D6.5 - European Policy Forum exploitation plan

Deliverable 6.5 presents the Exploitation Plan of the European Policy Forum for Women-Led Innovation in farming and rural areas, the strategic policy interface established within the GRASS CEILING project to drive institutional awareness, knowledge transfer, and early uptake of project results on gender-responsive innovation in agriculture and rural development.

Throughout the project, the Forum has acted as a key science–policy interface, engaging policymakers, researchers, women innovators, EU institutions and civil society actors, and ensuring that the project’s findings and tools have been tested, validated, and shared widely across governance levels. This deliverable outlines how the results, methods, and community built through the Forum will continue to generate value after the project ends.

The Forum emerged as a central channel for early policy uptake, strategically accompanying the development of GRASS CEILING’s main policy outputs, including the comprehensive set of recommendations for inclusive transition policies and the policy toolkit designed to guide gender-responsive policymaking. Through a sequence of carefully organised events, webinars, dialogues, expert interviews, workshops, and consultation activities, the Forum created opportunities for stakeholders from more than 26 countries to interact with the project’s evidence, co-shape its policy proposals, and provide feedback based on institutional realities. These exchanges ensured that both the recommendations and the toolkit respond to actual policy needs and are aligned with upcoming European policy milestones, such as the post-2027 CAP, the Gender Equality Strategy beyond 2025, the Vision for Agriculture and Food 2040, and the forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework.

The exploitation strategy builds on three Key Exploitable Results (KERs) that were identified as the most mature and impactful outcomes of the Forum’s work. The first (KER 1) is the set of policy recommendations compiled in Deliverable 5.1, which offer a forward-looking and evidence-based roadmap for advancing gender equality in rural areas and which have been strengthened through a wide participatory process. The second (KER 2) is the Policy Toolkit, consisting of a demonstrator prototype with three instruments—the gender-proofing template, the benchmarking tool with a training dimension, and the data strategy behind the Rural Women Innovation Compass—which has undergone extensive review by Forum members, EU experts, researchers, and managing authorities. The third (KER 3) is the Forum’s own community, which continues beyond the project through its integration into the Rural Pact Community Group on Women in Rural Areas, providing a permanent, EU-level space for cooperation, visibility, and the continued mobilisation of actors committed to gender-inclusive rural innovation.