Gender and the Renewal of the CGIAR

by Hilary Feldstein and Deborah Merrill-Sands

• poverty and women;
• inequality in economic activities and access to resources;
• inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels; and,
• inequalities in the management of natural resources and safeguarding the environment.

Three central themes of the renewal of the CGIAR provided the points of linkage with the Beijing platform:

• the move to open the CGIAR to a wider range of partnerships;
• the integration of CGIAR perspectives with those of the international development community; and
• the refocusing of research on the nexus of agriculture, the environment and poverty as the basis of nurturing sustainable agriculture for food security in developing countries.

These themes also provide the background for discussion of the CGIAR Gender Program.

The CGIAR Gender Program

The Gender Program is assisting the CGIAR in addressing the concerns raised at Beijing and the refocused vision of the CGIAR. The program, which was launched in 1991, was built on the recognition that women constitute over 50 percent of the poorest of the rural poor and in all regions play a significant role in agriculture and natural resource management.

Their voice, as well as men's, must be included to insure that the knowledge and preferences of the intended users of technology and policy research are taken into account in the research agenda. With respect to staffing at the centers, the driving force has been the dramatic increase in the participation of women in science over the past twenty years. Women now generally comprise between 20 to 50 percent of the international pool of scientists and professionals from which the centers recruit. To insure continuation of excellence in research and training, special efforts are needed to tap into, attract, and retain professionals from this more diverse pool of talent.

The Gender Program's goals have been to encourage and support

• the use of gender analysis in agricultural and natural resource management research and technology development, training, and policy research; and
• the recruitment, advancement, and retention of women scientists and other professionals in the centers.
• ICW95 provided an opportunity for the program to report on a rich set of experiences from the centers working in pursuit of these goals, review the lessons learned, and propose frameworks for future action in gender analysis and gender staffing which build on these achievements and seek to institutionalize attention to gender in the ongoing activities of the centers and the system as a whole. The report to ICW 1995 was very well received by members who proposed that the Gender Program be extended for a further three year period.

The program was developed in consultation with the Center Directors and has been funded by Australia, Canada, the Ford Foundation, the International Development Research Centre (Canada), Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Key elements of the strategy used for developing the program over the past four years have been to:

• cultivate awareness and develop commitment by linking work on gender systematically to the strategic objectives of the centers;
• respond to the priorities set by the Directors General;
• target resources on those centers where senior managers were committed and initiated requests for support (to date the program has worked substantively with eleven of the sixteen centers);
• diffuse lessons learned at these focal centers to the other centers in the system through publications, workshops, meetings, and promotion; and
• use the established systems of the CGIAR, such as reviews and boards of trustees, to reinforce adoption of good practices at centers.
• In large measure these strategies will continue to guide the program through 1998.

Gender Analysis

Gender analysis and the user perspective contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of technology and policy design and to fulfilling the CGIAR's commitment to improving productivity, conservation, equity and welfare. In order to achieve impact, there must be adoption. In order to obtain adoption, users--men and women--must be brought into technology design at the earliest opportunity. Since the inception of the Gender Program in 1991, Centers

• have included considerations of gender in research review documents and process
• have hired gender specialists,
• conducted portfolio reviews of their program
• held training for their own staff, and
• incorporated materials into their training programs.

Portfolio reviews have been particularly helpful to Centers in identifying those areas in their research where using gender analysis will have high payoff. Using small grants from the Gender Program, ICARDA has prepared a literature review of gender roles within WANA, IPGRI has published The Forgotten Farmer on plant genetic resources, women and the CGIAR; and IFPRI has established an electronic mailing list on gender to serve interested center scientists and the wider body of researchers and practitioners concerned with these issues and has conducted an electronic conference on gender and property rights.

Between 1990 and 1995, Centers have directly supported 140 gender-related research and training activities. These achievements add up to progress in Center and scientist awareness and activities, but the advances made are fragile and not yet systematic.

The lessons emerged from the experience thus far:

• For Center scientists-usually trained in a technical discipline-understanding and using the results of gender analysis to further their work is a challenge. Experience from many organizations seeking to incorporate a gender perspective has shown that it is usually the opportunity to work with gender in one's own program or commodity and region, that allows people to learn the value of gender analysis for their work.
• The responsibility for gender analysis and user perspective is necessary for NARS and NGO scientists who are in the front line of directly addressing farmer needs, as well as for the CGIAR. In support of such capacity building, the framework for future action calls for continued response to center initiatives while focusing on a few centers to help them develop systematic attention to and practice of gender analysis. This will be done principally through support to Centers in conducting research related to emerging themes within the CGIAR--participatory modes of research; location specific research at benchmark ecoregional sites; adoption and impact studies; policy concerns on resource tenure; in situ conservation of biodiversity; understanding the extent and pattern of the feminization of agriculture; and a growing concern for directly addressing women's specific constraints to agricultural production Support to centers will be complemented by increased communication among centers on best practice, provision of training and other materials, and support to the CGIAR in identifying gender-related priorities for research, and tracking the use of gender analysis in IARC research, training and dissemination activities.

To carry out this plan for action, recommendations were made at ICW95 for the continuation of the Gender Analysis Program to 1998 with a central program to coordinate and implement activities, resources to provide technical assistance, and small grants in response to center initiatives. There will also be a working group of gender focal points, annual reports to the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the Committee of Deputy Directors-General, assistance to external program reviews, continuation of an electronic mail network for communication and publication of innovative cases.

Gender Staffing Program

The CGIAR system's attention to gender staffing is linked to concerns for organizational performance. To ensure excellence in staffing, the centers cannot afford to bypass the expanding pool of female scientists and professionals in their recruitment efforts. The centers are also seeking to diversify their staff because broadening the skills, perspectives, and ideas available to an organization can lead to more innovation and improved responsiveness to a rapidly changing environment. In addition, many leaders in the CGIAR believe that-given its humanitarian mandate, its concerns for equity, and its international character-the system should provide leadership in creating work environments that are gender-equitable and culturally pluralistic.

The work of the past four years has sought to increase the participation of women in the centers. Efforts have focused on strengthening the recruitment of women, primarily by developing mechanisms to mobilize applications, and reducing constraints to spouse employment. With the dramatic rise in dual-career couples worldwide, constraints to spouse employment are seen increasingly as an obstacle to recruiting high quality male and female staff. Good progress has been made. The number of women in internationally-recruited positions has increased 19 percent at a time of financial stringency when the cadre of international staff of the CGIAR system grew only 1 percent. Women now comprise 14 percent of internationally-recruited staff as compared to 12 percent in 1991 and 31 percent of nationally-recruited staff as compared to 18 percent. The proportion of women serving on center boards of trustees has jumped from 10 percent to 17 percent. The percentage of women amongst postdoctoral fellows and graduate trainees has reached 25 percent, a level which is about equal to the supply.

From a qualitative perspective, looking at the organizational changes that have taken place, progress has also been substantial. More than half the centers have adopted new policies and practices for reaching women more effectively in recruitment for staff positions and fellowship and training opportunities, and for ensuring fair review and selection procedures. With respect to spouse employment, the centers now see this as critical to their ability to attract high quality staff.

Most centers have adopted more flexible policies for hiring suitably qualified spouses within the centers and about a third have introduced the means to systematically assist spouses to find professional opportunities outside of the centers. In the future, the system will continue to build on the experiences gained in recruitment and spouse employment. The Gender Staffing Program will give priority to disseminating good practices across the system, tapping more effectively into networks of women professionals in the South, and supporting efforts of centers that have not been as successful in attracting female candidates.

The main focus of the Gender Staffing Program in the future, however, will be on gender issues in the workplace -- working on factors that affect the productivity, job satisfaction, professional development, and retention of both male and female staff. This is a much more complex area of work, particularly in a multi-cultural environment. It relates to the core management systems, the values and reward systems that drive behavior, the way work is organized, and leadership and management styles. These aspects of an organization can have a gender dimension in that they can privilege certain behaviors, skills, and ways of working while they can minimize others.

So far three centers, with larger percentages of women in employment, CIMMYT, IFPRI and IITA, have begun to work on these issues with very interesting results. The goal of the change effort is to identify leverage points which can strengthen the center's ability to achieve its strategic goals while at the same time creating a gender-sensitive work environment. This line of work is much more developmental and intensive. It offers, however, great opportunities for the centers to be innovators in this area of organizational development.

To move towards institutionalization of work on gender staffing, it was agreed at ICW95 that the Gender Staffing Program would be anchored with the Management Team of the CGIAR Secretariat. In addition, a network of gender staffing focal points has been established across the centers and an Advisory Panel has been set up as part of the Committee of Deputy Directors General.

Lessons Learned

Several key lessons have been learned from the experience in addressing gender analysis and gender staffing:

• Mainstreaming gender is a long-term process of organizational change. The change process requires commitment, creativity, flexibility to respond to new and second-generation issues as they arise, and vigilance to stave off complacence.
• For the change to have impact and be sustained, work on gender has to be explicitly linked to strategic objectives of the centers. Staff and managers have to see how it will help them to do their job better as well as strengthen the performance of their organization.
• Focusing on gender can be a leverage point to improve research management processes (such as priority-setting and monitoring and evaluation) as well as work and management systems -- such as recruitment processes or performance reviews.
• To achieve progress at the center level it is essential to have strong leadership from the top, a constituency of staff committed to promoting and supporting change, and a "champion" who is clearly responsible and accountable for making the desired changes happen. And,
• external support helps to maintain awareness and momentum, encourages monitoring, provides economies of scale, and facilitates access to technical expertise.