Toolkit

This toolkit intends to motivate and help practitioners in integrating a gender perspective in agricultural value chain development by providing practical tools for all stages of the value chain intervention.

The toolkit provides an overview of material available on gender and value chains. The tools are selected from manuals produced by USAID, SNV, GIZ, ILO, KIT, Oxfam and other organisations and build on knowledge consolidated in the Agri-ProFocus Gender in Value Chains Network.

Target group

• Practitioners working with different actors in agricultural value chains.
• Practitioners that work with organisations that support or influence agricultural value chains, such as NGOs, knowledge institutions, government, BDS, microfinance organisations.

There are two types of tools:

1. tools that support data-collection and research to gain insight into gender constraints, - opportunities and - strategies within certain value chains;
2. tools guiding the facilitation of participatory processes in order to involve male and female value chain actors in the different stages of the project. 

Content of this toolkit

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Downloads

The ‘Downloads’ section of this toolkit provides an overview of all tools per chapter and sub chapter. It is also possible to download all tools at once. Click Downloads 

Sharing

In the ‘Sharing’ section you can find the experiences of others with the use of this toolkit, also completely different tools relevant for gender sensitive value chain development can be share here. APF will review these posts and will adjust tools on the website accordingly. Click Sharing

Disclaimer

The tools are, as much as possible, described according to the original documents available in the public domain. Given the different origin of the tools, this toolkit does not pretend to provide a coherent set of tools. It aims at providing information on tools for gender sensitive value chain development available on the internet in a summarized form allowing practitioners to select the tools which best suit the organization, way of working and philosophy.

Gender vs women

Women are a category of people; gender is the socially constructed difference between women and men. The meaning society gives to the roles of men and women results in certain power relations and dynamics. As a consequence, inequality in people’s capacity to make choices exists. Because women are often lagging behind in this respect, many tools are focused on empowering women. However, for changing gender relations in society input of both men and women are required.

Use

• Design your own gender integration process - Professional responsibility

This toolkit is not a ready-made recipe to integrate gender into your value chain development project. It rather offers a range of tools that can be used per stage of your intervention. It is up to the practitioner to decide which combination of tools to use.

• All tools will have to be contextualized and fit in a process

It is the responsibility of the practitioner to adjust the tools to his or her specific situation.

• All tools fit in a process involving different people at different steps

Most tools describe one step in a process (e.g the data collection, or the participatory analysis). The design of the other steps in the process and the involvement of the right mix of people in the different steps is the task of the practitioner.

• Open knowledge - Sharing

The toolkit strives to be a low-threshold portal for the value chain practitioner. We believe in the concept of ‘open knowledge’. We want to make tools not only ‘available’ and ‘accessible’ but also ‘adjustable’. Therefore we encourage you to use and adjust the tools and to share your experiences and adjustments with us. We are also interested in other tools you consider useful. Experiences can be shared by going to the ‘Sharing tab’ in the table of content.

• Acknowledge Agri-ProFocus

In return we would like to be mentioned as source for the material, so that others can also join our growing network.


Credits
The content of this Toolkit has been developed by Angelica Senders of Fair & Sustainable Advisory Services, Anna Lentink of Triodos Facet and Mieke Vanderschaeghe, independent consultant, with support of Roel Snelder of Agri-ProFocus Netherlands.

The tools are taken from manuals produced by practitioners and organisations, available in the public domain or made available through the Agri-ProFocus Gender in value chains network. The toolkit relies strongly on manuals produced by: USAID, SNV, GIZ, KIT, Oxfam and ILO. Click here for an overview of available manuals/ online tools.