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The Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for ICT initiatives is an innovative evalu ation guide for ICT practitioners seeking an appropriate gender framework and analysis tools for their information and communication technology (ICT) interventions.

GEM was developed by the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme (APCWNSP), a global network that facilitates the strategic use of ICTs in support of women’s actions and agendas. Since 1994, APCWNSP has worked globally, co-ordinating research and “on-the-ground” activities that have highlighted the need for strengthening consideration of gender concerns in the planning and implementation of ICT initiatives. As more and more of today’s development work and money is channelled into projects that employ ICTs, their effects on women are of great importance. For women, the accessibility of ICTs requires adequate equipment, information, financing, organisation, training and time. Evaluation of ICT development work is therefore critical to ensure gender equality and women’s empowerment are addressed. 

GEM can be used by practitioners, including:

• Organisations using ICT for development, human rights and other issues

• Project managers and project staff using ICT in projects without a specific gender or women’s focus

• Evaluators working in the ICT field

• Donors and development agency staff working in the ICT field

• Gender focal points that support women’s and ICT issues

• Policy makers

• ICT planners

• Consultants in the area of gender and ICT 

The guide provides users with an overview of the evaluation process (including links to general evaluation resources) and outlines suggested strategies and methodologies for incorporating a gender analysis throughout the evaluation process. GEM is not simply an evaluation tool. It can also be used to ensure that gender concerns are integrated into a project planning process. 

This policy brief series is geared to national level policy makers and institutional science leaders in research performing organisations (RPOs) and research funding organisations (RFOs). It consists of twenty-six policy briefs.

Twenty of these policy briefs are grouped around five themes: 1) Recruitment and Promotion, 2) Gender Equality Plans, 3) Gender Dimension in Research Content in Research Performing Organisations (RPOs), 4) Gender Dimension in Research Content in Research Funding Organisations (RFOs) and 5) Gender Balance in Decision-Making. Given the variety of policy agendas and implementation levels across European countries, each topic is furthermore subdivided into four briefs, targeting these different national policy levels.

Furthermore, six individual policy briefs focus on: 1) tackling sexual harassment, 2) intersectionality, 3) securing top-level support for gender equality, 4) building gender competence and knowledge 5) statistics and methodology and 6) implementation and resistance. These six policy briefs are not targeted at a specific country group. This introduction  outlines the methodology used for the twenty thematic briefs.  

Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) seeks to support countries in securing the necessary policies, as well as the technical and financial conditions, to enable them to i) sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes; ii) build both the resilience and the capacity of agricultural and food systems to adapt to climate change, and iii) seek opportunities to reduce and remove greenhouse gas (GHG) in order to meet their national food security and development goals. The adoption of CSA practices at scale requires appropriate institutional and governance mechanisms to facilitate the dissemination of information and to ensure broad participation by relevant stakeholders and targeted beneficiaries. CSA is site-specific and considers the synergies and trade-offs between multiple objectives that are set in diverse social, economic, and environmental contexts. Among the drivers influencing CSA adoption, the understanding of how gender could influence the effectiveness of these instruments is capturing increasing attention in the literature (Okali 2011; Stienecker, 2012; Watt, 2012). Recent studies show that youth and women have a different degree of vulnerability compared to that of men for many reasons, including their greater dependence on natural resources for livelihoods, responsibility for food production, water and fuel for their households, more limited assets, and social, cultural and political barriers.

In dealing with CSA adoption, as well as with agricultural technology adoption, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of focusing on the gender-heterogeneity behind the adoption choice itself.1 For example, an outcome may depend on whether the decision-maker is the husband or the wife, as well as if the decision-maker is also the household head.2 To understand gender dynamics in agriculture it is not sufficient to compare male to female farmers or male- to female-headed households. Instead, we need to understand the heterogeneous system of household behaviour embedded in the agricultural economy and to analyse the different situation of women in both male- and female-headed households in terms of their access and control of productive resources, services and employment opportunities.

The household, then, should not be considered as a unified economic entity, but as a network of interactions between different agents that act together to maximize their own outcome. In this framework, gender plays a role in the decision-making over the allocation, negotiations and exchange of resources and labour. This is an extremely complex issue, but CSA adoption itself depends on complex interactions that defy simple characterizations. The integration of gender into CSA also means understanding how gender, and thus its adoption of CSA practices, will evolve together with climate change in the future. To evaluate the effectiveness of CSA in turn would require choosing a set of indicators that are appropriate to carry out such comparisons across the three pillars of CSA: adaptation, food security, and mitigation. In the next sub-section we provide a brief review of options and point to indicators that have the potential to be used based on available data. 

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects all countries and peoples across borders. Nonetheless, social and cultural systems influence both how environmental pressures affect societal groups and how they can contribute to reducing harmful emissions. The roles and responsibilities ascribed to women and men in a society impact their respective dependence on their natural environment, shape their capacity to adapt to a changing climate, and lead to specific knowledge of how to influence their environment. When these inequalities between men and women are removed and their specific abilities and knowledge promoted, their full potential to contribute to fighting climate change can be unlocked. Women’s agency in particular has been woefully neglected by mitigation measures in the past. There is growing recognition that by empowering women to actively participate in reducing emissions and strengthening community resilience, climate change projects become more successful, more sustainable, and more equitable.

Women are involved in helping their communities and families adapt to environmental changes every day all over the world, but their potential to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is often overlooked. In the past, academic work and development cooperation has focused chiefly on women’s role in adaptation and has only recently turned to women’s role in averting climate change impacts. This manual includes examples from adaptation but focuses on facilitating the design of inclusive climate change mitigation.

For instance, mitigation measures that target women on the household and community level and give them access to energy-efficient technologies such as improved cookstoves can significantly reduce GHG emissions and produce important development cobenefits such as improved health and less time spent on collecting biomass for fuel. The efficiency and equitability of such measures is increased if women are empowered to produce and sell such cookstoves themselves and are enabled to engage in continued education or training in ways to generate income and adapt to environmental changes. In short, climate change responses that take into account social factors produce more sustainable outcomes.

Inclusive climate change action is a crosscutting approach to achieving gender equality, emission reductions, and development goals that are embedded in country development strategies and sector policies. In order to make climate policies and projects more effective, efficient, and equitable, policy makers and practitioners need to engage in a policy dialogue to bridge the gap between climate change and gender expertise. An integral part of planning and implementing climate change measures that benefit women, reduce emissions, and achieve sustainable development goals is the ability to access appropriate finance. 

Objectives of the Training Course

The content of this manual gives the training audience an overview of the links between gender and climate change as well as of the climate policy and finance landscape, and it provides information on how to mainstream gender into climate policies and projects. By developing an understanding of gender and climate change issues and inviting a diverse group of participants to share their knowledge and expertise, the training aims to develop capacity and a multilevel cross-sector partnership that will enable decision makers to identify and prepare more equitable projects and access climate finance. This manual serves to facilitate this training as a progressive model for replication in other countries.

The training course on gender and climate change and mitigation finance has the following aims:

»  Create awareness of the advantages of and need for gender-sensitive mitigation action

»  Develop participants’ capacity to mainstream gender into climate policies and projects

»  Encourage a policy dialogue and knowledge exchange between policy makers, especially from environment and line ministries, and representatives of women’s organizations and groups

»  Support country readiness for new gender-sensitive climate finance mechanisms

»  Lay the foundation for gender-sensitive climate policies and projects that enable equitable access to technologies and distribution from climate finance

»  Develop participants’ understanding of the concept of gender, of climate change issues and policies, of the links between gender and climate change, and of the climate finance landscape

»  Empower marginalized stakeholders to participate in decision making to facilitate a partnership between representatives working on climate change and gender issues