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GPKT Activity Update 5

Women’s Research Project Activity Meeting October 2004

On 11 October 2004, representatives from the GPKT Women’s Working Group met in the EWI Gjilan/Gnjilane office to discuss possible research activities and methodology. The rationale behind this meeting was the need for research identified during the Women’s Working Group session at the September Kumanovo Conference. Participants at the Kumanovo session felt strongly that research into the situation of women in the micro-region was sorely needed, as before more information became available it was difficult to identify accurately the priority needs and the appropriate responses in terms of project implementation on women’s issues.

A meeting was therefore held by EWI in order to facilitate discussion about research needs and to explore ideas for research projects, which could then be taken forward by the Working Group members (and if they wished and co-ordinated amongst themselves, to be submitted as independent project proposals to the EWI MPLF micro-grant fund the following month). As a part of EWI’s general capacity-building and skills transfer work in the GPKT communities, a second objective of the meeting was to introduce the basic concepts of research methodology to Working Group members, and to increase their awareness of the kinds of research most appropriate to address different information needs.

Facilitated by the GPKT Project Manager, Chrissie Hirst, participants were asked three core questions in relation to their research needs: Research - Why? On What? How best? Discussion then followed with identification of priority research topics, which it soon became clear fell within the three main areas for action determined during the Kumanovo conference:

Women’s economic situation – employment, discrimination, start-up loans, social benefits, etc.

Women’s social resources / amenities: ‘social care’ – health care, awareness and education, etc.

Women’s status, rights and role in communities– decision-making, empowerment, abuse, etc.

Education was a cross-cutting theme in all these three areas.
 

Participants then worked through possible research methodology that could be used to gather the necessary information for action on one or several topics within each area. Possible methods appropriate to different information needs were discussed, including quantitative surveys, open source information gathering, and focus group discussions.
 

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