Gender

Learning note

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This Note relates to KSF2: Poverty, social development and targeting
Version: January 2008

Core issues

Gender equality and women’s empowerment have gained increasing importance, both as objectives and as instruments for poverty reduction. IFAD is guided by the principle that development initiatives should incorporate the priorities and needs of both women and men and give them equal opportunities to access benefits and services.

As defined by the prerequisites for gender-sensitive design in IFAD’s Plan of Action 2003-2006 “Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in IFAD’s Operations”, investments should follow a three-pronged strategy to achieve gender equity and mainstreaming: expansion of women’s access to and control over assets; strengthened decision-making/political representation of women, and improved wellbeing:

• Proposals should be based on a clear understanding of: (a) the division of gender roles and responsibilities; (b) gender differences in access to resources and benefits, participation in community affairs and decision-making; and (c) the needs of special vulnerable groups, e.g. the young and elderly.
• In line with the “Prerequisites of Gender-Sensitive Design” of IFAD’s Gender Plan of Action, operational measures should ensure gender-equitable participation in, and benefit from, planned activities and in particular they should:

  • include specific targets in terms of proportion of women participants in different project activities and components;
  • specify means to ensure women’s participation in project-related decision-making bodies;
  • allocate resources for specific activities to support gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment (e.g. gender sensitisation and training; measures to enable women to participate in planned training, etc.);
  • incorporate Project Coordination Unit (PCU)/ Project Management Unit (PMU) Terms of Reference (TORs) that include responsibilities for gender mainstreaming, especially at the level of project director, M&E officer, extension officer, microfinance officer;
  • explicitly address the issue of present and likely availability of field staff to ensure outreach to women, linking recruitment and training activities accordingly;
  • specify that experience/willingness to work with women and marginalised groups is a criterion for NGO/partner selection.

• All people-related indicators should be sex-disaggregated so that the project or programme monitors differential impact and participation by women and men – see Learning Note 6.1 – Monitoring and Evaluation. 
• Designs should promote opportunities for policy dialogue on issues related to gender equality and the empowerment of women – see Learning Note 1.2 -  Pro-Poor Policy Dialogue for Change.

Key tasks for design and review

Using guidance in the IFAD 2003 Gender Plan of Action as a basis, teams should:

• Analyse and document gender-specific roles and needs and gender differences in access to resources among the intended target group and across the project area.
• Use the above findings to design the project’s gender strategy: devise mechanisms to ensure that investments will target women and their needs directly even when they are not heads of household.
• Ensure that general borrower statements on, and commitments to, the importance of targeting women are linked to operational measures that create equal opportunities for women and men.
• Ensure that improving women’s economic empowerment and improved welfare is reflected through organisational mechanisms that specifically include women in project-related decision-making bodies.
• Clearly define responsibilities within the project management structure for gender mainstreaming. Design recruitment and training plans that include gender mainstreaming aims and components.
• Ensure sex-disaggregation of logframe indicators.

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