Livestock and Fish initiative guides and enables gender mainstreaming

Women in Ethiopia breed sheep for a living

Recognizing that gender-informed priority setting and delivery can contribute to inclusion and equity among the women, men and young people involved in livestock-related livelihoods, the Livestock and Fish CRP is integrating gender analysis into the development of livestock-related technologies.

Guided by the program’s gender strategy, it is studying and addressing critical gender-based constraints and opportunities related to livestock and animal-source food consumption, it promotes gender-transformative approaches, and it enhances the capacity for gender research of its staff and partners.

This gender mainstreaming means making gender equity concerns an integral part of the program’s research.

To bring these efforts to life, a ‘gender initiative’ was established in 2014. Delivered through an agreement with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and comprising a group of core gender specialists across the program, the initiative coordinates and oversees the program’s strategic and integrated gender research. Funds were made available to technical projects keen to mainstream and improve work on gender in their activities.

Gender integration coaching

During 2015, extra attention was given to coaching selected projects across the flagships and value chains to build capacity for gender integration and provide technical support. The aim was to strengthen the integration of gender into technical scientists’ work, starting where the research team is at and exploring ways to improve their work. Here, coaching is a tailored and specific modality of capacity development that builds on the strengths of the individual and supports where there are weaker areas or blind spots.

In 2015, 15 technical projects were coached by KIT and the gender initiative, normally following these steps:

Step 1: Making a tailor-made coaching action plan. The Gender Initiative has a skype meeting with the research proposal holder(s) to tailor a coaching pathway and action plan to support realization of a specific research proposal (or option).

Step 2: Coaching-at-a-distance. Through skype, email and phone calls, research teams call on advice, guidance and expertise and obtain feedback on their work.

Step 3: Coaching on-site. In some cases, face-to-face support may be organized to support specific activities, such as training of enumerators or organizing a stakeholder workshop.

Step 4: Assessment. At the end of the period, the coaching was assessed.

Experiences of the coached projects are captured in a number of ways: