How Selection Criteria and Preconditions Potentially Disadvantage Farming Women

Productive matching grants schemes are an important tool to modernize agricultural production. The World Bank has been supporting countries at the European Union (EU) pre-accession stage to increase their capacity and ability to administer grants according to the EU Pre-Accession Assistance for Rural Development (IPARD) principles and guidelines. Given its experience with matching grants and gender-inclusive approaches in productive investments in agriculture, the World Bank has the ability to provide guidance to sector institutions on how to make their grant targeting and selection processes more inclusive of women farmers beyond current selection criteria. This policy brief is based on the 2020 assessment Gender inclusion in productive investments in the Western Balkans, which analyzed World Bank-supported projects in Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro that focused on building farmer and institutional capacity for European Union pre-accession supported productive grants.