Engendering the RSPO standards for more gender equality and better performance on smallholder oil plantations

The purpose of the project is to ensure that female and male small-scale producers in Southeast Asia have more sustainable production practices and increased incomes. In addition, this project aims to generate support via the responsible and sustainable policies and practices of leading agri-businesses and financial institutions, the provision of effective support services by multi-stakeholder initiatives, as well as improved legislation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member states. The project includes work on sustainable palm oil as one example to be used by ASEAN, governments and companies for gender transformative and responsible agribusiness investments. In this way, Oxfam seeks to support, on the one hand, its role in the palm oil value chain and in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). On the other hand, it seeks to learn from experiences, tools and methodologies to address gender and sustainability issues in one value chain, and then apply the lessons learnt to other value chains and inform other stakeholders in Southeast Asia.