Beyond Yields: How the GALS Approach Empowers Women in Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate variability and soil degradation continue to threaten smallholder farming communities across Africa. While sustainable practices like Conservation Agriculture and modern irrigation can dramatically boost productivity, their adoption is often stalled by deep-seated socio-cultural barriers. In many rural communities, rigid gender roles restrict women and youth from owning land, accessing resources, or making key agricultural decisions, leaving these vulnerable groups excluded from the benefits of climate-smart innovations.

To break down these systemic barriers, CGIAR researchers implemented the Gender Action Learning System (GALS)—a transformative, community-led empowerment methodology. Structured around principles of inclusion, GALS provides a practical framework to address power dynamics, resource distribution, and decision-making power at both the household and community levels. By establishing a three-phased participatory research pathway that includes co-designed needs assessments, core empowerment exercises, and participatory monitoring, GALS creates safe spaces for families and local leaders to re-evaluate traditional divisions of labor and asset control.

In Malawi, GALS was tailored specifically to support the uptake of Conservation Agriculture and irrigation technology. A key driver of success was the engagement of men and traditional leaders, who hold significant authority over community resource distribution. Through a cascading training model, 40 GALS Champions—comprising lead farmers, traditional leaders, and extension agents—guided the scaling of sustainable farming practices and equitable decision-making across 4,095 households, significantly boosting food security and shared agency.

The success in Malawi led to the creation of the Gender Action Learning System for Transformative Research (GALS-4-TR) framework, which embeds social inclusion directly into agricultural innovation processes. Today, government departments and NGO partners like Total LandCare are incorporating GALS into official agricultural extension guidelines. As the methodology expands across Zambia, Zimbabwe, and even into aquaculture value chains in Malaysia, GALS is proving that addressing household power dynamics is essential for building resilient, equitable, and sustainable food systems.

Read the full Enabling Environment Success Story here.

Compiled by the CGIAR Scaling for Impact (S4I) program, the “Enabling Environment Success and Failure Stories” is a collection of accounts that chronicles both the successful and unsuccessful efforts in creating a supportive environment for scaling agrifood system innovations. Through compelling narratives that highlight specific challenges, key players, and outcomes, this series is designed to demonstrate how CGIAR actively influences and strengthens these environments to achieve a wider, more impactful reach.