The Global Initiative for Gender Transformative Approaches aims to enhance women’s land rights by integrating gender transformative strategies into IFAD’s rural development interventions. This initiative focused on sharing insights to improve policies, tools, and practices in Bangladesh and other programme countries.
In Bangladesh, Bonhishikha served as the local consultant with CIFOR-ICRAF, leading and coordinating a study for the Char Development and Settlement Project (CDSP). The Gender Analysis included a socio-legal review of current processes and a qualitative assessment of community members in the Noakhali programme areas. A major focus of the analysis was to address the intergenerational impact of equal land titling of khas lands and understand how this affects women’s land and resource rights in the char areas and the surrounding enabling environment. Bonhishikha also developed a toolkit on using the Gender Transformative Approach, co-created with the project team to incorporate a more feminist perspective into their programme design.
What we found:
The gender analysis in Bangladesh revealed that while dual-titling alone was insufficient to change social attitudes regarding women’s land control and access, additional training embedded in long-term, intersectoral efforts within a geographic area contributed to shifts in these attitudes. Across six countries, the initiative highlighted the necessity of localised and focused gender analysis to collaboratively develop gender-transformative approaches.