Rhiannon Pyburn, Anouka van Eerdewij, Vivian Polar, Iliana Monterroso Ibarra and Cynthia McDougall BOOK LAUNCH Advancing Gender Equality through Agricultural and Environmental Research: Past, Present, and Future Co-Organized by IFPRI and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) NOV 23, 2021 - 09:00 AM TO 10:15 AM EST

1. Introducing the
CGIAR-wide gender
research publication
Rhiannon Pyburn, NL-CGIAR senior expert and senior advisor,
KIT Royal Tropical Institute; leader of Collaborative Gender
Research cluster in the CGIAR Research Program on Policies,
Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
Anouka van Eerdewijk, senior associate, KIT Royal Tropical
Institute

2. 1 CGIAR research through an equality and empowerment lens
Rhiannon Pyburn and Anouka van Eerdewijk
2 Examining choice to advance gender equality in breeding research
Vivian Polar, Rohini Ram Mohan, Cynthia McDougall, Béla Teeken,
Annet Abenakyo Mulema, Pricilla Marimo, and Jummai Othniel Yila
3 Moving beyond reaching women in seed systems development
Ranjitha Puskur, Netsayi Noris Mudege, Esther Njuguna-Mungai,
Eileen Nchanji, Ronnie Vernooy, Alessandra Galiè, and Dina Najjar
4 Promise and contradiction: value chain participation and
women’s empowerment
Markus Ihalainen, Sumer Shaikh, Gaudiose Mujawamariya, Sarah Mayanja,
Sounkoura Adetonah, Katie Tavenner, and Marlène Elias
5 Nutrition-sensitive agriculture for gender equality
Hazel Malapit, Jessica Heckert, Jessica Scott, Ravula Padmaja, and Agnes Quisumbing
6 A gender–natural resources tango: Water, land, and forest research
Deepa Joshi, Iliana Monterroso, Bryce Gallant, Kokila Perera and Valentina Peveri
7 From vulnerability to agency in climate adaptation and mitigation
Sophia Huyer, Tatiana Gumucio, Katie Tavenner, Mariola Acosta, Nitya Chanana, Arun
Khatri-Chhetri, Catherine Mungai, Mathieu Ouedraogo, Gloria Otieno, Maren Radeny,
John Recha, Elisabeth Simelton
8 From the “feminization of agriculture” to gender equality
Cheryl Doss, Ayesha Qaisrani, Katrina Kosec, Vanya Slavchevska,
Alessandra Galiè, and Nozomi Kawarazuka
9 Assessing women’s empowerment in agricultural research
Marlène Elias, Steven Michael Cole, Agnes Quisumbing,
Ana Maria Paez Valencia, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, and Jennifer Twyman
10 Toward structural change: gender transformative approaches
Cynthia McDougall, Lone Badstue, Annet Mulema, Gundula Fischer, Dina Najjar,
Rhiannon Pyburn, Marlène Elias, Deepa Joshi, and Andrea Vos

3. Guiding question: How does agricultural and environmental
research and development contribute to gender equality and
women’s empowerment?
• Research and development approaches
and interventions can, and do, lead to
positive empowerment and gender
equality outcomes for women.
• Yet also have negative effects on
women’s empowerment and can even
exacerbate gender inequalities.
• Negative and positive empowerment
effects can happen at the same time.
• Positive and empowering effects do not
happen automatically.

4. Explicit conceptualizations of gender equality
and women’s empowerment
(1) look beyond the individual
• requires assessing changes (in
gender equality and women’s
empowerment) at three levels:
• the individual
• the relational
• the systemic
(2) look beyond the material
• takes informal and ideational
aspects of equality and
empowerment into account:
• social and gender norms and
attitudes (at the systemic and
relational levels)
• and self-confidence and critical
consciousness (at the individual level)
Women’s empowerment and gender equality occur when shifts happen across different levels (individual,
relational, and systemic) and encompass dimensions that are both material and immaterial, and formal
and informal.

5. Next generation of research
design and analysis
• that moves beyond specific settings, and
advances insights into how empowerment
and equality outcomes vary by context, and
for different women and men within the
same contexts
• on the dynamics of the broader rural
transformations and on how these processes
interlock to produce and reinforce
disadvantage; how to harness the potential
that they may unlock
• on how intentional approaches - like
collective action and gender transformative
approaches - fare (and work), and the
challenges in scaling them

6. “Walking the talk”: messages for CGIAR leadership
• Not automatic, if not intentional, progress towards gender equality will not happen
• Put gender objectives at the center
• Better articulate the gender-related objectives, outcomes and change processes of a project or policy.
• Investigate higher-level gender research questions that cut across specific domains.
• Generously resource strategic gender research: gender research must be well-embedded in core funding
streams.
• Ensure strong consultation with gender scientists to thoroughly infuse gender analysis across the One
CGIAR portfolio
• Staff permanent, strong, senior gender scientists providing ample resourcing and clear mandates.
• Ensure effective accountability and performance monitoring mechanisms are in place.
• Confirm commitment to gender equality research from CGIAR leadership at all levels and coordination
throughout the governance system.
• Facilitate internal reflection on norms and practices as to how research is prioritized, designed, and
organized vis a vis gender knowledge.

7. Deep dive into three
book chapters
Vivian Polar, Gender, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist;
Gender research coordinator, CGIAR Research Program on Roots,
Tubers and Bananas (RTB), International Potato Center (CIP)
Iliana Monterroso Ibarra, Scientist, Co-Coordinator of Gender and
Social Inclusion Research, Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR)
Cynthia McDougall, Senior Research Fellow - Gender, Environment
and Development, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

9. Chapter 2
Examining choice to
advance gender equality in
breeding research
Vivian Polar, Rohini Ram Mohan, Cynthia
McDougall, Béla Teeken, Annet Abenakyo
Mulema, Pricilla Marimo, and Jummai Othniel
Yila

10. Examining choice to advance gender equality in
breeding research
• For empowerment to
happen people must have
the option to choose.
• Options must exist and be
perceived as existent.
• Options must be relevant
• Technological options
available for women are not
always in line with their
needs and priorities.
Existence of
Choice
Choice is
Meaningful
Outcome of
Choices made
Empowerment

11. Gender equality objectives must be incorporated at
the level of breeding objectives
• Identify customer segments considering gender differences
• Purposefully target customer segments considering gender equality
objectives
• Build product profiles that build on gender analysis of crop and trait
preferences, priorities and needs
Institutional
Innovations
Methodological
Innovations
Generating
relevant data

13. Chapter 6
A gender–natural resources
tango: Water, land, and
forest research
Deepa Joshi, Iliana Monterroso, Bryce Gallant,
Kokila Perera and Valentina Peveri

14. A gender–natural resources tango:
Water, land, and forest research
• From management to Governance [CGIAR
CAPRi]: NR commodity to commons (Elinor
Ostrom), collective action, plurality of rights
• Institutional arrangements shaping social
differentiation: gendered dimensions and
dynamics of natural resources management
and governance
• Forests, Land and Water: need for collective
action interventions; gender – social structuring
of identities, norms, roles, rights, use

15. Implications for future gender and natural resource
research
• Focus on gender equality and inclusion connects environment and natural resources, as well as
agriculture and food security agendas – look beyond agriculture – systems perspective
• International Agreements and Conventions: draw attention to equality and inclusion and call on
nation states to ensure more equal access to natural resources
• UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration: [re]politicize
• SDGs: the ecological resilience of the planet is not disassociated from people’s well-being.
• COP26: Pledges to strengthen engagement of marginalized groups [gender, IP, social inclusion and justice]
• What tasks remain to ensure inclusive natural resource governance?
• Are complex and intersectional gendered inequalities in rapidly changing social, political,
economic, and ecological contexts understood and addressed?
• Feminist Political Ecology: conscious, deliberate synergy between natural resource R4D agendas and feminist approaches
• Is there still a commons agenda? rethink our framing of gender equality and empowerment, and avoid instrumentalist
interpretations
• Interests and mandates— continued tendency to commoditize nature (eg. Restoration, REDD+), blur complex social
differences and disparities in overtly simplistic narratives of “local communities,” and reduce multiple, plural rights and
access to natural resources through convenient
• Beyond women and community-level interventions? Masculinities persist not only in social relations but equally in
institutions at scale, and in the very definition of what constitutes science

16. Challenges for transformative change
– forward looking research agendas?
• Securing access rights for women and calling on their participation in NRM
does not automatically translate into improved agency and material,
political, and social gains to women—that is to say, to women’s
empowerment
• Acknowledge that we need to push for approaches that will tackle root
causes and the systemic and structural barriers to gender inequality
• Natural resource governance is inherently political - gender, power, and
inclusion are synergistically and systematically incorporated in the design and
implementation of natural resource programs and reforms

18. Chapter 10
Toward structural change:
gender transformative
approaches (GTA)
Cynthia McDougall, Lone Badstue, Annet Mulema,
Gundula Fischer, Dina Najjar, Rhiannon Pyburn,
Marlène Elias, Deepa Joshi, and Andrea Vos

19. Gender equality at
the center?
• Prompted us to ask ‘how are we doing in terms of
gender approaches in Ag, NRM and AR4D leading
to gender equality/SDG5’?
• The answer is: Not nearly well enough.
• Not a single country is set to achieve
gender equality by 2030
• Limitations of approaches to date: scope,
sustainability, reinforcing, perverse
outcomes
• Signaled need & important momentum towards
depth and re-orientation:
• GTA as a critical complementary approach and
new trajectory.

20. Implications for One
CGIAR research?
• Recognize AR4D weaknesses to date.
• Build from GTA pilots and lessons about complex social
change:
• Explicitly transforming constraining structures
(norms+), engaging men & women via shared learning
enables more equitable relations; reflexivity sparks
shifts in individual mental models, value, beliefs.
• Grow well-designed studies to address gaps:
• Intersectionality
• Scaling out
• Multiple scales: beyond community
• Measurement approaches for complex change.
• Re-gain feminist foundations (power)?

21. Book link (open access):
https://www.ifpri.org/cdm
ref/p15738coll2/id/13467
9/filename/134888.pdf
Link to the synopsis:
https://www.ifpri.org/cdm
ref/p15738coll2/id/13472
7/filename/134936.pdf
The work on this book was
undertaken as part of the
CGIAR Research Program
on Policies, Institutions, and
Markets (PIM) led by the
International Food Policy
Research Institute (IFPRI).
The authors and editors are
grateful for the funding
support provided by the
CGIAR Fund contributors to
PIM, and by Canada’s
International Development
Research Center. We thank
all CGIAR Centers and
Research Programs that
supported the authors in
contributing to this book.
This book has gone through
IFPRI’s standard peer-
review procedure. The
opinions expressed here
belong to the authors, and
do not necessarily reflect
those of PIM, IFPRI, or
CGIAR.