1) Closing the gender gap in agriculture and food systems can reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and health, and enable more sustainable natural resource management. 2) However, interventions must consider heterogeneity as effects vary based on other aspects of people's lives like location. A cash transfer program in Brazil increased women's decision making in urban but not rural households. 3) More knowledge is still needed on barriers facing women in areas like mobility, job choice, and work burdens in order to design effective policies and programs. The CGIAR is working to better understand these issues to close gender knowledge gaps.

1. Gender and A
Food Secure
Future
What do we need to
know?
What do we need to
do?
Karen Brooks
CGIAR Knowledge Day
November 5, 2013

2. Making the case: Why close the gender gap in
agriculture and food systems?
Equality
Justice
Rights
Risk Reduction
Efficiency
Removing barriers to women’s
contributions will increase productivity
Improving women’s status improves
outcomes for their children
Increasing women’s agency reduces
stress on natural resources

3. Value Proposition: Gender and System Level Outcomes
Reduced
rural
poverty
• Eliminating barriers to women’s labor participation
in some sectors would reduce gender productivity
gap by one third to one half (WDR 2012)
Increased
food
security
• Equalizing access to agricultural resources could
increase yields by 20-30% and reduce the
world’s hungry by 12-17% (SOFA 2011,
Quisumbing, et al., forthcoming)
Improved
nutrition
and health
• Nutritional supplementation for girls influences
the growth of their children (Behrman, Calderon,
Preston, Hoddinott, Martorell, Stein, 2009)
Sustainable
natural
resource
management
• A woman with secure ownership rights is more
likely to invest in sustainable farming practices
(Otsuka, et al., 2003)
Clear case should lead to clear actions…

4. …but heterogeneity intervenes
Women and men experience gender together with other dimensions of
life: interactions matter.
Bolsa Família, a conditional cash
transfer program with female
beneficiaries, increases women’s
decisionmaking, but with
heterogeneity in effects:
 Effect driven by urban
households
 In rural households, program
does not increase and possibly
reduces women’s
decisionmaking power
Source: de Brauw, Gilligan, Hoddinott, and Roy (2013)
Average proportion reporting female decision
making power regarding specific decisions,
Bolsa Família transfer recipients and
nonrecipients, 2009.

5. Action requires knowledge of interactions; heterogeneity
Progress in:
…and less so in:
 Education
 Mobility
 Fertility
 Labor force
participation
 Mortality
 Job choice
 Earning gaps
 House and care work
 Asset ownership
 Agency
All relate centrally to agricultural innovation and reduction of rural poverty.

6. This is core challenge of CRP gender strategies
System-wide
For CRPs
 Identify key barriers
 Understand
heterogeneity that
matters

Research agenda
 Work with
implementation partners
to design interventions
 Address scale
 Monitor outcomes
 Identify policy and institutional
issues with greatest gender impact
 Diagnose
o Barriers that work of CGIAR can
address
o Barriers that work of CGIAR can
address in partnership
o Barriers best left to others
o Extrapolation, generalizability
o Comparative research
 Improve the data and methods

collect sex-disaggregated data and
gender analysis

7. “When market
signals, formal
institutions, and
income growth
all come
together to
support
investments in
women, gender
equality can and
does improve
very quickly.”
- WDR 2012
Photo Credit: Neil Palmer, CIAT

8. Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato
A major accomplishment
of CGIAR and partners
Gender lens speeds
adoption
 Gender in decisions on
land use
 Gender in
communication
Probability of adoption highest on
parcels jointly controlled by men and
women, but where women lead in
deciding crops grown. Communication
strategy must recognize limits of
communication within households.
Source: Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP)

9. Closing the gender knowledge gap
Strategic:
 Collecting and analyzing sex-disaggregated data: progress in
agreeing on a set of minimum standards for inclusion of sex
disaggregation in most data collection
 Continuing empirical work on gender issues in agriculture;
especially comparative research and meta studies
 Working with partners to explore alternative design and
delivery mechanisms to meet context-specific gender needs
 Evaluating outcomes: focus on gendered impacts of
agricultural interventions
 Generalizing with caution: moving beyond the specific
Source: Quisumbing, et al. (eds.), forthcoming. Gender in Agriculture: Closing the Knowledge Gap. Springer.

10. Thank
you
Photo Credit: Neil Palmer, CIAT