Introduction The purpose of this paper is to review the types of interventions that have been implemented through the projects of IFAD’s West and Central Africa (AFRICA I) Division1 that have the specific objective of targeting women and their specific needs. The ultimate goal of the paper is to determine how best to reach women. To achieve this goal replicable interventions and those actions that should be avoided in the future must be identified. However, before one undertakes an overview of the specific experiences in gender targeting in Africa I Division projects, one must understand why gender matters in the first place. Why is it important to distinguish between women and men when implementing projects in West and Central Africa (WCA)? A perusal of the literature on this subject shows that a gender perspective is essential in the selection of new projects because the access of women to resources is disproportionately small relative to that of men, and this reduces women’s income-earning opportunities and their standards of living. Their limited access to productive and social assets – such as land, agricultural inputs, credit and education – decreases women’s contribution to economic growth and generates poverty among women and among the households that depend entirely on them. Moreover, because women are usually in charge of family nutrition and are involved in food production, their lack of resources influences the level of food security among households. Likewise, as a result of the link between the nutritional and health status of women and the nutritional and health status of children, a gender-biased intrahousehold distribution of food and health care affects the welfare of future generations. Lastly, women’s double work burden – work on the farm and chores in the household – means that women are subject to serious time constraints that prevent them from undertaking other activities, including activities that might be of additional benefit to them, to their children and to the household. For all these reasons, the link between poverty, women and resources assumes major importance in any attempt to alleviate poverty and implement effective growth-promotion strategies. Thus, before reviewing the interventions undertaken by Africa I Division with regard to gender targeting, the paper, in the following section, first examines the situation of women in the West and Central Africa region today (and, in a few cases, the entire sub-Saharan region). It identifies areas in which gender bias is having a negative influence on women’s access to resources, and it argues that, in order to improve the situation of poor women in WCA, projects must begin to aim at the reallocation of assets towards women. In Section III, the paper surveys the past experience of Africa I Division in targeting women, while in the concluding section it offers guidelines that the Division’s future projects must necessarily consider, should the goal be the improvement of the situation of poor women in WCA. 1/ This paper is adapted from Chapter I and Annex II of West and Central Africa Division's rural poverty assessment and a report on gender mainstreaming in the Division's projects, prepared by an internal consultant. |
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