1. INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Evaluating the Impacts of
Agricultural Development
Programming on Gender
Inequalities, Asset Disparities,
and Rural Livelihoods
Overview of the initiative
INTERNATIONAL LIVESTOCK RESEARCH INSTITUTE

2. Purpose
 To reduce the gap between men’s and
women’s control and ownership of assets,
broadly defined, by evaluating how and how
well agricultural development programs build
women’s assets
 Three-year project, supported by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation
 Dreaming big and thinking ahead: might be
the start of a new paradigm in agricultural
development programming!

3. Why assets?
 Control over and ownership of assets is a
critical component to well-being
 Increasing control/ownership of assets help
create pathways out of poverty more than
measures that aim to increase incomes or
consumption alone
 Different types of assets matter

4. Page 4
Different types of assets matter
 Natural capital
 Physical capital
 Financial capital
 Human capital
 Social capital
 Political capital
Tangible and
Intangible assets

5. Why look at control of assets?
 Why controls assets within the household
matters
 Households do not pool resources nor share
the same preferences
 Who receives resources determines impact of
policy
 Evidence from many countries that increasing
resources controlled by women improves
child health and nutrition, agricultural
productivity, income growth

6. Women continue to have fewer assets
than men

7. Percentage change in husbands’ and wives’
exclusively owned assets, Bangladesh, 1996-2006
-100
-50
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
%change
Type of asset
Husbands
Wives
Page 7

8. Why does a gender gap in assets persist?
 We know a lot about:
• how to target women with development
interventions
• how to improve participation
• what to do to increase the chances that they
will benefit from ag devt projects, including
working with men to change attitudes and
behaviors that limit women’s economic
opportunities.
 But these methods are still not widely used in
development projects
 Have not been addressing gender gap in
assets

9. The big picture: Putting it together

10. Capacity building
 Build capacity of project teams/evaluation
partners to undertake integrated economic and
social gender impact assessments, to collect and
analyze sex-disaggregated data, and use the
results to design, implement and evaluate
strategies to enhance project impacts on women
 Key partners in capacity building:
• Project teams/implementers
• Evaluation partners

11. Capacity building activities--1
 Develop a conceptual framework for
analyzing gender and assets in agricultural
R&D programs, specifying the different assets
targeted and impact pathways
 Inception workshop in November 2010:
training and planning workshop for potential
projects (one evaluation person and one
implementer)
 Develop a capacity building strategy for
selected projects and for the overall initiative
based on the KAP survey

12. Capacity building activities--2
 Train a regional team of experts, evaluators,
and/or project team members in
• use of rapid gender and asset assessments tools and
analytical approaches
• setting up M&E processes to measure effectiveness of
strategies for increasing women’s assets in the context
of ongoing projects
 Midterm workshop (year 2): progress, research
results, midterm adjustments to projects
 Final workshop (end of project): present
evaluation results, effectiveness of different
strategies , share lessons from evaluation results
and integrated strategies

13. Research--1
 Understand the impact of agricultural
development activities on women’s and men’s
access to and control over key assets
 Empirical evidence based on quantitative and
qualitative approaches
 Key question: Have agricultural development
interventions increased ownership of and
access to key assets (land, livestock, and
access to water, soil, and improved varieties)
and reduced the extent of inequality in asset
ownership between men and women?

14. Research--2
 Individual case studies, with regional
representation and balance across key assets
 Synthesis across case studies
 Analysis to be conducted jointly by the PIs
and the evaluation staff of the individual
projects
 Note: realistically, for a project to be
included, baseline data must exist. This
initiative is only a 3-year project—for now!

15. Research activities--1
 Form an External Advisory Committee
 Review and select projects for participation in
the initiative based on the initial workshop
and elaboration by the projects of their
gender, asset and evaluation needs and
priorities
 Work with the evaluation partners in the
selected projects, design additional gender-
sensitive approaches or components to
include in the evaluation plan for each
participating project

16. Research activities--2
 Support project evaluation partners to gather
additional data as needed, either
immediately, or over time as part of the
impact assessment.
 Conduct gender analysis together with
evaluation partners, to include:
• initial characterization of baseline data
• documentation of mid-course adjustments
and their impacts
• impact analysis by project
• synthesis of findings across projects

17. Identifying “good practices”
 Identify effective pathways for reaching women
and reducing gender asset disparities, based on
ongoing implementation and cross-project
learning
 Some projects may want to implement mid-term
adjustments, as a result of findings. Changes will
be documented so we can learn from them
 Develop alternative strategies for addressing
gender disparities in assets in agricultural
development projects, depending on context
(SSA vs SA)

18. Dissemination and outreach
 Document and widely disseminate methods,
results, and lessons learned about how to build
women’s assets and improve livelihoods through
agricultural development projects
 Thinking “outside the box”: use web-based
dissemination options, such as
http://genderassets.wordpress.com
 Develop training materials and for supporting
partners in data collection, analysis and
implementation
 Prepare scientific papers, project reports, and
policy briefs

19. Key points--1
 Evaluate 8-10 agricultural development projects
• identify the projects’ impacts on women’s assets
• clarify which strategies have been successful in reducing
gender gaps in asset access and ownership
 Participatory process between implementors and
evaluation partners
 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
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20. Pag
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20
Key points--2
 Provide training and
technical assistance
to program staff in
methods to identify and
address gender
disparities in assets.
 Contribute to a
development toolkit
to reduce gender asset
disparities and help to
place gender
considerations at the
center of agricultural
development.

21. Mind the gap!