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. 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.
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.
