As the role of women in dry area agriculture increases, and their workloads become heavier with the migration of men to urban areas and abroad, they face financial, cultural, and legal constraints in accessing knowledge, innovation, finance, markets, institutions, and resources, particularly land and water resources. We will identify how specific gender gaps and priorities in targeted regions have important implications for gender- equitable, demand-driven development and identify effective gender-responsive and transformative ways to increase production, food security, incomes, and women’s share of these benefits. Our focus will be to improve women’s access to land, water, seeds, credit, and other productive resources and to knowledge and innovation. We will acknowledge and build upon their traditional knowledge in adapting to climate change; in livestock, land, and water management; and in breeding and preserving seeds of food crops. ICARDA’s research will seek to empower women through capacity development and to facilitate their role as leaders and active agents of change. Understanding their needs will allow ICARDA to support ways to enable women to access, own, control, and benefit from productive resources as well as improve their working conditions in the agricultural wage sector, which is largely dependent on the labor of women. In addition, we will explore cultural, ideological, normative, and institutional factors, as well as emerging changes and trends in these factors, and analyze how they affect gender relations, gender roles, and decision-making processes. We will also investigate the need for gender-responsive and transformative action for effective agricultural research for development under changing climate conditions and the implications for technology development and adoption. We will explore promising formal and informal institutional arrangements to increase women’s voice and power in dry area communities and agricultural organizations coping with climate change, to ensure more sustainable and equitable community resource management and use. We will use technologies and knowledge to reduce the drudgery of agricultural work to free up time and energy; support women to engage in more lucrative economic activities through agricultural diversification, intensification, and value-addition; and investigate promising practices for women to purchase, operate, and benefit from such technologies at individual, household, and community levels. Because labor is such an important asset for women and youth, it is critical that we pay attention to improving wages and working conditions and eradicate gender-based inequalities to realize decent work for rural women and youth. Projects will ensure that women and men directly participate in and benefit from ICARDA research by setting gender-inclusive objectives from the onset. We will go beyond collecting and analyzing gender- disaggregated data to exploring factors and processes through which gender relations are shaped and possibly refigured, so that women as much as men participate and benefit from the development process. Youth are an additional target group because they too represent a large disenfranchised group facing high levels of unemployment. Yet they have tremendous capacity to innovate and engage meaningfully and lucratively in the agricultural sector. In order to make agriculture more attractive and lucrative for this group, we will address research questions around youth and their engagement and empowerment in the agricultural sector with a specific focus on service provision and the value chains of key commodities. The Center will explore new and innovative ways of attracting youth into agriculture through the development of entrepreneurs that use and benefit from technology. With our partners taking innovation to scale, we will ensure that gender and youth are comprehensively active in and benefit from all of ICARDA’s projects and initiatives.
ICARDA Strategic Plan 2017 - 2026: https://dx.doi.org/20.500.11766/8237