Reality Check: Gender Mainstreaming in a JICA-Funded Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Project in the Philippines

This research used a qualitative approach—drawing on semi-structured interviews, document analyses, and a non-participant structured observation—to explore JICA’s gender mainstreaming framework, how it affects a Philippines’ disaster risk reduction and management project, and how the local partners influenced the mainstreaming of gender within the rehabilitation programme. It followed JICA’s gender mainstreaming framework starting from the formulation of the policy in its Headquarters in Tokyo, and to the adoption by JICA’s country office in the Philippines based on the local context. It then examines how the framework is operationalised in the programme, and finally, the contribution of JICA counterparts in the city government of Tacloban in mainstreaming gender.