Book-based session: Advancing Gender Equality through Agricultural and Environmental Research
This session presents key messages a recent CGIAR-wide gender publication involving all research programs and Centers, entitled: Advancing gender equality through agricultural and environmental research – past, present and future (Pyburn, R. and A. Eerdewijk, eds. 2021). This book sets an agenda on how agricultural and environmental research and development can advance gender equality in its own right. The framing intentionally flips the direction of common questions on gender-based constraints in agriculture and natural resource domains. For example, rather than looking at how gender analysis can increase productivity or improve uptake of technologies, authors look at how agricultural research and technology development contribute to progress towards gender equality and greater women’s empowerment. Authors challenge boundaries in thinking about gender in agriculture to stimulate creative and new perspectives or insights to both contribute to the CGIAR system-wide gender research agenda as well as the broader gender/agriculture research and practice domain internationally. Nine thematic chapters cover the following domains: breeding research, seed system development, value chains, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, natural resource governance, climate adaptation and mitigation, the feminization of agriculture, assessing women’s empowerment, and gender transformative approaches. This session will focus on what emerged through using a gender equality lens in re-examining CGIAR gender research within these themes, and what this means for the next generation of gender research. After a rapid-fire presentation from chapter co-authors, the discussion will focus on where to go next with gender research in order to advance gender equality.
Moderator/organisers:
Rhiannon Pyburn, KIT, Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
Rhiannon Pyburn, KIT Royal Tropical Institute
Chapter 1: CGIAR research through an equality and empowerment lens
Vivian Polar, International Potato Center (CIP)
Chapter 2: Examining choice to advance gender equality in breeding research
Eileen Bogweh Nchanji, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
Chapter 3: Moving beyond reaching women in seed systems development
Gaudiose Mujawamariya, AfricaRice
Chapter 4: Promise and contradiction: value chain participation and women’s empowerment
Padmaja Ravula, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)
Chapter 5: Nutrition-sensitive agriculture for gender equality
Deepa Joshi, International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Chapter 6: A gender–natural resources tango: Water, land, and forest research
Sophia Huyer, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), ILRI and AICCRA
Chapter 7: From vulnerability to agency in climate adaptation and mitigation
Katrina Kosec, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Johns Hopkins University
Chapter 8: From the “feminization of agriculture” to gender equality
Ana Maria Paez-Valencia, World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Chapter 9: Assessing women’s empowerment in agricultural research
Cynthia McDougall, WorldFish
Chapter 10: Toward structural change: gender transformative approaches