Pratiquer l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes au sein des organisations : étude de cas des ONG au Mali
This thesis analyzes practices with regard to equality between women and men within eight Malian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have received Canadian funding. Official development assistance has been radically transformed since the 1950s, and one of these transformations has been the important role played by NGOs since the beginning of 1990s, following the implementation of structural adjustment policies and the end of the state’s monopoly on public aid for development projects. The changed role of NGOs in official development assistance has created dependency and these donors impose conditions. Our results show that the donors require efforts to foster gender equality for the beneficiaries of the programs, but paradoxically do not require that NGOs do the same in their personnel practices. By analyzing the composition of the staff of eight Malian NGOs, our results show that 34 % of the staff are women, while 66 % are men. These results demonstrate that there is a significant gender imbalance. However a closer analysis shows that equality between women and men in the organization and management of staff differs from one NGO to another. The practices are highly dependent on the willingness as well as the values of the managers. Our research brought out several explanations for this disparity in the level of women’s employment. The reasons often mentioned were: 1) the need for competent staff; 2) family-work balance; 3) the sociocultural context; 4) the interpretation of the Muslim religion about the place of women in society. In fact, our results showed that under the influence of donors, NGOs have become professionalized; our analyses also show that the impact of professionalization is different on women and men and it has been made at the expense of women. Some managers, both male and female, prefer to recruit men because they believe the men are more competent. Our results confirm the theory of the glass ceiling which highlights the fact that women have difficulty accessing positions of responsibility. Our results also showed that in Mali both the sociocultural context and religion play major roles in social relationships, and especially in women’s place in society.
ACDI Mali International development aid CIDA NGO gender equality glass ceiling Mali