How COP27 can deliver climate justice for rural women
“The $100 billion of committed climate finance must be directed toward the worst impacted women, and men, in the most affected regions,” writes Dr Nicoline de Haan. Coming soon.
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New hotspot mapping reveals where climate change hits women the hardest
Women are more at risk of experiencing adverse climate change effects in some areas than in others. Read more.
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How Bangladesh became a test case for women’s empowerment
"[U]nlocking the multiple benefits that gender equality can bring begins with first quantifying the level of empowerment and gender parity," writes Dr Claudia Sadoff, Managing Director for Research Delivery and Impact, CGIAR. Read more.
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How gender equality can transform food systems and protect us from climate change disasters
With the HER+ Research Initiative, CGIAR will fill a critical evidence gap by identifying and testing climate solutions that work for women. Read more.
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The value of reflection in research for development
Why are we here, what are we doing and are we making a difference? Honest, critical reflection in a space of respect and privacy might help us find answers. Read more.
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Ready? Set? Transform! How to make gender equality last
One way to address the root causes of gender inequality is by applying what is known as a “gender-transformative approach”. Read more.
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Top 10 gender research reads from 2021
A long overdue paper that debunks myths about women, a book that might make you cry and more of the best from 2021. Read more.
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Gender in rural institutions and governance: A review of existing tools
This working paper provides guidance on available tools and points to gaps where methodological development is needed. Read more. |
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Tools and methods on gendered design, deployment and evaluation of agricultural technologies
This working paper reviews tools and methods that help address gender inequities across the entire agricultural innovation cycle. Read more. |
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Event: UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66)
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Date: March 14, 2022
Time: 08:00-09:30 EST / 16:00-17:30 EAT
The CGIAR GENDER Platform, the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zambia to the United Nations together with partners will host a side event on the margins of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66). The event will engage policy makers, development practitioners, funders, gender specialists and leaders promoting gender equality to achieve climate-resilient, sustainable, productive food systems for all.
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Gender research news from across CGIAR
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Mitigating, adapting and responding to climate change
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In sub-Saharan Africa, mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change will require tenacious implementation of gender-sensitive interventions coupled with major policy shifts. In general, if national climate adaptation policies exclude women, they would be eliminating the contribution of half the population, implying a loss of GDP. In fact, women's knowledge should be central to building resilience to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
Climate change impacts include, for example, extreme heat and humidity that in the month of birth exert significant negative effects on children's nutritional status in Bangladesh. Climate responses, however, imply trade-offs that may reinforce inequality, and therefore deliberate efforts are needed to ensure that the least resilient farmers, including women, benefit from climate action.
A ‘gender-smart agriculture’ approach considers women’s priorities and access to technology, resources and information to support their climate resilience. This new conceptual framework offers guidance for how to scale up climate-resilient agriculture approaches that are gender and socially inclusive.
In India, a newly launched project will work with smallholder women and men farmers to diversify rice-based systems to enhance their climate resilience. Also in India, in Bihar, new research explores how the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices can support women whose husbands have migrated elsewhere to safeguard their livelihoods. Finally, a step-by-step guide (in Spanish) explains how to include gender considerations in climate-smart policies for Chile.
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Designing crops and technologies
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Gender-responsible innovation is critical to equitable upward social movement, but innovation teams often unintentionally leave behind socially vulnerable groups. An introductory guide and toolkit offer insights on how to use a human-centered approach to design gender-inclusive digital solutions for agricultural development.
Important links exist between gender and the science of breeding. Resources such as the G+ tools are being used to help plant breeders interpret gender research and create varieties that meet the needs of women and men farmers. Likewise, a gender-responsive tool can support better pest and disease management.
A new paper takes stock of lessons learned on gender and maize breeding in Africa and assesses knowledge gaps that need to be filled. Meanwhile, this method can guide crop breeders in understanding trait preferences across value chains and social contexts, such as among women and men cassava farmers and consumers in Nigeria.
Also in Nigerian cassava production, research indicates that food product quality traits are more important for members from food-insecure households and that gender differences increase among the food insecure. In Tanzania, a study explored how the development of the cassava seed supply system can better reach and benefit women. In Ethiopia, higher energy intakes were observed among women from households practicing irrigation.
Research in the Madagascar Highlands showed that women and men farmers must be involved in the initial stage of developing and deploying new rice varieties to deliver technologies that are useful and suitable. In three villages of Rajasthan, India, not only gender, but also age and social class might influence farmers’ ability to adopt and benefit from innovations in barley cultivation and livestock.
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Changing norms and institutions
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Gender-transformative approaches address the underlying causes of gender inequalities that limit the lives and livelihoods of fishers, farmers and value chain actors. Building on previous gender research efforts, scientists recommend integrating gender-transformative research and methodologies into the new CGIAR Research Initiatives; a few highlights explain how it could be done.
In Jordan, many civil society organizations pay lip service to the idea of progressive gender approaches, but the lack of gender mainstreaming at the organizational level leaves those promises unfulfilled. Similarly, while some women in the Eastern Gangetic Plains become more engaged in public places as they move away from unpaid labor, this does not always increase their decision-making authority in private spaces. In Eastern India, scientists are offering training to women groups to build a self-reliant quality seed system, linking women’s empowerment in cooperatives with seed security. A comprehensive literature review summarizes what is known about the implementation and effectiveness of women’s groups in improving nutrition outcomes.
Turning to environmental management processes, an easy-to-use guide shares tips on inclusive facilitation, such as creating an environment of trust. This ‘guide to the guides’ can help practitioners find the right guides and resources to advance gender equality through ecological restoration.
When it comes to decision-making on ocean governance, more should be done to turn consultation into participation, according to one researcher. Growing evidence points to gender equality playing a key role in aquatic food systems’ crucial contributions to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
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Understanding gender in landscapes
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Three pastoralist women in Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Spain are restoring rangelands to improve livelihoods, safeguard the environment and benefit the greater society. Their achievements stand out because decision-making power over pastoral communities’ land and resources is more likely to be in the hands of men than women.
For example, in Gujarat, India, women pastoralists are more likely to lose access to land and resources as commons are privatized. At the same time, a project in pastoral communities in Kenya and Tanzania has improved women’s access and tenure security over community land and resources, while also reducing their workloads.
Women in Tunisia are more involved in livestock grazing than previously assumed, which suggests that providing support for women to sustain pastoral systems could help repair Tunisia’s degraded ecosystems. New guidelines lay out how to increase women’s meaningful engagement in and potential to benefit from participatory rangeland management – including by identifying gender-specific needs and developing gender-responsive activities.
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Fostering opportunities in markets and value chains
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A recent editorial questions how gender dynamics and women’s work are being incorporated into neoliberal policies and sustainability discourses. Being financially included can be transformative for women within agriculture and food systems, enhancing their access to inputs, labor, equipment, markets, technology and sustaining their agri-businesses.
While restrictive norms and practices of social exclusion may be reinforced through generations in Kenya's dairy value chains, some young women and men act as agents of change in their communities. In Kenya and Ethiopia, following introduction of improved forage varieties and gender-sensitivity training, Ethiopian men reported being involved in forage harvesting, chopping and feeding against prevailing norms, while the Kenyan women took on greater decision-making roles. Elsewhere, in India, research indicates that dairy cooperatives can be empowering for women when they emerge from women’s activism.
In Nigeria, one award-winning catfish entrepreneur highlighted the need to increase youth participation in aquatic food systems, especially the involvement of young women in cage culture production, normally dominated by men. In villages producing chickens in Ghana and Tanzania, women, more than men, emphasized the difficulties of accessing poultry health services.
In Ethiopia, a young farmer turned her life around after enrolling in a sheep-fattening training program and now runs a successful business. Reversely, in Ghana, both women and men are involved in sheep and goat production; yet a woman cannot say she owns small ruminant. “It is forbidden,” confided one woman.
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Boosting capacity and training on gender research
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New research reveals how capacity development can catalyze gender transformational change and produce more equitable food systems for women. A recent paper got more specific and explored the key aspects of gender training programs that seed attitudinal shifts and practice change in agricultural research teams.
Along the same lines, a new systematic approach to monitoring, learning and evaluation of gender training programs can help provide evidence on their longer-term impacts, while a competency framework for trainers can guide recruitment, performance assessment and identification of competency gaps for the capacity development of trainers.
Recently, 32 biophysical and social scientists from 11 agricultural research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa participated in a course that deepened their skills and understanding of theory in gender-responsive agricultural research. Such skills are sorely needed because, for example, sex-disaggregated data and gender data are not systematically collected and are lacking worldwide. Also of note, this paper argues for using dyadic interviews as one qualitative method to collect data on intra-household decision-making. This is an important contribution as reasons for spousal disagreement in survey responses are multiple.
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Promoting women in science
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Women remain the minority in many international and national organizations devoted to agricultural research, including CGIAR centers, regional and national research institutes, and universities. This despite the importance of gender equality related to sustainable development, including sustainable rice production and sustainable food systems.
Women scientists participating in the One Planet Fellowship implemented by African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) have published new research on identifying and promoting sustainable crop production techniques to enhance smallholder farmers' adaptation to climate change and on the resistance of commonly grown maize varieties to fall armyworm. Also in Georgia, women scientists are driving force for change.
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Webinar: Gender and nutrition - the assessment nexus
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Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Time: 09:00 - 10:00 EST
This CGIAR GENDER Platform webinar will discuss how the relationship between women’s empowerment and women’s and children’s diets and nutrition outcomes have been conceptualized and studied.
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Follow the conversation on Facebook and via @CGIARgender and #GenderInAg.
Sign up for our online discussion group to participate in exchanges about GENDER and related resources and opportunities.
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Thank you
Thank you to the CGIAR centers, initiatives and platforms as well as CGIAR GENDER Platform partners who contributed to this newsletter: AfricaRice, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), International Potato Center (CIP), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), WorldFish. Also to the CGIAR Initiatives Building Systemic Resilience against Climate Variability and Extremes (ClimBeR); Livestock, Climate and System Resilience (LCSR); NEXUS Gains; Sustainable Intensification of Mixed Farming Systems as well as the Excellence in Breeding (EIB) Platform. CGIAR GENDER Platform partners Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA); African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD); and Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) also kindly contributed.
Photo credits from the top: Georgina Smith/CIAT; CIP Asia; Joe Nkadaani/CIFOR; Habibul Haque/WorldFish; Prashanth Vishwanathan/CCAFS; IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation; Olek Kaminski/WorldFish; Cecilia Schubert/CCAFS; GENDER working paper cover; GENDER working paper cover; S Quinn/CIP; Nabin Baral/IWMI; Milo Mitchell/IFPRI; Foundation for Ecological Society/ABC; CRP Dryland Systems; WorldFish; Nicholas Ngwili/ILRI; AWARD; Apollo Habtamu/ILRI.
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