In Bangladesh, FAO has recently partnered with USAID-funded programme Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES) to support agricultural development organizations in ensuring that their rural advisory services reach women farmers and address their needs.  FAO’s collaboration with INGENAES is in the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between FAO and the University of Illinois.

Since March 2016, a total of five (5) rural advisory services organizations from Bangladesh participated in self-assessments using the new FAO Gender and Rural Advisory Services Assessment Tool (GRAST). The analysis enabled the organizations to identify strengths and weaknesses in their service provision from a gender perspective.

As part of its efforts to promote greater gender-sensitivity in rural advisory services, FAO developed the GRAST. The tool is designed to support organizations in assessing the gender-sensitivity of their rural advisory services at the enabling environment, organizational, and individual levels, and can be used for both external programme evaluations and internal self-assessments. The GRAST helps to identify the aspects of the programmes that work well for rural women, as well as aspects that need improvement.

Innovative good practices are highlighted through the GRAST, and are systematically incorporated in FAO’s capacity development and policy support materials. 

As in many developing countries, women in Bangladesh make up a large portion of the agricultural labour force, and yet, they continue to have less access than men to rural advisory services due to their limited mobility, heavy domestic work burdens, and cultural norms that discourage them from working with male extension staff. Improving women and men farmers’ access to relevant agricultural information, techniques and technologies through rural advisory services is the key to increasing agricultural productivity and reducing poverty in rural areas.

In Bangladesh, the GRAST has been implemented by several organizations: Five (5) national and international organizations carried out self-assessments of the gender-sensitivity of their policies and practices using the organizational module of the GRAST; Bangladesh Agricultural University applied the “Enabling Environment Module” of the tool, and the Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID) used the “Individual Level Module’’ in conducting interviews with staff members and clients of participating organizations.

Organizations reported that the tool helped them to understand what elements of their programmes are gender-sensitive, and which ones need refinement to better address the needs and priorities of rural women. Extension clients also shared their experiences with the organizations’ service provision, which the organizations can use to improve the gender-sensitivity of their services. The GRAST also helped foster discussions within organizations on how gender influences service provision and the organizational culture.

Voices from the field: “The tool allowed us to reflect on current gender-sensitive policies and practices and the degree to which these were operationalized or not … [and] allowed us to consider internal organizational factors that support gender sensitive programming”- RAS organization in Bangladesh