Mapping for Change: A Network Analysis of the Association for Women's Rights in Development
Medha Basu
(I am not taking the second half of the module)

BACKGROUND:

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is a global membership and advocacy organization, with its member base of women’s rights activists, organizations and movements increasing to an all time high of 565 institutional and 3496 individual members in 2013, coming from a mix of 159 countries.[i] 

AWIDs core mission is rooted in, and driven by strengthening collective social networks across issues, regions and member constituencies, making the study of their active and growing network essential to any strategy and future plans of the organization.

AWID's mission is to strengthen the collective voice of their members to  influence and transform structures of power and decision-making and advance human rights, gender justice and environmental sustainability worldwide.[ii] AWID believes that working together is key for women’s rights and gender justice to be a lived reality, and therefore a significant amount of their work is directed towards supporting women’s rights organizations and movements to form meaningful connections with each other and collaborate effectively. Their projects fall under the following umbrellas:

• Mobilizing members to strengthen collective action in solidarity with women’s rights causes
• Organizing and facilitating constructive spaces for members and donors, development agencies and other CSOs to explore and strengthen connections
• Bringing together groups in the gender equality space that have not yet found common ground.
• Including and engaging groups who have an underrepresented voice but are stakeholders in the issue
• To serve as clearing house for information to and from our members and broader women’s rights movements.

This SNA will specifically focus on the connections between the institutional member base of AWID. While AWID undoubtedly keeps lists of their member base dis aggregated by country, issue area, date of joining (break-up by region is below), there is no mention on their website, or in any of their literature, about the quality, quantity and nature of connections among their network.

Fig 1: Source: AWID 2013 Annual Report

RESEARCH QUESTION:

What is the current level and nature of connections between institutional member organizations of AWID, and how can this information be leveraged by AWID to strengthen the network for collective and representative action on women's rights?

More specifically, each sub-question/strand of this SNA umbrella question would draw insights which would help AWID make more nuanced and effective decisions while planning and implementing their strategy over the next few years, as articulated below: 

A) Sub-Question: How dense are the connections between members in each country, and between members in each region (in the categories laid out in Figure 1)? Do some countries/regions have a higher number of, denser, stronger or higher reciprocity of ties than other countries/regions, and are some under-connected? Are some countries underrepresented by way of being comparatively less connected than others? 

Decisions this would inform: Does AWID need to provide more opportunities for engagement and convening in some countries and regions, so that they have the chance to become better connected, not only within country platforms, but to the wider network? This could involve organizing a regional conference, a data and research sharing platform, or matching organizations which do similar work. AWID can also note which regions have more outgoing/incoming than reciprocal ties, as a basis to investigate what kinds of projects can be implemented to find common ground and increase chances of collaboration.  

B) Sub-Question: AWID aims to build action for gender equity holistically, ie, beyond the gender binary, ensuring they are not only engaging only women activists for women's rights. Therefore, this SNA can reveal: how well embedded and connected are member organizations who work with engaging men and boys for gender equality, deal with LGBTQA rights or transgender perspectives?

Decisions this would inform:
If there is an under-representation of transgender or LGBTQA focussed members who lie at the periphery of the network with few ties to the larger network,  or less heard voices which need to be boosted in the mainstream flow of information in the 'clearing house', AWID staff can reach out to these organizations to understand where they need more support and facilitation. 

C) Sub-Question: How well connected are the members categorized by the issue areas they work on? AWID has 6 issue areas along the lines of which they organize and mobilize collaboration: Economic Justice; Resourcing Women’s Rights; Challenging Religious Fundamentalisms; The Right to Defend Rights: Women Human Rights Defenders and Young Feminist Activism. Are some issue area networks not well-connected globally (or in certain regional blocks), and are some very well connected? 

Decisions this would inform:
The force of an advocacy network to push for change in a specific issue area is affected by the strength of the bonds in the network itself and the level of collaboration. Therefore if a particular issue area network needs attention, AWID can allocate relationship building efforts, or launch joint projects/platforms in those issue areas.

D) Sub-question: Are there any 'success models' of collaboration which emerge, in terms of hubs which are very highly connected and reciprocal, either by region, issue area, or other factors like the type of projects they have worked on together, or the mode of their interactions?

Decision this would inform:
This would shed light on what has worked and what has not worked in bringing together organizations and facilitating strong bonds. AWID could accordingly allocate resources and efforts to those types of joint projects which work best (example- if the SNA showd that organizations seem to make stronger and lasting connections through joint report writing over attending workshops together, then this can inform the balance of activities planned for the coming year). They could also examine the  connections between diverse organizations from different countries and cultural contexts, to assess whether cross-cultural and cross-issue exchange is occurring, and if not, what activities can be planned to encourage this. 

E) Sub-Question: Are there some member organizations which stand out as very well connected and active, with multiple bonds with other members in-country or internationally? Who are the organizations who are isolated?

Decision this would help inform:
This process will help identify existing and emerging leaders. AWID can use this information to invite these high-influence, pro-active organizations, which are well-embedded in their own geographic or issue network to kick-start new advocacy project. They could also act as a conduit to bring on board new or peripheral constituencies (other members, donor agencies, policy bodies, etc).

DATA AND SOURCES: 

Defining 'connected':
'Connected' in the context of this network can be defined and measured in many ways. For the purposes of this SNA, I am defining it the following way:
1) Level 1 ties indicate that 2 members have participated in a workshop together where minimal interaction was necessary, contributing to a pooled data-sharing platform along with other organizations,  or signing the same petition together.
2) Level 2 ties could involve working on a joint project together- from contributing separately run but coordinated pieces to a larger national campaign, being on a break-out group team at a conference and presenting recommendations together, attending a strategy meeting together and collaborating with other organizations.

3) Level 3 ties could involve deeper collaborative ties indicated by co-writing a report, lobbying for policy or legal reform together, jointly applying for a grant, collaborating to implement a long-term programme, becoming organizational partners

Sources of Data:

• Annual Reports for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. These reports list all the achievements and executed projects in the year under the 6 issue areas AWID works on, along with a description of what kind of collaboration and process of each project entailed. (available online).[iii]
• Updated list of all members - disaggregated by country, region, issue areas, date of joining (very likely to be available in internal records).
• List of all activities facilitated by AWID between 2010-14 (available through annual reports), and an accompanying list of all members/partners who were involved in each activity (likely to be available in internal records):

a) Strategy meetings, agreed plans of action, memorandums of understanding signed

b) Policy advocacy groups formed

c) Publications written jointly (best practices, manuals, policy recommendations)

d) Public campaigns carried out (social media, protests, awareness drives)

e) Research (studies conducted and analysed collaboratively, data sharing platforms created)

f) Grants jointly applied for by members

g) Public, 'access to information' platforms collaboratively worked on

• An end-of year survey of all members, where they are asked to list the ten organizations they collaborated most with, or approached the most in a given year (much like the Women to Women post-survey, where girls were asked to list the 3 girls they interacted the most with). This survey could also ask which mode of AWID activity members found most beneficial to increasing their knowledge, capacity, and engagement with the broader network. This information does not seem to be available or mentioned in the online literature, but could be conducted along with end-of year catch-ups or other meetings with members through regional offices of AWID.
• The attendance list at various workshops and events at AWIDs flagship international forum, which is held every 2-4 years and garners attendees from members and other stakeholders in the range of 1000-2000. The last one took place in 2012 in Turkey, and the next one will be in 2016 in Rio, Brazil. [iv]       

CRITICAL SNA MEASURES (with each member organization as a node)

Density: This means the number of actual connections over the number of potential ones between member organizations. This 'whole network measure' will be critical in identifying the success models of a bonded network and areas of untapped potential for collaboration, to be facilitated by AWID.  Density can be compared and analyzed of networks categorized by region (MENA, South and South-East Asia, etc).

Strength of ties: This will analyze the network at Level 1,2 and 3 ties. It would  be interesting to compare the whole network density at the 3 levels, and also if layering the 2009-2013 data/matrices, to compare which ties have gone up a level over the years. When looking at the joint activity/platform which initiated and built the tie, this could indicate which efforts at collaboration have been effective catalysts for deepening bonds.  

Arc  reciprocity: to what extent the existing ties in a whole network are reciprocal (0-1). If arc reciprocity within a given issue area or geographic network are low, AWID as a membership organization could identify sub-networks high on one-way links, and devise ways to find mutual interest or convene members around common issues.

Centrality Measures:

Degree: In-degree indicates how many nodes that link to a given organization 'a'. This could be gauged from the proposed survey where at the end of the year- all members indicate the top 10 organizations who they have collaborated with or reached out to, dichotomized by level 2 and 3 ties. Therefore those organizations with very high in-degree could be identified as potential leaders/driving partners for new initiatives

Eigenvector : This, from the survey and activity lists combined, will measure which organizations are connected to the most important/influential nodes. This measure is crucial to know when facilitating a joint advocacy opportunity, where there is an effort to bring about reform, and coalesce support from the most influential and credible stakeholders in the network. The organizations with high eigenvector could be assigned as the coodinators and partnership management leads on projects to maximize support around lobbying/backing policy recommendations for a given cause.

Betweenness : This reveals organizations who are on the path between most other nodes. These organizations would be approached as the key nodes for passing on important information to the rest of the member network, including updates on AWID activities, changes in relevant domestic and international law or policy, calls for applications for grants, etc. They could also be useful for information gathering and feedback to AWIDs team on who the main players are in their network, and ideas on who to engage further for which project.

EI Index: This indicates (on a scale from -1 to 1), whether a given geographical, issue area or activity based network is homophilous or heterophilous. Since one of the aims of AWID is to encourage bonding over common ground, but also idea exchange across members who have different core interests and constituencies, this measure will help identify where a bridging effort is needed to create platforms for diverse organizations.

Cliques: clique is a sub-set of a network in which the organizations are more closely and intensely tied to one another than they are to other members of the network. Identification of cliques would be helpful for AWID to assess where there are strong communities of collaboration within the network and then further investigate why this works, and what kinds of joint activities or interests cause these strong bonds to occur. Perhaps success stories can be replicated. If a clique is very insular and not connected to the rest of the network, efforts can be made to provide opportunities for broader interaction.

CONCLUSION:

A comprehensive Social Network Analysis of AWIDs organizational member network would give them a wealth of information about why, and through what modes their members connect, and subsequently build strong ties and execute joint projects. The gaps, evidence of weak ties and comparatively sparsely connected issue area or geographic networks can inform organizational decisions on where to direct new initiatives to facilitate collaboration. Emergent leaders can be identified to spearhead advocacy movements, and those who seem less connected can be approached to ask if they need support. Overall, this would feed back into helping AWID have a more targeted and nuanced approach to reaching its goals.

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[i] Annual Report 2013, http://www.awid.org/annual-report-2013

[ii] AWID, About Us, http://www.awid.org/who-we-are; Accessed 22 Oct 2015

[iii] AWID Annual Reports, http://www.awid.org/annual-reports

[iv]International Forum, http://www.awid.org/awids-international-forum