West Africa Gender and Market Initiative: Regional Partner Consultation
The RBD VAM team organized the regional workshop ‘Gender Analysis, Women’s Empowerment and Humanitarian Action’ held in Dakar 14-15 June 2016, as part of the 2015-2016 OFDA USAID-funded regional pilot initiative, Gender and Markets: Empowering Women in West African Food Markets. WFP seized the opportunity to share study findings for integrating gender analysis and women’s empowerment into market and other food security assessments to support gender equitable humanitarian interventions with a wide range of external participants. This was followed by an open discussion to engage participants. They were invited to share their experiences developing or working with gender-responsive data and analysis to inform programmes, and good practices and lessons learned.
The overall workshop objective was to bring together diverse actors from the region engaged in gender analysis to discuss and share good practices, lessons learned and steps forward using the WFP West Africa Gender and Market study as a starting point. The workshop was an opportunity for all participants to address gaps and risks, and identify response strategies to strengthen gender analysis for humanitarian action in West Africa. Specific objectives included:
- Provide an opportunity for partners in the region to share and learn from one another.
- Exchange and provide feedback on approaches to gender analysis and assessing women’s empowerment in different value chains or emergency settings.
- Collect and integrate participant feedback on WFP pilot study findings into final report for WFP Gender and Markets initiative.
- Document and distribute regional best practices and lessons learned, as well as key studies and data, from the region through a practical workshop report (to be included in the final Gender and Markets report).
- Create a network of partners engaged in gender analysis in the region to encourage future information- and data-sharing, and collaboration.