There were three distinct phases to the project, each building on the preceding phase: a literature review, a review of practice and fieldwork.

The literature review highlighted common challenges women face internationally in accessing and applying appropriate training for rural livelihoods. Based on these findings, the review of practice examined the strategies past projects used to address these challenges, analysing a broad cross-section of evaluations of projects conducted by aid agencies such as the World Bank, the FAO, USAID and Danida that delivered training for rural women. The review explored common challenges associated with agricultural and enterprise training for women smallholders, and drew out methods of addressing them that have proved successful in different contexts and on different continents.

Finally, to improve our understanding of how training interacted with the various other factors in play, fieldwork was undertaken in four projects across two countries, India and Ghana. Each region and project was selected on the basis of the findings from the literature review and the review of practice, scoping visits by the research team and by the fact that the project could provide evaluation data on the successes and learning points from their agricultural extension work with women.

Further details on each phase of the project can be found in the final report or for an overview of the key findings, see the summary report.