Gender transformative approaches in pastoral areas: A review of current trends and key issues

Gender transformative approaches (GTAs) engage with, and address deeply embedded structural inequities. While pastoral systems share certain features with other livelihood systems, their unique characteristics require that GTAs are tailored or adapted to address particular perennial challenges. Tailoring GTAs is also essential to ensure that interventions do not unintentionally reproduce inequalities through exclusion.

We reviewed primary and secondary sources to understand GTAs in pastoral contexts in SPARC countries in Africa. The data sources provide insights on the primary foci of GTAs, target groups, impacts, mechanisms used to implement GTAs and, lastly, metrics used to assess impact. We used the “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform” (RBET) framework to evaluate project level data and identify projects that had explicit transformative aims and impacts. A total of 18 interventions were included, five of which targeted adolescents.