This paper discusses the barriers to and enabling conditions for designing and implementing gender-responsive climate-smart agriculture (CSA) initiatives. Through examples, the paper identifies lessons and promising practices for addressing gender issues across the range of CSA interventions from farm level practices and systems approaches to the enabling environment. Through two deep dive case studies, the paper showcases the potential for CSA to contribute to gender-transformative results and offers recommendations for doing so.
- Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) could achieve its goals more effectively and efficiently if its design and implementation intentionally addressed gender and social inequalities.
- Despite institutional commitments to gender equality, few CSA interventions move beyond technical approaches to consider the gender and social norms that affect their success and who benefits from them.
- This working paper details promising practices for designing and implementing gender-responsive CSA interventions based on an extensive review of the literature, case study analysis, and interviews with 23 stakeholders.
- To be effective, CSA implementers should build institutional awareness and capacity, and assess and eliminate the biases that prevent them from effectively using gender-responsive approaches to CSA.
- Effective gender-responsive CSA design must start with a gender and social analysis of the context and participatory identification and engagement of stakeholders.