Organizational Change

The GCARD Road Map establishes an inclusive, rolloing process of reform and capacity development that aims to mobilize the full power of agricultural knowledge and innovation towards meeting agriculture and food-related development needs. It proposes a six-point plan for transforming agricultural research for development around the world, requiring actions from all those involved in the generation, access and use of agricultural knowledge.

Empowerment just happened. No one, as he planned economic development for the developing countries, intended to empower women. Indeed, leading theorists like Walt Rostow and Edward Banfield, had a negative view of women, assuming their support for traditional values and religion would impede progress. These attitudes were so embedded in US society that on many university campuses women professors, from chemists to psychologists, were forced into Home Economics Departments (Nerad 1998). In the 1960s, women in the United States began to rebel against their socially constructed roles and demanded passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. “Uppity Women Unite” was our motto. Together we altered policies in the Congress and help shift the development paradigm to include women.

Despite the rhetorical support in many governmental and non-governmental organizations and projects, progressive policies for gender equality are frequently not implemented or effective. Due to the traditional domination by men in organizations engaged in agriculture and natural resource management, these sectors seem particularly resistant to gender initiatives, resulting in low numbers and levels of female staff, lack of activities addressing needs of rural women, low budgets for women-related activities, unbalanced decision making both within the agencies themselves and within the rural communities where activities are undertaken, and organizational cultures that disadvantage women staff.

This document is an overview of a three-day workshop organised by Save the Children-Sweden in Kathmandu in March 2004 on 'strengthening partnership with men and boys to promote gender equality and end violence against girls and boys'.

This resource manual is available to help prepare and facilitate training workshops for young women on a variety of issues, including leadership, economic justice, HIV and AIDS, human rights, and peace.