IFAD contribution to MDG 3 – Gender equality and women’s empowerment

This section highlighs some of the learning from IFAD staff and partners in mainstreaming gender, understanding and meeting women’s needs.

Over the years, IFAD has distilled some general lessons and considerations which can positively contribute to gender mainstreaming in all types of projects, regions and sub-sectors, for example:

• integrate women from the start, not as an afterthought, and involve both men and women in needs assessments.
• consider and reflect the different roles and responsibilities of men and women in project design and implementation, and ensure that communication, training and extension address both men’s and women’s needs and expertise.
• identify and take into consideration institutional and legal barriers that limit women’s access to resources and services.
• support women to participate in community level decision-making and planning, recognising social and religious barriers to their participation and seeking culturally acceptable means of surmounting them. Strengthen women’s groups when culturally and socially appropriate.
• apply a gender perspective in the analysis of constraints and opportunities, and a gender-specific assessment of labour availability.
• treat women as individual farmers, not just part of the household labour force.
• identify and promote income-earning opportunities of special interest to women and
• ensure that monitoring and management information systems continuously assess the extent to which men and women are reached by project activities  Build in corrective mechanisms so that gender biases are rectified in a timely manner.

Project evaluations and assessments have also come up with lessons regarding issues, concerns and practices which affect the participation of and benefits to women.

• new! Governments play an essential role in ensuring gender equality (2010) IFAD works with governments to deliver rural development programmes, and a fundamental aspect of their gender mainstreaming approach in countries needs to promote a supportive political and legal context for gender equality and women’s empowerment.  The 2007 IFAD publication Polishing the Stone highlights some of the ways in which IFAD works with government in Latin America to ensure that gender mainstreaming is supported and promoted at all levels.
• IFAD - A 30 Year Retrospective (2008)  IFAD retrospective on IFAD's work, in which ex Director Idriss Jazairy states that highlighting the role of rural women in fighting hunger and his pride at initiating the first summit of first ladies for the economic advancement of rural women with the final declaration read by Audrey Hepburn.
• Annex II of Polishing the Stone (2007) is a list of prerequisites and recommendations for gender sensitive development projects, including selecting and training staff, making the gender gap visible, and gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation.
• Nepal: Gender mainstreaming an important element in project success (2002) A 2002 study of an IFAD supported forestry project in Nepal found that the gender mechanisms and activities had changed attitudes and behaviours of both communities and staff and enhanced the project’s impact on poverty.  Women’s participation had increased in all project activities, resulting in an increase in availability of credit to women, and a dramatic increase in foraged resources translating into more income for their households.
• Congo: A focus on gender should not result in overburdening women (2002) In the Eastern Congo men’s traditional employment and activities have been undermined by conflict and crop failure and women are increasingly taking over responsibilities and tasks once carried out by their husbands.  This evaluation suggests that donors should avoid exclusively targeting women where men are underemployed and suffering from low morale.
• Nepal: A strategy for women’s participation in a forestry project (2002) An IFAD supported forestry project in Nepal provides an example of challenging male domination in forestry activities. Convinced that there were serious constraints of women’s participation in the project and its benefits, two male project managers raised funds to recruit a three woman gender team to the project.  The team worked at grassroots, district and policy level to promote women’s participation in leasehold groups.  Several success elements are identified in the study.
• Pakistan: Gender mainstreaming in a conservative society (2001) A 2001 review studied two IFAD sponsored projects in Pakistan which were making the shift from including women’s components to a gender mainstreaming approach.  Both projects avoided imposing external values, but tried to work within the local culture to promote change, targeting the participation of men and women.   This briefing summarized the main strategic learning from the experiences, which have been considered in the design of later projects in Pakistan and are applicable elsewhere, particularly in conservative societies. 
• Ghana: Targeting women without excluding men (2000) An assessment of rural financial services in Northern Ghana found that, although women suffer from lack of access to formal credit, the solution may not be programmes targeted at women.  Excluding men can result in hijacking of loans or loss of use of family labour in the woman’s business. 
• Venezuela: Gender sensitive evaluation requires staff skills and commitment (1998) A review of IFAD supported projects in Latin America demonstrates that gender sensitive evaluation needs to go beyond ‘head counting’, to understand the reasons for participation, or not, of men and women in an activity or project, and the distribution of actual benefits. 
• Socio-cultural aspects to effective targeting of women (1997) A 1997 review of IFAD supported projects in the Yemen argues that that priority targeting of women is now becoming more acceptable. Targeting women works best when it is based on an understanding of both the women and the culture. In contexts such as Yemen, targeting strategies usually need to consider men at some point in the process, in order to effectively reach women and have an impact.

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