Making Better Links: Gender Mainstreaming in Value Chain Development

Location:World Bank, MC 5 - 100, Washington, DC, USA.
Dr. Linda Catherine Mayoux, International Consultant, Poverty, Gender, Enterprise Development and Impact Assessment
Background: Value Chain Analysis (VCA) is now increasingly used as a methodology for identifying effective strategies for pro-poor growth through enabling the upgrading and development of value chains. Gender mainstreaming in VCA, as well as necessary to address gender discrimination, is likely to encourage creative thinking about a range of different potential strategies for upgrading of the value chain as a whole and also protecting the interests of those most vulnerable at specific stages within it. This presentation discusses a methodology and process for mainstreaming gender in VCA, including innovative participatory tools and processes which can enable the analysis itself to promote better communications and practice between stakeholders.
About the presenter: Dr. Linda Mayoux is an international consultant working on poverty, gender, enterprise development and impact assessment. Her consultancy work since 1997 has included empowerment analysis and strategies, gender mainstreaming and poverty focus in micro-finance, ethical/fair trade, training, enabling environments and integrated participatory methodologies for impact assessment and research. She has worked on these issues for DFID, UNIFEM, ILO, USAID, SDC, Aga Khan Foundation and many NGOs in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. She also has twenty years of academic research experience on gender and poverty issues based at Cambridge, Open University and Glasgow University in UK. Her main current focus is the development of the WEMAN project with Oxfam Novib and IFAD and other donors (Women's Economic Empowerment Mainstreaming and Networking for Gender Justice in Economic Development) as a continuation of her work on Participatory Action Learning Systems, gender and micro-finance, value chain development and local economic development.
This is the first seminar the World Bank is hosting in a joint seminar series with IFPRI and IFAD. Boxed lunches will be provided. To register, please email Ms. Sarian A. Akibo-Betts at: Sakibobetts@worldbank.org.