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Who we are

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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Where we work

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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Research by country and region

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TOPIC

Gender

Globally, women and men work together as producers and caregivers to secure their households’ livelihoods, food security, and nutrition. However, gendered divisions of rights, resources, and responsibilities often leave women and girls particularly vulnerable to malnutrition, poor health, and excessive workloads.

Understanding gendered differences is integral to IFPRI’s mission to provide research-based policy solutions to reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Gender is a major focus and cross-cutting theme in IFPRI research.

IFPRI collects data, develops metrics, and generates important findings on how gender relates to food and nutrition security, land tenure, and power and resource allocation within households. We also examine the role of gender in agricultural development projects, market development and trade, institution building, natural resource management, and overall economic development and poverty reduction, and the relationships between gender and climate change. Evaluations of development and social safety net programs investigate the impact of different interventions on women’s and children’s nutrition and household relations, including on domestic violence.

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IFPRI’s work on women’s empowerment includes the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, the first comprehensive tool for measuring women’s empowerment and inclusion, now widely used and adapted for development programs, as well as several affiliated tools.IFPRI’s research on this topic is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 1, SDG 2, and SDG 5, and all the CGIAR Impact Areas, especially Gender Equality, Youth, and Social Inclusion.

To stay up to date on IFPRI’s gender work, please subscribe to the Gender Highlights newsletter.

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Publications

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Working Paper

Gendered drivers of varietal turnover: A qualitative assessment for improved teff and wheat varieties in Ethiopia

2024Yami, Mastewal; Cavicchioli, Martina; Abate, Gashaw T.; Kramer, Berber
Details

Gendered drivers of varietal turnover: A qualitative assessment for improved teff and wheat varieties in Ethiopia

Limited adoption of agricultural technologies such as improved crop varieties has been a challenge for increasing crop productivity in low-income countries. We study drivers of varietal turnover by conducting gender-disaggregated focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with teff and wheat farmers, and key informant interviews with public and private seed actors, in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. We find that attributes specific not only to production and sales, but also to processing and consumption (such as color, texture, moisture, and taste) are key drivers for varietal uptake among both men and women farmers. In relative terms, processing and consumption attributes are more important to women than men farmers. Gender and social status are usually linked to access to resources (such as inputs or information about newly released varieties) that could become an important driver of uptake. Women’s and men’s prior experiences with improved varieties also influence adoption. For instance, farmers that experience crop losses when using new varieties during a drought reportedly become more risk averse in future decisions to adopt new improved varieties. Overall, the findings imply the need to adopt seed development and marketing strategies that pay close attention to the preferences of both producers and consumers, such as considering the importance of consumption attributes (e.g., not altering local recipes) and encouraging farmers to first experiment with new varieties on parts of their plots before adopting at scale or providing a risk management tool (e.g., insurance) that can protect farmers from potential risks associated with new technologies.

Year published

2024

Authors

Yami, Mastewal; Cavicchioli, Martina; Abate, Gashaw T.; Kramer, Berber

Citation

Yami, Mastewal; Cavicchioli, Martina; Abate, Gashaw T.; and Kramer, Berber. 2024. Gendered drivers of varietal turnover: A qualitative assessment for improved teff and wheat varieties in Ethiopia. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2292. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Northern Africa; Gender; Social Inclusion; Teff; Wheat

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

2024Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.
Details

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women’s access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment. JEL Codes: C9, D13, J12, J16

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; and Recalde, María P. 2024. Experimental measures of intra-household resource control. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227(November 2024): 106705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705

Country/Region

Ghana; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Decision Making; Households; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705 Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Impacts of gender-inclusive extension approaches on farmer understanding and willingness to pay for bundled financial services

2024Timu, Anne G.; Manoti, Dismas; Shee, Apurba; You, Liangzhi
Details

Impacts of gender-inclusive extension approaches on farmer understanding and willingness to pay for bundled financial services

Building the resilience of smallholder farmers, and their ability to cope with the negative impacts of climate shocks can significantly improve the sustainability of agriculture as a reliable source of livelihood. While innovations such as index insurance and bundled financial instruments could enhance smallholder farmers’ climate resilience, their uptake, and use remain low, especially among women farmers. Based on experimental data from a risk contingent credit (RCC—an insurance bundled credit product) project in Kenya, we argue that employing inclusive extension approaches that address social inequities in information access and use could enhance gender equality in product understanding, a key determinant of uptake. We evaluate the gender differences of the impacts of conventional face-to-face, animated brochures, and video-based extension approaches on product understanding and willingness to pay (WTP) for RCC. We find that; (i) providing animated brochures to a random subset of farmers significantly improved their understanding and WTP for the product, (ii) the use of animated videos significantly increased product understanding, but it had weaker impacts on the farmers’ WTP, and (iii) the impact of animated brochures on product understanding was significantly larger among women farmers. This study underscores the importance of addressing social and cultural barriers to agricultural information access and use, and designing tailored extension approaches to support men and women in making informed decisions about climate risk management. From a policy perspective, we conclude that addressing these barriers could foster a socially fair, and a more sustainable and resilient agricultural sector for both men and women smallholder farmers.

Year published

2024

Authors

Timu, Anne G.; Manoti, Dismas; Shee, Apurba; You, Liangzhi

Citation

Timu, Anne G.; Manoti, Dismas; Shee, Apurba; You, Liangzhi. 2024. Impacts of gender-inclusive extension approaches on farmer understanding and willingness to pay for bundled financial services. Current Research in Environmental Sustainability 8(2024): 100268.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2024.100268

Country/Region

Kenya

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Agricultural Extension; Capacity Development; Climate Resilience; Gender Equity; Insurance; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2024.100268 Source record

Project

Climate Resilience

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

How men and women cope with weather-related agricultural production risk: A case study of cereal and tomato farmers in Haryana, India
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 22, 2024

How men and women cope with weather-related agricultural production risk: A case study of cereal and tomato farmers in Haryana, India

By Samyuktha Kannan and Berber Kramer

Addressing gender differences to build resilience.

Workshop: Coming together to leverage India’s national workfare program for resilient livelihoods for women
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 21, 2024

Workshop: Coming together to leverage India’s national workfare program for resilient livelihoods for women

By the Bhubaneshwar consortium

Ways to improve the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Africa Food Systems Forum Summit 2024: Advancing gender equality and nutrition for sustainable agriculture
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 19, 2024

Africa Food Systems Forum Summit 2024: Advancing gender equality and nutrition for sustainable agriculture

By Faith Gikunda

Building equity into food systems.

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Events

Building More Inclusive and Natural Resource-Secure Food Futures
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

December 12, 2024, 10:30 – 12:00 pm

Building More Inclusive and Natural Resource-Secure Food Futures

Also streaming on Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. Throughout her career, Ruth Meinzen-Dick has made pathbreaking contributions to natural resource management and gender equity, drawing from her deep engagement with communities […]

SPIR II RFSA Learning Event: Impact results workshops
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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December 9 to 10, 2024

SPIR II RFSA Learning Event: Impact results workshops

Please register (in-person or online) for each workshop you plan to attend. You can register for individual or multiple workshops. December 9, 2024 | 9:30am to 12:00pm (Africa/Addis_Ababa) | In-person and online December 9, 2024 | 1:00pm to 3:30pm (Africa/Addis_Ababa) | In-person and online December 10, 2024 | 9:30am to 12:45pm (Africa/Addis_Ababa) | In-person and […]

Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 Summit
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

September 2 to 6, 2024

Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 Summit

The Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 annual summit will be a timely opportunity to convene diverse stakeholders, including world leaders, investors, academia, farmers’ organizations, and the private sector, to spotlight innovations, technologies, best practices, business models, policy delivery mechanisms, and investments to accelerate food systems transformation in Africa and beyond, with youth and women at […]

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News

October 24, 2024 | In the News

At high level dialogue, Stakeholders Rally Support for Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture (National Update/Punch)

This article published by National Update (Nigeria) wrote about a recent high-level dialogue on the CGIAR HER+ initiative in Abuja held on October 9, 2024, that aimed to address barriers women face in Nigeria’s agrifood sector.

December 03, 2023 | Press Release

CGIAR and partners launch Innovation Sprint on Gender and Climate Action

December 3, 2023, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). CGIAR and partners have committed US$31 million over four years (2023-2027) to ensure that climate innovations in agrifood systems are designed to work for women and rolled out in ways that address underlying gender inequalities. Together with 20 partners, CGIAR launched the AIM for Climate Innovation Sprint on […]

July 11, 2023 | Press Release

Women key to crop success in low-income countries

This post is a slightly modified version of the original press release issued by the University of Edinburgh. Empowering women farmers in low and middle-income countries can lead to greater crop diversity helping to improve year-round supply of healthy foods, suggests a new article published in The Lancet Planetary Health by a group of authors including […]

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Our experts

Daniel Gilligan

Daniel Gilligan

Director, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI), Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Deanna Olney

Deanna Olney

Director, Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH), Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

David Spielman

David Spielman

Director, Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS), Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Muzna Alvi

Muzna Alvi

Research Fellow, Natural
Resources and Resilience

Mariam Dawoud

Mariam Dawoud

Program Manager, Development
Strategies and Governance

Ara Go

Ara Go

Senior Program Manager, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Rewa Misra

Rewa Misra

Program Head, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Jenny Smart

Jenny Smart

Senior Program Manager, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Amanda Wyatt

Amanda Wyatt

Senior Program Manager, Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

Ester Jimmy

Ester Jimmy

Research Associate, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Ning Ma

Ning Ma

Research Analyst, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Md. Redoy

Md. Redoy

Field Research Officer, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion