Episode 5: Learning from the Humanitarian Logistics Landscape

Podcast Series: Gender Mainstreaming, Episode 5

Sudipa Sarker, Lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and Programme Lead for MSc Global Logistics and Supply Chain Analytics interviews Gyöngyi Kovács, Dean of Research and Erkko Professor in Humanitarian Logistics, Hanken School of Economics

Episode 1 I Episode 2 I Episode 3 I Episode 4 I Episode 5 

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[00:00:00] thank you for tuning into this podcast series on gender mainstreaming in the logistics sector. We are recording five podcasts and today marks the fifth and final episode of the series. In this episode, we will be discussing what we can learn about gender from the humanitarian logistic sector. Our guest today is Jyonji Kovach, who is the Dean of Research at Hankin School of Economics.

She is also the Elko Professor in Humanitarian Logistics at Hankin, the founding director of the Humlag Institute, and the founding editor of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Jyonji has also written about gender mainstreaming in the humanitarian logistic sector.

Welcome to the show, JJI. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and experiences with our listeners. First, let's start with your definition of gender mainstreaming. Thank you Shari, for having [00:01:00] me on this podcast. It's really nice to talk to you again. Think gender mainstreaming well, I don't wanna now go for.

Any scientific definition in that sense, but more maybe in how it is being used in the humanity and sector many, many years ago, gender mainstreaming has hit also humanity and logistics as a sector. And at that point, the big concern was about women in logistics and how to meet the needs of women beneficiaries, particularly through humanity and logistics.

So these were the two main issues. back then. Gender mainstreaming has changed quite a bit over the last, say, two decades, and nowadays there's a lot more focus on the older varieties of gender on LGBTQ plus communities, but also then kind of the intersectionality of vulnerabilities with, with other kinds of aspects as well.

So we've kind of come a long way in a very nice, you know, way to talk about, but there's a lot to be [00:02:00] still done.

You have been working in the sector for over 25 years now. How do you think the sector has progressed in terms of gender mainstreaming?

We've, as I said, we were very much focusing on women it's turned towards more of a balance and then it now really kind of encompasses the bigger spectrum, generally, of gender. There's a lot to be done, though, because, I mean, when it comes to gender mainstreaming, the point is that you consider these nuances in everything you do.

And, I mean, we still have manholes in even humanitarian events. We still have For example, I mean, we might have a much better percentage of women or race in, in, the area of supply and procurement, but we still lack, generally speaking, people who are kind of like a bigger spectrum when it comes to, say, warehousing jobs or transportation jobs.

At the same time, I think what has also been a [00:03:00] fundamental change is to consider the whole spectrum of gender as a way of Changing people's minds. So, for example, there have been situations in which female drivers were selected in conflict zones because they would be perceived as less of a threat, and thereby kind of mitigating otherwise potentially exclusive situations just by the fact that it wouldn't be a male driver.

So, that kind of Thing like, you know, it just changes your thinking about it and you use it consciously as a way to defuse a situation or to ensure that the security of both the delivery and the population is warranted better. Now, in which situations that is being done, of course, is very context specific and you need to be very aware of the context.

But another thing that has [00:04:00] been. Become much more typical in the sector is that whenever you are deployed to any kind of disaster, there are all sorts of gender awareness trainings that one has to do and not just once, but just before every deployment and in every deployment and and people and, you know, Organizations have programs by which they make you go through it like, yes, you are now in this country, in this environment.

Pay attention to X, Y, Z, which is very, very specific to this country or environment. So, for example, one of my last deployments was one of those where I wouldn't have known that it, in that particular environment, there was quite a substantial population of people who self identified as third gender.

And it was very good to have that kind of AVNS training that, hey, in this population, this is typical in, in certain kind of contexts it's an, actually, it's a, it's a population that is invited, for example, [00:05:00] to weddings because people think that they bring luck. At the same time, it's a population that is discriminated against in other kinds of situations.

So that makes it Makes it much better in programming, but also in logistics to know that, okay, we have to pay attention to this when visiting communities.

Can you give us some examples of gender mainstreaming in the humanitarian logistic sector?

Well, these were just some examples, I would say, but it's become like a gender mainstream has become mainstream, which is kind of maybe the biggest point here. So we can talk endlessly about specific examples, but that's. Exactly what it is that you have it incorporated in programs in deployments in talking about it.

But it's still maybe a different example. Just generally speaking, but we still need to think about it like in our research. We've had at some point a survey looking at how do skills of [00:06:00] logisticians. And especially in humanitarian logistics, like what is moderated by gender. And it was really, really interesting to work with that survey.

This was together with Peter Tatum, because we've had 170 something responses and the quantitative part of the survey came back as no, there is no impact, there is no effect. But then we also had an open ended question about, okay, under which circumstances does it make a difference? And we had. Over 70 answers to that question, giving us and detailing us examples of when it did make a difference.

So this was one of these surveys from a research perspective as well, where we went back to like, okay, something doesn't add up. How come quantitatively we get this result and qualitatively we get a completely different story? So what is difficult to say from this perspective? [00:07:00] Aspect is like, you know, are all the stories we got just anecdotal evidence and outliers?

but there are very many for, for those to be just outliers. Or is it just, or did we capture something wrongly in the quantitative side? So we actually then ended up writing an article on comparing the content, the quality sides, because of this, because it was super interesting. And yet I have to say, if you are a qualitative researcher, if you, if you would only have had that data, we would think that gender is not important.

is a really big problem and there are so many aspects and issues and, and the gender of the logistician makes a huge difference in so many different ways, but when it comes to the stats, it doesn't show. So, at the end of the day, do you think that what we did capture were wonderful stories, but probably outliers to the regular what happens?

Who do you think has played a significant role in promoting [00:08:00] gender mainstreaming in the humanitarian logistics sector?

There are several different people. And those organizations that have played a significant role and let me just also maybe come to one fact here that to be fair, when you look at, for example, in like a long time ago, there used to be a lot of like women in logistics endeavors, they still exist, and the logistics sector is still fairly male, but in contrast, some aspects of humanitarian logistics and also healthcare logistics aren't, so it's kind of an interesting thing.

You know, detail to this. Now, who has been promoting it? I would say when Pamela Steele has started off this whole gender mainstreaming thing and then maybe kind of developed it into the project and she has written several kind of actually booklets about this as well and books about it. And she's putting to put together these women in supply chain in the humanitarian sector.

Really like two decades ago. So that has been very instrumental because she brought together [00:09:00] the voices of a lot of female logisticians and supply chain managers in the humanitarian sector, brought it together, and then it kind of initiated a debate. At the same time though, gender mainstreaming became an issue from very different directions as well, because there has been quite an effort to see to it, for example, gender in conflict gender in transportation, gender in Any kind of disaster like how does a natural hazard impact on male versus female populations in certain parts of the world?

Say, depending on is it the men or is it the women who are working the fields versus the men or the women who are more typically migrating to the cities to do other kinds of things. Work. So like, you know, where would a person more likely be when a disaster hits? That's one aspect to it. Then the other aspect to it is like, okay, in this particular culture, how do we perceive different groups or the different groups of gender or disabilities or, you know, [00:10:00] age, etcetera, which is more context dependent again, so like all these kinds of things have come together and a lot of awareness of it has come together, not only in the logistics sector.

In fact, logistics was probably relatively late to this. just that kind of maybe the whole story is much bigger than. After a while, the UN has had this huge he for she movement, which is also probably a decade ago by now which was born out of the recognition that gender mainstreaming can't be promoted by women for women or by LGBTQ plus for, for their own segment.

But that we need to kind of have the advocates across a population. And that movement was rather instrumental in opening a lot of doors across all across all sectors within the humanity and space.

So, last question, what are your suggestions for the logistics and supply chain management sector to become more gender mainstreamed? So, I think a lot [00:11:00] has been done and a lot is yet to be done. So, if I just now focus on what needs to probably still be looked into. We still have issues with, for example, equipment sizes.

And I'm talking about say trucks and lorries. Like, you know, how do you get into a truck or a lorry? How, how, how big is it? Can you actually drive it if you are not of a certain size? It's probably more known when it comes to pilots that they need to be a certain size and certain weight, even in certain kinds of equipment.

So the, the, the. And not all of this is made so that women could actually qualify. How much do you need to carry? How, how can you reach certain things? Does a bulletproof vest actually work for people who have certain types of breast sizes? So there are also kinds of these issues are kind of on one package that [00:12:00] is being looked into, but it is not still kind of very much in its infancy, I would say.

Then one thing that was very early on an issue and consideration in the humanitarian space was when there was a recognition originally in South Africa that HIV AIDS spreads with truck drivers. And then there have been quite an effort put into making sure that people would get their access to their antiretroviral drugs along the way, but also there was an effort put into for example, distributing condoms and male condoms and female condoms and like and all sorts of kinds of things like that to this.

So What there would still probably need to be done a lot more is to say, okay, how do we make routes safe for non male truck drivers? But it comes to say, and not just safe, but even just kind of like operable, like, you know, where can you go to a bathroom? How often can you go to a [00:13:00] bathroom? Like, also procedure wise, like, you know, are you allowed to have bathroom breaks?

So a lot of these kinds of things would, you know, still make quite a big difference in making certain jobs accessible to a wider population.

So thank you once again for being here with us today. Thank you.