Will proposed development projects have the effects intended? Who will benefit, and who will not? What side-effects are likely? These are just some of the questions behind this new methodological approach for use in planning and assessing product designs.;The authors argue that gender impact assessment is an appropriate way to estimate the expected impact of an intervention, such as a development project, on women; and how the specific interests and needs of various categories of women will be affected. The book describes how development projects can have either positive or negative effects on the division of labour, and access to and control over allocation of resources, benefits, and decision-making in a society. It recognises that different groups of women (farmers and non-farmers, rich and poor, and so forth) have different interests; and that the interest of women cited in a proposed project or programme must be reflected in the design of activities and institutional linkage, so that intentions become reality.;The book concludes that it is essential that gender differences are explored throughout the planning phase, since projects are unlikely to respond to women's needs, and may even have negative consequences for women, if these issues are not adequately addressed before implementation of policies or project work.;The book presents three case studies from Burkina Faso, India and Bolivia in which this method was used, plus an introduction to the methodology, conclusions regarding its use, and the lessons to be learned from the studies.

Between 1970 and 2005, Bolivia lived through military coups, democracy and dictatorship. It suffered discontinuity, erratic political change, peasant and indigenous upheavals. It is in this context that we find the continuity of non-governmental organisations like CIPCA (Centre for Research and Promotion of the Peasantry), which contributed, among other actors, to the dawning, in 2006, of a new political era in which people who had been excluded since colonial times reached positions of formal State power. The primary aim of this book is to present the history of one particular NGO as part of the history of the social movements and the NGOs in Bolivia (and Latin America). Between 1970 and 1985 CIPCA carried out its rural development activities in an informal setting of a group of friends and against a background of military dictatorships, with the main objective of restoring the validity of democratic institutions. Once democracy was restored, in 1982, and CIPCA had become a formal institution, it had to adjust its objectives. Between 1985 and 2006 activities were carried out in an atmosphere of political democracy, in which economic exclusion of the peasantry and the indigenous population was nonetheless still present. This books systematisation of 35 years of (CIPCA) history offers the reader a reference that might serve to deepen reflections on rural development themes that are still matters of debate today.