REGIONAL GENDER EQUALITY STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN FOR EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA (2016-2017)

The agreed main priorities for FAO’s work in promoting gender equality in Europe and Central Asia are as follows6:

1. Empowerment of rural women through income diversification and increased participation in decision-making processes – by initiating and implementing specific projects that meet strategic and practical needs of rural women, improve rural livelihoods and empower rural women economically.

2. Support to the generation of gender statistics for formulation and implementation of evidence-based agricultural policies and strategies – (i) by strengthening the capacities of Member Countries to develop, analyze and use sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data for evidence-based policy analysis, planning and evaluation; and (ii) by providing technical support to in-country data collection activities, such as agricultural censuses and surveys, in order to promote the mainstreaming of gender issues in statistics.

3. Gender-sensitive FAO technical assistance – (i) by fostering an enabling environment for the empowerment of rural women to attain food security and poverty reduction goals in agriculture and rural development in Europe and Central Asia; (ii) by raising key stakeholders’ awareness of the need for mainstreaming gender concerns into respective policies; and (iii) by promoting policy instruments, such as “gender budgeting”, to develop inclusive and gender-sensitive policies, organizational structures that are favourable and conducive to gender equality and rural women’s empowerment in agriculture, food security and the rural sector. 

GENDER MAINSTREAMING WILL BE ACHIEVED WHEN:

1. All FAO interventions address gender concerns which are reflected through the assignment of a gender marker;

2. There are specific projects and activities that directly support women’s economic empowerment in agriculture and rural development across all FAO technical areas;

3. Situation analyses of CPFs, regional and country level initiatives and projects integrate analysis of gender issues in rural development;

4. Needs assessments of FAO interventions consult with both women and men stakeholders and target beneficiaries;

5. All staff and consultants in programmatic work are familiar with gender-sensitive project implementation approaches and are equipped with the relevant skills via capacity development;

6. Project implementers, partners and task forces are trained on gender-sensitive project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation;

7. All data collected through monitoring are sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive indicators are used wherever possible (in for example, the monitoring of changes in time use before and after the intervention and the identification of changes in women’s access to extension services before and after the intervention);

8. All mobilization processes of farmers and stakeholders integrate proactive measures to ensure that both women and men are actively involved in FAO activities, and have access to decision-making, information, knowledge and opportunities within FAO projects;

9. All project reporting includes sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data and makes specific reference to gender concerns, including key issues, actions and recommendations;

10. Gender specialists and experts are consulted throughout project implementation and programmatic work to support gender mainstreaming;

11. Budgeting on gender-mainstreaming is forecast in every project and FAO activity, in accordance with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality.