In developing countries, women do up to 80 percent of the work on farms. Yet in most areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, women are afforded less status than men, have less access to resources, and have greater responsibilities given their dual roles as mothers and farmers in rural households.
We believe that agricultural development programs must address gender in order to most effectively reduce hunger and poverty. To ensure this occurs, we’ve developed a Gender Impact Strategy for Agricultural Development.
Our vision of success:
- Women will be actively and meaningfully engaged in each of our projects.
- Through the work of our grantees there is a visible improvement in the general welfare of households—women, children, and families—demonstrated by measured improvements in health and income.
To help realize that vision, we have:
- Created a gender checklist to ensure that we and our partners are considering the optimal role of women in our projects from the outset.
- Adopted proposal templates to help grantees and program officers ensure that each grant has specific and sufficient measures in place to effectively address gender.
- Helped to increase understanding of the importance of gender dynamics in the communities where we work, among our partners, and within our programs.
- Committed to offering tools and resources to help support grantees’ and partners’ efforts. For example, we have hired a program officer with extensive gender experience, and we will look for ways to strengthen gender expertise and effectiveness within the field.
About the Report:Title: Gender Impact Strategy for Agricultural Development (13 pages, 394KB, PDF)
Prepared by: Agricultural Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Date Published: June 2008