The sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place on March 10 to 21, 2025. The main focus of the sixty-ninth session will be on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly. The review will include an assessment of current challenges that affect the implementation of the Platform for Action and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and its contribution towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Representatives of Member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world are invited to attend the session.
IFPRI will be actively engaged in the following sessions:
March 13, 2025 | From farm to table: Women at the Agriculture-Nutrition Nexus
8:30am to 10:00am EDT | Organized by IFPRI, session at the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) forum.
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This session will explore the critical role of women in the agriculture-nutrition nexus and how achieving food security, addressing malnutrition, and combating hunger are inseparable from the pursuit of gender equality. The session will also highlight the structural barriers that women face in fragile settings and the importance of overcoming them in such places, where women’s vulnerability is highest. Senior researchers from IFPRI will present research findings and case studies from low- and middle-income countries, followed by an interactive discussion to explore pathways for change at the individual, household, and community levels.
The session will consist of the following presentations: (1) an overview of the agriculture-nutrition pathways, with a focus on women’s role in these pathways; (2) findings from impact evaluations of women’s self-help groups in India and their impacts on nutrition; (3) making anticipatory action programming more empowering, based on case studies in Nepal and Nigeria; (4) impacts of advocacy trainings on women’s voice and agency in Nigeria and their economic outcomes; and (5) the role of policy in the agriculture-nutrition-empowerment nexus, featuring findings from India and Nigeria.
IFPRI Speakers
- Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
- Jordan Kyle, Research Fellow, IFPRI
- Katrina Kosec, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
- Catherine Ragasa, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
IFPRI Organizer: Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
This event and the research shared through it was supported by the donors who fund the CGIAR’s Science Program on Food Frontiers and Security and the GENDER Accelerator through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund.
March 18, 2025 | Empowering Women through Sustainable Agriculture
10:30am to 12:00pm EDT | Co-organized by Juno Evidence Alliance and the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI)
This session aims to stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue on women’s empowerment in agriculture and food systems by focusing on gender-responsive development, scientific leadership, and inclusive program design. Panelists from diverse backgrounds—crop and plant breeding, economics, computer and data science—will represent both academic and development sectors, providing a well-rounded perspective on empowering women within agrifood systems.
IFPRI Speaker
- Jessica Leight, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
March 20, 2025 | Side Event: Measuring Women’s Empowerment In Large Scale Surveys
4:45pm to 6:00pm EDT| Co-organized by the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and IFPRI
The side event aims to present an overview of the development of Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) and describe the effort made by FAO and partner countries for integrating WEMNS in agricultural surveys. FAO, IFPRI and partner countries will share their experiences, successes, lessons learned and propose steps forward.
IFPRI Speaker
- Jessica Heckert, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
IFPRI Organizer: Hazel Malapit, Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI