The International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific Committee on Women has launched a major regional decadal study aimed at understanding and strengthening women’s participation and leadership in cooperatives across the Asia-Pacific region. The study, titled “Engendering Cooperative Data in the Asia-Pacific Region: Membership, Leadership and Institutional Enablers,” is being undertaken under the JCCU Gender Project with support from the Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union, Japan.
The initiative builds on earlier regional studies conducted in 2005 and 2015-16 and seeks to generate fresh evidence on how women progress from cooperative membership into leadership and decision-making positions. While women constitute a large share of cooperative members in many countries across the region, their representation in boards, management, and policy-making roles continues to remain uneven and often insufficiently documented.
According to ICA-AP, the new study is intended to bridge this information gap by creating a strong repository of gender-disaggregated data that can support advocacy, policy formulation, and institutional reforms within the cooperative sector. The study will not only examine participation figures but also explore the social, institutional, and organisational factors that influence women’s access to leadership opportunities.
A key feature of the initiative is its two-tier methodology. The study will gather information directly from primary cooperatives at the grassroots level while also collecting inputs from apex cooperative organisations at the national level. This approach is expected to provide a broader understanding of the pathways, barriers, and enabling mechanisms affecting women’s leadership journeys.
The research will also focus on how cooperative rules, workplace structures, and governance practices impact women’s continuity in leadership roles, including their ability to return after career or family-related interruptions. Organisers believe the findings will help cooperatives design more inclusive governance systems and improve representation across institutions.
Primary cooperatives across the Asia-Pacific region have been invited to participate in the survey and contribute field-level experiences that reflect grassroots realities. The survey can be completed in multiple sittings, with the final submission deadline set for June 1, 2026.
The findings of the study are scheduled to be presented at the Fourth Regional Conference on the Status of Women in Cooperatives in Asia-Pacific, to be held in Tagaytay in December 2026.
