Sourcing examples of policy and programming practice for empowering women in a rural context
This report presents the results of a scoping exercise in preparation for potential e-Learning modules
Abstract
This report presents the results of a scoping exercise in preparation for potential eLearning modules on Empowering Women in a Rural Context for DFID’s livelihoods cadre. The goal of the eLearning will be to promote transformative gender policy and programmes by updating livelihoods advisers’ knowledge of gender in a changing agricultural and rural context.
Individuals in approximately 60 agencies (bilateral agencies, multilaterals, financial institutions, foundations, and research institutions) were contacted by email to solicit their views on programmes or policies that have promoted transformative gender approaches and had evidence to show the subsequent impact. A limited search was also conducted of different evaluation websites, and reports and donor evaluation websites were also briefly reviewed.
The report is divided into three sections as follows:
Section 1 outlines those programmes identified by this study, that show the most evidence of impact and that could provide good material for the eLearning modules planned. There are five examples in this section:
- A roadmap for promoting women’s economic empowerment
- Rwanda’s nation-wide land tenure regularisation programme
- Evidence from Farmer Field School evaluations
- The Agricultural Support Programme in Zambia
- The impact of economic resource transfers to women versus men.
Section 2 contains some promising interventions that have not yet produced evidence of their impact; or evidence was not located within the time frame of this review. However these interventions might be worth exploring further in eLearning materials. There are 12 examples in this section organised around the following:
- Agricultural Input Voucher Scheme with a focus on gender impacts, Tanzania
- A review on the effectiveness of agricultural interventions for smallholders in Africa
- The World Food Programme’s Enhancing Resilience (ER) Programme in Bangladesh
- Vitamin A-rich Orange-fleshed Sweet Potato Programme, Malawi
- The Homestead Food Production Model and its relevance for empowerment
- Value chains and empowerment (4 reports)
- Effectiveness of ‘Grants’ for enabling an empowerment process (2 reports)
- The World Bank’s enGENDER IMPACT website
- DFID gender review of 2012/13 evaluations
- ILO programmes that benefitted rural women workers.
Section 3 contains examples of evaluation reports that might have relevance. A range of evaluation reports were sent by individuals in bilateral agencies in response to the email request where those contacted felt their evaluation reports could be reviewed as they potentially matched the criteria for this request. Evaluations from DFID, FAO, USAID, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and AusAID are considered.
A Bibliography list has been included and keywords for each intervention are included for all examples in this report.
This report has been produced by Dr Una Murray for Evidence on Demand with the assistance of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) contracted through the Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Professional Evidence and Applied Knowledge Services (CEIL PEAKS) programme, jointly managed by HTSPE Limited and IMC Worldwide Limited.
Citation
Murray, U. Sourcing examples of policy and programming practice for empowering women in a rural context. Evidence on Demand, UK (2013) 44 pp. [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12774/eod_hd.nov2013_murray]
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