Building capacities toward gender equality
AGENT provides tailored technical support to USAID activities with a specialized focus on women’s leadership, women’s economic empowerment, and strengthened livelihoods. Technical gender specialists work closely with program, project, and local stakeholders to strengthen gender analyses and provides on-the-ground training to build in-house capacities to address gender considerations and design gender-responsive implementation. This page offers a snapshot of some of our technical support work.
Of the more than 25,000 women and men policymakers IUCN has provided capacity building on gender and environment linkages worldwide, about 20% have been supported by AGENT.
Mainstreaming gender in regional biodiversity projects
AGENT provided gender technical support for USAID’s Regional Coastal Biodiversity Project in Central America (RCBP). This included a gender analysis for one of the project sites where information was gathered by conducting workshops and focus groups with local women and men. As a result of AGENT’s technical guidance, RCBP included information and strategies to address key gender issues, such as interventions to support women’s participation in local fisheries value chains and identifying gender indicators for its Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan. AGENT also supported the project in leveraging entry points to mainstream gender into local sustainable management plans, which included gender being integrated in regional communications strategies on the importance of women’s roles and contributions toward the sustainable management of coastal biodiversity and related resources.
Ensuring women can meaningfully participate in environmental decision-making, AGENT trains women and women’s organizations across forestry, fisheries, water management, energy infrastructure development, adaptation, and resilience sectors to advance their interests and rights.
Strengthening technical fisheries partnerships on gender integration
At the request of E3’s FAB office, AGENT provided support and guidance in the development of a gender analysis for a global alliance, the Seafood Alliance for Legality and Traceability (SALT), that facilitates knowledge exchange and action to promote legal and sustainable fisheries through improved transparency in seafood supply chains. Additionally, AGENT participated in the co-creation process and was able to further underscore the importance of understanding how gender issues impact human and labor rights issues, which is a key priority within SALT’s strategic approach. AGENT’s contributions helped lead to the development of stakeholder working groups that will focus on these social issues and will hopefully expand SALT’s focus beyond vessels to include the entire value chain. This is critical for addressing gender equality issues as women play many important roles throughout the sector and can become change agents in addressing labor conditions.
AGENT’s technical expertise across energy issues, biodiversity sectors, types of pollution, and recycling topics has been applied to support USAID gender analyses in Haiti, Mesoamerica, and Central America.
Improving social impact analysis in the Central American energy sector
In Central America, the construction of large-scale renewable energy projects has been the source of tension with neighboring communities, who feel uninformed or consulted about the projects. Additionally, women’s interests have tended to be misrepresented where consultative processes exist. To address these issues, governments have made efforts to further regulate how social impact assessments are conducted, particularly with a human rights and gender equality framework. Despite the establishment of this bylaw, implementation has remained challenging. AGENT provided technical support to USAID’s Comunidades y Energia Renovable (CER, Spanish acronym; Communities and Renewable Energy) activity on transparent renewable energy development by building trust between stakeholders and enhancing local community engagement. Implemented by Iniciativa Climatica de Mexico, the project works to ensure local communities—particularly indigenous peoples—are included in early development planning in order to reduce potential conflicts and ensure respect for local autonomy and rights to self-determination.
AGENT supported the project in the implementation of participatory diagnostics to understand how key actors view the development of locally-based large-scale renewable energy projects in the Yucatan and Chihuahua regions. Showcasing global example strategies and approaches on how large energy projects work with women and men from local communities, AGENT also trained renewable energy teams on conducting gender-sensitive and responsive community outreach and social impact evaluations. Additionally, AGENT supported the development of a theory of change to guide the development of a public policy that can deliver more inclusive renewable energy projects. CER reported that thanks to AGENT, it is more conscious about not only consistently including women in community engagement and information collection, but also ensuring gender considerations are included in all reports to ensure the differentiated views of women and men are addressed at all levels.