WEBINAR, Feb 16: Measuring Gender-Transformative Change in Agriculture: A review of the literature and promising practices

Please join the IFPRI Gender Task Force for a webinar with WorldFish and CARE on Thursday, February 16, 9:00am-10:00am EST

Screencast is available here for download; slides can be viewed here. 

Presenters: Steven Cole, Cynthia McDougall, & Afrina Choudhury from WorldFish & the FISH CGIAR Research Program; Emily Hillenbrand & Pranati Mohanraj from CARE USA

Discussant: Ruth Meinzen-Dick (IFPRI)

Gender inequalities are recognized as both a major driver of poverty and an impediment to agricultural development. Understanding complex processes of social change remains a critical challenge for effective agricultural development programming that advances gender equality. Gender transformative approaches represent a move beyond “business as usual” gender integration in programming towards the creation of an enabling social environment and more equitable formal and informal institutions that expand life choices for women and men.

At the heart of their work, WorldFish (starting in its past Aquatic Agriculture Systems  and Livestock & Fish CGIAR Research Program and now moving forward in its FISH CGIAR Research Program) and CARE USA (through its global Pathways to Empowerment agriculture program) strive to apply gender transformative approaches (GTA) in designing, implementing, and learning from agricultural development interventions. However, committing to GTA implementation approaches also requires a transformation of measurements and indicators of change, an area of research that remains relatively under-developed in the agriculture sector.

In this webinar, CARE and WorldFish Center jointly present a literature review of promising indicators and tools for measuring gender-transformative change in agriculture, along with some practical case studies and the implications of applying such approaches in practice.

Presenter Bios:

WorldFish

Steven Cole

Steven Cole is a Gender Scientist for WorldFish. He obtained his PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Arizona. He also holds a MSc degree in Agricultural Economics and a BSc in Health and Nutrition. Steven leads the gender transformative research carried out in small-scale fisheries and with fish farmers in Zambia and in inland valley swamp areas in Sierra Leone. The research integrates and tests gender transformative approaches in development interventions that aim to achieve better, longer-lasting, and more equitable development outcomes.

Cynthia McDougall

Cynthia McDougall is the Gender Leader WorldFish and the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-food Systems (‘FISH’). She is an interdisciplinary social scientist with over 20 years of experience in food security, gender and social equity, and natural resource governance. Her particular interest is in interdisciplinary, mixed methods, and action research approaches and how these can leverage scalable shifts towards empowerment, equality, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security and sustainability. Cynthia holds an MPhil (Geography) from Cambridge University in the UK and a PhD (Knowledge, Technology and Innovation) from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

Afrina Choudhury

Afrina Choudhury works as Gender Specialist for WorldFish, Bangladesh where she is responsible for the design and implementation of pro-poor gender sensitive strategies. Working in the field of aquatic-agriculture, her research has revolved around the integration of gender into technical interventions in ways that are sustainable and transformative. In particular she works to understand how individuals negotiate and change the nuanced constraints brought about by social norms and relationships. She also co-chairs the National Gender Working Group, which brings together gender and equity work in Bangladesh. She holds Masters degree in Development studies from BRAC University.

CARE USA: 

Emily Hillenbrand

Emily Hillenbrand is currently Team Leader of the global Pathways to Empowerment Program, a multi-country initiative to empower female smallholder farmers and support more equitable agriculture systems at scale. Prior to assuming the Team Leader role in Oct. 2016, Emily was Senior Technical Advisor for Gender and Livelihoods, working on developing gender-transformative approaches and measurement tools for Pathways and other programs within the Food and Nutrition Security unit. She co-created the Farmer Field and Business School curriculum with the Pathways technical team and has been refining qualitative and participatory tools to promote as well as monitor gender behavior change. Before joining CARE, she worked for five years on gender and nutrition programming with Helen Keller International, in the Asia-Pacific Regional office and with HKI Bangladesh. She holds a master’s degree in Women, Gender and Development from the Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands, and a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Middlebury College.

Pranati Mohanraj

Pranati Mohanraj is a Technical Advisor for Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation with CARE USA Food and Nutrition Security Unit. She has extensive experience in developing innovative program designs; establishing monitoring and evaluation system; providing technical leadership for development of critical program indicators, monitoring and assessment tools; and in conducting impact measurements. Her work life spans engaging with country level government departments in India; setting up modules for Masters students at University of York, UK; engaging with grassroots level organizations; as well as providing technical support and guidance to countries across Africa and South Asia. She leads processes for developing monitoring, learning and evaluation framework and system; impact measurement and evaluation research; and capacity building of local staff. Dr. Pranati pioneered development and implementation of community based participatory self-assessment tool such as the PPT (participatory performance tracker) in CARE’s women empowerment and agriculture program which allows communities and CARE staff reflect and assess their performance and plan to minimize identified gaps. Taking the PPT tool to its next level, she spearheaded development of a mobile-based application for data collection and automated analysis and developed the eMIS, in collaboration with Dimagi, a solution to track program participation and change and to enable data-driven decision-making. Adapting the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), she specifically focused on measuring women empowerment in CARE’s Pathways program. She came to CARE with a Masters’ degree in Social Work and a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, UK.

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Access Code: 985-102-237 

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