Page 44 - voice-international-oct2022

Global Perspective

perspective into their oversight work in the don’t consistently consider gender issues and
budget cycle; and the other is to address cognitive implications in their financial oversight with
barriers and behavioural constraints and make the belief that gender discrimination is non-
sure that legislatures’ interest and intention get existent in their country.
actually translated into specific actions for gender • The second barrier is that gender integration
integration into their oversight work. Ultimately, the can be a change from how parliamentary
integration of a gender perspective into financial financial oversight has been provided until
oversight requires behavioural change among the then. Thus, people’s “status quo bias”—the
elected representatives in legislatures. tendency to prefer the maintenance of the
current state of affairs—would cause friction
Psychological Barriers to Gender to adopt gender integration. Furthermore, the
Integration “confirmation bias”—the human tendency to

Field research and experience in Myanmar look for evidence in line with an existing view
(including an analysis of the behavioral challenge, or belief—would keep members of parliament
a diagnosis on the from critically assessing
parliamentary budget information that is
process, a survey with The integration of a gender perspective into contradictory to their
members of parliament financial oversight requires behavioural change beliefs that gender
and support staff, among the elected representatives in legislatures. discrimination and
and a review of the gender inequality are
scientific literature) not an issue in the
allowed deep insights country.
into the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of the • Finally, the third barrier relates to legislators’
members of parliament regarding gender integration decisions to integrate a gender perspective and
into their financial oversight responsibilities. Then, consider the impacts of the government budget
a team of behavioural scientists used data and on gender equality made as a group. This
findings gathered from field research to develop a means that the variety of biases and problems
list of psychological barriers they found to be at that surface during group decision making (e.
play for Myanmar’s parliament when faced with g. “groupthink”—the tendency to fail to make an
the idea of gender integration into their oversight optimal decision due to the desire for harmony
work. The identification of these psychological or conformity within a group) are likely to
barriers subsequently informed the design and keep members of parliament from suggesting a
development of strategic interventions in support of change that goes against the status quo which
gender-sensitive parliamentary financial oversight in they believe others support.
Myanmar.
The identified psychological barriers were Behavioral Informed Interventions
grouped into the three behavioral contexts in which To overcome these psychological barriers
they would likely arise, namely—when someone is and help gender integration into parliamentary
explaining or justifying the current state of affairs, financial oversight, several strategic ideas were
considering changes to the current state, and developed based on innovation, scientific backing,
making decisions as a group: feasibility, and size of expected impact. A general
• The first of the barriers is associated with the theme throughout the developed strategic ideas
“inherence heuristic”—our tendency to explain was to leverage the “foot-in-the-door effect” which
phenomena using inherent features of the occurs when someone has agreed to any action, no
phenomena itself. This means that members matter how small, which then makes them get more
of parliament may justify the fact that they substantially involved than they did before. This

44 | VoICE International | October 2022