How Can Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy Support a Feminist Agenda in Africa? Challenges in Addressing Sexual Violence in Four Agricultural Colleges in Ethiopia

Recently the Canadian government, announced its new 'feminist international assistance policy' towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The core action of that policy focuses on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls as the most effective way to challenge poverty and inequality (Government of Canada, 2017). One of the policy's four key activities is to address sexual and gender-based violence, 'stepping up' a commitment to evidence-based decision making through better data collection and evaluation of gender equality. But what does better data collection and evaluation of gender equality mean? Taking a feminist reflexive stance, we "step back" to reflect on a preliminary analysis of a survey study on sexual violence involving close to 1 500 students enrolled in four Agricultural Technical Vocational Educational Training (ATVET) colleges in Ethiopia, and conducted as part of a Global Affairs Canada project, Agricultural Transformation Through Stronger Vocational Education (ATTSVE). In considering the significance of "better data collection" we advocate for the idea of "stepping aside" as researchers in favour of participatory approaches to working with data, and ultimately to support insider knowledge (what we term "stepping into") to drive the agenda for addressing sexual and gender-based violence in relation to the SDGs.