Summary
Voluntary Sustainability Systems (VSS) can play an important role in reducing persistent gender inequalities, contributing to more just value chains. However, recent research suggests that the reported impacts of VSS on gender equality have been limited. A recent CGIAR-ISEAL Scoping Study demonstrated that a lack of meaningful data on women’s roles in value chains was identified as a major challenge to designing effective interventions. The Scoping Study also found that VSS and other value chain actors were limited in their ability to monitor and evaluate their efforts towards gender equality.
What metrics and tools are available for systems and businesses to better track gender-related outcomes? How can we identify the deep-rooted barriers to gender equality to enable better strategies and programmes? How can these be implemented without fatiguing producers and smallholders with further data collection and reporting burdens?
In this learning event, hosted in partnership with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT under the CGIAR Gender Equality Initiative, we dived into answers to these questions from experts working on gender-responsive monitoring, evaluation and research. This learning event built on our previous event, “Achieving gender-just agri-food systems”, to explore how VSS and the private sector can respond to data challenges when pursuing gender equality outcomes.
Speakers:
Vidya Rangan | Senior Manager, Impacts and Innovations | ISEAL
Jessica Heckert | Research Fellow | International Food Policy Research Institute
Samita Thapa | Research Lead, Gender | World Benchmarking Alliance