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Guidelines for measuring gender transformative change in the context of food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture
In the framework of the EU-RBA Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition, these Guidelines aim at enhancing the capacity of research and development partners to design, implement, monitor and evaluate gender transformative interventions.
IFAD Research Series 94: Engaging women in microfinance - a qualitative study of the Programme de Microfinance Rural in Mali
This paper outlines the results of a study on the Programme de Microfinance Rural in Mali. It explores the impacts on agency and use of resources in households, with a focus on the role of gender in addressing these issues.
Women transforming rural areas in Northern Montenegro
Montenegro’s Rural Clustering and Transformation Project highlights the imperative of integrating rural women into decision-making processes at all levels. This policy brief underscores the importance of enhancing rural women's education, training and job access.
Scaling gender and climate investment opportunities
This paper finds that investing in rural women helps achieve climate goals, while simultaneously addressing gender inequality and poverty.
2022 Year in Review: Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition
This year in review is a snapshot of the Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition in 2022.
Interventions for Women's Empowerment in Developing Countries: An Evidence Gap Map
This evidence gap map (EGM) visualises the areas in which most research on effective interventions for women’s empowerment is concentrated—and where there are gaps.
Effectiveness of Life Skills Training Interventions for the Empowerment of Women in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review
This systematic review evaluates the effectiveness of life skills training programmes for empowering women in developing countries.
Evidence Review on the Effectiveness of Interventions Promoting Women's Empowerment in Developing Countries: Approach Paper
This approach paper describes the strategy for data collection and analysis and the contours of the evidence gap map and systematic review.
Effectiveness of life skills interventions for the empowerment of women in developing countries: Protocol for a Systematic Review
This protocol for the systematic review details the methods used in the meta-analysis.
ASAP Technical Series: Gender and Climate Change
This paper defines gender sensitive as recognizing different roles of women, men, boys and girls, inequalities and gender power dynamics and trying to mitigate negative impacts in programme/action design.
IFAD Briefing Note - Gender and Climate: Scaling Gender and Climate Investments
IFAD's unique investing position serves as a starting point for a discussion on how it might scale up and support gender-based responses for adaptation and mitigation to climate change.
Guide to formulating gendered social norms indicators in the context of food security and nutrition
This guide provides assistance on formulating indicators to measure changes in gendered social norms in the context of food security and nutrition.
Research Series 74: Women’s empowerment, food systems, and nutrition
This background paper examines the linkages and interactions between women’s empowerment, food systems, and nutrition.
How to do note: Integrating the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) in IFAD operations
This note provides practical guidance on how to roll out the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) for IFAD-funded projects.
Behavioural science recommendations for the design of gender transformative IFAD programmes
This study examines how behavioural barriers and biases perpetuate the gender gap and explores how behavioural science can reduce such barriers and biases.
Joint Programme on: Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women
This collection of success stories and good practices shows the impact of the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (JP RWEE) among rural women in the seven participating countries: Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger and Rwanda.
Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security, Improved Nutrition and Sustainable Agriculture
This is the official flyer of the JP GTA. It provides information about the Joint Programme's overview, background, objective, expected results, key components and country-level activities as well as key issues related to gender transformative approaches.
Enhancing women’s resource rights for improving resilience to climate change
This brief summarizes relevant findings from socio-legal analyses, combining the review of key legal and policy documents and literature on existing barriers to the recognition of women’s land rights.
Making agricultural and climate risk insurance gender inclusive: How to improve access to insurance for rural women
IFAD’s technical assistance programme INSURED (Insurance for rural resilience and economic development) has been building knowledge about how to strengthen women producers’ access to climate risk insurance.
Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (JP RWEE): Final Evaluation (2014-2020)
This report presents the findings of the Global End-term Evaluation of the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (JP RWEE).
Rural women and girls 25 years after Beijing - Critical agents of positive change
The 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, also known as “Beijing + 25”, provides an excellent opportunity for governments, civil society, the United Nations system and all development actors to take stock of progress made towards gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
Gender transformative approaches for food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture – A compendium of fifteen good practices
The Compendium is a product of the Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition implemented by FAO, IFAD and WFP and funded by the European Union.
The Gender Network
Informe de Género e Inclusión Social: Región Andina
Brief on Gender and Social Inclusion: East and Southern Africa
The faces of empowerment - Photo Essay about the beneficiaries of the Joint Programme on Rural Women Economic Empowerment
This photo essay describes the different types of changes in the life of women that are participating in the JP RWEE.
Research Series Issue 44: Gender, rural youth and structural transformation: evidence to inform innovative youth programming
This study analyses sex-disaggregated data from various countries to characterize rural youths’ transition to adulthood by gender.
Research Series Issue 43: Youth agrifood system employment in developing countries: a gender-differentiated spatial approach
Little is known about the economic activities of rural youth. This study provides empirical evidence on this gap in literature.
The Latin America and Caribbean Advantage: Family farming – a critical success factor for resilient food security and nutrition
The West and Central Africa Advantage: Fighting fragility for smallholder resilience
A new report from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) shows that by working with women, men, young people and indigenous peoples as change agents we are best placed to beat back the impact of climate change on rural communities in West and Central Africa (WCA).
Gender-transformative adaptation - From good practice to better policy
Stocktake of the use of household methodologies in IFAD’s portfolio
IFAD in Sudan: Linking rural women with finance, technology and markets
Resultados relevantes por cada proyecto
Occasional paper: IFAD’s experience in scaling up in Asia and the Pacific region - Lessons learned from successful projects and way forward
The Asia and the Pacific region includes the world’s fastest growing and most dynamic countries and is a key driver of growth in the world economy.
Women-led business and value chain development; a case study in Tajikistan
Investments in smallholder goat development and related value chains are effective means to reduce poverty and increase the incomes of men and women from resource-poor households. They are also effective channels to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in remote mountainous
areas.
Rural women's leadership programme in grass-roots organizations: a case study in Nepal
Integrated promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment: economic empowerment, decision-making and workloads
address the cross-cutting and multifaceted nature of gender inequality through multiple entry points.
Household methodologies
How to do note: Design of gender transformative smallholder agriculture adaptation programmes
Research Series Issue 19 - Measuring Women's Empowerment in Agriculture: A Streamlined Approach
The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) can be a useful tool to measure the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector. However, computing the WEAI in its current form involves large data requirements, resulting in lengthy surveys with several questions on various dimensions and indicators within each dimension. This paper proposes a reduced version of the WEAI, or the R-WEAI, and examines two possible approaches to reduce the data requirements while ensuring comparability to the full WEAI.
Advancing rural women’s empowerment
Gender equality and the empowerment of women are prerequisites for the eradication of poverty and hunger. First and foremost, gender inequalities and discrimination represent fundamental violations of the human rights of women. In addition, it is well recognized that gender inequality and discrimination undermine agricultural productivity globally,1 negatively impact children’s health and nutrition, and erode outcomes across social and economic development indicators.
Much work on rural women’s empowerment has focused on the need to expand women’s access to productive resources, which can allow them to increase their productivity. However, much more attention needs to be directed at underlying gender inequalities such as gender-biased institutions, social norms, and customs that negatively impact women’s work (paid and unpaid), livelihoods and well-being. Within food systems, these biases manifest themselves in limiting women’s access to productive resources, to services (such as finance and training), to commercial opportunities and social protection (including maternity protection). These manifestations may be regarded as symptoms, therefore, rather than drivers, of gender inequality.
How to do note: Poverty targeting, gender equality and empowerment during project design
Toolkit: Poverty targeting, gender equality and empowerment
The JP RWEE pathway to women’s empowerment
Gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls is a pre-condition for the eradication of poverty and essential to achieve progress across all goals and targets set by the Sustainable Development Agenda. The JP RWEE facilitates transformation through rural women’s leadership, making gender equality and women’s empowerment a reality. Support to women's economic empowerment allows for increased influence, education and information for women to decide the use of their income, savings and loans, and the ability to make decisions about their life.
Glossary on gender issues
Grant Results Sheet OXFAM Novib - Community-led value chain development for gender justice and pro-poor wealth creation
This programme set out to empower 35,000 vulnerable women and men in rural value chains directly and another 65,000 indirectly through direct and peer capacity-building and action learning to negotiate a better position in value chains and achieve sustainable and equitable “win-win” collaboration between value chain stakeholders.
The programme aimed to adapt and integrate participatory action learning methodologies into the policies and practices of at least 10 civil society organizations (CSOs) and to disseminate them through e-forums and capacity- building events then to be taken up by other relevant IFAD and Oxfam projects, in countries such as Ghana, India and Sierra Leone. Knowledge institutes also contributed to participatory planning and gender mainstreaming in value chain research and training.
Household mentoring Handbook for Household Mentors: Project for Restoration of Livelihoods in the Northern Region (PRELNOR)
Gender mainstreaming in IFAD10
IFAD has a well-established history of supporting gender equality and women’s empowerment. This commitment spans 25 years, from the 1992 paper, Strategies for the Economic Advancement of Poor Rural Women, to the 2003-2006 Plan of Action for Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in IFAD’s Operations, the 2010 Corporate-level Evaluation of IFAD’s Performance with regard to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment by the Independent Office of Evaluation, and finally the 2012 gender policy.
In the new IFAD Strategic Framework 2016-2025, gender equality is identified as one of the five principles of engagement at the core of IFAD’s identity and values. IFAD complies with the United Nations commitments on gender mainstreaming, including the United Nations System-wide Action Plan (UN-SWAP) on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Gender in climate smart agriculture, Module 18 for the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook
Compendium of rural women’s technologies and innovations
Toolkit: Reducing rural women’s domestic workload through labour-saving technologies and practices
Lessons learned: Reducing women’s domestic workload through water investments
There is a recognized need in the water sector for more accurate data on access to water in terms of the distance travelled and the time needed to collect water to meet all household needs, and who or what combination of people are involved in water collection.
How to do note: Reducing rural women’s domestic workload through labour-saving technologies and practices
This How To Do Note looks at the opportunities provided by labour-saving technologies and practices for rural women in the domestic sphere. The purpose is to inform IFAD country programme managers, project teams and partners of proven labour-saving methods available to reduce the domestic workload and how they can best be selected and implemented – to help promote equitable workloads between men and women and contribute to poverty eradication.
Promoting the leadership of women in producers' organizations - Lessons from the experiences of FAO and IFAD
This shortage is compounded by women’s lack of voice in decision-making processes at all levels − from households to rural organizations − and in policymaking.
Changing lives through IFAD water investments: a gender perspective
Case study: Family life model, Uganda
An Innovative, Scalable, Pro-poor Home Cooking-based Charcoal Production Value Chain For Women
How to do note: Household Methodologies
Scaling up note: Gender equality and women’s empowerment
IFAD has achieved significant results in promoting innovative gender mainstreaming and pro-poor approaches and processes in its operations, making this an area of IFAD’s comparative advantage.
Gender and rural development brief: West and Central Africa
A gender-balanced model for community development
In Yemen, a community-led project for fostering women's empowerment has imporoved the food security of thousands of landless and smallholder famers living in the poorest areas of the country.
From 2004 to late 2012, the Dhamar Participatory Rural Development Project, cofunded by IFAD and the Government of Yemen, addressed the needs of the rural population in the Dhamar Governorate. By ensuring the participation of rural people in the decision-making processes and income-generating activities, the project improved the food security of substience farmers and their families in the villages of Dhamar.
Financing microenterprises led by women
IFAD Policy on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
Case study: Men's Campfire Conference, Zambia
Case Study: Household approach for gender, HIV and AIDS mainstreaming, Malawi
Case study: Chiefs and traditional leaders, Zambia
Case study: Household approach, Zambia
Gender equality and women's empowerment - IFAD's work and results
Case study: Transformative Household Methodology, Ethiopia
Case study: Men’s Travelling Conference, Kenya
Case study: Household Mentoring, Uganda
Toolkit: Household methodologies: harnessing the family's potential for change
Case study: Gender Action Learning System in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Uganda
GALS has been developed under Oxfam Novib’s (ON) Women’s Empowerment Mainstreaming and Networking (WEMAN) Programme since 2008 with local partners and Linda Mayoux. The use of GALS in value chain development (VCD) was piloted by ON and partners in Uganda through a small IFAD grant (2009- 2011). It was rolled out by ON with local partners in Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda with the support of a large IFAD grant (2011-2014) and in other countries with cofunding from other donors.
Transforming rural areas in Asia and the Pacific
The Gender Advantage: Women on the front line of climate change
This publication illustrates IFAD’s experience in closing the gender gap and mobilizing the ‘gender advantage’ in climate change adaptation through ten case studies from across the world.
Report of the side event: “Moving Forward: Breaking The Glass Ceiling”
“MOVING FORWARD: BREAKING THE GLAS CEILING” Strengthening women’s participation and influence in farmers’ organizations
Gender and rural development brief - Near East and North Africa
Gender and rural development brief - Pacific Islands
Gender and Water - Security water for rural livelihoods - The multiple-uses system approach
Transforming Agricultural Development and Production in Africa. Closing Gender Gaps and Empowering Rural Women in Policy and Practice
Over 50 experts from more than 20 countries convened in Salzburg, Austria, in November 2011 for a special Dialogue for Action meeting entitled Transforming Agricultural Development and Production in Africa: Closing Gender Gaps and Empowering Rural Women in Policy and Practice. Designed to accelerate rural and agricultural development in Africa, the meeting focused on investment in women.
It was organized by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) with support from the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)/Belgian Fund for Food Security (BFFS) Joint Programme. This report aims to reflect the complexity of the discussions that took place during the event and the outcome of those discussions.
Women and pastoralism
The paper highlights the issues arising from the Global Gathering of Women Pastoralists (2010) which brought together over 100 women from herding communities across 32 different countries to discuss the challenges faced by pastoralist women and girls, and their potential opportunities.
It aims to support development practitioners in planning specific interventions and mainstreaming issues that potentially affect pastoralist women into the implementation stages of development initiatives.
The paper is part of the IFAD Livestock Thematic Papers on Livestock and Pastoralists and Gender and Livestock, which offer an in-depth view of the broader context.
Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. Policy brief
What does gender equality look like? Gender equality exists where women and men have equal access to opportunities and services, equal control over resources, and an equal say in decisions at all levels.
Evidence demonstrates that where gender equality is greater, there is higher economic growth and a better quality of life for all.
Trail Blazers: Stories of Women Champions from IFAD Projects
Women and rural development
contributions to agricultural production. But the inequalities that exist between women and men make it difficult for women to fulfil their potential.
Lightening the load - Labour saving technologies for rural women
The difference we make, 2010
Nearly 2 billion rural people live on less than US$2 a day. Most are smallholder farmers and their families, who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Today, they must cope with rapid and unprecedented changes. Climate change, a growing world population, and volatile food and energy prices are pushing more people into extreme poverty and hunger. For the first time in human history, the number of hungry people has passed 1 billion. On top of this, tens of millions more people are expected to go hungry by 2020 as a result of climate change.
Promoting women's leadership in farmers' and rural producers' organizations
This paper presents the outcomes of the Special Session of the 2010 Farmers’ Forum, Promoting Women’s Leadership in Farmers’ Organizations and Rural Producers’ Organizations, that was convened on 12 and 13 February in conjunction with the Thirty-third Session of IFAD’s Governing Council. The session was co-organized by IFAD and the non-governmental organization Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resources (WOCAN).
In plenary session and working groups, over 60 participants – including 35 women farmer representatives, members of the Farmers’ Forum Steering Committee, observers from NGOs and FAO, and many IFAD staff – had a rich discussion that generated important recommendations.
IFAD will follow up on those recommendations not only as a matter of equity, given women’s enormous contribution to agriculture, but also because a stronger women’s voice and leadership in agriculture are essential to making smallholder agriculture more productive and sustainable.
Gender and desertification: Making ends meet in drylands
Desertification is the process of land degradation that affects dryland areas and is caused by poverty, unsustainable land management and climate change. Drylands lose their productive capacity in a spiral of destruction that twins increased land degradation with increased poverty and food insecurity. Drought and desertification threaten the livelihoods of more than 1.2 billion people in 110 countries.
The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia Desertification is the process of land degradation that affects dryland areas and is caused by poverty, unsustainable land management and climate change. Drylands lose their productive capacity in a spiral of destruction that twins increased land degradation with increased poverty and food insecurity. Drought and desertification threaten the livelihoods of more than 1.2 billion people in 110 countries. The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
Gender and desertification: Expanding roles for women to restore drylands
In addition to caring for their families, women across the developing world spend considerable proportions of their time and energy using and preserving land for the production of food and fuel and to generate income for their families and communities.
These activities include crop production, growing fruits and vegetables, raising small livestock, tending trees, processing products for food and markets, and managing and collecting water and fuel. Women are usually responsible for the plots in which food crops are grown, while men are responsible for the plots on which cash crops are grown. The latter account for a major part of the threat of soil nutrient depletion and desertification.