Case study
Lao PDR
Research Team Leader and Lead Technical Advisor role with UN Development Programme (UNDP)
In 2023 I led a large-scale research project to explore the gender situation in the National Assembly and 18 People’s Provincial Assemblies (PPAs) in Lao PDR. I went on to design the gender programming for a $15 million UNDP parliamentary strengthening project.
Working in collaboration with Lao researcher Dr Seng Chittalath, the project aimed understand the gendered experiences of the institutions firsthand, and recommend how the UNDP project could design programmes to help achieve national gender goals. This involved a review of existing research and documents, and holding interviews and conducting surveys with MPs and staff.
It seemed like a straightforward project, until we realised that the relationship between the UNDP and the National Assembly was fraught (to say the least), political leaders weren’t bought into the project, and the practicalities of collecting the data had been drastically underestimated. The project was repeatedly stalled and seemed doomed to fail.
Unlocking the work meant building trust. The National Assembly was cautious about foreign expertise and we didn’t understand their unique political environment. Things started to move when we cultivated deeper relationships with key political actors, listened to their concerns, and understood their priorities and needs. We re-designed the project to increase the involvement of parliamentary staff so they could see how the research would be conducted and have faith in its outcomes. This included training on research methods to explain and counter pre-conceptions about ‘interviews’ and fears about being judged or tested. Meanwhile, I provided support and capacity building to the Institute for Legislative Studies, which also helped to improve trust in our work.
Working with a team of parliamentary staff, we interviewed more than 20 MPs about their experiences and ideas. We also received more than 300 survey responses from MPs and staff across the National Assembly and PPAs, including over 650 individual comments. Combined with an in-depth review of existing research and documents, and informal interviews with other stakeholders, we had a rich evidence base from which to draw conclusions and recommendations.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. We knew this research was a new experience for the leadership of the NA and wanted to make sure they had ownership over the results. The report was split into two - the literature review and the interview/survey data analysis. The latter report was structured entirely around the anonymised quotes from the research, so the analysis was told through the words of the participants, rather than ours.
We also observed that written reports weren’t the best way of communicating findings and recommendations. So we arranged briefings for the key leaders and parliamentary bodies to outline the key messages and receive their feedback in open discussion. This helped prioritise which recommendations were most important to them, and allowed us to start to design delivery programmes.
After a long period of dissemination and feedback, the report was finally approved in December 2024. The Women’s Parliamentary Caucus and the Social and Cultural Affairs Committees have taken ownership of the findings and taking forward the recommendations, including through internal party policies.