Gender and inclusivity blog posts

For many rural communities in Africa and Asia, collecting and managing water for home use and domestic gardening is “women’s work”. Yet women seldom have a say in how water is managed or how water infrastructure is planned.

Most people don’t realize there are two Noahs in the bible. There’s the man with the animals and the ark, and then there’s the woman who fought for equitable property ownership rights for men and for women. Noah and her sisters appealed to Moses for women’s inalienable and legal right to control their own land, with or without male co-ownership. This Noah is my namesake.

Variation in agricultural output, due to climatic shocks, is a significant source of risk in agriculture. Are men and women affected differently by climate risk? If so, do policies then need to specifically address women’s needs in addition to men’s needs?

From April 28 - May 31, 2014 the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog will feature blog posts that focus on key resilience concepts in agricultural systems.

Water is perceived to be a women’s business but the business of water lacks women, said Sonomi Tanaka of ADB at a recent conference on Women in Water Leadership.

What makes a research model useful? In research for development, it must have a practical application and be grounded in reality. When used to assess trade-offs, model inputs must reflect people because they are the main drivers of change within systems.

Engaging female farmers in Nepal is an increasingly important component of climate change adaptation strategies, highlights new IWMI book, Tackling Change, on climate change adaptation and agricultural water management.

Knowing that landscapes are used by different people for different purposes is one step in deciding how to design more effective and equitable interventions. But paying attention to gender and social differences when designing landscape-scale approaches is not the same as achieving gender equity.

A recent UN Women paper examines gender equality in 49 African constitutions. Most contain statements relating to equality and non-discrimination, with many including specific reference to property rights.

As gender gains attention in the agricultural world, data and information show women as major players in food production. But, development practitioners and policy makers have been slow to recognize women’s vital and diverse role in food security.

For International Women’s Day, Andrew Noble, Interim Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems reflects on the importance of the inclusion of women in natural resource management and agriculture.

I understand the history that has led to this focus on gender as the central social theme in scientific programs, but if you look at it objectively, it is quite weird – we structure our programs around something that, while it is relevant to the science in some contexts, is central in very few.