Programme Overview
The overarching goal of the JP RWEE is to secure rural women’s livelihoods, rights and resilience in the context of sustainable development, Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The programme addresses structural barriers to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment through holistic, integrated interventions that create an enabling environment for systemic, sustainable and transformative change, while advancing rural women’s rights.
A defining feature of the JP RWEE is its strong joint programme approach. A fully joint programme, operating under a unified governance, financing and results framework, with funding managed through the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office (MPTFO), and common monitoring framework. In most contexts, the programme also works with the same group of participants across interventions, ensuring coherence, efficiency and collective impact across partners.
The JP RWEE is closely aligned with national priorities and policies and is implemented in partnership with national and local governments, local NGOs, civil society, and private sector actors. The programme is structured around four interrelated outcome areas, reinforcing its integrated and collaborative design.
Outcome 1
Improved food security and nutrition for rural women and their households
This outcome aims to improve the food security and nutrition of rural women and their families, which is key for building resilience and achieving economic empowerment, as well as contributing to equitable and sustainable food systems.
Examples of programme activities include:
- Supporting women’s access to climate resilient inputs for agricultural production
- Improving food handling, processing and storage through innovative technologies
- Strengthening capacities in climate resilient and nature based agricultural practices, with a focus on indigenous knowledge
- Training on gender sensitive nutrition and sustainable consumption
- Promoting women’s equitable access and control over productive resources
Outcome 2
Increase rural women’s income, decent work and economic autonomy
This outcome focuses on developing women’s entrepreneurship skills, working with women’s groups to support women to progress beyond the production stage to develop links to value addition and markets, including high end ventures and rural to urban linkages. This includes engaging with key actors such as buyers, suppliers and financial service providers.
Activities include:
- Strengthening women’s entrepreneurship skills
- Training in processing, product diversification, transformation and value addition
- Strengthening links to markets and engaging with value chain actors for gender responsive procurement and gender responsive market chain development
- Promoting decent work and access to social protection for women
Outcome 3
Increase rural women’s voice and agency for full and equal participation and leadership
Under this outcome, women’s leadership skills are strengthened and actions to bring about equitable gender relations are supported using proven household and community methodologies that address discriminatory social and customary norms.
Activities include:
- Strengthening the capacity of women to organize and participate in cooperatives and producer organizations with gender equitable and inclusive governance
- Leadership training and mentoring for women to take up leadership roles
- Supporting the formalization of women’s groups for legal recognition
- Community dialogue and male engagement to promote changes in gender discriminatory social norms and attitudes
Outcome 4
Strengthen gender-responsive legal frameworks, policies and institutions
Outcome 4 focuses on the national level and the need to have a gender-responsive policy environment to achieve long term systemic change and advance women’s economic empowerment. The programme works closely with Ministries of Agriculture and Women’s Affairs.
Activities include:
- Support for the analysis and development of gender responsive agricultural and rural development policies, strategies and plans
- Capacity building and strengthening of government to use gender-responsive budgeting
- Promoting the use of tools and data to track progress in the economic empowerment of rural women, such as the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index
- Raising awareness within communities on women’s rights, including land rights
- Strengthening women’s advocacy platforms and engagement with policy dialogues
Cross-cutting lenses
A gender transformative lens is applied across programme interventions to tackle the root causes of gender inequality and bring about gender transformative change. All activities are implemented from a social norm change perspective. Gender transformative approaches, such as the Gender Action Learning System and Dimitra Clubs are used to engage men as agents of change.
The programme aims to build the resilience of women and their families, and to address key challenges in the promotion of rural women’s economic empowerment. A social, economic, environmental and climate resilience lens is applied across interventions to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance rural women’s resilience and ability to mitigate and adapt to shocks and stresses to their livelihood systems.