INTERVIEW | Bridging the Gender Divide in Humanitarian Aid: in Conversation with Liselot Kattemölle

This International Women’s Day, we celebrate the extraordinary women* across the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement who help make this world a better place. Our Project Coordinator for Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA), Liselot Kattemölle is one of the leading women in our Netherlands Red Cross’ 510 team, working hard to ensure data and digital support to communities globally. We sat down with Liselot for a conversation about her journey being a woman in the Movement, and how technology can be a powerful tool in reducing the inequalities that persist in the humanitarian sector.

When and why did you join the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement?

Liselot: I started working with the Netherlands Red Cross in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic after having worked in Palestine for a year. The 510 team, full of inspiring and dedicated colleagues, provided a place I could thrive in. Over time, I became increasingly appreciative of the humanitarian principles. When public debates around COVID-19 were polarising, the ideas of neutrality and humanity felt like a safe haven. At 510, we have been collaborating with National Societies globally which helped me understand the power of this vast network to connect to the smallest localities, and the urgent need to digitally transform how humanitarian aid is delivered. I have also worked closely with the IFRC to develop a digital transformation strategy for our diverse network of 191 National Societies. This work has demonstrated the importance of women representation in digital spaces. To me, digital transformation is fundamentally about improving access to technology, but access isn’t universal or experienced equally. We need to consider how factors like gender, race, class, and digital literacy shape people’s experiences with – and barriers to – technology. Women are part of the Movement, and part of determining how digital products and services should be designed and governed. Without us, these solutions would only represent half of the population that we’re trying to serve. From the very beginning, our global Red Cross Red Crescent network has offered me the opportunity to connect with women in data and digital, who are my sources of strength and inspiration.

Looking at your journey with the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, which event has shaped you the most?

Liselot:There were two main highlights, one of them being the digital transformation assessments. In 2022, I trained two colleagues at the Palestine Red Crescent Society to conduct this assessment according to a methodology I developed as part of the IFRC’s digital transformation strategy. It was exciting to see something I had worked on for so long in the hands of the colleagues in Palestine who were able to quickly make it their own. I later did a similar training for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. However, two days after I left, the earthquake happened which was devastating for the colleagues I had just worked with. Months later, I received pictures of Syrian Arab Red Crescent staff and volunteers doing the digital transformation assessment by themselves. I was happy to see that, despite the humanitarian crisis that they had gone through, they still were able to pick up where we left them. My third assessment took me to Central Asia where the groups we worked with were quite young and invested in the digital transformation of their National Societies. When looking at threats and opportunities for digital transformation, they themselves raised the need to consider gender and LGBTQI+ inclusivity, which powerfully showed what digital transformation run by youth could look like. My second highlight has been my more recent work with the 510 CEA team who are passionate and dedicated to improving how community feedback is being collected through various digital services and products, making humanitarian aid more accountable. Adopting a product-driven approach, we developed the Digital Engagement Hub (DEH). Moving forward, IFRC, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Netherlands Red Cross are committed to co-developing DEH together. I’m proud to be part of this innovative collaboration, which we need to see more of in the humanitarian sector. It doesn’t make sense to develop digital products and services in siloes when our ambitions are the same.  

How has CEA affected the ways in which women can access assistance and participate in their own recovery?

Liselot: CEA is a principle adopted by the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement to recognise all programme participants as equal partners.  National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies aim to mainstream CEA as a standard approach, but this can often be challenging to achieve in practice. We’re good at the community engagement part, providing the tools to collect feedback of programme participants. However, there is also the accountability part to show participants how the provision of aid is managed, and what is being done with their feedback. For this, digital CEA brings a powerful opportunity to break through the power imbalance between the people who design aid and those who receive it, reducing the physical barriers that exist for people to provide feedback on the aid given. People in vulnerable positions shouldn’t have to risk their lives walking 20 kilometres to the next physical feedback box. By digitising our feedback mechanisms, we can improve opportunities for people in vulnerable positions to be heard. We must commit to making sure that our digital products and services are designed in a way that is accessible for people who aren’t used to dealing with digital technology on a regular basis. In 2023, the gender gap of access to mobile technology was 15% between men and women, and it has grown since. This means that 265 million fewer women worldwide have access to mobile technology than men. There’s a lot of ground to gain there, and our revolution with digital CEA should be in that space.

In Liselot’s story, we find a reminder of the power of data and digital to reduce inequalities. As we reflect on Liselot’s journey within the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, let us amplify the voices of women to challenge conventions, defy expectations, and pave the way towards a more inclusive future at the intersection of data, digital and humanitarian aid! ❤

*At 510, we work with an inclusive definition of women as all adults who live and identify as women though they may not have been assigned female at birth. Discrimination, harassment, or systemic barriers to success are not experienced by all women equally. International Women’s Day is a time to recognize the unique, disproportionate and intersecting challenges faced by women of colour, women with disabilities, and queer or trans women, and to stand in solidarity with them. To learn more, visit the International Women’s Day website.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that the Arabic, French and Spanish versions of this article were automatically generated using Artificial Intelligence. We cannot guarantee full accuracy of these versions.