Gender Mainstreaming in Ethiopian Agricultural Research System: Approaches, Progresses and Prospects

Abstract

This paper presents efforts, approaches and progresses of gender mainstreaming in Ethiopian Agricultural Research System from 2005 to 2015. The study used information sources, such as institutional assessment, annual performance and research progress reports, and field-level case studies. Efforts of gender mainstreaming in Ethiopian agricultural research system have been underway since mid-1990s to encourage gender-disaggregated data collection and analysis. However, formal gender mainstreaming efforts were commenced in 1999 while institutionalizing gender issues in the research system. Since 1999, various gender mainstreaming approaches, such as, establishment of a gender mainstreaming unit at the headquarters and gender focal units at research centers, sorting out of gender mainstreaming priorities, organizational assessment, development and implementation of a national gender mainstreaming strategy and action plan, implementation of capacity building for gender analysis, establishment of international research links, and enforcement of women affirmative actions at workplace, had been applied. Due to the efforts made and approaches used so far, researchers’ awareness and understanding towards the relevance of gender issue in the research system had improved. Hence, the developments of technologies that address different gender categories had been increasingly availability to the rural women. The generation of these technologies consecutively contributed for the improvement of the benefit of women from research outputs from 5% in 2005 to 31% in 2015. Despite the progresses, the integration of gender in the research stages is limited in addressing differentiated needs of gender categories due to inadequate availability of gender disaggregated data by the research commodity. Hence, as part of the gender mainstreaming efforts, gender disaggregated information should be generated and take while research planning and implementation is undertaken.

Keywords: Gender mainstreaming approaches, agricultural research