The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, ICRAF, INBAR and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors: on.cgiar.org/CGIARFundDonors.

LED BY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in the CGIAR Research Program on

Forests, Trees and Agroforestry

Introduction

For the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), gender inequalities present structural barriers to the change that is needed to support sustainable and equitable development solutions.

FTA prioritizes a transformative approach to gender equality by focusing on drivers of change in tree-based and forested landscapes, and on how these affect/are affected by men and women’s capabilities to: i) control assets and resources, ii) value and distribute unremunerated labor, and iii) meaningfully participate in decision making at various levels.

The Program adopts an intersectionality lens to analyze how gender intersects with other factors of social differentiation, to shape livelihood and resource management decisions, governance, and the distribution of benefits and costs from forest and tree-based systems.

FTA conducts research with and about younger generations of women and men. FTA engages with a wide range of actors, across scales and sectors, in creating an enabling normative and policy environment for improved gender equality, environmental, and socio-economic outcomes.

An evolving gender agenda

FTA’s gender agenda continues to evolve. We adopt a rights-based approach, emphasizing gender equality as a rightful goal in and of itself. While win-wins between gender equality and environmental objectives are optimal, reconciling tensions and trade-offs may at times be required.

FTA’s thematic foci on institutions and governance maintain their relevance, and its emphasis on migration and multi-local livelihoods, tenure and large-scale land acquisitions, restoration, climate change, market-based conservation mechanisms and value chains continues to expand, amid rapid environmental and political economic transformations.

In its second phase, FTA will build on the capacities developed and lessons learned and will broaden its focus to: adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of gender issues, prioritize transformative gender work, adopt mixed methods—including participatory action research—in research and evaluations, incorporate the latest thinking on gender and development in capacity-building efforts, create learning and knowledge-sharing platforms, broaden and deepen its partnerships, and enhance gender integration in monitoring, evaluation and adaptive learning frameworks.

Research questions

FTA’s gender research addresses questions about the norms, institutions and power relations that represent structural barriers to gender equality in tree-based landscapes, and ways to redress these, by studying:

• The effects of different sector policies in creating constraining or enabling environments for women’s access to and control over forests and trees• The types of institutional arrangements that promote meaningful participation of men and women from different generational groups in decisions related to forest restoration and management• The structural causes of socially-differentiated impacts of climate change, and how to strengthen the voice, influence and entitlements of marginalized groups in adaptation and mitigation policies and interventions• The strategies, institutional arrangements, interventions and safeguards that should be used to improve the gender responsiveness of FTA value chains and business models• The policies, institutional arrangements and interventions that foster enabling environments for women and men from different social and generational groups to benefit from migration and multi-local livelihoods in forest

landscapes• The extension approaches that improve the uptake and gender responsiveness of forestry and agroforestry technologies and planting material, and create opportunities for women’s empowerment and social inclusion

Key gender concepts

The concepts that underlie FTA’s gender agenda are highlighted above and include:• Gender equality – our work is guided by a normative commitment to substantive

gender equality, which combines formal gender equality (i.e. formal opportunities for women and men, such as those inscribed in policies) with equality of outcome (i.e. reflected in the actual conditions of women’s and men’s lives).

• A rights-based approach – We emphasize that women’s rights and gender equality are not only means to achieving other outcomes but important and legitimate goals in and of themselves.

• A transformative gender research agenda – our research focuses on identifying and transforming the structures underlying gender inequalities (gendered power relations, norms, institutions, policies) rather than focusing only the symptoms.

• Agency – refers to the ability of individuals to make strategic life decisions and to act upon them. Our research designs, methods, partnerships and dissemination strategies aim to support local women and men’s abilities to exercise their agency to redress gender inequalities.

• An intersectional approach – our research is informed by an understanding that gender intersects with other factors of social differentiation (including generational dimensions) to position individuals within their societies and shape their opportunities and constraints.

Impact pathways and theory of change

FTA adopts an integrated approach that combines two main impact pathways:

1. Informing policy making at various levels to advance gender equality and rights in control over and access to forest, tree and agroforestry resources and their benefits.

2. Enhancing women’s participation in decision making on the management of forests and agroforestry landscapes.

FTA’s gender mainstreaming efforts feed into these pathways by increasing the quality and quantity of gender-strategic and -integrated research.

Contributions towards a CGIAR-wide gender research framework

• Thematic: Natural resource management, common property resources, landscape level analyses and collective action.

• Approach: Rights-based and transformative approach, intersectional and multi-scale analyses, alignment with global environment and development commitments.

• Process: Moving from knowledge to impact through partnerships with a range of actors, working across scales, geographies, sectors, and disciplines. Integration across participating CGIAR centers through the Gender Integration Team.

Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR

Theory of change about gender integration in FTA FTA’s gender research impact pathway