Gender Equality and Inclusion
Overview
We will lead strategic, innovative research to advance gender equality, youth opportunities, and social inclusion within CGIAR’s Food, Land, and Water Systems Portfolio, aligning efforts to move CGIAR and our partners toward achieving gender equality and social inclusion.
The Accelerator plays a vital role in building an enabling external environment for gender equality and social inclusion research within food, land, and water systems. Our efforts will accelerate the growth and impact of gender equality and social inclusion, and will continue influencing the global discussion on gender equality and youth engagement.
Our goal
Our work aims to help
Technical Report
Where we work
Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Small Island Nations in the Pacific
Challenges
Challenges we’ll address
- Systemic, complex and deeply entrenched social inequalities and gender disparities in food, land, and water systems
- $10 trillion lost per year because of lack of investments on basic skills for women and in gender equality
- Widening income gap between men and women exarcerbated by the climate crisis, as households run by women lose US$53 billion per year more than men
- A pressing need for multi-actor, multi-sectoral, and evolutionary solutions to promote human right to gender equality and social inclusion
Areas of work
Accelerating Solutions for Impact
Core question: Which integrated solutions, under what conditions, can effectively foster equitable, inclusive, and resilient FLWS?
Purpose: Identify, test, and scale solutions that advance gender equality, women's empowerment and resilience, social inclusion of marginalized groups, and equitable, inclusive, and resilient FLWS.
Accelerating Change Through Evidence
AoW2 helps CGIAR learn systematically from research and implementation experience — and translate that learning into better methods, decisions, and institutional practice. Without Learning Systems effective approaches remain isolated pilots, evidence remain fragmented, successful approaches are difficult to scale. Therefore AoW will address this through Generating learning, Synthesizing learning and Embedding learning.
Youth Thrive
Youth Inclusion Goal —Sustained Youth Agency:Diverse young women and men in LMICs co-develop and access decent, fulfilling jobs in FLWS that provide food-secure and prosperous livelihoods —realizing their potential as producers, consumers and citizens. Nearly ½ of employed youthwork in agrifood systems —yet structural barriers persist.
Research questions:
- Evidence gaps and solutions. Building the knowledge base for youth-responsive FLWS.
- Policies, programs & decent jobs. Enabling environments for youth to thrive through inclusive policy and program design.
- Financial access & business growth. Youth-responsive financial products and investments that unlock enterprise potential.
Our approach
Interlinked support across CGIAR’s portfolio
We will work closely with the Breeding for Tomorrow, Climate Action, Diets and Nutrition, Food Frontiers and Security, Multifunctional Landscapes, Policy Innovations, Scaling for Impact, and Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods programs.
Working to share our capacity with
- Gender researchers
- CGIAR senior leaders
- Biophysical and social science collaborators
Our expertise
- Significant experience on gender and inclusion research on food-land-water systems, across 14 research Centers worldwide
- 100+ scientists whose research focuses on the nexus of gender equality and social inclusion and food-land-water systems — a specialization that remains scarce in the FLWS ecosystem
- Our role as convenor of the largest global gender network in food-land-water systems researchers
- Our global network and deep relationships with partners and stakeholders across the world.
Events
News
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Women as shock absorbers: Gendered costs of the global fuel and fertilizer crisis
A recent interview with a woman farmer in Kenya revealed the multiple challenges of higher fuel and fertilizer prices stemming from the closure of...
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Doubling the impact: Bundling technical and social innovations
Communities in Kenya and Ethiopia are more resilient to climate shocks with improved food security when bundling technical and social innovations.
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What will it take to make food systems work for women?
Thirty years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action — what many hailed as a landmark global framework for gender...
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From vision to impact: What closing the gender gap in STEM really means for Africa
Every year, we reaffirm our commitment to women and girls in science. We host panels, share statistics, and celebrate role models. These efforts...