Case study: Making the case for gender-responsive adaptation planning in Uruguay: The importance of sex-disaggregated data

The design, implementation and analysis phases of this case study drew on the expertise of various divisions at Uruguay’s Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries, including the Specialized Gender Commission, the Agricultural Sustainability and Climate Change Unit, the Agricultural Statistics Division, the Rural Development Division, and the Agricultural Policy and Programming Office.

The target population of this study was women, aged 18 to 70 years old, from dairy, livestock, and horticulture production farms that were either family farms or medium-sized farms, and who lived on or up to 50 kilometers from their farms. The team prioritized the voices of women in the study, as previous national agriculture sector climate change adaptation surveys had not exceeded 25 percent female participation.

For this case study, the team reviewed methodologies from other surveys on gender and adaptation in the agriculture sectors. The review found that comparing women’s and men’s knowledge from a single questionnaire can lead to unreliable results and conclusions as this approach neither considers the different contexts in which women and men live and work, nor the value chains in which they may participate.