The idea of this blog post came to me after a good conversation about our internship expectations, women leadership and participation of women in decision making positions in the governments between David and I during one of our work days.
Understanding our role in one of the world’s newest bureaucracy
Since we have started our internship in the Ministry of Commerce on June 1st, we have been through a continuous process of understanding what the objectives of our work in the ministry are and what our added value would be. Given the wide array of opportunities of things to do and improve in a system that will soon become the youngest bureaucracy in the world, there still a struggle of understanding the system and making the system understand us J
Before heading to South Sudan, we have been advised by several people that we should be a rapid response team in order to tackle any urgent policy analysis problem or capacity building constraints, to focus on the priorities of the people that we are working with. However, this is easier said than done. In order to receive valuable work, one need to build trust, be proactive, lower their expectations, understand the role and functions of the ministry and try to work the “perfect match” between skills and potential work. I guess, this is always a necessary step in an unstructured internship, where one always risks to work under a super-busy manager that might not clearly understand the return on investment in the intern in explaining or giving him responsibilities to fulfill.
Discussing and figuring out what is the focus of our work took us almost a week, given the busy schedules of our main counterparts, the Undersecretary of Trade and the Director for Trade. We realized that our expectations about the speed of doing things and meeting people here is constrained by how engaged they are in interministerial consultation, negotiations with the North, preparation for negotiations or even trainings abroad.
During this process I’ve had some good learning points: 1) one needs to remain humble, and try to learn both from context and regional practices what is the essential role of a ministry. 2)we can integrate a learning and assessment process of the key roles and policy cycle components of the ministry in our Project, by consulting stakeholders as this work can be feeded into the strategic plan of the ministry for 2011 and 2013; 3) provide fast inputs defining SMEs in South Sudan and help with the implementation of the Monitoring and Evaluation system in MC&I.
Some thoughts on women leadership
Both David and I will be under the direct supervision of 2 very strong and capable women, the Undersecretary and the Director General for Trade. Given that the Government of South Sudan has a quota system that needs to ensure that 25% of the staff are women, it is a good surprise to observe that some of these women also in position of decision making where they can influence policy and a country’s priorities.
As a woman I almost always take for granted the fact that women are capable and strong enough leaders to head any type of organization. However, David made a good point yesterday pointing that men are frequently exposed at situations of decision making where women are not present and just this lack of representation can cause question marks or misunderstandings about the capabilities and competencies of women to lead.
While I do not sense the need of confirmation of women potential and of their decision making or negotiation abilities in public office (because of the significant leadership roles that I’ve seen women taking and performing in community, informal or formal organizations), I do need to understand the impact of women decision making on public policy. How do we quantify it? What is it correlated with? Are women’s decision more forward looking and sustainable? Are women’s decision correlated with improvements in women’s status or even disadvantaged groups in the society?
I believe that this internship offers exactly this opportunity, that by working with two extraordinary women, that are not only having decision making roles in ministries but also their communities, I hope to observe and have a few ideas about women in public policy and what would be the factors correlated with their decision making.
