Rhiannon Pyburn, Illiana Monterroso, Hazel Malapit, Katrina Kosec, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Jennifer Twyman, and Dina Najjar POLICY SEMINAR Crafting the Next Generation of CGIAR Gender Research Co-Organized by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets and IFPRI OCT 30, 2019 - 12:15 PM TO 01:45 PM EDT

1. Landmark publication on CGIAR
gender research
CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research
Rhiannon Pyburn
Coordinator
Senior Advisor, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT)
12h15-13h45 CEST
October 30, 2019

2. gender.cgiar.org
Objectives of the Platform (Jan 2017-Dec 2019)
• Visibility, capacity development, system-wide gender
research agenda, partnership development
1
Group photo: First jointly convened annual conference (with University of Canberra and ACIAR) : Seeds of Change, Canberra, Australia, April 2019

3. gender.cgiar.org
Objectives of the report
• Review, synthesize findings to-date, and reflect on a set
of specific gender themes within CGIAR
• Challenge boundaries to stimulate creative perspectives
and new insights by reframing analysis
• Set a forward-looking research agenda on how
agriculture / NRM can advance gender equality in its
own right
2

4. gender.cgiar.org
Reframing with a gender equality lens
Intentionally ‘flip’ the direction of the questions being asked:
from
How does gender analysis contribute to agricultural
development and NRM?
(e.g. often focusing on increasing productivity, better efficiency
and more/better uptake of technologies developed)
to
How do agricultural and natural resource management (both
research and development initiatives) contribute to achieving
gender equality?
3

5. gender.cgiar.org
Nine cross-cutting themes
“how agriculture/NRM can advance gender equality through….”
1. Breeding programs
2. Seed systems
3. Value chain development
4. Natural resource governance
5. Nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs
6. Climate change mitigation
7. Examining evidence on the “feminization” of agriculture
8. Assessing Women’s Empowerment
9. Engaging with constraining norms through Gender
Transformative Approaches (GTAs)
4

6. gender.cgiar.org
Definitions
Empowerment
“the process by which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic
life choices acquire such an ability."
"The ability to exercise choice incorporates three inter-related dimensions:
resources (defined broadly to include not only access, but also future claims, to
both material and human and social resources); agency (including processes of
decision making, as well as less measurable manifestations of agency such as
negotiation, deception and manipulation); and achievements (well-being
outcomes)” - Kabeer 1999
Gender Equality
“This refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women
and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will
become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and
opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender
equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and
men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups
of women and men. Gender equality is not a women’s issue but should concern
and fully engage men as well as women. Equality between women and men is
seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of,
sustainable people-centered development” - UN Women Glossary 5

7. gender.cgiar.org
Overall framework
6
• Reach-benefit-
empower-transform
• Level of change:
individual change,
relational, systemic
• Material / ideational
• Scale
• Broader changes

8. Natural Resource Governance and
Gender
Deepa Joshi (IWMI), Iliana Monterroso (CIFOR), Valentina
Peveri, Kokila Perera

9. gender.cgiar.org
How has the management and governance of water, land
and forests (as natural resources) impacted gender
equality and empowerment?
Four key messages:
1. Accounting and addressing gender differences in the
distribution of property rights can improve outcomes of
policies and interventions
2. Structures governing natural resources are based on and
influenced by asset endowments, social norms, legal
structures and power relations; women face important
limitations to participate actively and effectively which
affects how they can benefit
3. Factors that influence access and adoption of technologies
need to account for the gender differentiated roles, forms
of knowledge and access to information and how these
influence behavior and decisions
4. Policies and interventions addressing natural resource
depletion and environmental degradation impacts resource
user groups in different ways
8

10. gender.cgiar.org
What have we learned from of CGIAR
research?
Devolution of forests rights
Clarifying and securing tenure rights to forest resources
• Plurality of the forest tenure systems
• Other dimensions influencing social differentiation
need to address these alongside gender issues
• Formalization of women’s rights to forests resources vs.
social relations around natural resources
Institutional arrangements and social norms
influencing women’s access (rights) and control
(decision making) over forest resources take place at
multiple levels
• Customary institutional arrangements promote collective
action and influence forest resource management decisions
• Increasing participation of women in forest user groups
(Rule making, reinforcement) leads to improve management
outcomes
• Gender-blind forest initiatives (REDD, Restoration) often rely
disproportionately on women’s labor- inequalities with
respect to access to forest resources with. Implications in
terms of benefits and empowerment.
From water management to
water governance
Change in focus paved the way to looking at
gender inequality and empowerment in
relation to water
• ‘Who gets what water, when and how, and who
has (what kinds of) rights to water and related
services, and their benefits’
• Because water is fluid: access, use and
management is realized and legitimized in
conditions of Legal Plurality
• Negotiations of access, use and control dynamic
and evolved temporally as well as spatially
Water and collective action
• “collectives” of the locals are not inherently and
explicitly inclusive
• ‘intra-community differences’ particularly, in
relation to women’s exclusion from irrigation
committees through formal and informal practices
• Participation in water management initiatives (e.g.
irrigation) contributes to women empowerment. 9

11. gender.cgiar.org
3. Key elements of the forward-looking
research agenda
The 2030 sustainability agenda (SDGs) calls for
attention to dual goals of sustainability and inclusion:
• “Sustainability requires men and women to work
together to protect and enrich the natural resource
base” Meinzen-Dick, Kovarik, and Quisumbing
2014
• BUT R4D research and interventions either see
gender and the environment/NRM as parallel
agendas OR persisting simplistic understanding of
gender as implying “women”
• Work around masculinities; Incorporating
intersectional perspectives to understand
inequalities as contextual, and political provides a
way forward to transformational change
• Rapidly changing economic, environmental and
political processes require exploring how diverse
types of power, agency and decision-making
influence natural resource governance
10

12. Gender and Nutrition-Sensitive
Agricultural Programs
Hazel Malapit (IFPRI), Jessica Heckert (IFPRI), Jessica Scott
(WorldFish), Padmaja Ravula (ICRISAT), Agnes Quisumbing
(IFPRI)
Gender and Nutrition-Sensitive Agricultural Programs

13. gender.cgiar.org
How can nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs (NSAPs)
contribute to women’s empowerment and gender equality?
If NSAPs succeed in improving
nutritional status of women and girls:
• Direct benefits on the wellbeing of
women and girls and helps to narrow
existing gender gaps
• Better nutrition can unlock the
empowerment process
• Benefits can be passed on to the next
generation
If NSAPs focus on shifting gender
norms and empowering women as a
pathway to nutrition:
• Adopt strategies and actions that
transform gender norms and directly
empower women within the project time
frame (with potential longer term
changes)
• Have the potential to close gender gaps
not only in nutrition and health but also
across other dimensions of wellbeing
Photo credit: HKI

14. gender.cgiar.org
What have we
learned from CGIAR
research?
1. NSAPs can contribute to women’s
empowerment and gender equality
BUT it does not happen automatically
2. Even when NSAPs consider gender
roles in designing their programs,
they may only seek to “reach” or
“benefit” women, not to empower
them, and thus not implement the
appropriate strategies that could
potentially empower them.
3. They may take gender roles into
account, but not seek to transform
them.
4. Even if NSAPs aim to empower
women, their M&E frameworks may
not include measurable indicators of
empowerment, and thus will not be
able to ascertain whether their
interventions empowered women.
Photo credits (Clockwise from top left): Neha
Kumar (IFPRI); Melissa Hidrobo (IFPRI); Bartay
(HKI); Agnes Quisumbing (IFPRI).

15. gender.cgiar.org
Toward the next
generation of gender-
transformative NSAPs
1. Collect data on outcomes of all
household members, not just the
target group of the intervention
2. Bring men on board
3. Pay attention to unintended
consequences of women’s
involvement, including increased
work burdens and the possibility
of backlash from men
4. Assess impacts on women’s
empowerment as an outcome in
its own right, and not merely as an
instrument for achieving nutrition
outcomes
Photo credit: Shammi Ferdousi (ANGeL)

16. “Feminization” of Agriculture:
Examining the Evidence
Cheryl Doss (Oxford), Katrina Kosec (IFPRI), Alessandra Galie
(ILRI), Ayesha Qaisrani (RA), and Vanya Slavchevska (CIAT)

17. gender.cgiar.org
Why this topic?
• Changes in the rural sector include changes in labor patterns and
decision-making in agriculture
• Drivers of change include: climate change, crises, shocks,
migration opportunities, new technology/ mechanization,
commercialization of ag., new policies, changing aspirations
• Two distinct views:
 Women’s agency increases; become decision-makers on the farm/ in the
community
 Women are “left behind” and carry additional burdens of labor and
responsibility, with inadequate resources
• Insufficient understanding of:
 How the gendered patterns of agricultural labor are changing (necessary
for policy/ intervention designs)
 The net impacts of these changes on gender equality, both in terms of
work and agency
16

18. gender.cgiar.org
What have we learned from CGIAR
research?
• Women are increasing both the amount of time that they spend
in agriculture and the range of activities in which they are
involved (although not in all contexts)
• Men’s and women’s agricultural labor often remains segregated;
more lucrative opportunities go to men, women are paid less for
the same tasks, women face harassment
• As women avail of new economic opportunities, they often face a
substantial increase in their daily workloads
• Nonetheless, women’s increased engagement in agricultural
decision-making and take-up of paid work opportunities has the
potential to change social norms, give women a community of
women and greater respect, and more broadly empower women
17

19. gender.cgiar.org 18
• Need to apply an intersectional lens
• Need better analyses of how interventions
can improve gender equality
Data needs:
 Quantitative: Macro-level data on trends and
patterns and on changing policies and
institutions across time and space; data on
women’s voice and agency in policy-making;
better time use data
 Qualitative: To understand not just the
outcomes, but also processes of change
• Policies in commercial agriculture need to
prevent exploitation of labor (e.g., women
have less bargaining power)
• Need for hiring more women managers
(role models)
• Need to capture the subjective
notions of wellbeing of women in
different regions (these vary
across cultures but are a key
dimension of gender equality)
Looking ahead

20. Assessing Women’s Empowerment in and
through Agricultural Research for Development:
Methods, Challenges and Opportunities
Steven Cole, Marlène Elias, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Ana Maria
Paez, Agnes Quisumbing, Jennifer Twyman (alphabetical)

21. gender.cgiar.org
Key messages
• Historical context to the women’s
empowerment (WE) agenda
• definitions and frameworks vary
• often depoliticized
• Measuring WE offers different
pathways for supporting women’s
empowerment
• Different tools and approaches contribute to
different pathways
• Bringing tools together
(interdisciplinary, mixed methods)
provide more holistic assessments
• from emic and etic perspectives
• assessing fosters (directly or indirectly)
changes in WE and gender equality
20

22. gender.cgiar.org
Learning from CGIAR gender research
Multiple measures of women’s
empowerment of agriculture
produced in CGIAR
They largely cluster around:
- the WEAI, adaptations and
derivatives
- GENNOVATE tools
Some attempts to bring qualitative
and quantitative approaches together
21

23. Personal or
Relational
Environmental &
relational
or all three levels
Resources or
Agency
Resources, Agency &
AchievementsPersonal &
Relational
Resources &
Agency
Ladder of
power &
freedom
WEI (Oxfam)WE
FI
WELI
WEI (IRRI)
5 Dimensions
WEAI, A-WEAI
WEI (CARE)
WDI - GAI
Empowerment profiles
Gender Indicator
Monitoring Tool
GEI - CSV
Wellbeing timelines
Qualitative
Quantitativ
e
Levels
Dimensions
Pro-WEAI
Similar in scope
Quadrant 2
Quadrant 1 Quadrant 3
Quadrant 4
Towards a multidimensional approach to assessing empowerment
Towardsassessingempowermentatmultiple
levels
Key

24. gender.cgiar.org
Forward-looking agenda
- Balancing between the ability to measure across
countries/measure at large scale and measures that capture
the contextual nature of empowerment
- Positioning women’s empowerment in agriculture in relation
to other aspects of women’s lives; agriculture itself may not
be empowering for women
- Greater attention to intersectionality
- Understanding situations where women ‘choose not to
choose’ (do not wish to be involved some types of decisions)
- Embedding measures of potential backlash due to women’s
empowerment within measures
23

25. Beyond GAD:
Engaging with constraining norms
through gender transformative
approaches
Cynthia McDougall
Lone Badstue
Marlène Elias
Gundula Fischer
Deepa Joshi
Rhiannon Pyburn
Annet Mulema
Dina Najjar

26. gender.cgiar.org
What are Gender Transformative
Approaches (GTAs)?
• Relate to the focus on creating an
enabling social environment and more
equitable formal and informal
institutions that expand life choices for
women and men.
• Use a combination of participatory
research tools to lead participants
through a change process.
Why are GTAs important?
• Existing empowerment approaches
limited in their sustainability; can have
negative work burden implications;
and are mostly focused on individuals.
• Explicitly challenge norms in a safe
environment 25

27. gender.cgiar.org
Type of GTA Mechanisms and strategies Outcomes
Testing a gender
transformative
approach with
polyculture
harvesting
technology in
Bangladesh (WorldF
ish)
- WorldFish developed / piloted an
integrated social/technical
strategy
-with women and men from the
same households, and more
powerful household members
(often mother-in-laws and
father-in-laws) over 1-year.
- Sparked dialogue between more and less
powerful members of the household about
possibilities for changing dynamics.
Gender Action
Learning System in
Malawi (WorldFish)
- GTA combined with technical
innovation process (participatory
action research testing of
technologies to reduce
postharvest loss)
- The GTA (‘communication for
social change’) comprised bespoke
community theatre (drama skits)
raising local gender dynamics
iterating with discussions in the
participatory action research
groups
Changes in GTA sites compared to gender
accommodative sites: Increased gender attitude scores
(28.6% vs 11.7%), especially for the men who
participated (35.7% vs. 13.3%)
Changes in women’s empowerment GTA:
- Increased women’s participation in fishing (5%-
75%)
- Increase of women’s contributions to intra-
household decisions about the income generated
from processing fish (49%)
- Fishing gear ownership status changed from sole
ownership of men to joint ownership of spouses
(44% to 76% reported joint ownership).
Using ‘Community
conversations’ to
transform gender
relations in Ethiopia
(ILRI & ICARDA)
- Engaged not only farmers but also
other development actors.
- Highlights that GTAs aspire to challenge
development actors and agencies, including R4D
organizations to become critically self-aware of
their own gender positions, beliefs, and biases as
a foundation for systemic change.
26

28. gender.cgiar.org
Way Forward
• There are still gaps in knowledge about a gender
transformative approach in at least two critical areas: a)
evidence of strategies linked to outcomes; and, b) engaging
with change at scale.
• Enacting lasting, substantive transformation towards gender
equality involves transformation of gender barriers at
multiple scales, some key questions:
• How, why, and in what direction does transformation
at one scale affect another?
• What motivates and enables – deters / limits – public,
civil or private actors to catalyse gender transformative
change?
• How can organizations interested in catalysing GTAs
change themselves transition to and maintain internal
gender equality cultures and systems as a foundation
for catalysing systemic change? 27

29. gender.cgiar.org
Thank you
Photo: Neil Palmer/IWMI