Generic catchphrase or global commitment: What is women’s empowerment?
Empowering all women and girls is among the global goals guiding international development efforts toward 2030, and innumerable projects have stated ‘women’s empowerment’ among their objectives. But what do we mean, when we talk about women’s empowerment? Read more.
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Voices from the field: Young women farmers anchor CGIAR session at Cultivate Africa
“We live in a time where we can do so much more, [] but we are constrained by many factors,” said Agnes Kalibata, President of the AGRA Alliance, as she reflected on discussions led by the CGIAR GENDER Platform during Cultivate Africa. “We need to double down on the opportunities we are providing for women.” Read more.
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Developing a pro-equity nutrition policy agenda for Africa
To develop a pro-equity nutrition policy agenda for Africa, what factors must be looked at? What considerations must be made? How do shocks impact efforts? These issues were up for discussion at Cultivate Africa, in a session convened by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and the CGIAR GENDER Platform. Read more.
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Gender research news from across One CGIAR
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Achieving women’s empowerment
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Women’s empowerment is of paramount importance for multiple development goals, and long-standing research has helped define the methods and tools needed to measure it. For example, the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index can help monitor whether interventions help women reach higher levels of empowerment.
Likewise, indicators for gender equality and the empowerment of women are needed for successful implementation, and a new conceptual framework has been developed to study gendered freedom of movement, an important aspect of women's empowerment. Similarly, measuring women’s time use—to address inequalities—requires good surveying techniques. However, a recent study in Nepal suggests that understanding women's empowerment requires investigating agency over time and intensity of work, rather than simply hours worked.
In Ethiopia, scientists mapped women’s empowerment through agricultural interventions, finding that it hinges on fostering women's voice and agency. In Uganda, a sugarcane-farming household’s socio-economic status and gender norms were both found to predict interest in increasing women’s economic empowerment, whereas in Tanzania, the age of the household head, education level, and other factors had a positive association with women’s empowerment. In Indian state Odisha, a farmer producer company has ushered in a new era of farming practices with tangible socio-economic and empowerment benefits, especially for women farmers.
In general, livestock can also provide meaningful opportunities to enhance the empowerment of women in developing countries, an important factor for economic development, but livestock-keeping and development often come with many gender-based challenges.
Meanwhile, an assessment of a pilot project in Bangladesh hints that providing information to both husbands and wives might foster women’s empowerment and points to engaging men and women jointly as a promising area for future research. Also of note is that non-traditional big data sources, such as social media data or call detail records, can be leveraged to empower women in agriculture.
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Understanding gender and driving systemic change
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In Indonesia, myths hold back women from eating fish, a potential source of valuable nutrients. Gender and other social constraints prevent value chain actors in Zambia from equitably engaging in and benefiting from capture fisheries in low-income settings. In fact, while malnutrition persists everywhere, those who are already disadvantaged—due to their gender, age, caste and other factors—face the greatest threats.
Rural transformation is central to the broader structural transformation process taking place in developing countries, and understanding these processes requires attention to gender. In the Philippines, for example, the gender gaps in four select value chains are relatively small, but persistent stereotypes and gender norms still disempower both women and men. On the African continent, women engaged in making shea-based products are now becoming increasingly vulnerable due to an emphasis on agri-business exports and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Well-founded evidence can help ensure that investments, policies and interventions do support vulnerable populations—both women and men—who will disproportionately bear the impacts of climate change.
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Governing land and landscapes
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In Cameroon, local communities and refugees join together in restoration initiatives and value chain improvements to alleviate risks carried by the women and girls tasked with sourcing and using woodfuel. In Kenyan drylands, agroforestry ‘basins’ stir up big benefits for women. In fact, it has been well established that including women in forest management groups positively affects both governance and conservation outcomes, but challenges remain on the ground. The habits and practices of men in forests also warrant consideration.
Recent research from Ghana and Malawi investigates the relationship between sustainable agricultural intensification—greater productivity on the same land—with prevailing gender-biased land tenure systems. So far, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s land tenure security, but a new framework can help identify factors that influence it. Importantly, landownership alone may not suffice to reduce the gender gaps in agriculture.
How human rights, gender equality, equity and environmental justice influence different scales of environmental governance is under investigation in a recent study. The current ocean economy is systemically inequitable: benefits are accumulated by a few, while development harms affect the most vulnerable. Elsewhere, scientists found that efforts to conserve biodiversity often take a too simplistic view of gender, risking inequitable processes and ineffective outcomes.
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Designing crops and technologies
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A study on plantain consumer preferences indicates that while men value yield size, women might find other characteristics, such as taste, more important. Cooperating with women when developing and testing new cassava varieties will ultimately benefit women, given their disadvantaged position within many communities and their prominent role in cassava processing and marketing. In addition, integrating formal and informal seed systems could improve women and men’s access to quality seeds. This research is important because when crop breeding programs fail to consider women and men consumers’ preferences, modern varieties are not widely adopted.
In Nepal, women farmers, left in charge of farming after men have migrated to other locations, are now learning balanced fertilizer management techniques to help improve yields and generate greater income. Agricultural mechanization can benefit rural women in the Global South, but not only are appropriate technologies lacking, women are also not included in the design and validation of these technologies. Surprisingly, the demand for and adoption of labor-saving machinery remains weak in many areas, including areas where women face a particularly high labor burden.
When it comes to digital technologies, human-centered design can be used to create solutions that can better serve the complex livelihoods of women and men smallholders. Although considerable advances have been made to close gender data gaps in recent years, holes persist in our understanding of the gender digital divide itself.
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Spotlight: New book and CGIAR scientist celebrated
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New book: Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture provides a cutting-edge assessment of the field of gender and agriculture, with contributions from both leading scholars and up-and-coming academics—including from CGIAR—as well as policymakers and practitioners. Learn more.
CGIAR scientist included in BBC 100 Women 2020 list
Dr. Safaa Kumari, an eminent Syrian plant virologist at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), has been acknowledged in the BBC’s 100 Women 2020 for her inspiring and influential work in protecting global crops from devastating diseases. Read more.
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Vacancy: Program Manager – CGIAR GENDER Platform
GENDER is looking to hire a seasoned program manager to oversee the Platform’s program management unit and ensure that its goals and objectives are met. Kenyan nationals are invited to apply by December 8, 2020. Read more.
Vacancy: Scientist – Gender Research
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is recruiting a Scientist – Gender Research to support implementation of the Evidence Module of the CGIAR GENDER Platform. This position will be based in Nairobi. Read more.
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Follow the conversation on @CGIARgender and #GenderInAg.
Sign up for our online discussion group to participate in exchanges about GENDER and related resources and opportunities.
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Thank you
Thank you to CGIAR research centers, programs and platforms that contributed to this newsletter: AfricaRice, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 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), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), WorldFish. Also to the CGIAR Research Programs on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH); Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA); Livestock; Maize; Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) as well as Excellence in Breeding (EIB) and Big Data Platform.
Photo credits from the top: C de Bode/CGIAR; Farmer on Fire; C de Bode/CGIAR; O Girard/CIFOR; A. Galie/ILRI; Emily Gibson/CIFOR; Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR; Simret Yasabu/CIMMYT.
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