Gender Integration

Areas of Expertise

Gender Integration

Lutheran World Relief is committed to addressing constraints that inhibit gender equity in our programming as well as in the communities with whom we work.

When women and girls are empowered to fully engage in productive economic activity and decision-making at the household, community and government level, their contributions have the potential to grow their local economies exponentially. Without equitable access to resources and services, women and girls are limited in their ability to thrive and to contribute to the socioeconomic welfare of their families and communities.

Analyzing gender gaps

Lutheran World Relief conducts gender gap analyses to evaluate context-specific gender dynamics and establish strategies to close these gaps. Our projects:

Promote equitable household, organization, and enterprise-level decision-making
Recognize that men and women (young and old) are change agents in their communities
Integrate a gendered approach into our design, monitoring, evaluation and learning

Promoting Equitable Decision-Making

Although both men and women are actively engaged in agriculture in the developing world, women traditionally have had little influence in agriculture policies and practices. Lutheran World Relief works with producers to reduce barriers that limit rural women’s access to productive resources such as land, credit, inputs and services. Farmers are also taught to calculate women’s uncompensated contributions to agro-enterprises, allowing for better cost analysis. As a result, men are becoming more aware of how women contribute economically to farm operations, and women report that they more highly value their own contributions.

Gender in Design, Monitoring and Evaluation

Lutheran World Relief provides training to staff and implementing partners, so they are able to incorporate gender considerations into programming and organizational culture.

Since 2012, Lutheran World Relief has developed trainings and provided technical advising on gender integration through our long-term partnership with Cultural Practice, LLC, a women-owned small business working in four primary practice areas in international development: gender integration, monitoring and evaluation, agriculture and food security, and health.