Adrian Hartrick/Oxfam
Strengthening gender transformation approaches
The International Coffee Organization (ICO), the intergovernmental body for the coffee sector, wanted to improve the livelihoods of smallholder women coffee farmers and make gender equality a policy priority for the sector. The ICO’s Coffee Public-Private Task Force - CPPTF appointed Oxfam Business Advisory Service as the Gender Advisory Lead[1] to support them to embed gender transformative approaches throughout their Roadmap 2020-2030, plans and activities.
Solution: a gender transformative tracker tool
Adopting a gender transformative approach means addressing the root causes of gendered dimensions of poverty, vulnerability, and inequality. It involves changing the policies and practices of institutions (such as communities, governments, and businesses) and the social norms, attitudes and practices that sustain discrimination.
We developed a gender transformative tracker tool, which offers guidance to strengthen the gender elements of existing activity and identify opportunities to incorporate gender-transformative approaches into the design and evaluation of projects. We worked closely with technical leads looking at issues such as living income, sustainable production and market policies to recommend practical examples for ways that gender transformative approaches could be adapted and applied to each area.
Impact: Making the tool open source
Initially developed for ICO Task Force members from the public and private sector, the Gender Transformative Tracker is now available as an open source tool that aims to increase awareness and to push stakeholders to strengthen how gender-responsive and transformative their plans and activities are. Whilst progress has been slow to adopt the recommended approaches by public and private actors within the Task Force, the technical leads have started to apply the recommendations to their ongoing work, and described the tool as “well structured” and “very comprehensive”, which “lays out clear strategies, roles and expectations [for stakeholders]”.
Oxfam provided in-depth, useful and practical recommendations to the Task Force to embed gender transformative strategies and approaches to our work”
Wolfgang Weinmann , Coordinator Coffee Public-Private Task Force – CPPTF, International Coffee Organization, on secondment from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
References
[1] Funded by GIZ- Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH on behalf of Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development – BMZ/ Germany