News: Children of Empowered Women Grew Taller

Care and USAID highlights dramatic drop in child malnutrition and provides an inside look at a program called SHOUHARDO that combined nutritional support with women’s empowerment initiatives to reduce child stunting, a key measure of malnutrition, by 28 percent in less than four years. That’s twice the rate of the average U.S. government-funded food aid project of its kind. The program was designed to reduce malnutrition among 2 million of the poorest people in Bangladesh. Researchers found that women who participated in empowerment interventions to help them fight sexual harassment, move about their communities more freely and gain a greater say in household decisions were less likely to have stunted children than women who received only direct nutrition interventions such as regular food rations. In other words, the children of empowered women actually grew taller.

Access the article here

Event: CONSULTATION ON USAID IMPLEMENTATION OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL ACTION PLAN ON WOMEN, PEACE, AND SECURITY

May 16, 2012
2:30pm to 4:00pm
USAID Information Center, Mezzanine Level
Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
For questions, please contact Amber Ussery at aussery@usaid.gov
Federal Triangle Metro Stop. Paid public parking available.
Please allow ample time for security check. Photo ID is required.
No R.S.V.P. required

News: In Kenya, Survey of Female Farmers Uncovers Challenges

A World Bank survey in Kenya that seeks women’s input and data to inform agricultural policy shows that female farmers have limited access to water, energy and finance, and few women own property they can use as collateral for loans. As agriculture becomes ‘feminized’ and men abandon farms to work in cities, policies must change to meet women’s needs. Read more here: http://go.worldbank.org/ETKDJPYK70

Upcoming Publication: Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies

An upcoming report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies will evaluate the role of adolescent girls in the developing world and identify opportunities for national governments and bilateral donors to equip these girls to be agents of economic and social change. This report serves as the next volume of the Girls Count series. Girls Count provides some of the first critical research specifically focused on adolescent girls in the developing world.  It demonstrates how providing support to girls ages 10-18 dramatically improves their lives – and also results in significant benefits for society as a whole.  A launch event for this publication is scheduled for early October in the United Kingdom, read more here.

News: USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah announced the establishment of USAID’s new Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

The Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade’s (EGAT) Women in Development Office is being transformed into a new Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, focused on building partnerships that can deliver results. This office will also give greater support to female entrepreneurship, scale up initiatives designed to enhance women’s ownership of key assets like land and housing, and work to reduce gender gaps in access to new technology and infrastructure. Carla Koppell is the new Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Office. The complete speech is available at http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/ps110426.html.

Event & Webcast: Renewing IDB’s commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment

Date: 07 Apr 2011

Time: 9:30 AM

Location: Washington DC, United States

Venue: IDB Auditorium/EVICC, 1330 New York Avenue, N.W.

Time: 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.*

Keynote Speaker: Michelle Bachelet, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director for UN Women

Guest Speaker: Vanda Pignato, Secretary of Social Inclusion and First Lady of El Salvador

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will hold a launch event for the IDB’s Policy on Gender Equality and Gender Action Plan 2011-2012 with keynote speaker Michelle Bachelet, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director for UN Women, and guest speaker, Vanda Pignato, Secretary of Social Inclusion and First Lady of El Salvador. IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno will deliver the opening remarks. The event will also feature a panel with IDB management on promising IDB initiatives to foster gender equality.

For a detailed agenda, please click on the documents link.

The event is open to the public. Interpretation services in Spanish and English will be provided.

CLICK HERE FOR THE SPANISH LANGUAGE WEBCAST

If you are interested in attending the event, please click on the “register” link and fill out the registration form for the event.

Publication: A Silent ‘Revolution’? Women’s Empowerment in Rural Tamil Nadu

Staffan Lindberg, , Venkatesh B athreya, , R Vidyasagar , Goran Djurfeldt , A Rajagopal

One of the most significant social changes over the past 25 years in Tamil Nadu is the entry of women into the local political bodies at the village and village union levels through the 33% reservation system. Simultaneously, women are now, to a significant extent, organised in self-help groups. Through these about one-fourth of the households can access loans for small entrepreneurship or, rather more frequently, for smaller emergency/consumption loans. There has also been increased participation of women in the non-agricultural labour market and the emergence in Tamil Nadu of a rudimentary “barefoot” welfare state. In this article we report from a 25-year panel study of 213 agrarian households in six villages in Karur and Tiruchirapalli districts. View Full Article

 

Event (DC): Renewing the IDB’s commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment

The Inter-American Development Bank would like to invite you to join IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno in a launch event for the IDB’s Policy on Gender Equality and Gender Action Plan.

Keynote Speaker: Michelle Bachelet

United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director for UN Women

Guest Speaker: Vanda Pignato

Secretary of Social Inclusion and First Lady of El Salvador

Date: April 7, 2011

8:30am-12:30pm

Enrique Iglesias Conference Center

IDB Headquarters

1330 New York Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20577, USA

For more information and to register for the event please click on the link below:

http://events.iadb.org/calendar/eventDetail.aspx?lang=en&id=2836&

The event is open to the public. Space is limited.  Please register if you want to attend. Interpretation services in Spanish and English will be provided. The webcast of the event will also be available in Spanish.

Feel free to disseminate this invitation to any other contacts that might be interested in attending.

News: ALINe working with the World Food Programme’s Purchase for Progress initiative to further women’s economic empowerment

ALINe is supporting the World Food Programme (WFP) in the development of the Purchase for Progress (P4P) global gender strategy. Through the P4P initiative, WFP is using its purchasing power to offer smallholder farmers opportunities to access agricultural markets, become competitive players in those markets and thus improve their livelihoods. P4P provides a particularly appropriate vehicle to economically empower female smallholder farmers, but the challenge however, remains how to most effectively achieve this goal.

WFP has identified 8 core activities that it believes to be particularly effective and beginning February 2011, ALINe will provide P4P with specific guidance on how these suggested activities can be adapted to account for local and cultural differences in the 21 pilot countries where P4P is currently being implemented and build towards a P4P global strategy. ALINe will also undertake fieldwork in Ethiopia, Mali and Guatemala, to ‘ground truth’ and contextualise key assumptions, focusing on the operational aspects of the strategy and on the impact of P4P on women’s empowerment and access to markets. This work will feed into a broader scope of work that the WFP Gender Service has commissioned the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) BRIDGE Programme to carry out on its behalf, to advise on how to mainstream gender across key dimensions of WFP’s work at field level and how to build capacity of WFP staff to ensure the gender mainstreaming is effective.

Call for Articles: Monday Developments

Scheduled article topics in our
March issue include (but are not limited to):

• QDDR/PPD analysis: How will the recent U.S government reviews affect NGOs?
• Gender and women’s empowerment: What can be done to level the playing field?
• A review of the new Congress: Will the new Congressional landscape help or hinder foreign assistance?

Monday Developments is the premiere forum for discussions of international development and humanitarian relief. It features the latest issues, trends, controversies and best practices in the development and humanitarian assistance arena. Monday Developments is read nationally and internationally by development professionals, NGOs, volunteer organizations, students and academics, contractors, think tanks, the World Bank, the United Nations, USAID and other offices within the U.S. government.

Prior to submission, interested contributors should contact the managing editor, Chad Brobst, at cbrobst@interaction.org to discuss their ideas, submit a summary for approval and receive a copy of our writer guidelines. The magazine’s complete 2011 Editorial Calendar can be viewed here.