• The Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition Guidelines (2023)

The European Union (EU), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) launched the Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition (JP GTA) in 2019.

Funded by the EU, the JP GTA has developed a theory of change common to the three United Nations Rome-based Agencies for conceptualising and carrying out gender equality work with a transformational and sustainable impact. The main outputs include:

1. A Compendium  compiling 15 good practices on gender transformative approaches (2020);

2. A Guide on formulating indicators to measure changes in gendered social norms in the context of food security and nutrition (2021);

3. The Guidelines for measuring gender transformative change in the context of food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture (2023).

The JP GTA was inspired by, and contributes to, the implementation of the EU Gender Equality Strategy and gender action plans, in particular the Gender Action Plan (GAP) III

• The Gender transformative framework for Nutrition

The Gender transformative framework for Nutrition (GTFN) is a Canadian-led, evidence-based conceptual model that expands the potential of nutrition programs to tackle gender inequalities. The Framework leverages existing literature and theoretical frameworks by applying systems thinking to critically examine the multi-sectoral drivers of malnutrition, while placing empowerment and gender equality at its centre.

• IFPRI Women’s Empowerment Indicators

The International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) and academic, civil society partners and isntutional partners have developed a series of indicators designed to measure women empowerment:

The Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Governance (WEAGov) is an assessment tool developed by IFPRI and partners to help evaluate the extent to which women are empowered across the policy cycle related to agrifood systems. WEAGov provides a way for national policymakers, civil society organisations, and researchers to identify gaps and opportunities to raise women’s voice and agency at different stages of the national policy cycle and provides a basis for monitoring progress in women’s empowerment in agrifood systems governance and related indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The launched in 2012 by IFPRI, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and USAID’s Feed the Future. Since the original WEAI release, multiple versions of the WEAI have been developed. The Abbreviated WEAI (A-WEAI) is a shorter version of the original that can be used in population-based surveys to measure women’s empowerment. The Project WEAI (Pro-WEAI) instrument, under development, seeks to measure women’s empowerment within project-specific contexts, and includes optional modules tailored to livestock and/or nutrition and health programs. The pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI), still under development, is intended to measure empowerment across agricultural value chains. WEAI-related materials – research instruments, protocols, publications, are available on the WEAI Resource Center website.

The Women's empowerment in fisheries and aquaculture index (WEFI) measures the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in fisheries and aquaculture contexts in an effort to identify ways to overcome those obstacles and constraints. WorldFish, KIT Royal Tropical Institute and index experts collaboratively developed it. The WEFI draws largely on the WEAI but is tailored to aquaculture and fisheries contexts in addition to capturing information on agriculture.

The Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) is a nutrition-centred metric of empowerment that can be used to measure, track and identify barriers to nutritional empowerment

• N4D Nutrition Quick Tips Series

The Nutrition, Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Brief (2022) includes practical suggestions on how nutrition can be mainstreamed as part of gender-transformative approaches, as well as strategies that aim to empower women increase gender equality and improve the nutritional status of both women and children, addressing multidimensional drivers of malnutrition across a range of sectors. The Equality, equity and nutrition Brief (2022) provides strategies for effectively reducing inequalities related to nutrition.

The Quick Tips Series provides practical advice and guidance for staff in the European Commission and European Union (EU) delegations on how programming and support across multiple sectors can contribute to improved food security and nutrition outcomes.

• INTPA Guidelines

INTPA has developed a series of guidelines to accompany the EU Gender Action Plan II (2016-2020). Each guideline has a section and appendixes that provides guidance and guidelines on specific topics.  Because Women matter (2017) guides the reader through the steps required to integrate gender dimensions in an investment and the process of a gender analysis, and provides insights for gender sensitive and transformative projects implementation.  Women’s Land rights matter (2018) complements the previous note, deepening the analysis on the importance of promoting women’s land rights as a precondition to empower women and reduce poverty. Closing the gender gap through agrifood value chain development (2021) provides an overview on how to incorporate a gender-responsive approach in the design, implementation and monitoring of value chain development projects

• Intersectionality resource guide and toolkit: An intersectional approach to leave no one behind (2021).

This Resource Guide and Toolkit offers a starting point for those wishing to deepen their understanding and apply an intersectional approach to their work. It aims to provide conceptual clarity, a practical framework and tools for reducing compounded and intersecting inequalities faced by people experiencing diverse and compounded forms of discrimination.

• From Reach to Transformation: Leveraging the RBET Framework to Secure Women’s Land and Resource Rights

The Reach, Benefit, Empower framework has been invaluable in guiding gender considerations in programming, ensuring that projects carefully consider their goals, and then move from ambition to implementation to evaluation. The framework makes it easier to see how projects claiming to “empower” women may only manage to “reach” them, such as through training, without actually verifying if the activities benefit or empower them. The addition of “Transform” to this framework (RBET for short) emphasizes the need for deeper structural or normative changes to create more equitable systems. In this brief the authors explore how to get the most out of the RBET framing in relation to securing women’s land and other resource rights.

• Capacity4Dev Gender topic

Capacity4dev is the knowledge sharing platform created by the European Commission's Directorate General for International Partnerships (INTPA) to connect development professionals around the world so they can collaborate and share knowledge and lessons learnt about their work. The Gender topic gathers resources on Gender and women empowerment.

It is not specific of food systems.

• The Gender Network

The Gender Network, with more than 2,000 members, has the goal of increasing IFAD’s impact on gender equality and strengthening women’s empowerment in poor rural areas. Members of the network include: IFAD staff, project staff at country level, external partners (such as gender experts), and other resource people from international organisations, academia and research centres, policymakers, donors and other actors.

• UN Women Community of Practice- Training for Gender Equality

This online community and platform aims to support the informed discussion and reflection on the current trends of training and capacity development for gender equality, the collection and dissemination of good practices and the identification of institutions, opportunities and resources for training for gender equality at the global level.

It is not specific of food systems.

• CGIAR CoP on Gender Transformative research Methodologies

The ‘Community of Practice on Gender Transformative Research Methodologies (GTRM-CoP)’ is hosted under the CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform’s Methods Module. It provides an opportunity for researchers to collaborate on examining, challenging and transforming the underlying causes of gender inequalities through developing and refining gender-transformative research methodologies. Learn more, visit the CoP’s SharePoint site (CGIAR.org account holders only).

It is not specific of food systems.

• CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform Training courses

The CGIAR Gender Platform gathers training courses for researchers, students, development practitioners and others looking to boost their knowledge and skills on gender in food systems are highlighted below. It provides a selection of courses offered by highly reputable international institutions, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Bank.

• Financial flows

The  OECD/DAC gender equality policy marker is based on a three-point scoring system, to qualitatively track the financial flows that gender equality. This allows the OECD to identify gaps between DAC donors’ policy commitments and financial commitments. At present, 92% of total bilateral “sector-allocable” aid is screened against the gender equality marker.

• Gender and sex-disaggregated statistics

The collection and use of high-quality data, disaggregated by sex, age and other forms of social and economic differentiation, and the implementation of rigorous qualitative and quantitative gender research are paramount for monitoring, evaluating and accelerating progress on gender equality in agrifood systems. Despite improvements in the past ten years, significant gaps remain in the availability, scope and granularity of data, and in the evidence on what works and under what conditions for building more inclusive agrifood systems. In particular, sex disaggregated data are still scarcely collected in nationally representative surveys available and statistics often rely on female versus male household heads.

The Food systems dashboard contains provides the UNDP Gender Equality Index, and nutrition and dietary indicator  for women namely underweight from NSCD-Risc, anaemia from WHO and Minimum dietary diversity for Women (MDD-W) from the Global Diet Quality Project and the Share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) collects and incorporates sex-disaggregated data in all its major statistical databases and related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) platforms. However due to the lack of sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics, it is not possible to have a full understanding of rural women’s and men’s roles, status and contributions in agriculture.

The Global Nutrition Report country profiles provide sex-disaggregated on nutrition indicators and dietary practices.

• Country Gender profiles

The FAO provides an update on the situation of women and men in agriculture and the rural sector by country. Based on available data disaggregated by sex and age, each report describes the situation of women and men, as well as their specific roles and opportunities in agriculture and rural economies while the Food Systems Assessments identify key sustainability questions that will help define innovative policy and investments solutions in view of transforming food systems to make them more sustainable and inclusive.

• FAO, 2023. The status of women in agrifood systems

The FAO, 2023. The status of women in agrifood systems provides the most complete compilation of Gender and sex-disaggregated statistics in agrifood systems.

• INTPA Gender Equality page
• European Institute for Gender Equality
• CGIAR Impact Platform,
• FAO Gender page
• IFAD Gender page
• WFP gender equality page
• OECD Gender and Development
• OECD Gender Equality
• AFD Gender equality page
• the BMZ Gender Equality page and GIZ gender page page

This list is not intended to be an exhaustive or definitive collection of websites. Rather, it is a starting point for exploration and discovery. We will continue to add new links and resources as we become aware of them, and we appreciate your suggestions and contributions to this effort.