The GAAP team is happy to announce the release of our new technical guide!
This new guide, Reducing the Gender Asset Gap Through Agricultural Development, explains the importance of assets - both tangible assets such as land, labor, and animals and intangible assets such as education, financial capital, and social networks - for development, and the wide gap that exists between men and women in the use, control, and ownership of these assets. With practical lessons and recommendations, the guide shows how to collect data and design and monitor projects to address this gender asset gap, clarifying how each step of the project - from design to evaluation - can attend to gender differences. It also identifies both qualitative and quantitative tools to use in collecting and analyzing sex-disaggregated data on assets.
Along with the research findings laid out in the GAAP project notes and discussion papers, and an updated GAAP toolkit for collecting data, this technical guide completes a full package of resources for researchers and practitioners working to improve women's equality and economic status in the developing world.
Happy reading!
The GAAP Gender & Assets toolkit, originally created in February 2012, has now been updated! This updated version includes case studies from each of the portfolio projects, a new section on key "lessons learned", and links to the tools used in each project.
The new version of the toolkit can be found here. Individual case studies can also be read here.
The tools used by each of the projects in GAAP have now been posted on the website! These include both qualitative and quantitative tools. For more information on what worked and didn't with each of these tools, we recommend you read the case studies, in particular the interviews with project leads. The tools can all be found at the Questionnaires tab above, or by clicking on the link to each specific project below.
Tools:
Last Thursday, GAAP hosted an outreach event in Washington, DC to present the findings from some of the projects in the GAAP portfolio. The morning event began with a welcome by Agnes Quisumbing and Ruth Meinzen-Dick, two of the four Principle Investigators of the GAAP, who also gave a presentation on the GAAP conceptual framework and an overview of the project.
The event also included presentations from Dan Gilligan and Neha Kumar on the Harvest Plus Reaching End Users (REU) project, from David Spielman on the CSISA laser land leveling project, from Deanna Olney on the Helen Keller International project, from Shalini Roy on BRAC's Targeting the Ultra Poor project, and from Agnes Quisumbing on CARE's Strengthing the Dairy Value Chain (SDVC) project. The presenters were joined by session chairs Keith Weibe and Marie Ruel, from IFPRI.
The event concluded with closing remarks from John McDermott, Director of the CRP on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).
Summarized findings from GAAP portfolio projects are now available. Project Notes summarizing the key findings from each project are now available on the Findings page, as well as on each individual project page. The full collection of Project Notes is also available. Stay tuned for more detailed findings in the form of papers in the coming months!
The CGIAR's Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) just released a short video interview with Agnes Quisumbing, one of the GAAP PIs and the Senior Gender Advisor to A4NH. In the video, Agnes explains the important linkages between gender and assests and how their relationship can affect people's ability to engage in and benefit from interventions. She showcases two of the GAAP portfolio projects: The Harvest Plus Reaching End Users Project and the Helen Keller International Enhanced Homestead Food Production Program.
New Paper: Closing the Gender Asset Gap: Learning from Value Chain Development in Africa and Asia
A new paper, developed for the UN Foundation and ExxonMobil Foundation research collaboration on "Building a Roadmap for Women's Economic Empowerment" has just been released. This paper, written by several of the PIs and Core Members of GAAP, explores value chains in five of the GAAP projects: dairy value chains in Bangladesh and Mozambique (CARE and Land O'Lakes), horticultural crops in Burkina Faso (HKI), and orange-fleshed sweet potato in Uganda (HarvestPlus).
For the full paper, click here.
For more information on the "Building a Roadmap for Women's Economic Empowerment" research collaboration, click here.
When talking about asset ownership and control for smallholder farmers, land is one of the most important assets to consider. Owning, operating and controling land can influence food security, gender relations, the environment, economic development, conflict resolution, and transparency, among other things. Throughout September, the international development news and business site, Devex, is running a campaign entitled "Land Matters", which will highlight several of these issues.
The campaign showcases innovative solutions to land issues and advances a conversation that now involves smallholder farmers across Africa and other parts of the world as well as land experts, social entrepreneurs, business executives and government officials.
The campaign is being co-sponsored by PIM, the CGIAR program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets, and authors from IFPRI and CAPRi will be among the contributors, especially on the “Land Matters for Women” and “Land Matters for the Environment” themes. GAAP Principal Investigator Agnes Quisumbing contributes her thoughts on why we should care about women's land rights in a op-ed.
Visit the Land Matters site here, or participate in the conversation by tweeting #landmatters or by sharing, liking, and commenting on the coverage via the Devex LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ pages.
Landesa, one of the grantees in the GAAP portfolio, was recently spotlighted in the Wall Street Journal for one of it's projects in India's western state of Orissa.
Photo credit: Landesa
In particular, it details the establishment of Women's Support Centres in administrative divisions; these centers help to ensure that rural single women can obtain homestead land. The author notes: "If the WSC program extended throughout Orissa, as is likely, more than half a million single women could get land, finally bringing to life the ideals embodied in India’s laws and constitution."
For the full article, click here.
- Photo credit: Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times
Seattle-based Landesa, one of organizations that makes up the GAAP Portfolio, was recently featured in a two-part series in the Seattle Times entitled "Seeds of Hope".
The first part of the series focuses on Landesa's work with landless families, particularly in India. The granting of micro-plots to landless families has proved successful in lifting families out of poverty, contributing to household food security, and freeing up household income usually spent on food to be spent on other purchases, like education. A pilot girls empowerment project works through girl's groups to educate girls in how to grow food for their families; the hope is that endowing the girls with this kind of useful knowledge will make families reconsider marrying the girls off at a young age, allowing them to complete their educations and break out of the cycle of poverty.
The second part of the series focuses on Landesa's founder, Roy Prosterman, a University of Washington law professor.
The series also includes a beautiful Photo Essay, which displays photos from West Bengal, where Landesa's "Security of Girls Through Land" project operates.
