Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and skills development for poverty reduction – do rural women benefit?

This paper discusses technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as well as skills development in rural areas, mainly pertaining to agriculture and related activities and explores existing gender differences. TVET has suffered from a focus on basic, and especially primary education, which led to the neglect of post-basic education and training and their non-inclusion in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in training and skills development because of increased evidence that a minimalist approach to microfinance for poverty reduction and enterprise development did not lead to sustainable growth. The paper argues that many training interventions do not cater for the specific needs of women who are under-represented in formal training programmes and often directed towards typical female occupations. It reviews vocational and skills training in several IFAD supported programmes and explores how these target the poor and most vulnerable and to what extend gender differences in training provision, methodology, training content and transition to labour markets have been taken into account.