Gender-based inequalities constrain women’s ability to participate in efforts to enhance agricultural production and reduce poverty and food insecurity. To resolve this, development organizations have targeted women and more recently “mainstreamed” gender within their agricultural aid programs. Through an analysis of agricultural-related development aid, we examine whether funded agricultural projects have increasingly targeted women and/or gender. Our results show that the number of agricultural aid projects and the dollar amounts targeting women/gender increased between 1978 and 2003. However, the increase was modest and, as a percentage of all agricultural development aid, has declined since the late 1990s. Significantly, this decline occurs at a time when there are an increasing number of women engaged in agriculture. Our findings suggest that the rhetoric of gender mainstreaming outstrips efforts to develop projects aimed at women and gender inequality and that the concept may be being used to legitimize a decline in focusing explicitly on women.
Baden, S., and A.M. Goetz.1997. Who needs [sex] when you can have [gender]? Conflicting discourses on gender at Beijing. Feminist Review56 (Summer): 3-25.
2.
Bassett, Thomas.2010. Slim pickings: Fairtrade cotton in West Africa . Geoforum41:44-55.
3.
Bock, Bettina, and Sally Shortall.2006. Rural gender relations: Issues and case studies. Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing .
4.
Boserup, Ester.1970. Women’s role in economic development. London: George Allen & Unwin.
5.
Brown, L., H. Feldstein, L. Haddad, C. Peña, and A. Quisumbing.1995. Generating food security in the year 2020: Women as producers, gatekeepers, and shock absorbers. 2020 Vision. Brief 17. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) , Washington, DC.
6.
Bunch, S., and R. Mehra.2008. Women help solve hunger: Why is the world still waiting?International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Washington, DC.
7.
Buviníc, M.1998. Cases for women: Explaining their misbehavior. In International agricultural development, edited by C. Eicher and J. M. Staatz.Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
8.
Carr, Edward R.2008. Men’s crops and women’s crops: The importance of gender to the understanding of agricultural and development outcomes in Ghana’s Central Region. World Development36 (5): 900-915.
9.
Chambers, Kimberlee, and Janet H. Momsen .2007. From the kitchen and the field: Gender and maize diversity in the Bajio region of Mexico. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography28:39-56.
10.
Cornwall, Andrea.2003. Whose voices? Whose choices? Reflections on gender and participatory development. World Development31 (8): 1325-1342.
11.
Doss, Cheryl.2001. Designing agricultural technology for African women farmers: Lessons from 25 years of experience. World Development29 (12): 2075-2092.
12.
Eicher, C. K., and J. M. Staatz. (Eds.). 1998. International agricultural development. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
13.
Ellis, Frank.2000. Rural livelihoods and diversity in developing countries . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
14.
FAO.n.d. Women and food security. Food and Agricultural Organization. www.fao.org/focus/e/women/sustin-e.htm . (Date of retrieval May 2, 2010).
15.
FAO.2004. Gender dynamics and agrobiodiversity: Understanding gender specific vulnerability context . Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/007/y5633e/y5633e00.pdf (Date of retrieval September 20, 2010).
16.
FAO.2007. Gender equality: Ensuring rural women’s and men’s equal participation in development . Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/i0765e/i0765e10.pdf (Date of retrieval May 14, 2010).
17.
Hurni, H., and B. Osman-Elasha .2009. Context, conceptual framework and sustainability indicators. In Agriculture at a crossroads: Global report, edited by B. D. McIntyre , H. R. Herran, J. Wakhungu, and R. T. Watson.Washington, DC: International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development .
18.
IMF.2003. Appendix I. Specific financial instruments and transactions: Classifications. In External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/eds/Eng/Guide/index.htm (Date of retrieval October 24, 2010).
19.
Jaquette, Jane, and Kathleen Staudt .2006. Women, gender, and development . In Women and gender equity in development theory and practice: Institutions, resources, and mobilization, edited by J. S. Jaquette and G. Summerfield.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
20.
Kalipeni, Ezekiel, and Leo Zulu.2002. Top-down to bottom-up: The difficult case of the Blantyre City Fuelwood Project. Journal of Southern African Studies28 (1): 117-136.
21.
Kharas, Homi.2007. Trends and issues in development aid. Wolfensohn Center for Development Working Papers, Working Paper1, November 2007. Brookings Institution , Washington, DC.
22.
Lyon, Sarah, Josefina Aranda Bezaury, and Tad Mutersbaugh .2010. Gender equity in fair-trade-organic coffee producer organizations: Cases from Mesoamerica. Geoforum41:93-103.
23.
Mehra, R., and G.R. Gupta.2008. Gender mainstreaming: Making it happen. In Equality for women. Where do we stand on Millennium Development Goal 3?, edited by M. Buviníc, A. R. Morrison, A. W. Ofosu-Amaah , and M. Sjöblom.Washington, DC: The World Bank.
24.
Mehra, R., and M. Hill Rojas .2008. Women, food security and agriculture in a global marketplace. Washington. DC: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).
25.
Molyneux, Maxine.2007. The chimera of success: Gender ennui and the changed international policy environment. In Feminisms in development , edited by A. Cornwall, E. Harrison, and A. Whitehead.London: Zed Books.
26.
Momsen, Janet H.2004. Gender and development. London : Routledge.
27.
Moser, C., and A. Moser.2005. Gender mainstreaming since Beijing: A review of success and limitations in international institutions. In Mainstreaming gender in development, edited by F. Porter and C. Sweetman.Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
28.
Mukhopadhyay, Maitrayee.2007. Mainstreaming gender or "streaming" gender away: Feminists marooned in the development business. In Feminisms in development , edited by A. Cornwall, E. Harrison, and A. Whitehead.London: Zed Books.
29.
Murphy, J.L.1997. Gender mainstreaming in World Bank lending: An update . Washington, DC: World Bank.
30.
Nation, Marcia L.2010. Understanding women’s participation in irrigated agriculture: A case study from Senegal. Agriculture and Human Values27:163-176.
31.
Noonan, Rita K.2002. Gender and the politics of needs: Broadening the scope of welfare state provision in Costa Rica. Gender and Society16 (2): 216-239.
32.
Peet, R., and E. Hartwich1999. Theories of development. New York: The Guildford Press.
33.
Pongsapich, Amara.2006. Women’s movements in the globalizing world: The case of Thailand. In Women and gender equity in development theory and practice: Institutions, resources, and mobilization, edited by J. S. Jaquette and G. Summerfield.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
34.
Prügl, Elisabeth, and Audrey Lustgarten .2006. Mainstreaming gender in international organizations. In Women and gender equity in development theory and practice: Institutions, resources, and mobilization , edited by J. S. Jaquette and G. Summerfield.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
35.
Rathgeber, Eva. M.1995. Gender and development in action. In Feminism/ postmodernism/development, edited by M. H. Marchand and J. L. Parpart.London: Routledge.
36.
Razavi, Shahrashoub, and Carol Miller.1995. From WID to GAD: Conceptual shifts in the women and development discourse. Occasional Paper1, Geneva, Switzerland, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
37.
Rodda, Annabel.1991. Women and the environment. London: Zed Books.
Staudt, Kathleen.1997. Gender politics in bureaucracy: Theoretical issues in comparative perspective. In Women, international development, and politics: The bureaucratic mire, edited by K. Staudt.Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
40.
UN.1997. Gender mainstreaming . New York: United Nations. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/GMS.PDF (Date of retrieval September 20, 2010).
41.
Wangui, E.E.2008. Development interventions, changing livelihoods, and the making of female Maasai pastoralists. Agriculture and Human Values25:365-378.
42.
World Bank.2007. World development report 2008: Agriculture for development. Washington DC : World Bank.
43.
World Bank, FAO, and International Fund for Agricultural Development.2009. Gender in agriculture sourcebook. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
