Gender in agriculture sourcebook

This extensive resource provides guidance for the development of rural agricultural strategies that effectively promote gender equality and women's empowerment and reduce poverty.   The Sourcebook is the outcome of a collaboration between the World Bank, The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). It provides guidelines, practical advice, principles and approaches that have worked so far at achieving gender mainstreaming goals in agricultural programmes. It focuses on agricultural livelihoods, looking at various sectors: agriculture, forestry, fisheries, livestock, land and water, agro-industries and environment. Its target audience is operational staff who design and implement lending projects and technical officers who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages.

The resource is broken into 16 modules based on themes of cross-cutting importance for agriculture and rural development with strong gender dimensions: policy and governance; agricultural innovation and education; food security; product and input markets; rural finance; rural infrastructure; water; land; labour; natural resource management; and crises. Four of the modules focus on specific sub-sectors in agriculture: crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries. A separate module on monitoring and evaluation is included, providing guidance on tracking implementation and outcomes.

Within each module key Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) factors are considered: assets; markets; risk and vulnerability; knowledge, information and organisation. This approach provides the conceptual framework to discuss the complexities and synergies that occur between gender equality, livelihoods, food security and poverty reduction issues. Each module also ends with a lessons learned section. For example, in module 15: Gender and Forestry, lessons learned include:

In terms of providing support a sequence of support to community-based organisations working on forestry issues

• Identify existing women’s organisation groups in the proposed project area, their objectives, activities, successes, and constraints.
• Provide demand-driven support and training to those groups that already exist following an analysis of problems and opportunities in forest access and resource use.
• If there are no community-level organisations or associations in which women play an active role, assist local authorities in the creation of self-help groups and village-level development associations in which women can play a more active role.
• Build capacity and provide management training based on the goals of the groups.