24 INTERVIEW
Evaluating effects of gender budget intitiatives
in maternal health .
PHD
On Tuesday 20 December , IOB alumna Patricia Bamanyaki had the public defence of her PhD project . Exchange to change asked her for a review of her PhD trajectory and her experiences with the “ sandwich ” scholarship .
E2C : Can you give a short summary of your PhD project ?
The research was an impact evaluation of civil society-led gender budget initiatives at the local government level in Uganda , with a focus on maternal health . Gender responsive budgeting involves a consideration of the impacts and implications of policies , programs and budgets on women , men , boys and girls ( belonging to different social groups ), followed by informed action to promote gender equity . Over the last two decades , gender budgeting has been advanced as an effective tool for governments to meet their commitments towards gender equality and the realization of women ’ s rights . Little , however , is known empirically about the efficacy of such initiatives , and more so at lower levels of government . The research , thus , sought to establish the effects of local-level civil society gender budget initiatives on genderresponsiveness of maternal health care provision at public health facilities , as well as the utilization of skilled maternal health care among rural women in Kabale District , Uganda .
E2C : Can you explain what methodology you used in your PhD ? What do you think is the added value of this methodology ?
Given the limited information available , the study adopted a sequential exploratory mixed methods research design , which started with a qualitative phase and ended with a quantitative phase . For the qualitative phase , theory-based evaluation principles were integrated with process tracing methods to develop a program theory and underlying mechanism explaining how gender budget initiatives may influence gender-responsive maternal health services and the use of maternal health care among rural women . Formal Bayesian logic was used to test the strength of the evidence found in the case linking the locallevel civil society gender budget initiative to the observed outcomes in maternal health service provision and the use of maternal health care . The qualitative phase findings revealed that the civil society gender budget initiative sensitized women on maternal health services , rights and entitlements . The quantitative phase used propensity score matching methods to estimate the effects of the initiative on knowledge of maternal health services , rights
Exchange to change January 2017