The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project:

Toward a new paradigm in agricultural

development programming

Research supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the project,

“Evaluating the Impacts of Agricultural Development Programming on

Gender Inequalities, Asset Disparities, and Rural Livelihoods”

Objectives and overview

Objective: To reduce the gap between men’s and women’s use, control and ownership of assets, broadly defined, by evaluating how and how well agricultural development programs build women’s assets

Four-year project, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (mid 2010-mid 2014);

Jointly led by IFPRI and ILRI , including 8 core project collaborators working in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia;

Dreaming big and thinking ahead: Might be the start of a new paradigm in agricultural development programming!

Why assets? Why gender?

Increasing control/ownership of assets help create pathways out of poverty more than measures that aim to increase incomes or consumption alone;

Households do not pool resources nor share the same preferences Who receives resources or controls assets matters;

Evidence from many countries that increasing resources controlled by women improves child health and nutrition, agricultural productivity, income growth;

Although we know a lot about how to target women and increase participation with development interventions, methods are still not widely used in development projects and have not addressed the gender-gap in assets;

We define assets broadly: Natural capital, Physical capital, Financial capital, Human capital, Social capital, Political capital.

Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project

(GAAP)

• Evaluate 8 agricultural development projects to:

1. Identify the projects’ impacts on men’s and women’s assets

2. Clarify which strategies have been successful in reducing gender gaps in asset access and ownership

• Use a participatory process between implementers , evaluation partners, and GAAP team, to add a gender perspective to existing impact evaluation

• Use existing baseline surveys and new targeted studies (qualitative and quantitative) to document men’s and women’s assets and the change in those levels over the life of the project.

• Provide training and technical assistance to program staff in methods to identify and address gender disparities in assets.

• Contribute to a development toolkit and practitioners guide to reduce gender asset disparities and help to place gender considerations at the center of agricultural development.

What we want to achieve

GAAP Partner Organizations

Project intervention approaches

Partner Country Assets transferred Gender view

of project

BRAC Bangladesh Cattle, goats, poultry

birds, or land for

horticulture

Gender aware

CARE Bangladesh None Gender

transformative

Harvest Plus Uganda Orange Fleshed Sweet

Potato (OFSP) vines

Gender aware

HKI Burkina Faso Hens, seeds Gender

transformative

Kickstart Kenya and

Tanzania

None Gender blind

Landesa India Land titles, basic inputs

(seeds)

Gender aware

Land O’Lakes Mozambique Improved dairy cows and

training inputs

Gender blind

CGIAR CSISA India None Gender blind

Project Evaluation design GAAP contribution

Landesa Propensity weighted

regression

Qual work (FGDs, KIIs, life histories); input

into quant survey module

BRAC

CFPR-TUP

Randomized controlled

trial (RCT)

Qual work; input into gender and assets

modules in endline

CARE-SDVC Propensity weighted

regression

Qual work; input into gender and assets

modules, additional modules for endline

LOL MSDDP Early vs. late livestock

recipients

Qual work (FGDs, KIIs, life histories); input

into quant survey module

HKI-EHFP RCT Qual work; input into gender and assets

modules

Harvest

Plus REU

RCT Qual work, including social network analysis;

input into gender and assets modules

CGIAR

CSISA

Econometric

approaches;

Experimental auction

Qual and asset module in mid-line quant

survey; Funding for analysis time to focus on

social networks

KickStart Early vs. late pump

buyers

Funding for qualitative work

Project approaches to evaluation

Two main findings that cut across

projects

Gendered use, control, and ownership of assets

affect the take-up of agricultural interventions

To participate in a dairy-value chain project, you need

a dairy cow!

Agricultural interventions affect the gendered use,

control, and ownership of assets

Agricultural development projects, even if not asset

transfer projects, can affect men’s and women’s use,

control and ownership of assets

Papers for this session

BRAC Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction-Targeting

the Ultra Poor Program

How do intrahousehold dynamics change when assets are

transferred to women? Evidence from BRAC’s Challenging

the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction-Targeting the Ultra Poor

Program

CARE-Bangladesh Strengthening the Dairy Value Chain Project

“Can dairy value chain projects change gender norms in

rural Bangladesh?”

For more on GAAP, see: http://gaap.ifpri.info