Hurting or helping? Why we need gender and food systems research
We are making progress on gender equality in food systems, but tough new questions on potential trade-offs and backlashes demand more investment into gender research. Read more.
|
|
|
Gender transformative change critical for nurturing an equitable rice sector in Africa
Women’s participation and roles in agri-food systems may vary across regions, but the reality remains the same: women are central to the sustainable development of agri-food systems. Read more.
|
|
|
Top 10 reads on gender and value chains
A burgeoning body of literature has begun investigating the gendered dynamics of the increasingly commercialized and globalized agricultural production and food systems. Read more.
|
|
|
New CGIAR GENDER Platform grants awarded
Three new projects will integrate women’s empowerment and nutrition into CGIAR and partners’ investments, while four other projects will develop cutting-edge methods and tools for high-quality gender research in food systems.
|
|
|
Cultivating Equality 2021 Conference: Registration now open
Do you want to be part of conversations that put gender equality at the heart of food systems transformation?
Join us at Cultivating Equality: Advancing Gender Research in Agriculture and Food Systems, to be held online October 12-15, 2021!
Registration for this free, virtual event is now open.
|
|
|
NEW: GENDER evidence explainers
|
|
Building farmers’ resilience to climate change means addressing gender inequalities
Women need to be supported to adopt climate adaptation and mitigation strategies if we are to stay within the 2°C target for warming. Read more.
|
|
|
Exploring how climate change interacts with gender and inequity to affect nutrition
The climate crisis is provoking increases of malnutrition, leaving some people more vulnerable because of their gender, ethnicity and more. How to right the wrongs? Read more.
|
|
|
Understanding gender preferences in banana traits may improve design and adoption of new cultivars
Women and men who grow bananas for consumption and sale have some similar and some different preferences in the traits they look for in cultivars. Read more.
|
|
|
Gender research news from across CGIAR
|
|
Gender equality in food systems
|
|
Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems will result in better food security and nutrition, and more just, resilient and sustainable food systems for all; however, a scoping review has revealed both consensus and gaps in existing evidence.
A recent conversation between two eminent scientists highlighted that women’s voices and leadership must be prominent in food systems—it’s the only way to guarantee that food systems are just. Meanwhile, a participant in a South Asia dialogue proposed that to transform the current food system, women workers must organize to form their own food-production, food-processing and agri-business enterprises.
Because, women’s voices are often not often heard in processes related to food systems transformation, which often leads to subpar policies, investments and program; the Global Food Systems 5050 initiative aims to change this.
|
|
Creating opportunities in business, markets and value chains
|
|
In Kenya, heavy work burdens are a factor constraining women’s empowerment in bean production. In fact, a Kenyan woman’s work is never done, according to a new study that seeks to understand the gendered burden of firewood collection. Likewise, in Kenya, women’s new roles in producing forage for livestock suggest the adoption of improved forage may increase the labor burden on women.
Practical training solutions for empowering women in agribusinesses in Nigeria were recently discussed by stakeholders, while a recent study in Benin indicated that embracing strategies that enhance innovative, proactive and risk-taking attitudes can ensure the success of young women agribusiness owners.
An assessment of the impacts of four years of developing value chains—for cashew, dairy and fruits—in Honduras has revealed how, through research and use of qualitative and quantitative tools, concrete actions can be identified and implemented to achieve women's empowerment. In addition, in Uganda, a gender-responsive participatory market chain approach contributed to women’s empowerment in the banana value chain.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, training and membership of Village Savings and Loans Associations helped women improve their financial literacy and their negotiating skills in the coffee–agroforestry value chain. In Zambia, small businesses are developing gender-integrated business strategies to encourage women to enter the aquaculture sector. Overall, in low- and middle-income countries, information and communication technologies could increase fisherwomen’s access to information and their financial independence through mobile banking apps.
|
|
Designing crops and technologies
|
|
A new portal for gender-responsive agricultural research for development provides guidance on critical questions and methods for research that takes women and men’s different preferences, experiences and opportunities in agriculture into account. Meanwhile, a new training module offers agricultural training centers and extension agents in Odisha, India, advice and guidance on designing and delivering gender-responsive extension and advisory services.
In Nigeria, banana seed sourcing and sharing practices among men and women farmers affect the spread and potential control of banana bunchy top disease, the most devastating disease of banana and plantain. In the Philippines, women are willing to pay more for heirloom rice, but proper branding is needed to create demand and preserve this cultural heritage.
A study of seed systems in East Africa found that women’s networks, though sometimes larger, are less likely to exchange improved varieties that might help farmers adapt to climate change, although informal seed systems can reach smallholders, particularly women, where formal systems do not.
As livestock often provide a significant share of women’s employment and income, identifying gender-based biases can improve the condition of women and the sector as a whole. At the same time, vaccinating cattle against East Coast fever has the potential to transform the livelihoods of cattle keepers, but gender-sensitive strategies should be put in place to enable both men and women to benefit, while preventing increases in women’s workload.
Finally, in Myanmar and Cambodia, investors must ask, 'Who do we want to benefit?’, if their investments are to go beyond rice–fish production and deliver socially inclusive food security and livelihood opportunities.
|
|
Understanding gender for nutrition, in landscapes and under climate change
|
|
Improved access to healthy food, combined with targeted nutritional education for women and caregivers, can enhance diets for vulnerable children. Another new study suggests that woman-headed households’ food security increases by 68 calories in response to an increase of 100 calories in women neighbors’ food security. Currently, updated information on Nigerian women and children’s micronutrient status and dietary intakes is being collected for informed, evidenced-based decisions about current and future programs and policies.
When it comes to ecosystem restoration, many oft-disenfranchised groups are left out of planning, but rural women face some of the most significant constraints in top-down restoration projects. However, in Kenya, one survey revealed that decisions on the uptake of restoration practices, although usually initiated by women who attend agricultural workshops, are often discussed between husband and wife. Attaining greater equality in land ownership requires changing the very system that has led to women owning less land than men.
When dealing with climate change and other extreme crises, experience from Bihar, India, shows that convergence, collaboration and inclusion are key to reduce the vulnerability of smallholder farmers. Climate-Smart Villages in Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras have set out to contribute to reducing the gender gap in agriculture, taking into consideration the socioeconomic realities of both women and men.
Finally, when disasters mean that large-scale survey data might not be available, mobile phone data could help predict women’s economic empowerment.
|
|
Measuring and advancing women’s empowerment
|
|
Women’s groups, such as farmers’ cooperatives, have been suggested as a potential path to women’s empowerment, but a recent review reveals that the type of group determines the extent to which participation does result in empowerment. However, members of a women's group in Madagascar reported that reviving the group allowed them to learn modern rice farming techniques directly from development projects and public institutions, and not necessarily through their husbands.
Increased knowledge of how to measure women’s empowerment and involvement in decision-making can help research partners design and validate interventions to advance gender equality; more lessons to inform future research are available in a new brief. In addition, a recent article discusses how to contextually measure women livestock producers' empowerment.
However, prevalent approaches to empowerment focus narrowly on agency as the ability of individuals to make their own free choices, but such choices might not always be empowering. Along the same lines, generalizations that categorize women with heavy time burdens as disempowered can mask key aspects of agency.
|
|
Changing norms and institutions
|
|
In Vietnam, women are highly constrained by gender norms, limiting their access to resources and decision-making power, and by a prevailing positive-feedback loop of time poverty. Likewise in Bangladesh, conservative social and religious norms hamper women in rural fishing communities from accessing adequate resources and technology; better understanding the socioeconomic issues that limit women’s roles in fisheries could help.
Migration, including male out-migration, is an important aspect of the feminization of agriculture and impacts gender dynamics in food systems. Feminization of agriculture is, for example, happening in wheat-based systems in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, and a new guidance note highlights commonalities and differences across countries. In Vietnam, farmers’ migration in two disaster-prone regions has been found to impact household decision-making, farm labor and disaster risk reduction.
The desires, aspirations and ambitions of rural women are under-studied, but the topic is becoming more important as many men migrate in search of more lucrative employment opportunities outside their rural homes. In a similar vein, the opportunities and challenges facing African youth, especially in the semi-arid drylands, are becoming an increasingly hot topic.
|
|
CGIAR Gender Researchers’ Leadership and Mentoring Program: Call for applications
The CGIAR GENDER Platform, in collaboration with African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), has launched the CGIAR Gender Researchers’ Leadership and Mentoring Program.
The Program focuses on strengthening gender researchers’ capacity to influence institutional processes toward gender-equitable and socially inclusive agricultural transformation.
Mid-career gender researchers who are full-time employees in a One CGIAR center or a partner National Agricultural Research Institute are eligible to apply for the Program. The deadline is July 31, 2021. Learn more.
|
|
|
Follow the conversation on Facebook and via @CGIARgender and #GenderInAg.
Sign up for our online discussion group to participate in exchanges about GENDER and related resources and opportunities.
|
|
|
Thank you
Thank you to CGIAR research centers, programs and platforms that contributed to this newsletter: AfricaRice, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), International Potato Center (CIP), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), World Agroforestry (ICRAF), WorldFish. Also to the CGIAR Research Programs on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM); and Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB).
Photo credits from the top: AWM Anisuzzaman/WorldFish; Mokhamad Edliadi/CIFOR; IRRI; Hampus Eriksson/WorldFish; Trong Chinh/Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT; Prashanth Vishwanathan/CCAFS; Georgina Smith/CIAT; Neil Palmer/CIAT; AWM Anisuzzaman/WorldFish; Chrispin Chikani/WorldFish; RTB; IRRI-India; AfricaRice; PIM.
|
|
|
|
