Rome, 9 December 2024 – Opportunities exist for IFAD to promote gender-transformative processes at community, project and policy level. Seizing these opportunities calls for the Fund to spell out for its interventions how gender intersects with multiple drivers of poverty and how gender inequality is exacerbated in fragile contexts. It also warrants contributing to catalysing changes owned by national partners and local stakeholders that address the root causes of gender inequality in rural areas. These are among the findings of the Thematic Evaluation on IFAD’s support to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE), which Dr Mònica Lomeña-Gelis, Senior Evaluation Officer, presented during a learning event organized by the Independent Office of Evaluation (IOE).

The opportunities for further improvement stem from the conclusions of the GEWE evaluation, which found that IFAD’s corporate documents are aligned with global gender strategies and with those of other comparators but should be reinforced to fully cover several key areas of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 targets on gender equality, including the adoption of legal frameworks for the promotion of gender equality and undertaking reforms to ensure equitable access to ownership and control over land for rural men and women.

“Gender mainstreaming as the strategy for achieving GEWE and the move to programming to tackle the roots causes of gender inequality are highly relevant to IFAD’s mandate and are aligned with international efforts”, noted Dr Lomeña-Gelis.

The purpose of IOE’s learning event was to promote ownership and use of the new GEWE evaluation. The event was held in a hybrid manner with the possibility of in-person participation of staff in headquarters and online participation by field staff. Over one hundred participants attended the event, including representatives of IFAD’s senior Management such as Guoqi Wu, Associate Vice-President, Corporate Service Department, and Juan Carlos Mendoza Casadiegos, Director, Environment, Climate, Gender and Social Inclusion.

“This type of event allows for constructive self-reflection on what has worked and what needs to be improved. This evaluation comes at a time when significant amount of work is needed to meet our aspirational goals in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Management agrees with the evaluation finding that GEWE is necessary for rural transformation”, said Bettina Prato, Lead Policy and Technical Advisor to the Associate Vice President, speaking on behalf of Dr Donal Brown, Associate Vice-President, Department of Country Operations.

The workshop facilitated a better understanding across IFAD of the key evaluation findings and recommendations, and promoted the organization-wide discussion around how the evaluation informs the update of the gender policy and action plan and guides future interventions to enhance the impact of IFAD’s work on gender equality.

Following a brief introduction of the event by the IOE Director, Dr Indran A. Naidoo, the event was divided in two sessions. The first one was focused on the key findings and recommendations of the thematic evaluation and the management actions in response to the evaluation. The second one was organized around a panel discussion aimed at guiding future interventions to accelerate IFAD’s work on GEWE, followed by questions and answers. Panel members featured Sara Mbago-Bhunu, Regional Director, East and Southern Africa; Kaushik Barua, Regional Lead Portfolio Advisor; Maine Astonitas, Senior Portfolio Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean; Beatrice Gerli, Senior Technical Specialist, coordinator of the Gender-transformative mechanism in the context of climate adaptation; Philippe Remi, country director Tunisia, Libya, and Montenegro; and Pascaline Barankeba, Country Director Sierra Leone-Liberia.

Specific topics addressed by the panel members included improving GEWE design, implementation and reporting; building strategic partnerships to scale up impact and leverage capacities to work on gender; and what a gender transformative process looks like in the framework of IFAD programming.

“As Management, we firmly believe that gender transformation is core for everything we do here at IFAD, including enhancing food security and nutrition outcomes and also building resilience to climate change”, affirmed Guoqi Wu.

Discussants noted that gender transformative approaches need to be tailored to the context, and gender equality needs to be understood as central component of IFAD interventions. It was acknowledged that additional efforts are needed to reinforce capacity building of all implementing parties to measure GEWE-related outcomes, beyond the outreach and number of men and women participants. The role of key partners, including national governments and other international actors, was highlighted to strengthen the contribution of IFAD to gender equality in rural contexts.

“It is important to provide actionable tools to IFAD staff and project management units to implement transformative activities and to demystify the conception that making gender transformative activities generates undue complexity. We feel that we can and must provide the appropriate tools”, noted Carlos Mendoza Casadiegos.

The evaluation put forward several recommendations to enhance IFAD’s contribution to GEWE, ensuring that its interventions are well-supported, effectively implemented and capable of catalysing transformative changes and sustainable impacts in rural development. In particular, the evaluation suggests focusing the update of the gender policy and the gender action plan on strengthening IFAD’s position to promote GEWE in agricultural and rural development; strengthening the effectiveness of IFAD’s interventions on GEWE through consolidated guidance, promoting its shared understanding and buy-in among relevant stakeholders; ensuring that the Fund has human resources with the capacities and competencies commensurate with the ambition of IFAD’s GEWE priorities; and establishing high-level metrics to track and report progress towards IFAD’s GEWE goals to ensure accountability and promote learning.

For further information, please contact Dr Alexander Voccia, Senior Evaluation Communication & KM Specialist [here].

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