International Women's Day

Why is Gender Equality critical in your area of work?

To mark International Women’s Day 2020, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets, and HarvestPlus posed this question to their research communities. Read what they have to say.

Jody Harris

Gender equality is critical in achieving healthy and equitable food systems because powerful women balance societies and can negotiate what’s best for themselves and their communities.

World Vegetable Center and Institute for Development Studies

Emily Meyers

Gender equality is critical to strengthening agricultural value chains because women are expanding their participation in value chains. Removing gendered barriers will allow women to participate on par with men, and economic and social value chain upgrading will follow!

Sunny Kim

Gender equality is critical for good nutrition because men and women must sustain it, so that both may thrive from it!

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Ruerd Ruben

Gender equality is critical for reaching impact at scale. because it guarantees involvement of key persons in all decision making on labour use, income generation, diets and nutrition, child education and health care.

Wageningen University and Research

Purnima Menon

Gender equality is critical in improving malnutrition in South Asia because the ways in which girls and women are invested in throughout the life course affects their nutritional status and that of their children.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Tuyen Huynh

Gender equality is critical in agriculture and nutrition because women are often responsible for so many things not only at work but home, including the nutritional status and caregiving of children. We need them to realize their potential so we can achieve our global goals!

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Alan de Brauw

Gender equality is essential in the economics profession because it broadens the perspectives and research questions that its tools are used to answer.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Namukolo Covic

Gender equality is critical in improving food, water, land, and agriculture systems. Without it, women in some settings are disadvantaged and vulnerable to shocks and disruptions in life that men do not face.

CGIAR Research Program for Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Katrina Kosec

Gender equality is critical in rural governance because rural women are often more reliant than are men on public goods and services, and yet frequently have less influence over what is delivered, where, and how.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Jennifer Twyman

Gender equality is critical for achieving healthier diets because many food choices are made by men and women as couples within households. We need information and food systems interventions related to healthier diets to reach men and women equally.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Frank Place

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals requires that many good decisions are made at global, national, community, organizational, household, and individual levels. To ensure success, women must have full opportunity to participate in these decisions.

Director, CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Berber Kramer

Gender equality is important in any area of development because aspirations, opportunities, and outcomes in life should not be restricted by whether we’re born as a boy or a girl; we all deserve an environment in which we can use our talents to realize our dreams.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Silvia Alonso

Gender equality is critical in ensuring everyone has access to safe and nutritious food because women are, as much as men, indispensable pieces of the world’s food chain puzzle.

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Agnes Quisumbing

Gender equality is critical in eliminating poverty and malnutrition because we need to tap the potential of ALL people, men & women alike, to harness today’s resources for the well-being of today’s and future generations.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Mark Lundy

Gender equality is critical for sustainable food systems because without equality the system will not be socially sustainable over the long-term.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Suresh Babu

Gender equality is critical in institutional and capacity development for food policies and strategies because without equal participation of men and women in the policy process, the policy design and implementation will be biased against either men or women.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

John McDermott

Gender equality is critical if we are to meaningfully mitigate malnutrition in all its forms. Empowering women enables them to be informed and act on better nourishing their families and themselves.

Director, CGIAR Research Program for Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Channing Arndt

Gender equality is critical in group or institutional decision-making because women and men have different experiences, hence bring different perspectives to problems/issues.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Diana Suhardiman

Gender equality is critical in ensuring food security through sustainable environmental governance. Our ability to adapt to changing climate and socio-political landscapes depends on how we all can join forces as equal partners, while pursuing our various roles.

International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

Hazel Malapit

Gender equality in academia is critical to training the next generation of leaders and development practitioners because different genders bring different ways of looking at the world, and different tools and methods to answer critical questions in development.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Anne Larson

Gender equality is critical for many things, but most importantly, because growing inequality undermines basic human rights, democracy and our ability to build a “safe and just space for humanity” (Raworth 2017).

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Kristin Davis

Gender equality is critical in ag extension services because women and men have different info needs and different access to and control over resources.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Steven Lawry

Gender equality is critical to ensure that water, land, forests, and other natural treasures are used and governed equitably and sustainably.

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Johan Swinnen

Gender equality is critical in ending hunger and malnutrition, increasing agricultural productivity, protecting the environment and investing in the next generation. IFPRI research shows that reducing gender inequality improves food and nutrition outcomes for households, women, and children.”

Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Steven Prager

Gender equality is critical for sustainable food systems because the roles of men and women are rapidly changing in response to different drivers such as urbanization and rural transformation. This helps assure healthy children and vibrant youth!

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Rob Vos

Gender equality is critical to ensuring food and nutrition security because when women earn and manage the income for the household, everyone in the family will have more and better food to eat.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Barbara Wieland

Gender equality is critical in improving animal health and productivity and in mitigating zoonotic risks because women play a key role in animal health management, but are often left out of decision making.

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Arshnee Moodley

Gender equality is critical in research organizations, including academic institutions, because in 2020 we still do not have a balanced representation of both genders in research management and leadership positions.

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), CGIAR Antimicrobial Resistance Hub

Inge Brouwer

Gender equality is critical in securing healthy diets because without the efforts of both women AND men future food systems will not be able to deliver nutritious, divers and safe food to all in a sustainable way.

Wageningen University & Research

Daniel Álvarez

Gender equality is necessary because women’s access to the same agricultural resources as men would result in increased production, and would reduce hunger by up to 17 per cent.*

HarvestPlus * FAO 2011

Destan Aytekin

Gender equality is critical in securing healthy diets for all because we need each individual to reach their full potential to improve societies. Biofortification is one unique solution since all members of a family consume staple foods—regardless of gender!

HarvestPlus USA

Arun Baral

Gender equality is critical to building sustainable value chains for biofortified foods because women entrepreneurs play a critical role in producing and marketing nutritious food products. HarvestPlus partners with women-run small and mid-size businesses that are selling biofortified foods.

HarvestPlus USA

Syeda Nuhara Begam

Gender equality is critical to nutrition security in Bangladesh because women tend to take the lead in selecting the food menus for their families. We should help them choose safe and nutritious foods.

HarvestPlus Bangladesh

Ekin Birol

Gender equality is critical to ensure that nutritious foods in the household are accessible to women and girls. They are often left to fill their stomachs with less-nutritious options when their biological needs for nutrients are often higher than those of men and boys.

HarvestPlus USA

Katrina Boyd

Gender equality is critical in improving nutrition because hidden hunger—including iron, zinc, and vitamin A deficiency—affects millions of women, whose micronutrient requirements are high and often go unmet in developing countries.

HarvestPlus USA

Olatundun Kalejaiye

Gender equality is critical in promoting sustainable household nutrition because both partners and all family members are informed, involved and supported to take decisions relating to nutrition thus enabling them to pass this knowledge, attitude, and practices to the next generation.

HarvestPlus Nigeria

Martha Katsi

Gender equality is critical in securing healthy diets for all; where women, men, girls, and boys have a say on what they grow and eat. This is why the quest for equality is fundamental to ending hidden hunger.

HarvestPlus Zimbabwe

Sakile Kudita

Gender equality is critical in agricultural development because different genders have different but complementing priorities, strengths and different social challenges. It’s about embracing diversity and harnessing complementarity towards better development outcomes. No one gender has better priorities than the other.

HarvestPlus Zimbabwe

Sylvia Magezi

Gender equality is critical to securing healthy diets for all. Without it, access to land and other resources for food production is compromised and this in turn affects food security and diets.

HarvestPlus Uganda

Becky McDowell

Gender equality is critical in improving childhood nutrition because all parents—both moms and dads—have a role to play in their children’s health and well-being.

HarvestPlus USA

Rewa Misra

Gender equality is critical for access to finance. The food and agriculture sector has some of the most significant numbers of women SME owners. However the lack of collateral severely affects their ability to access formal financial services.

HarvestPlus USA

Daniel Álvarez

HarvestPlus

* FAO 2011

Gender equality is critical in group or institutional decision-making because women and men have different experiences, hence bring different perspectives to problems/issues.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

HarvestPlus Zimbabwe

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)