“Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls,” as stated in Goal 5 of the 2030 Agenda, is a fundamental requirement for sustainable development.

Yet while gender is central to rural development in Africa and Asia, little attention has been paid to women’s empowerment as a critical success factor.

However, the sustainable development agenda will only succeed if the discriminatory barriers that prevent women and girls (e.g. land rights, access to finance, digital divide) from realizing their full potential are also addressed.

So, let’s ask ourselves: Do we take these challenges into account and do our rural development projects reach, benefit AND empower women?

To really get there, there is still a lot for us as development practitioners to discover, create and develop.

Therefore, we must become courageous and respectful changemakers to contribute to empowerment of women in rural development projects.
The aim of this working group is to accompany and drive this process so that we move from gender sensitivity to a gender-transformative approach in our work.

The objective of gender-transformative approaches is to contribute to sustainable social and economic empowerment of women, by addressing social norms and structural differences that contribute to gender inequality.

Gender-transformative approaches in rural development have only gained momentum in the last few years, and we are committed to mainstreaming this subject through a vibrant GIZ Sector Network for Rural Development.

The working group on gender-transformative approaches was officially launched in late November 2020 and since then, the number of members and interested colleagues has been steadily increasing.

A participatory kick-off meeting in January 2021 encouraged us to become active in the following areas:

Our channel on MS Teams is the main point of contact for mutual exchange and information.

Our ambition is to open the working group to all colleagues who are interested in the topic and want to commit themselves to go one step further.

If you want to get involved, please join us on MS Teams or IDA. You can also use the MS Teams code: 682dx8f.

Let’s work together and do things differently. Together we can be and make the change that we want to see.

We are looking forward to your participation and contribution!

Speaker: Miriam Heidtmann

Co-Speaker: Felix Schilling
Tandem Partner: Theresa Jeremias
Task Force: Elke Matthaei, Joan Wanja Githinji, Laura Rondholz, Sara Jabril