Ifaa Gender Analysis Report

As a continuation of the previous Development Food Security Activity, the CRS-implemented Ifaa (meaning “light” in Afaan Oromo) activity is a five-year Resilience Food Security Activity program in Ethiopia supported by the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance with the goal of enabling vulnerable communities in the East Hararghe Zone of Ethiopia’s Oromia region to reduce their poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity.

The Ifaa activity addresses key gender barriers that impact the achievement of project objectives and, per requirements of the USAID Automated Directives System (ADS) 201.3.2.9, ADS 205, and Food for Peace (FFP), CRS hired a research team to undertake a project-level gender analysis to inform the Ifaa project gender strategy. The gender analysis aligns with the USAID Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy (2012), U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to GBV (2016), the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment (WEEE) Act (2018), and the United States National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.

The gender analysis uses USAID’s ADS 205 gender analysis domains as the analytical framework and seeks to address the cross-cutting themes of gender-based violence. This gender analysis employed an appreciative, qualitative and participatory methodology to answer the key research questions. In totally the gender analysis (GA) team conducted 48 participatory group discussions speaking with 303 women and 228 men. In addition, the GA team conducted an additional 130 in-depth interviews (49 percent of which were women).