Tool kit for Gender and Agriculture - Economic Commission for Africa

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Improving Agriculture through Gender Analysis
Include gender issues in TORs of supervision missions.
Assess progress on gender-related actions during mid-term reviews.
Include gender-differentiated results in the lessons learned in implementation
completion reports.
• Prevent fade out:
Emphasize gender issues in TORs of supervision, completion, and evaluation
missions.
Include a gender specialist on missions, particularly if (a) information on
gender roles is lacking, (b) the project design contains many problems related
to gender roles, or (c) a special impact on women is required. The interest
and ability of the person to work on gender issues is important,
whereas their sex is not. A woman on the team cannot automatically be expected
to take responsibility for gender: she may be untrained, uninterested,
or unwilling.
• Build flexibility into projects, particularly when not enough is known at preparation,
so project actions can be modified during the project cycle to take advantage
of new information or opportunities.
• Include safeguards⎯such as timed implementation targets or mandatory reporting⎯to
ensure that attention to gender issues continues during the remainder of
the project cycle.
b. Modifications During the Project Cycle
Acknowledging gender issues is relatively new in the design of Bank projects, so it
will often be necessary to modify or adapt existing projects or components. Projects
need the flexibility to make mid-course corrections in response to changes in agricultural
production patterns, deficiencies in the original design, and a better understanding
of gender issues than was available at preparation. Flexibility also enables projects to
test promising approaches and expand successful strategies.
Many actions to modify ongoing projects are included among the examples by
subsector in Chapter III. These actions more often represent a change in emphasis
rather than addition of major new activities. Where it is difficult to identify genderrelated
actions during project preparation because of inadequate information, the project
can include an unallocated fund earmarked for such initiatives. Such a fund will
enable borrowers to identify activities and request funds at any time during the project
cycle. The fund should constitute resources over and above the components identified
with detailed costing. Such an unallocated fund can give a project flexibility, enhance
institution building, and ensure that gender issues remain visible.
3. Monitoring and Evaluation
Gender-disaggregated evaluation is important when addressing gender in monitoring
and evaluation of agriculture projects, for which several selection criteria for genderrelated
indicators exist.