This document summarizes the objectives and approach of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP), a four-year research project led by IFPRI and ILRI and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project aims to evaluate eight agricultural development projects in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to identify their impacts on men's and women's assets and determine which strategies are most effective at reducing gender gaps. GAAP contributes qualitative and quantitative research to help projects assess changes in gender norms and asset disparities over time. Two main findings that emerged across projects are that gender influences participation in agricultural interventions and that such interventions can affect gendered control and ownership of assets, even without direct asset transfers.

1. 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 on
Gender Inequalities, Asset Disparities, and Rural Livelihoods”

2. 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!

3. 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!

4. 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.

5. What we want to achieve

6. GAAP Partner Organizations

7. Project intervention approaches
Partner Country Assets transferred Gender view
of project
BRAC Bangladesh Cattle, goats, poultry
birds, or land for
horticulture
Gender aware
CARE Bangladesh None Gender
transformative
Harvest Plus Uganda Orange Fleshed Sweet
Potato (OFSP) vines
Gender aware
HKI Burkina Faso Hens, seeds Gender
transformative
Kickstart Kenya and
Tanzania
None Gender blind
Landesa India Land titles, basic inputs
(seeds)
Gender aware
Land O’Lakes Mozambique Improved dairy cows and
training inputs
Gender blind
CGIAR CSISA India None Gender blind

8. Project Evaluation design GAAP contribution
Landesa Propensity weighted
regression
Qual work (FGDs, KIIs, life histories); input
into quant survey module
BRAC
CFPR-TUP
Randomized controlled
trial (RCT)
Qual work; input into gender and assets
modules in endline
CARE-SDVC Propensity weighted
regression
Qual work; input into gender and assets
modules, additional modules for endline
LOL MSDDP Early vs. late livestock
recipients
Qual work (FGDs, KIIs, life histories); input
into quant survey module
HKI-EHFP RCT Qual work; input into gender and assets
modules
Harvest
Plus REU
RCT Qual work, including social network analysis;
input into gender and assets modules
CGIAR
CSISA
Econometric
approaches;
Experimental auction
Qual and asset module in mid-line quant
survey; Funding for analysis time to focus on
social networks
KickStart Early vs. late pump
buyers
Funding for qualitative work
Project approaches to evaluation

9. Two main findings that cut across
projects
 Gendered use, control, and ownership of assets
affect the take-up of agricultural interventions
 To participate in a dairy-value chain project, you need
a dairy cow!
 Agricultural interventions affect the gendered use,
control, and ownership of assets
 Agricultural development projects, even if not asset
transfer projects, can affect men’s and women’s use,
control and ownership of assets

10. Papers for this session
 BRAC Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction-Targeting
the Ultra Poor Program
 How do intrahousehold dynamics change when assets are
transferred to women? Evidence from BRAC’s Challenging
the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction-Targeting the Ultra Poor
Program
 CARE-Bangladesh Strengthening the Dairy Value Chain Project
 “Can dairy value chain projects change gender norms in
rural Bangladesh?”
 For more on GAAP, see: http://gaap.ifpri.info