Gender, Agriculture, and Assets

MOTIVATIONAccess to assets and ownership and control of those assets—including physical, human, and social capital—are critical determinants of well-being. However, these assets are unequally distributed between men and women. Closing the gap between men’s and women’s ownership and control of assets is not only important for women’s empowerment and well-being but is also a necessary step toward achieving global development goals. Realizing the importance of addressing gender issues in their own development programming, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting work evaluating the impact of agricultural development programs on gender asset inequality and other development outcomes.

OUTCOMES

• IFPRI worked with the International Center for Research on Women to develop guidelines for paying attention to gender in agricultural development projects for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The guidelines were featured on the Foundation’s website, in the area of addressing women’s needs in agricultural work.
•  Oxfam America developed a winning proposal that incorporates key inputs from IFPRI’s Gender, Agriculture, and Assets program. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded US$1.3 million for Oxfam America’s two-year project to improve livelihoods and empowerment for up to 500,000 women in smallholder farm households in Ethiopia, Mali, and Tanzania.
•  IFPRI and the International Livestock Research Institute’s Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are currently providing inputs for nine projects supported by the foundation and other donors in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, and Tanzania, to help improve project implementation by paying closer attention to gender differences in asset ownership and control.