How to Do Note: Designing Gender Transformative Approaches in the Context of Women’s Land and Resource Rights

Gender transformative approaches (GTAs) aim to challenge and change the underlying social norms, power dynamics,and systemic barriers perpetuating inequality between women and men. Unlike mainstream interventions that focus on symptoms without challenging root causes, GTAs actively confront discriminatory practices to achieve lasting change.

Despite growing recognition of GTAs, their application within resource tenure systems remains limited. To address this gap, IFAD launched the Global Initiative for Gender Transformative Approaches for Securing Women’s Land and Resource Rights in 2021. In partnership with CIFOR-ICRAF, IFPRI, and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, IFAD piloted the design, testing and adaptation of GTAs across six IFAD projects in countries where addressing gender dimensions was critical for project success.

Lessons from the initiative, which ran until 2024, inform this How to Do Note, which aims to facilitate wider adoption and scaling of GTAs for women’s land and resource rights. It complements the preceding How to Do Note on Securing Women’s Tenure Rights. Case studies from all six countries can be found under Securing Women’s Land and Resource Rights Through Gender Transformative Approaches: Insights from Six Countries.