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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

Where we work

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Heleene Tambet

Senior Research Analyst

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Bio

Heleene Tambet is a Senior Research Analyst in the Poverty, Gender and Inclusion Unit. She is an economist working on a diverse set of data-driven questions around the sustainability of food systems. At IFPRI, she has been supporting several large multisectoral evaluations, including Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience in Ethiopia and mNutrition in Ghana and Tanzania. Her primary interests are agricultural practices and management of farming-related natural resources in the context of climate change. During her graduate studies, Heleene worked on projects that included evaluating economic and environmental impacts of an organic certification scheme and studying adoption of soil and water conservation practices after extreme weather events. She has an MS in International and Development Economics from the University of San Francisco.

Google Scholar Citations

Publications

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Journal Article

Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia

2025Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; Tambet, Heleene
Details

Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia

Graduation model interventions seek to address multiple barriers constraining households’ exit from poverty, however, few explicitly target restrictive gender norms. Using a randomized controlled trial design, combined with three rounds of data, we investigate the impacts on gender equitable attitudes and behaviors of a graduation program that seeks to address multiple constraints for those in poverty and improve restrictive gender norms in Ethiopia. We find that at 1-year follow-up all treatment arms lead to improvements in men’s gender equitable attitudes and their engagement in household domestic tasks as reported by both men and women; but at 3-year follow-up, impacts are only sustained in the treatment arms that introduced men’s engagement groups after the 1-year follow-up survey to further promote improvements in equitable gender norms.

Year published

2025

Authors

Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; Tambet, Heleene

Citation

Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; and Tambet, Heleene. 2024. Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia. World Development 185(January 2025): 106781.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Behaviour; Cooking; Men; Rural Areas

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106781 Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

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Brief

PSNP and sustainable land management in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation

2024Tefera, Mulugeta; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene
Details

PSNP and sustainable land management in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation

The Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) is Ethiopia’s national safety net program, launched in 2005 and currently in its fifth phase. The objective of the PSNP is to protect households’ food consumption and assets, reduce their vulnerability to shocks, and address underlying causes of extreme poverty (MoA FSCD 2020). Households who have an adult available to work are required to take part in public works that focus on building infrastructure and improving the natural resource base (MoA FSCD 2020). As such, these projects are partially designed to contribute to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, there is limited evidence about how sustainable land management (SLM) activities are conducted under the PSNP on both publicly and privately operated lands, and how the uptake of these activities and their benefits differ by gender.

Year published

2024

Authors

Tefera, Mulugeta; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene

Citation

Tefera, Mulugeta; Gilligan, Daniel; Leight, Jessica; and Tambet, Heleene. 2024. PSNP and sustainable land management in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation. SPIR Learning Brief 8. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152385

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Households; Food Consumption; Poverty; Shock; Vulnerability

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Brief

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Brief

Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024

2024Gilligan, Daniel; Billings, Lucy; Kalva, Parthu; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene; Bahiru, Kibret; Mulford, Michael; Bekele, Kalkidan
Details

Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024

This sustainable land management (SLM) innovation draws on qualitative formative research, co-design of an innovation with partners, a quantitative impact evaluation testing the innovation, and resulting guidance for partners on implementing the innovation. This project is delivered as part of a multifaceted graduation model social protection program, SPIR II (Strengthen Productive Safety Net Program Institutions and Resilience II) that seeks to further sustain nutrition security and reduce risks to livelihoods for households participating in the Ethiopia’s national safety program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), which provides consumption support in the form of cash and food transfers. The goal of the SLM innovation being tested is to leverage social protection to promote women’s engagement in sustainable land management practices. Strengthening women’s involvement in sustainable land management is seen as potentially important given that extreme weather events pose risks for poor households in rural Ethiopia and women may be disproportionately at risk from these shocks. For example, Kato et al (2021) find that plots controlled by women in Ethiopia are more prone to soil erosion and of poorer quality in terms of soil depth, and women’s participation in watershed committees is low. The sustainable land management practices being introduced may help protect women and their families from these shocks over the longer term as well as introduce an additional livelihoods avenue. The innovation tested includes providing training (to either women only or to both men and women from same households) and free inputs (tree seedlings, vegetable seeds and tools for home gardening) among participants of the PSNP public works program, thus helping to address constraints to accessing information and inputs, and assessing whether spousal cooperation is important for successful adoption of these technologies.

Year published

2024

Authors

Gilligan, Daniel; Billings, Lucy; Kalva, Parthu; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene; Bahiru, Kibret; Mulford, Michael; Bekele, Kalkidan

Citation

Gilligan, D., Billings, L., Kalva, P., Leight, J., Tambet, H., Bahiru, K., Mulford, M., Bekele, K. 2024. Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024. Montpellier: CGIAR System Organization.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Social Protection; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Gender Equality; Sustainable Land Management

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Brief

Blogs

Do ultra-poor graduation programs build resilience against droughts? Evidence from rural Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 04, 2024

Do ultra-poor graduation programs build resilience against droughts? Evidence from rural Ethiopia

By Kalle Hirvonen, Daniel Gilligan, Jessica Leight, Heleene Tambet, and Victor Villa

Safety nets can buttress households against climate shocks.

Events

SPIR II Learning Event
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

May 16 to 17, 2023

SPIR II Learning Event

May 16 and 17, 2023 (9:00am – 5:00pm Addis Ababa): The Strengthen PSNP5 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR II) Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year project (2021-2026) that supports implementation of the fifth phase of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP5) in Amhara and Oromia regions and provides additional graduation model programming through complementary gender-sensitive livelihood, nutrition, and climate resilience activities to strengthen the program and expand its impacts.