Being able to access, control, and own productive assets such as land, labor, finance, and social capital enables people to create stable and productive lives. However, men and women have different access to and control over assets. This includes both tangible assets (such as money, livestock, land and so on.) and intangible assets (education, social networks and so on). Yet relatively little is known about how agricultural development programs affect men's and women's access to and control over these types of assets. The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP) is jointly led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to better understand gender and asset dynamics in agricultural development programs. GAAP core team members work with agricultural development projects in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa to:
- Identify how development projects impact men's and women’s assets;
- Clarify which strategies have been successful in reducing gender gaps in asset access, control and ownership; and
- Improve partner organization's abilities to measure and analyze qualitative and quantitative gender and assets data in their Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) plans for current and future projects.
Through a competitive process, eight different agricultural development projects from throughout South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were chosen to be a part of the GAAP portfolio (see GAAP Portfolio for specific project information). Each of these partner projects received a grant from GAAP that allowed them to conduct additional quantitative and qualitative research to look at how how men’s and women’s assets change over the life of their project. In addition, GAAP core team members from IFPRI and ILRI provided training and technical assistance to each partner project in the GAAP portfolio on qualitative and quantitative gender and assets research methods. In addition to the eight projects in the portfolio, one additional project applied to receive funding forcapacity building but not research.
For more detailed information you can read the final GAAP proposal here