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  • Publication | 2022
Fostering Gender-Transformative Change for Equality in Food Systems - A review of methods and strategies at multiple levels.

Development and research for development agencies and actors working in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, and natural resource management have been increasingly seeking to address gender inequalities in food systems. Rooted in a gender-accommodative approach, these tend to address the symptoms of inequality. There is growing acknowledgment, however, that lasting change requires engaging with deeper drivers of inequalities. Specifically, it requires addressing the underlying and often unrecognized structural roots of inequalities that are embedded in food systems and natural resource management. These are found within informal (e.g., norms), formal (e.g., regulations, laws, policies) and semiformal (e.g., statistics and data systems) structures. Gender-transformative methods and strategies are explicitly oriented to address these underlying structural causes. However, the methods and strategies that foster gendertransformative change are complex and nuanced and, as such, they may be misinterpreted or misapplied. Moreover, while transformative change at scale in food systems is urgently needed, practical application of gender-transformative methods and strategies has been most developed at the local level; this means there are considerable uncertainties about how to catalyze transformative change at scale. In response to these needs, this working paper aims to elucidate current and emerging methods and strategies that may support gender-transformative change in food systems at and across multiple levels. the working paper shares and examines an illustrative set of methods and strategies that contribute to gender-transformative change in food systems. The paper conceptualizes and reflects on this set of methods and strategies at three levels: local, meso and macro, and intraorganizational. Within this set and at each level, the paper critically considers these methods and strategies in relation to three key analytical dimensions: intersectionality, accessibility and scalability. In conclusion, the working paper suggests a novel way of understanding how to catalyze gender-transformative change at scale: the paper suggests the need for agencies to explicitly invest in a multilevel strategy of scaling out, up and, through such an interconnected, multi-actor and multilevel approach.