Knowledge

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.
 

IFAD, with support from the Government of Norway, developed the Rural Women’s Leadership Programme (RWLP) to strengthen the role and voice of women leaders in rural organizations, including in policy dialogue. 

The causes of gender discrimination pervade different aspects of our lives – social, economic, political, environmental – affecting gender roles and relations in domestic, productive and public domains and from the local to the international level. Time-bound development projects need to
address the cross-cutting and multifaceted nature of gender inequality through multiple entry points.

Interventions in the agricultural sector to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) mainly focus on strengthening women’s economic opportunities and decision-making capacities as farmers or in groups. However, the same women often remain disempowered within the household.

This How to Do Note (HTDN) is intended to provide guidance on how to design smallholder agriculture adaptation programmes that consider the differential impacts of climate change on women, men and youth smallholder farmers. This includes recognizing that programme interventions – from design to staffing to capacity development of beneficiaries and local organizations – need to consider how gender will affect sustainability and impact. The experiences, social positions and differing access to resources of marginalized populations are fundamental considerations in the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of gender transformative smallholder agriculture adaptation programmes.

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.

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.