Workshop on Gender and Assets

Please RSVP to Betsy Pereira by Monday, October 10th. Space is limited.

Gender issues have increasing prominence in the agricultural development agenda. A focus on assets is a particularly useful entry point for empowering women and achieving sustainable development outcomes, because of the long-term nature of benefits from strengthening women’s access to and control of assets. Although the gender asset gap varies across cultures and contexts, in most cases, women have fewer assets than men. Yet many agricultural development practitioners are unfamiliar with the emphasis on the distribution of assets between men and women, and are unsure how to address it, in a practical way. There is considerable interest, on the part of USAID and other development practitioners, in learning more about how attention to gender and assets can be integrated into their programs.

This workshop will present recent research on gender and assets, including innovative ways of moving beyond conventional indicators (such as women’s registered land ownership) to indicators of women and men’s control over a range of critical assets. Discussion will also address practical applications of this research for development programs, including USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative.