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Over the past few decades, scholars and practitioners working on gender and development
issues have advocated for more in-depth analyses that explore and foster change in the social
institutions that create and perpetuate gender inequalities. Gender integration approaches in a
research and development context are thus not something new. However, ma...
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The ultimate goal of the ICAR-Research Complex for Eastern Region is to transform
‘low productivity high potential’ zone into high productivity region for food, nutritional and live- lihood security through technological interventions. In this line, this bulletin has incorporated the important vegetables grown in this region with the list of promin...
Citations
... This program led early convening, communication and promotion of GTA, bringing together members of CGIAR centers, local and international NGOs, donors, women's organizations, and other research institutions to co-create a working definition and conceptual model for GTA that built on participants' observations, experience, and research into structural and normative gender change (CGIAR 2012a,b). In addition, an approach to organizational culture change for the purposes of transformative programming was developed, proposing stages of radically transforming an organization's structure, culture, practices, composition, in order to undertake gender transformative programming (Cole et al., 2014;Sarapura Escobar & Puskur, 2014). As the research base on GTA has grown, bilateral as well as philanthropic donors and key AR4D organizations have published studies, guidelines and good practices on GTA (McDougall et al., 2023;FAO, 2020;Wong et al., 2019). ...
... The tools provide a framework which is populated by the participants' unique material and then evaluated by them. We hoped therefore that weas external change agents -were not perceived as imposing the use of participatory methods on the farmers (Arieli et al., 2009;Cole et al., 2014). Rather, we anticipated that the methodology would not only spark critical reflection among the farmers but also provide them with a mechanism that they could own, and integrate into their own lives, for improving decision-making. ...
... More importantly, cultural practices and norms that circumscribe gender roles are embedded in the ethnic composition and the local institutions of the community (Adusah-Karikari, 2015; Owusu et al., 2019). According to Cerise and Francavilla (2012), discriminatory social institutions are the root causes of gender inequalities and are reflective of underlying gendered power relations (Cole et al., 2015). For instance, ethnic groups in Ghanaian fishing communities can be patrilineal or matrilineal and this influences the control men and women have over their livelihoods and economic activities (Overa, 2003;Torell et al., 2015). ...
... In terms of policy and intervention programming, the findings point to the need for the GoG to incorporate strategies for women empowerment through interventions that increase their productive livelihood characteristics. According to Cole et al. (2015), such a paradigm shift to gender-transformative capacity development is needed to address inequalities in food systems. Even though the Sustainable Fisheries Management Programme (SFMP) contributed to the enhancement of capacities of women and minimized cultural norms that limited women's active participation in the management of Ghana's SSF (Torell et al., 2019), our findings demonstrate the need for more of such interventions. ...
Gender inequalities in vulnerabilities and capacities of fishery livelihoods to respond to shocks is a major barrier to sustainable small-scale fishery livelihoods. Eliminating these vulnerabilities and gender barriers to livelihood capacities is increasingly deemed a means to build livelihood resilience in the face of fisheries declines. But livelihood studies in maritime research are yet to assess the gender differences in the resilience of fishery livelihoods of coastal communities. Building on indicator-based livelihood resilience assessment approaches in social-ecological systems, this study examines the gender disparities in the resilience of fisherfolk to shocks from decline in fisheries and associated socio-demographic factors in Ghana. We do this through socioeconomic techniques including four counterfactual decomposition formulations. Results indicate that, overall, higher capacities of livelihoods of men, mainly fishers to recover from shocks of fisheries decline compared to women in postharvest fishery activities. This disparity (more than 50%) is attributable to socio-demographic and cultural factors that shape the productive capacities of men and women in their fishery livelihoods. While recognizing the heterogeneous characteristics of these gender groups, our findings point to the need for measures that eliminate gender barriers and promote equitable access to resources that enhance productive capacities of fisherfolk. Socioeconomic tools also possess significant potential for assessing inequalities that impede opportunities for enhancing sustainability in fisheries in face of increasing socio-environmental change.
... Gender-transformative approaches (GTA) acknowledge the equal role that all genders have in women's Fig. 1 Theory of change, from Njuki et al. [2] Berretta et al. Agriculture & Food Security (2023) 12:13 empowerment and thus target men as agents of change to transform structural barriers and social norms [5]. While many women's empowerment interventions include GTA approaches, women's empowerment and GTA differ mainly in the following aspects (adapted from [6]): ...
Background
Women’s empowerment interventions represent a key opportunity to improve nutrition-related outcomes. Still, cross-contextual evidence on the factors that cause poorer nutrition outcomes for women and girls and how women’s empowerment can improve nutrition outcomes is scant. We rapidly synthesized the available evidence regarding the impacts of interventions that attempt to empower women and/or girls to access, participate in and take control of components of the food system.
Methodology
We considered outcomes related to food security; food affordability and availability; dietary quality and adequacy; anthropometrics; iron, zinc, vitamin A, and iodine status; and measures of wellbeing. We also sought to understand factors affecting implementation and sustainability, including equity. We conducted a rapid evidence assessment, based on the systematic literature search of key academic databases and gray literature sources from the regular maintenance of the living Food System and Nutrition Evidence Gap Map. We included impact evaluations and systematic reviews of impact evaluations that considered the women’s empowerment interventions in food systems and food security and nutrition outcomes. We conducted an additional search for supplementary, qualitative data related to included studies.
Conclusion
Overall, women’s empowerment interventions improve nutrition-related outcomes, with the largest effects on food security and food affordability and availability. Diet quality and adequacy, anthropometrics, effects were smaller, and we found no effects on wellbeing. Insights from the qualitative evidence suggest that women’s empowerment interventions best influenced nutritional outcomes when addressing characteristics of gender-transformative approaches, such as considering gender and social norms. Policy-makers should consider improving women’s social capital so they can better control and decide how to feed their families. Qualitative evidence suggests that multi-component interventions seem to be more sustainable than single-focus interventions, combining a livelihoods component with behavioral change communication. Researchers should consider issues with inconsistent data and reporting, particularly relating to seasonal changes, social norms, and time between rounds of data collection. Future studies on gender-transformative approaches should carefully consider contextual norms and avoid stereotyping women into pre-decided roles, which may perpetuate social norms.
... The constraints have effects across three domains: agency, social relations and structures. Women's and men's capabilities, power, voice and status thus derive from a complex set of relationships and institutions at different scales (Cole et al. 2014). ...
... Many GTAs focus on individuals and households; some extend to the community and groups. Technical improvement programs for agriculture, livestock, fishery and aquaculture that integrate GTAs, mostly implemented in sub Saharan African and South Asian contexts, are associated with: (i) women's greater sense of self-worth and improved capacity to negotiate relationships (Galiè and Kantor 2016), (ii) acknowledgment of women's knowledge and shifts in norms regarding women's engagement in agriculture (Cole et al. 2014), and (iii) women's increased voice in intrahousehold decision-making (Farnworth et al. 2016). Youth economic empowerment programs with GTAs in sub-Saharan Africa challenged prevailing norms, enabling young women to own a business and decide on income use (Leon-Himmelstine et al. 2021). ...
Lasting transformative change in agri-food systems and wider societal benefits require fostering an enabling environment for empowerment and equality by gender and intersecting social differentiation, while concurrently reducing existing inequalities in access to and control over productive resources, services and technology, resilience and leadership. Fostering an enabling environment hinges on addressing key structural constraints to equally accessing resources, exercising agency and achieving desirable outcomes across multiple scales in a holistic manner. This paper discusses the emerging thinking about key structural barriers at the scales of the state, markets, communities, households and individuals that are rooted in policy, discriminatory (formal and informal) social and economic institutions (including social norms) and dampened aspirations; and their relevance for transformative change in agri-food systems. It shows the trend and current status of key structural constraints and what has proven effective to relax such constraints. The paper lists key evidence-based recommendations to promote an enabling environment for empowerment and equality in agri-food systems.
... Participatory tools support such processes, increase the relevance of solutions to specific contexts and provide room for women and youth to voice their perspectives and needs that often remain unheard in the course of interventions . Gender-transformative interventions see critical reflections on inequalities framed by these approaches as one component of broader mechanisms to promote change (Cole et al. 2015). As such, participatory approaches may be used with differing degrees of participation ( Figure 2) and for various purposes, such as for informing decision-makers' understanding and action to actually empower women and girls ...
Abstract/Description
In many parts of the world, there is a clear need for investment in agriculture to counteract low yields and food insecurity. Focusing only on short-term production gains, however, through technologies such as improved seeds, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, increases risks to the environment and human health. Assessing the sustainability of agricultural intensification must go beyond simply finding economical ways to preserve agriculture’s natural resource base and reduce environmental harm from agriculture. The process of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) has to also be inclusive and move towards social equity if it is to be truly sustainable. There are many tools for assessing agriculture through an environmental or economic lens, but relatively few that use social criteria. This leaves a gap as more SAI projects and investments aim to achieve equitable benefits across gender and age lines. This guide provides decision-makers with data collection tools to assess gender and youth inequities associated with changes during SAI. These tools were developed and refined following workshops, field work and interviews with decisionmakers in Ghana and Malawi. In agricultural research, important social data often comes from large-scale household surveys that need significant investment of time and money. This guide focused on non-survey data collection tools, many of which originate from participatory learning and action, for two reasons: participatory tools encourage reflection by participants to increase stakeholder equity, and they are often better matched to the resource requirements and time constraints of those involved. Tools are presented based on their ability to provide information about three identified risks to equity from the SAI process: (i) unequal increases in workload, (ii) unequal access to and use of agricultural resources and (iii) inequitable impacts from changes in technologies and markets. For each tool, an overview explains how the tool relates to SAI. Then, the steps needed to facilitate use are presented, followed by special considerations for effective implementation. The guide supports decision-makers in choosing appropriate data collection tools and in effectively using the information. To make the choice of tool easier, information is provided on affordability, timeliness and human resource requirements for each. Also considered is each tool’s ability to assess potential technologies ex ante, so decision-makers can adapt them before implementation to better foster gender and youth equity. Finally, a number of examples of decision-making tools are presented with how to use the data collected to inform more inclusive SAI. The goal is to enhance the capacity of decision-makers to make a robust analysis of the distribution of benefits and burdens resulting from SAI investments. Decision-makers are encouraged to apply the tools within a community-driven gender transformative process that aims to change the norms that perpetuate social inequities, by simultaneously influencing household, community, market and political domains.
... This will necessitate challenging the underlying gender norms that see women's voices marginalised in management discourse, through the use of gender-transformative approaches. Such approaches remain uncommon, but practical guidelines on their implementation for aquatic agricultural systems exist (Promundo-US & CGIAR, 2016), and there are some examples of their successful application (Cole et al., 2015). Specific guidelines for employing more gender-inclusive approaches to CBFM in the Pacific have also been developed (Barclay et al., 2019;Kleiber et al., 2019), and training has been developed for some regional organisations on how to employ them (Makhoul & Morris, 2019;Makhoul, 2020). ...
Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) is a standard management framework in Melanesia. Yet, there is increasing evidence that women, among other marginalised groups, experience barriers to inclusion in decision-making processes. Through a case study in three communities in Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands, we adapted Agarwal’s 2001 participation typology for a Melanesian CBFM context to present a participation model for assessing gender inclusivity in CBFM. We defined six levels of women’s participation, including, (1) no participation, (2) nominal, (3) passive, (4) consultive, (5) active, and (6) interactive (empowering) participation, defined as actively participating in all aspects of the decision-making process, and holding leadership roles that increase women’s influence and power across the community. The model should be broadly useful throughout Melanesia across many different cultural contexts, though we anticipate that aspects will need adaptation in different contexts, both within and beyond Solomon Islands. We found that the three study communities respectively fell within the passive, consultive, and active levels. Our results show that gender parity, that is equal representation of women and men, is not a reliable indicator of gender equity. The utility of the model lies in its implementation, which requires engagement with gender power structures. This work contributes to the gender, small-scale fisheries, and community-based management literature by assessing women’s participation in CBFM decision-making processes through use of a participation model, and providing recommendations to fisheries practitioners on implementation of the model to assess gender equity in a community’s CBFM structures.
... This finding implies that efforts to close the gender productivity gap should go beyond attempting to create equal access to the observed resources to facilitate the empowerment of women and overcome the underlying causes of gender inequalities in productivity outcomes. Such efforts could entail, for instance, using gender transformative approaches that aim to enhance women's decisionmaking and negotiation skills while also addressing the gender norms and power relations that restrict women from utilizing and benefiting from the resources they have (or do not have) access to (see Cole et al., 2014;Cole et al., 2020). ...
It is widely recognized that female farmers have considerably less access to productive assets and support services than male farmers. There is limited evidence of gender gaps in technology adoption and agricultural productivity after accounting for the differential access to factors of production between males and females. This study investigates the gender differences in the adoption of improved technologies and agricultural productivity in Malawi using nationally representative data collected from 1600 households and 5238 plots. We used a multivariate probit model to analyze the gender differences in the adoption of improved technologies, including intercropping, use of improved varieties, crop rotation and residue retention, manure use, and minimum tillage. To analyze gender differences in agricultural productivity, we used an exogenous switching regression (ESR) model and recentered influence function decomposition. We found that female plot managers were more likely to adopt intercropping and minimum tillage but less likely to adopt crop rotation and use improved varieties than male plot managers. The ESR model estimation results showed that female-managed plots were 14.6-23.1% less productive than male-managed plots. The gender productivity gaps also indicated that female plot managers had an 8.2% endowment advantage but a 23.1% structural disadvantage than male plot managers. The importance of structural effects in accounting for the gender productivity gap highlights the need for policies and agricultural development programs that consider the underlying factors shaping gender productivity gaps rather than focusing solely on agricultural production factors.
... Reflective processes are learning processes that Reflective processes are learning processes that aim to shift mental models, values and beliefs (Cole et al. 2014;Wong et al. 2019), such as those that reproduce gender inequalities. GTAs promote cycles of critical reflection to challenge oppressive norms, behaviours and power dynamics (Kantor et al. 2015;FAO et al. 2020). ...
... Gender inequalities are produced and reinforced at multiple scales (household, communal, institutional and social scales). Thus, GTAs should engage with actors and institutions operating at different scales (Kantor 2013;Cole et al. 2014). ...
Gender equity is considered to be a foundation for the
resilience and wellbeing of people dependent on coral reef
social-ecological systems. Nonetheless, gender inequality
persists, and many interventions are still struggling to meet
in practice the commitments they make on paper. Gender
transformative approaches (GTAs) are considered the frontier
of gender research and development because they challenge
and shift the invisible social constructs that underpin and
perpetuate inequities. A collaboration between the ARC
Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook
University, WorldFish and CARE International sought
to determine the extent to which GTAs have been applied
alongside of or within the management and conservation of
coral reefs.
We commenced with a review of published grey and peer-reviewed
literature. We then facilitated inputs from a range
of experts to develop a good practice guide and a policy brief
to increase and improve the use of GTAs and other gender-sensitive
actions in coral reef social-ecological systems. Here,
we summarise the key findings of the literature review, the
good practice guide, and the policy brief. The intent of our
work is to increase awareness of and knowledge about GTAs
among funders, researchers, development agencies, and
fisheries and conservation stakeholders who seek to advance
gender equality in coral reef-social ecological systems.
... Although we identify three main social-ecological narratives, we acknowledge these are neither clear cut nor bounded. Research concerned with food security or poverty reduction objectives may, for instance, appear to be aligned with a social narrative, supporting human-centric goals and intrinsic values (e.g., Cole et al., 2015). However, there are also instances whereby gender equality visions may be conceived instrumentally, for example, to achieve nutritional outcomes (e.g., Meinzen-Dick et al., 2012). ...
Global visions of environmental change consider gender equality to be a foundation of sustainable social-ecological systems. Similarly, social-ecological systems frameworks position gender equality as both a precursor to, and a product of, system sustainability. Yet, the degree to which gender equality is being advanced through social-ecological systems change is uncertain. We use the case of small-scale fisheries in the Pacific Islands region to explore the proposition that different social-ecological narratives: (1) ecological, (2) social-ecological, and (3) social, shape the gender equality priorities, intentions and impacts of implementing organizations. We conducted interviews with regional and national fisheries experts (n = 71) and analyzed gender commitments made within policies (n = 29) that influence small-scale fisheries. To explore these data, we developed a ‘Tinker-Tailor-Transform’ gender assessment typology. We find that implementing organizations aligned with the social-ecological and social narratives considered social (i.e., human-centric) goals to be equally or more important than ecological (i.e., eco-centric) goals. Yet in action, gender equality was pursued instrumentally to achieve ecological goals and/or shallow project performance targets. These results highlight that although commitments to gender equality were common, when operationalized commitments become diluted and reoriented. Across all three narratives, organizations mostly ‘Tinkered’ with gender equality in impact, for example, including more women in spaces that otherwise tended to be dominated by men. Impacts predominately focused on the individual (i.e., changing women) rather than driving communal-to-societal level change. We discuss three interrelated opportunities for organizations in applying the ‘Tinker-Tailor-Transform’ assessment typology, including its utility to assist organizations to orient toward intrinsic goals; challenge or reconfigure system attributes that perpetuate gender inequalities; and consciously interrogate discursive positions and beliefs to unsettle habituated policies, initiatives and theories of change.
