How Does Feed the Future Measure Gender Impacts?

The “It’s All About M&E” blog series gives you a peek into Feed the Future M&E. In this blog post, guest blogger Sally Rey from the USAID Bureau for Food Security discusses how Feed the Future measures gender impacts.

Closing the “gender gap” in agriculture could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 100-150 million, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Women make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in the developing world, and they are likely to channel the income they control into the nutrition, health, and education of their children. However, the work they do on farms is often unpaid and under-valued. They are excluded from decision-making and lack equal access to land and resources like credit, markets, extension services, and inputs. In Africa, for example, women own just 1 percent of agricultural land, receive only 7 percent of extension services, and access less than 10 percent of agricultural credit offered to smallholder farmers.

This is why Feed the Future promotes gender programming as an important way to improve agricultural production, food security, child nutrition, health, and education.