Gender-equitable pathways to achieving sustainable agricultural intensification
This brief (PDF) by CGIAR-WLE has identified promising strategies for transforming inequitable social structures, norms and practices by increasing women’s access to resources, services and technologies as well as to decision making. The objective has been to enhance the ability of women to productively invest in sustainable technologies and practices and reap the benefits from these investments for themselves and their children. Increased gender equity in agriculture is both a practical and a social justice issue: practical because women are responsible for much of the production by smallholders; and social justice because in many cases they currently do not have rights over land and water resources, nor full access to markets, and often they do not even control the crops they produce. The authors have set up a number of recommendations to promote gender equity in policy or interventions. One of these recommendations is to invest in studying the social, economic and agroecological context to understand gender roles, the extent and depth of gender inequality, the main barriers to women’s participation, and the opportunities for promoting equality. These findings can be used during the implementation process. Another recommendation is to use systematic participatory methodologies to effectively support diagnosis of gender roles and thus enable decision makers to achieve greater gender equity. A final example of the recommendations is to ‘think out of the box’ and identify potential livelihood opportunities both off as well as on farm, for both women and men.