Moving forward since the GCARD 2010 recommendation for action regarding the role of women in agriculture, GFAR has initiated a Global Partnership Program, the Gender in Agriculture Partnership (GAP) through its open and inclusive mechanism. The GAP is a movement mobilizing a community of practice with connections built with the CGIAR (Gender in Research, CRP2 and AWARD), FAO-ESW/Rural Institutions and People’s Empowerment (including joint work with IFPRI), the World Bank, UN Women and the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) and various institutions including ICRW, IDS and NGOs, notably DIMITRA. The Regional Fora have also naturally initiated a number of actions related to gender under the current GFAR programme of work, APAARI, FARA (& SSA-CP) and AARINENA taking the lead in this regard.

Those already engaged in the GAP including national systems via the Regional Fora, NGOs, centers of expertise, and donors, are addressing gender gaps identified in the FAO-SOFA report 2010-2011 Women in agriculture, the World Bank/FAO/IFAD Gender in Agriculture SourceBook-2009, WDR 2012, and elsewhere.

The GAP is setting in motion a dynamic coalition of stakeholders to empower women for  influencing institutions, policies, and the Agricultural Research for Development agenda with the objective of transforming and strengthening agricultural innovation to more directly benefit women farmers and householders, providing them adequate access to Knowledge, credit, sustainable and appropriate resources, in an enabling environment.

The Global Conference on Women in Agriculture (New Delhi, 13-15 March, 2012) will be a milestone bringing together key organizations, and others, taking stock of their work and triggering specific actions on the road to the GCARD 2012 and beyond. From the GCWA should emerge recommendations for solid steps further – including a clear call to potential funders of this  work to move beyond defining the problems identified by the above mentioned reports to addressing them with concrete actions and tools.