Canada’s solution for intersectional design
Breaking down Gender-based Analysis Plus and how you can incorporate it into your work.
Hiding in plain sight above the 49th parallel is an inconspicuous design tool that’s changing the way the federal government thinks and operates. It’s called Gender-based Analysis Plus (or GBA+ for short). It’s an analytical process used by the public sector for assessing how policies, programs, practices and initiatives affect diverse groups of people differently. Or, put another way, it’s a stopgap against myopic design in government.
While it can be a periodic whipping post for Canada’s chattering classes, a lack of media fanfare hasn’t halted its use at the highest echelons of government. GBA+ is compulsory in national budgets, ministers are told in their mandate letters they must use it when making decisions, and it has been used to analyze some of Canada’s foremost national interests, from military peacekeeping missions to the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.
When talking about the economy and foreign policy, GBA+ may seem like a superfluous footnote — what does gender have to do with aluminum tariffs? — but when viewed from a design perspective, it’s essentially institutionalized empathy.
More than meets the eye
Though “gender” is embedded in the name, GBA+’s utility lies in analyzing the potpourri of intersecting identity factors that make us who we are — not only gender. This confluence is known as intersectionality. Characteristics like sex, ethnicity, income, education and even geography matter.
Now, the creators of GBA+ don’t paint it as a design tool, but its application — if done properly — is in the dominion of design. It’s a useful lens throughout the design process to check whether products may have different or undesirable effects for diverse user groups.
Though the word ‘user’ is often conspicuously absent from GBA+ resources and the wider bureaucratic lexicon, the public sector has a few synonymous terms: citizen, consumer, Canadian (at least in Canada). A citizen applying for a government job is a user of government systems. A consumer seeking a tax rebate for a home purchase is a user of government programs. A Canadian sending a letter through Canada Post is a user of government services.
These groups of users can be incredibly diverse. In fact, Canada is one of the most diverse countries in the world. This is both a point of national pride and a potential design challenge: how can the government ensure its policies, programs, practices and initiatives — its products— are inclusive, sensitive and sensible?
As the design guru Don Norman notes in The Design of Everyday Things:
“In some cases, detailed analyses of the intended group are necessary. Japanese teenage girls are quite different from Japanese women, and in turn, very different from German teenage girls. If a product is intended for subcultures like these, the exact population must be studied. Another way of putting it is that different products serve different needs.”
The crux of GBA+ is moving past “some cases,” as stated by Norman, to all cases. It’s to ensure public servants — the designers of government — aren’t creating blinkered products which are inadvertently averse to different groups. Institutionalizing empathy and the consideration of diverse groups of Canadians as users of government products is a good start.
GBA+ isn’t without criticism. In some cases there may be no gendered implications (though GBA+ training materials note such instances are few). The government also had to explicitly state that it does not view GBA+ as advocacy. More broadly, some critics have even taken aim at the concept of intersectionality which is at the core of GBA+.
It goes without saying that good design takes its users into account. Users vary in a myriad of ways: age, ability, knowledge, experience, and so on. The more empathetic designers are towards the multitude of mutable and immutable characteristics of their audience can help breed good design.
Getting started with GBA+
GBA+ is best undertaken at the start of a project and is ideally revisited through all stages. It’s least effective when conducted as a half-hearted formality. Make sure to document your findings along the way.
Start by identifying the issue. In policy development, as in design, problem definition is usually the hardest part. Are you solving the correct problem or a symptom of the problem? Why is it a problem? According to who? Get to know the real issues intimately from all angles.
Unconscious bias can result in a narrow GBA+ analysis. Checking your analyses and assumptions with colleagues and stakeholders can help find your blindspots. Another common issue in GBA+ is assuming groups of users who share a common characteristic are homogenous. For example, not all women are the same, just as not all men are the same. Notions of femininity and masculinity differ by age, culture and religion. Context matters. Some questions to help check your assumptions include:
- What assumptions am I making?
- Could certain groups be affected differently? If so, how?
- Have the views of diverse groups been considered?
- Have I consulted with potentially affected groups?
- Why am I consulting this group?
- Why am I not consulting this group?
- What other perspectives should I consider?
Gender-disaggregated data are the building blocks of GBA+. To determine whether something affects diverse groups of men, women and non-binary people differently, start by collecting evidence. Public data sets, surveys and censuses are low-hanging fruit. Focus groups and interviews with stakeholders require more time and effort but can be as equally enlightening as a hearty dataset. GBA+ lends itself to qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.
Ask whether your data and evidence is from a reliable or unbiased source. What information is missing, and is it possible to obtain? Sometimes disaggregated data can be hard to find. While this can be an obstacle, it’s not insurmountable. Designers must exercise more due diligence to ensure a comprehensive, evidence-based view. Can highly correlated factors be used to explore statistical intersections, such as race and immigration status? Are there acceptable proxy data sources? Make a concerted push to get quantitative evidence where it doesn’t yet exist.
Framing your options and recommendations in terms of outcomes is helpful. Are your outcomes equal, equitable or desirable? Are there unintended consequences for different groups? Do these options or recommendations address the actual problem? Does your decision maker have all the information required at her disposal to make an informed decision?
Finally, the implemented solution does not stand isolated in perpetuity. It requires monitoring and evaluation to ensure it addresses the issue and any subsequent changes. Developing benchmarks and key performance indicators is helpful.
Status of Women Canada, the government department responsible for GBA+, has compiled a handy list of resources and job aids for budding GBA+ practitioners. There’s also a free course that pulls together some high level concepts and case studies, and gives students a certificate upon completion. It takes about an hour and anyone with a basic understanding of the differences between sex and gender and equity and equality should waltz through it.
GBA+ isn’t a panacea for guaranteeing good design (or fixing bad design), and it doesn’t replace other analyses which may need to occur throughout the life of a project. However, it is one way designers can take the diversity, complexity and intersectionality of users into account. The next time you start a project, it doesn’t hurt to try.
