Mainstreaming Gender and Complexity: An Introduction for Research Design

Abstract

Gendered approaches to risk management are relevant to male, female and non-binary identities, from all areas, including marginalised communities and are a central concern in meeting the Hub’s goal of making urban development resilient to multiple disasters in ways that enhance equity and social justice.

The Hub strategy is to mainstream gender into all aspects of research, impact and capacity building activity. The Hub’s Gender Champion will support this process through advising City and Research College teams on:

(1) Making our research gender sensitive: how gender and other forms of social discrimination and difference can be highlighted in research methods, analysis and dissemination for impactful changes.

(2) Making project management gender sensitive: how the ways in which we undertake research (employing staff, staff development, research roles and leadership) can enable gender and other equity.

The Hub takes coproduction and leadership by city partners seriously as agents for transition and impact of themselves. For this reason, we do not pre-determine content for gender strategy. However, the vision of the Gender Champion, who will strongly influence this, encourages three entry points for mainstreaming. These entry points, presented in this article, should be considered during project design and implementation through MEL systems for both research and management. We present these now to indicate the trajectory of gender sensitive research within the Hub.