funder_partner: KIT Royal Tropical Institute

A group of farmers involved in participatory rice breeding trials near Begnas Lake, Pokhara, Nepal. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT/CCAFS)

From diagnosis to action on social equity

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on November 29, 2021. Posted in Blogs.

As CGIAR develops 33 exciting new research Initiatives, it is essential for its new research portfolio to move beyond “diagnosing gender issues” and to supporting real change for greater social equity. Gender-transformative research and methodologies are needed, co-developed between scientists and a wide range of partners.

To advance this vision, gender scientists from ten CGIAR centers and key partner institutions came together from October 25 to 27, 2021, in a hybrid workshop. Some participants were in Amsterdam, hosted by KIT, and others joined online from Canada, the Philippines and everywhere in between.

The workshop emerged from gender scientists’ desire to create a supportive innovation space for CGIAR researchers to integrate gender-transformative research and methodologies into the new CGIAR Initiatives.

The organizing team calls this effort GENNOVATE 2, as it builds on GENNOVATE, the trailblazing gender research project which ran across the CGIAR between 2014 and 2018.

GENNOVATE 2 promises to help CGIAR Initiatives achieve progress in the Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion Impact Area. It will also advance change towards Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 10 on gender and other forms of inequality.

In the workshop, participants sought to:

Share and develop ideas, methods and approaches to operationalize gender-transformative research and methodologies. Working groups focused on an initial selection of CGIAR Initiatives, representing all the Action Areas of CGIAR:
- ClimBeR: Building Systemic Resilience against Climate Variability and Extremes; (Systems Transformation)
- Securing the Asian Mega-Deltas from Sea-level Rise, Flooding, Salinization and Water Insecurity (Resilient Agrifood Systems)
- Sustainable Intensification of Mixed Farming Systems (Resilient Agrifood Systems)
- Market Intelligence and Product Profiling (Genetic Innovation)
Build on the significant investments, methods, data, and results from the original GENNOVATE.
Conceive a community of practice for continued sharing, learning and collaboration, across and within Initiatives, to accelerate progress on gender and social equity.

Participants at the GENNOVATE 2 workshop in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in October 2021.

Joining a vibrant community

GENNOVATE 2 is envisioned to complement the CGIAR GENDER Platform and the proposed new CGIAR gender-focused research Initiative, HER+.

“We have several gender methodology assets in CGIAR, and GENNOVATE is one of them,” said Nicoline de Haan, Director of the CGIAR GENDER Platform, opening the workshop. “We want to make sure we cultivate and grow the efforts started during GENNOVATE and move forward important lessons and practices in the new CGIAR portfolio.”

The team of scientists behind GENNOVATE 2 wants to support a vibrant community of researchers who “work out loud.” They will document and share their research methodologies, experiences and insights, in order to accelerate learning on gender issues and scale out successes more quickly.

The ultimate objectives of GENNOVATE 2 are to:

Develop and deepen a set of methodologies expected to directly empower women, youth, and marginalized groups in the targeted agri-food systems
Contribute to normative change towards increased gender equality across different scales, ranging from households to countries.
Generate and build an evidence base on the relationship between empowering women, youth and marginalized people, and moving towards climate-resilient and sustainable agri-food systems — and vice versa.

“An example of the added value GENNOVATE 2 can bring to CGIAR Initiatives is understanding what maintains prevailing gender norms in research sites, and also at relevant institutional and political levels,” said Anne Rietveld, gender scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and co-organizer of the workshop. “This will enable CGIAR scientists, partners and policymakers to design locally relevant gender-transformative approaches and policies for more impact. We can do this by building on our GENNOVATE 1 evidence base, adapting methods from GENNOVATE 1 and co-developing new methods in GENNOVATE 2.”

What’s next?

The workshop showed that many scientists from CGIAR and partner institutes are motivated to invest in the vision of GENNOVATE 2. Achieving impact in the Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion Impact Area will require concerted efforts and inputs from scientists on the ground.

“There is a groundswell of experience and enthusiasm that you, we, this group brings. We need answers and we can and should work together to make this a reality,” remarked Jon Hellin, Platform Leader – Sustainable Impact in Rice-based Systems at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and co-lead of the ClimBeR Initiative.

The organizing team listed concrete actions to follow the workshop:

Developing processes and spaces for discussing methodological advancements among the gender scientists in these four Initiatives which other Initiatives can tap into, contribute to and become part of.
To develop these shared and integrated methodologies and approaches into a GENNOVATE 2 conceptual and methodological roadmap — to contribute to the CGIAR Gender, Youth, and Social Inclusion Impact Area and guide other Initiatives, as well as bilateral research
To develop a position paper articulating what can be achieved through concerted efforts to integrate gender and social equity more effectively into the Initiatives, to showcase gender-transformative research methods for further development and implementation. The aim of the position paper is to influence global science leaders and CGIAR leadership in how they include issues of social equity in the Initiatives.
To support these conversations, learnings and harmonization processes through setting up a community of practice, where the “practice” to be improved is the practice of advancing gender research methodologies to go from diagnosis to action. This will start with a core group of enthusiastic researchers and then will expand as it gains momentum, so that all researchers in the various Initiatives interested in social equity can contribute
To seek funding opportunities to support the activities outlined above.

The GENNOVATE 2 organizing team welcomes the participation of interested CGIAR Initiatives as they move forward. The organizing team will also help strengthen interactions with external resource people and research networks, in to cross-pollinate new knowledge and innovations.

If you would like to know more about GENNOVATE 2, please contact Anne Rietveld, Gender Scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and Hom Gartaula, Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

The GENNOVATE 2 workshop was supported with funds from the CGIAR Research Programs on Roots Tubers and Bananas, Maize, and Wheat.

Workshop organizers Anne Rietveld (Alliance), Cathy Rozel Farnworth (Pandia Consulting, an independent gender researcher), Diana Lopez (WUR) and Hom Gartaula (CIMMYT) guided participants. Arwen Bailey (Alliance) served as facilitator.

Participants were: Renee Bullock (ILRI); Afrina Choudhury (WorldFish); Marlene Elias (Alliance); Gundula Fischer (IITA); Eleanor Fisher (The Nordic Africa Institute/ClimBeR); Alessandra Galie (ILRI); Elisabeth Garner (Cornell University/Market Intelligence); Nadia Guettou (Alliance); Jon Hellin (IRRI); Deepa Joshi (IWMI); Berber Kramer (IFPRI); Els Lecoutere (CGIAR GENDER Platform); Angela Meentzen (CIMMYT); Gaudiose Mujawamariya (AfricaRice); Surendran Rajaratnam (WorldFish); Bela Teeken (IITA), among others.

External experts who provided methodological inputs were: Nick Vandenbroucke of Trias talking about institutional change; Shreya Agarwal of Digital Green talking about transformative data; Katja Koegler of Oxfam Novib talking about Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) for community-led empowerment; and Phil Otieno of Advocates for Social Change (ADSOCK) talking about masculinities and working with men.

Researchers urged to use common gender keywords to improve data impact

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on June 17, 2020. Posted in Features.

A common approach toward data structuring is needed to improve access to gender research across agriculture data repositories, a recent report by the CGIAR Platform on Big Data in Agriculture suggests.

Simply adding the keyword ‘gender’ in database descriptions will improve the findability of gender agricultural research, which currently is hard to find due to the inconsistent use of keywords and tagging, said the report’s author Marcelo Tyszler, a (gender) data expert with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands.

“The data is there. We just can’t find it all! A lack of consistent keywords when tagging research is leading to holes in searches for gender research across CGIAR, the world’s largest network of agricultural researchers,” he says.

“A more systematic and sharper use of keywords when describing datasets will improve findability in searches,” Tyszler states.

As part of the Findability of Gender Datasets report, researchers used a range of keywords, including ‘gender’, ‘women’ and ‘female,’ to search repositories for gender-based data across CGIAR agricultural research centers and compared the search results with a reference list of gender datasets provided by scientists. The results showed that a number of the datasets in the reference list were not found using these search terms.

The results uncovered important inconsistencies in the description of gender research, especially in terms of how data is structured and the detail of documentation provided in CGIAR repositories, says co-author Ewen Le Borgne, a KIT gender researcher.

“Poor data management limits the impact of research to be found, read and incorporated into new research projects,” Le Borgne says, invoking the age old saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Ibu Rosalina arranging a Kacang Panjang bush. (Credit: Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR)

The researchers used the findings to promote a standardized approach to tagging and describing their research.

“To improve findability and the impact of data, the gender community should develop a list of commonly agreed keywords that can be used to consistently describe gender research data sets,” Le Borgne explains.

Any dataset containing ‘sex-disaggregated’ data should indicate so in the keywords, said Tyszler. This is also important for non-gender researchers, to broaden the scope of their impact.

“By facilitating the tagging, findability and accessibility of quantitative and qualitative gender data we hope to facilitate mixed methods research by providing opportunities for both qualitative and quantitative researchers to exchange insights and create a stronger dialogue,” he explains.

Moreover, across the CGIAR there is a wealth of gender specific qualitative data collected through focus groups, interviews and other participatory research. As CGIAR continues to advance gender research efforts, big data is unearthing exciting opportunities for understanding and acting on the relationships among gender, agriculture, and rapidly digitizing economies and societies. However, varied approaches to data management is restricting access, thus limiting the impact data can have when other researchers aim to reuse results to gain deeper insights.

Moving beyond the ‘gender’ tag

Lubuk Beringin villagers cut off palm nut fruits at Lubuk Beringin village, Bungo district, Jambi province, Indonesia. (Credit: Tri Saputro/CIFOR)

Not surprisingly, ‘gender’ was the most common keyword used to describe data found in the study. Although it is essential for researchers to add the ‘gender’ keyword to research descriptions they must also go further in describing what the dataset represents, the researchers indicated.

“‘Gender’ is not precise enough a keyword to find all relevant gender-focused datasets. However, our search shows very few details as to what, about gender, is studied in each project,” says Tyszler.

Studies in other fields, for example nutrition, seem to have much more granularity in the description, with keywords including, nutrient intake, nutrition policy, micronutrient deficiencies, etc. We need a movement like this in gender research, he explained.

Better keywords should be a minimum, but it is also possible to consider the identification of a set of smart ‘gender metadata fields’. These would be input elements that need to be filled in that could ensure all CGIAR datasets properly assess gender dimensions, which would boost the visibility of gender research.

Working as part of the CGIAR Socio-Economic Data Community of Practice, the gender researchers support the exchange of gender-focused data collection tools, with standardized focus groups and interview questions, to improve the potential for comparing different datasets.

Since 2018, the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture and CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research have been collaborating out of mutual interest, to identify ways to unlock the big data potential of gender research.

Together they aim to take a much more active role in shaping up how gender data can be better analysed and reveal new insights, said Gideon Kruseman, the lead of the CGIAR Socio-Economic Data Community of Practice.

“We are promoting a standardized approach by bringing together gender data experts with other socio-economic and even biophysical scientists that may not know how to best engage with gender research and data,” Kruseman explains.

Access the full Findability of Gender Datasets report, which was funded through a 2018 grant to KIT Royal Tropical Institute, by the Community of Practice on Socio-Economic Data with co-funding by the CGIAR Gender Platform.

Cover photo: A woman helps to install a drip irrigation pipe on a farm in Gujarat, India. (Credit: Hamish John Appleby, IWMI)