Gender is a cross cutting issue in DPA 5-year strategic plan. DPA has gender equality policy in place and staff members could access to the document and understand how to implement it. Gender equality has mainstreamed into project implementation and organisational level. So the community and poor and vulnerable people could attain gender equality. DPA aims to empower women in leadership position and decision making process. To achieve this, the following are the project intervention that DPA has carried out relevant to the promotion of women in leadership and decision making:

• Capacity Building: DPA facilitated the selection of community gender focal person focal person. 50% of the focal persons are female. To build their capacity, DPA provided training courses and mentoring to them on gender and development, women in leadership, conflict resolution and facilitation skills and women rights. In addition, women and men who were affected by land grabbing case were trained and coached on advocacy strategies, business and human rights principle, FPIC, and related laws. So they could able to share and apply the gain knowledge to exercise their role as gender focal person and to claim for their rights especially in promoting gender equality and natural resource management;
• Networking and Dialogue: DPA supported community gender focal persons to build a stronger network among themselves who represent different target villages of DPA. The community gender focal person were met regularly to update the current progress they exercise their role as community gender focal person, the issues happened in their villages, proposed solutions and joint action plan within the support from commune or district women affairs. Many of them were engaged, particularly those affected from NRM issues, in dialogue between local authority, specialised departments, private companies and perpetrator to claim their rights and to request for solution on specific issues that affected their rights, livelihood and NRM. DPA is an active member and steering committee of Gender and Development Network (GAD-Net), an arena to advocate for women representation in politics and decision making;
• Promotion of women in leadership position: DPA encouraged women to engage in leadership and decision making position. A specific number or percentage of women was set since the designing phase. In practice, a specific quota for women was encouraged to discuss with community members in order to involve women in leadership position especially for the income generation and natural resource management. The number of women participation as AG leaders, AC leaders and community focal person increase while still remaining very limited in natural resource management.
• Support to women headed households and domestic violence family: DPA supported poor women headed households and women affected by ELCs/mining impacts and worked with 35 married couples who are poor and have faced significant domestic violence by involving them with livelihood and gender road map/gender family planning projects, in Preah Vihear, Kampong Thom, Stung Treng and Siem Reap provinces. They reported significant improvement in their family in relation to husband and wife power relation and livelihood.