Gender to Anchor Policy LINK Work in Bangladesh
In a first, Policy LINK’s Bangladesh Agricultural Policy Activity has completed a gender analysis that integrates women’s empowerment into programming across its four policy areas, covering the seed sector, nutrition, food safety, and social safety nets. The report, based on interviews with 32 “key informants” in government and the private and nonprofit sectors, comes as Bangladesh seeks to boost women’s participation in agriculture-related policymaking.
Between 1999 and 2017, the number of females working in agriculture grew by 136 percent.
The push for greater representation, said Chuck Chopak, Policy LINK’s Acting Bangladesh Country Lead, owes, in part, to an exponential increase in the number of women powering the country’s agricultural labor force. In fact, between 1999 and 2017, the number of females working in agriculture grew by 136 percent—outpacing men by almost four-fold.
At the same time, the Policy LINK activity found that women’s outsized participation did not translate into representation in Bangladesh’s civil service, where much of the deliberation around agricultural policy, especially at the local level, has historically taken place. Among legislators, senior officials, and managers, women represent just 11 percent of civil servants, according to the report.
Bridging this gap will be a key focus of the Bangladesh Agricultural Policy Activity, which joined Policy LINK’s global portfolio of buy-in projects last year. Among the activity’s key partners will be the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, which oversees the country’s National Plan of Action for Nutrition, now in its second iteration.
Nutrition is one of four policy “pillars” addressed by the Policy LINK effort in Bangladesh. Among the activity’s cross-cutting recommendations are to engage women in the leadership of local institutions, encourage multi-sectoral and inter-ministerial coordination in gender programming, and broaden female farmers’ access to digital information sources.