GAP Description
The Gender and Agribusiness Project (GAP) is an activity of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at the University of Illinois with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Project members include faculty from the Colleges of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES); Commerce and Business Administration (CBA); Communications; and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations (ILIR).

Our goal is to improve the conditions of women's employment in agribusiness through documentation and dissemination of practices that contribute to worker productivity, stability, and satisfaction. Our strategy is to draw clear and detailed pictures of the best employment practices of a small number of multinational agribusiness companies operating in developing countries, to provide a realistic benchmark of what is possible.

In order to do this we:
  • create model partnership agreements with international agribusiness firms.
  • document company operations at sites selected by the company to represent their best practices in the employment of women.
  • synthesize the lessons learned from these cases into brief reports and discussion papers.
  • present these case studies and the lessons learned in professional and business conferences and publications.
  • maintain a web site which makes the cases available to trainers and researchers worldwide. The site also contains research tools, project reports and discussion of lessons learned, as well as hot links to other relevant sites.

To date, model partnerships have been created with these agribusiness companies:

  • Cargill, Zimbabwe, to explore women's employment in cotton ginning at various company work sites
  • Cargill, Sun Valley, Thailand, to examine employment in a fully-integrated poultry production system
  • Land O Lakes, Poland, to explore women's participation in production, processing, and distribution of dairy products.

Contact Information

Email:     gap@uiuc.edu

Address: Gender and Agribusiness Project - GAP, 320 International Studies Building, 910 South Fifth St. Champaign, IL 61820, tel. 217-333-5724, fax: 217-333-6270.
GAP Documents
*PDF demands more computer capacity but produces a better formatted copy. Some tables can only be viewed with PDF.

"All GAP material is copyrighted. Permission is given for quoting, printing, and using these materials, provided that credit is given for the source"
These publicaions were made possible through support provided by the Women in Development (G/WID), Global, U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Grant No. LIAS-C-00-98-00062. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development.