The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project:

Toward a new paradigm in agricultural development programming

Research supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the project, “Evaluating the Impacts of Agricultural Development

Programming onGender Inequalities, Asset Disparities, and Rural Livelihoods”

Objectives and overview

Objective: To reduce the gap between men’s and women’s use, control and ownership of assets, broadly defined, by evaluating how and how well agricultural development programs build women’s assets

Four-year project, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (mid 2010-mid 2014);

Jointly led by IFPRI and ILRI , including 8 core project collaborators working in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia;

Dreaming big and thinking ahead: Might be the start of a new paradigm in agricultural development programming!

Why assets? Why gender?

Increasing control/ownership of assets help create pathways out of poverty more than measures that aim to increase incomes or consumption alone;

Households do not pool resources nor share the same preferences Who receives resources or controls assets matters;

Evidence from many countries that increasing resources controlled by women improves child health and nutrition, agricultural productivity, income growth;

Although we know a lot about how to target women and increase participation with development interventions, methods are still not widely used in development projects and have not addressed the gender-gap in assets;

We define assets broadly: Natural capital, Physical capital, Financial capital, Human capital, Social capital, Political capital.

Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP)

• Evaluate 8 agricultural development projects to:

1. Identify the projects’ impacts on men’s and women’s assets

2. Clarify which strategies have been successful in reducing gender gaps in asset access and ownership

• Use a participatory process between implementers , evaluation partners, and GAAP team, to add a gender perspective to existing impact evaluation

• Use existing baseline surveys and new targeted studies (qualitative and quantitative) to document men’s and women’s assets and the change in those levels over the life of the project.

• Provide training and technical assistance to program staff in methods to identify and address gender disparities in assets.

• Contribute to a development toolkit and practitioners guide to reduce gender asset disparities and help to place gender considerations at the center of agricultural development.

What we want to achieve

GAAP Partner Organizations