SASI-Lunchbreak Part 15: Advancing Gender-Responsive Due Diligence in Agricultural Supply Chains
The International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF) 2026, initiated by the United Nations, calls our attention to the vital role women take on in global agricultural supply chains, food security, nutrition and economic resilience. At the same time, the challenges, inequalities and structural barriers they continue to face keep being overlooked. A gender-responsive due diligence approach can therefore be a powerful tool to strengthen women’s participation, opportunities, and position in agricultural supply chains.
Dear friends of the Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains Initiative (SASI),
We warmly invite you to the next SASI Lunchbreak “Advancing Gender-Responsive Due Diligence in Agricultural Supply Chains” on Thursday, 5th November 2026, from 13:00 to 14:00 pm CET.
The International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF) 2026, initiated by the United Nations, calls our attention to the vital role women take on in global agricultural supply chains, food security, nutrition and economic resilience. At the same time, the challenges, inequalities and structural barriers they continue to face keep being overlooked. A gender-responsive due diligence approach can therefore be a powerful tool to strengthen women’s participation, opportunities, and position in agricultural supply chains.
However, gender-responsive due diligence is not only relevant to producers in agricultural supply chains; it also bears the potential to benefit businesses. For example, it can strengthen them in terms of risk management and producer relationships, thereby rendering them more resilient overall.
Together with our experts, we will discuss what gender-responsive due diligence can look like in practice, how gender-specific risks can be identified and addressed along agricultural supply chains as well as the benefits businesses can gain from these processes.
We are pleased to welcome Anna Falth, Global Head of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and the Global Supply Chain Coalition (GSCC) at UN WOMEN, Esther Muhia, Founder of the Community Initiative for Change and Development (CIFCAD) in Kenya as well as Mimie Ravaroson, Sustainability Program Manager at Symrise.
Anna Falth is the Global Head of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and Global Supply Chain Coalition (GSCC). As an economist, Anna has more than 20 years of experience as an economic advisor within the UN system, including United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Economic Analyst), United Nations-Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Development Programme (Poverty Advisor) and UN Women (Economics Specialist, Manager of Empower Women, WeLearn and EQUALS, Senior Economic Advisor). She has an MSc in Economics from Lund University, Sweden, and a Master’s in law and Economics from Hamburg University, Germany.
Esther Muhia is the Founder of CIFCAD Kenya, an organisation that works across agricultural value chains to co-create programmes with communities, shift harmful social norms, and build resilience among women and other historically excluded groups. Her work is grounded in intersectionality, recognising that exclusion is shaped by overlapping realities, and that effective programme design must respond to all of them.
Esther was contracted by the Ethical Trading Initiative (UK) to co-design the GAIA (Gender Action in Agriculture) principles, which address and mitigate GBV risks in supply chains, and developed the Multi-Stakeholder Platform Framework adopted by the Tea Board of Kenya in 2025 to tackle GBV in the tea sector.
Mimie Ravaroson is Sustainability Program Manager at Symrise, where she leads strategic sustainability initiatives focused on responsible sourcing, farmer livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, and community development in four regions. With extensive experience working alongside agricultural communities in Madagascar, she specializes in designing and implementing impact-driven programs that connect sustainability commitments with measurable results on the ground. Through partnerships with farmers, NGOs, and industry stakeholders, she helps drive long-term resilience across natural ingredient supply chains.
The event will be held in English.
In our series of events, we will show that implementing due diligence is feasible for everyone. With our expertise, we want to actively support you in the implementation. On the one hand, we will present various practice-oriented tools and guidelines with a focus on the agricultural and food sector. On the other hand, we keep an eye on ongoing EU legislative processes and international discussions for you. It is also indispensable to take the perspective of the people and companies in the partner countries. We want to include them through our cooperation on the ground. The SASI Lunchbreak is a regular format offered online as a digital event on the first Thursday of every other month.
For questions and further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at sasi@giz.de.
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