Why so SADD?

Although the gendered impacts of disasters are still not fully understood (as I mentioned in my last post), over the past two decades, most humanitarian response and disaster relief organizations have begun to recognize the need to support both women and men through their interventions. “In the past decade, humanitarian [organizations] have made considerable progress in developing ways of working—including methods, ‘toolkits,’ and procedures—to help them integrate a gender perspectives into their work.”[1] In particular, disaster relief and humanitarian organizations have increasingly recognized the importance of collecting sex and age disaggregated data (SADD) in order to better inform humanitarian planning and measure the impact of their work on different groups.[2]

So – what is SADD? And why should we care?

According to Mercy Corps’ Gender Procedures:

…[W]e know that is not effective (and we do not have enough resources) to help every community member in the same ways. That is one reason we conduct assessments and develop beneficiary selection criteria – so we can target our assistance to the people who need it the most in ways that make the biggest difference. To best understand who in communities are most vulnerable or most in need, and who is best positioned to make sustainable changes, it is necessary to collect and analyze sex and age data.

Sex and age data is “simply demographic information we collect about program participants’ sex and age.”[3] Sex and age disaggregated data, or SADD, is when we break out data collected by sex and age to “look more precisely at similarities, differences, and trends.” [4]

Separating data in this way provides us with new, useful information that can feed into programming and monitor whether programs are reaching the intended audiences and producing the desired impact. For example, in the chart below entitled “Water and Sanitation Activities by Sex and Age (Ambore, Pakistan), 2010” you’ll notice that men were highly involved in water, sanitation, and hygiene activities (WASH) in Pakistan – for example, men identified and participated in the construction of water sites, they constructed latrines, were responsible for disposing of waste, and shared the responsibility of managing sanitation facilities at the household level. Despite this role, the percentage of men receiving health and hygiene education was much lower than women, and women were the primary target of hygiene education (it appears that women were around 70% of the training beneficiaries, while men constituted about 30%).

 

Sorry it's so hard to read! For a better version, go to the source: Sex and Age Matter, page 71

This is an example of how assumptions can prevent an organization from targeting  and reaching the “right” people in program activities – in this case, training and educating disproportionate amounts of women in health and hygiene when WASH activities are shared by men AND women.

 

So, SADD helps us to:

• Understand who needs what
• Understand who does what, including making decisions and controlling or accessing assets like education or land
• Be strategic about programming to achieve the greatest impact
• Make sure programs reach the people who need help the most.

If you are interested in learning more about SADD, I really recommend reading Sex and Age Matter: Improving Humanitarian Response in Emergencies by Dyan Mazurana, Prisca Benelli, Huma Gupta, and Peter Walker. As the report explains, “When agencies fail to use SADD and/or gender and generational analyses, their interventions can be misguided, fail, or put vulnerable groups at risk.” Sex and Age Matter convinced me that collecting and using SADD allows organizations to deliver more effective and efficient assistance, and I’m really glad that I’ll have a chance this summer to see how Mercy Corps has institutionalized the collection of SADD in its programming.

 

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[1] Hoare, Joanna, Ines Smyth and Caroline Sweetman. “Introduction: post-disaster humanitarian work.” Gender & Development, 20:2, (2012), 205-217.

[2] Hoare, Joanna et al. (2012)

[3] Mercy Corps’ Gender Procedures (2012)

[4] Mercy Corps’ Gender Procedures (2012)