User Guide to the G+ Product Profile Query Tool (G+ PP)
This is a decision-support tool for assessing the gender-responsiveness of potential or actual breeding
products (plant varieties and breeds of animals) for a defined segment of customers or users of the
product. Men and women often have different roles and responsibilities in farming and agro-value
chains, so they often need varieties that perform differently, requiring different traits in a new variety.
You can use this tool to find out if you already have enough information to assess a breeding product for
the customer segment of interest, or, if you don’t, the tool will identify precisely, what additional
information you will need to find. After identifying the relevant gender “gaps” that influence adoption
of plant varieties (or animal breeds) in the target customer segment, and gendered trait preferences,
this tool generates a gender impact score based on analyses of “do no harm” and “positive benefit” for
each trait of interest in a breeders’ product profile. The score summarizes the tool’s analysis of potential
advantages and disadvantages of an actual orfuture variety formen and women. A breeding team, made
up of plant breeders and social scientists, will use this tool to identify how a set of proposed traits will be
harmful or beneficial to men and women and the trade-offs between different breeding objectives that
this involves. The tool provides a questionnaire that requires answers in the form of expert judgments
that should be supplied jointly by a social scientist experienced in using gender analysis and a breeder
familiar with market-led breeding approaches. The G+ Product Profile Tool is meant to be used with the
G+ Customer Profile Tool.