Gender transformative approaches (GTA) have emerged in the last 15 years to challenge different ways of ‘doing development’. They focus on transforming the power relations and structures that reinforce gender inequity to achieve both gender equality and development outcomes. They differ from approaches to women empowerment in that they work with both women and men to transform social relations of gender to become more equitable. In spite of the growing interest in GTA, there remains little documentation of what they look like in practice and evidence of the long term change they contribute towards to.
This short brief gives an overview of one example of gender transformative program called the Gender Model Family (GMF) approach where are currently efforts to document the different ways it has been used and provide evidence of its broader impact. GFM was originally conceptualized by SEND Ghana in 2001 to implement a livelihood and food security project promoting soya bean production to address malnutrition.