Box 1: Key messages

• Striving towards gender equality is an integral part of sustainable development, achieved through: (a) gender equity (i.e. pursuing fairness and justice); and (b) women’s empowerment (i.e. increasing the opportunities of women to control their lives). 
• Gender analysis at programme design stage helps identify women and men’s different priorities, needs, capacities and vulnerabilities, reducing the risk of formulating project interventions based on incorrect assumptions and stereotypes. Identifying gender gaps helps formulate specific activities that address gender inequalities, and promote economic and sociopolitical development for both women and men. 
• Gender analysis must be conducted in a participatory manner, as the process raises the consciousness of local women and men about different types of gender inequalities, empowering them to take action to reduce those inequalities. 
• Gender analysis should be mainstreamed into livelihoods analysis (See Social Analysis), as it represents another principal cornerstone of project design. 
• Gender analysis should lead into concrete activities during implementation with corresponding resource allocations,  and gender-sensitive indicators to monitor progress and assess project impact on both women and men. 

Gender roles and division of labour: The roles of men and women in agriculture are clearly defined by long-standing traditional norms and practices. In most societies, women mainly engage in weeding, threshing, vegetable gardening, small livestock production and informal marketing, while men play a major role in land clearance, fencing and transportation of produce to the market (loading and unloading). The absence of adult males in a female-headed household often leads to poverty caused by a reliance on scarce family labour and the need to pay for hired labour.

Workloads: In addition to their farm activities, women are responsible for providing child care, preparing food (including fetching water and fuelwood) and managing the household economy. Women are also involved in community-based support functions. For example, in countries with high HIV/AIDS prevalence, providing home-based care for orphans and vulnerable children (and HIV/AIDS-affected people) has had a great impact on women’s ability to participate in crop production, for example less time for weeding, which in turn reduces yields.

Access to and control of resources: In many developing countries, most women in rural areas have limited access to land and water resources, and lack financial resources to buy inputs and technologies. They tend to own smaller plots than men which is often due to cultural inheritance practices that favour boys over girls as well as limited access to sufficient farm power to cultivate large plots. Traditionally they have been disadvantaged in accessing agricultural information (including market information and markets) disseminated through extension services and training, while lack of collateral and education often limits their access to formal credit. Many resource-poor men face the same challenges as women.

Gender roles in decision-making: In many parts of the world, women have less bargaining power within the household, community, and national levels. This is often linked to the fact that women continue to be deprived of property rights while their male partners, as heads of households, are making major decisions regarding household resource use. Although some legislation on inheritance and property rights are in many contexts gradually being amended as a result of systematic efforts to remove discrimination against women , much needs to be done to promote joint decision-making regarding the use of household income. Women participating in producer organisations or community development groups, often tend to defer to men for the final decisions unless there are special efforts made to promote women’s leadership and involvement in decision-making. Less literate women depend more on their husbands for decisions.

How gender analysis can direct programme formulation towards more gender-equitable development
An investment programme was designed for a poor region in an East African country. Its two main components were: (a) development of irrigation, mainly through rehabilitation of canals; and (b) increase in productivity through farmer training and demonstrations of new technologies to raise the productivity of crops, livestock, and fish. The programme identified three predominant groups of water users: gardeners, livestock farmers and fishermen. A thorough gender analysis of these population groups was carried out at programme formulation phase, examining division of labour, time use, health, land tenure systems, education and participation in water users associations (WUAs). The analysis revealed findings that forced the design team to add a third component to the programme: construction of rural infrastructure specifically to reduce women’s labour burden, including measures to mitigate possible health risks and negative environmental impacts. To respond to the issues – highlighted by the analysis – of women’s limited access to land, low female participation in WUAs and exclusion of indigenous women due to poor literacy skills, the programme introduced two innovative measures: (a) a quota was established for allocation of irrigated land to women, so they could have access to water from the irrigation projects during the dry season and be involved in the decision-making process; and (b) membership in WUAs was not limited to farmers with irrigated land, or to one member per household. A special transitional measure was added to promote women’s participation by charging slightly lower fees to female members of WUAs and accepting illiterate women in community credit management committees. The main programme activities that helped to achieve these gender mainstreaming objectives were the recruitment of a gender officer in the programme management unit and the organization of farmer training demonstrations (FTDs). During implementation, an additional need arose to provide numeracy and literacy training in indigenous languages to a considerable number of beneficiaries (most of them women) so as to open the doors for them to benefit from the programme. Functional literacy groups (FLGs) were set up to provide this support as well as to enhance solidarity among groups for other purposes, such as collective work and microfinance.

How gender analysis can contribute to readjusting a project during implementation
An ARD investment project in a country in Asia provided credit to poor households for the purchase of milk buffalo. A few years into implementation two new dairy cooperatives were formed to help farmers market their milk. The project brought considerable financial benefits to at least a third of the households in the village, bridged ethnic and caste differences in democratically-run dairy cooperatives and had positive effects on crop production as well, because more manure was available. However, a quick gender analysis during a supervision mission revealed that the project had some negative effects on poor women, whose labour in collecting fodder and caring for the milk buffalo had increased dramatically without appropriate compensation, because husbands controlled the income from milk sales. As a result of the growing livestock population, the women’s access to community land and state forests for gathering fodder and fuelwood had also decreased. Based on these findings, adjustments were made during implementation to include provisions to assist women in purchasing their own buffalos and to include them as members of the dairy cooperatives as well as in community actions to manage and improve fodder resources in state forests.