Picking the best tools for making value chain development interventions inclusive and gender equitable
“What is your experience with tools and approaches to engage women in agricultural value chains”
“Women cannot ride bicycles” and “women should not interact with men” are widely held beliefs in Burkina Faso. These prejudices prevent Burkinabe women working in gum production from bringing their products to lucrative markets and negotiating attractive prices with men buyers. In Honduras, other gender norms, such as the sentiment that women have smaller, nimbler fingers that are better suited to separating cashew nuts from their shells, can dictate the type of work that women (and men) can get and the income they can earn.
In northern Mali, women have been pushed into charcoal production as droughts have become more frequent and men have migrated away from their rural homes. However, due to their lack of political connections, these women are unable to obtain the necessary production permits and have been relegated to informal value chains and less profitable markets.
Such restrictive beliefs, social norms and structural inequalities hamper women from fully engaging in agricultural and food systems value chains, accessing markets and benefiting from them equally to their men counterparts. Conversely, when women are able to participate in value chains, on equal footing with men, the benefits can extend far beyond steady jobs and increased incomes, such as to shifting gender norms and even advancing women’s empowerment.
That’s why engaging women in markets and value chains is becoming a high priority on the global agenda for gender equality. While many methods and tools to support development practitioners, project leaders and investors are emerging, guidance on which tools are best suited for what purposes remains limited. To begin to fill this gap we have published a working paper that can help both researchers and development practitioners choose which tools and methods are best suited for their needs.
Tools for equality and women’s empowerment in value chains
Based on a literature search and consultation with experts, we reviewed 19 tools and methods (see the working paper dataset) that address gender and agricultural value chains. While several of the tools reviewed seek to understand and reduce gender equality across different nodes of the value chain, many of the research results published from using the tools and methods still tend to focus on smallholder producers and the production node, where gender inequality is already well documented.
Here we focus on two examples that go beyond the production node. First, the AgriProFocus Gender in Value Chains toolkit, which provides practical tools for all stages of the value chain intervention. It also stands out as it is among the tools that make the business case for greater gender focus in value chains by arguing that neglecting women in value chains leads to inefficiencies and loss of business opportunities. The toolkit is designed to motivate and help practitioners in integrating a gender perspective in agricultural value chain development, and it provides an overview of material available on gender and value chains, including a number of manuals produced by partners in the AgriProFocus Gender in Value Chains network. In 2020, AgriProFocus made the transition to a new organization, the Netherlands Food Partnership.
Second, the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI), developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), can help capture a quantitative measure of women’s empowerment that can be compared across different nodes of the value chains and across various value chains. It can be used to investigate barriers to market access and inclusion for both women and men. The accompanying survey tool also offers several optional indicators, including access to reliable sanitation and sexual hostility in the working environment, to better measure and contextualize empowerment and inclusion across value chains.
Directions for filling remaining gaps
While the two tools highlighted above are designed to be used across several value chain nodes, most tools and methods still have heavier emphasis on farm-level production, with less guidance on how to tackle challenges and pursue opportunities elsewhere in the value chain, such as in processing or trade. Along the same lines, there are few examples of how the tools and methods can consider more than one commodity at a time, which is a problem since most smallholder farmers get their incomes from a variety of activities. As a result, the tools are limited in how well they can diagnose or address a farmer’s or a family’s overall well-being.
Still, these tools and methods can help project teams seeking to address gender inequities in value chains and to bring about benefits not only for women, but for whole value chains. However, they are not able to replace the social science expertise and experts that are essential to applying the tools, analyzing data and results, and using this information to design better interventions.
CGIAR and the GENDER Impact Platform
Our review of tools and methods for integrating gender perspectives into value chains is part of a CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform series of working papers that curate and synthesize a portfolio of tested gender methods and tools.
To feed into that portfolio we would like to hear from you
What is your experience with tools and approaches to engage women in agricultural value chains?
Authors
Jennifer Twyman
Gender Researcher
Kate Ambler
Research Fellow
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Sign upAnonymous
Great to see the overview ( https://gender.cgiar.org/tools-methods-manuals ), thanks for that! The challenge: how do we encourage the actual use of these tools? In my experience, it is hard to get agrifood sector stakeholders to embrace methods that work for transformative change of gender-power relations (such as in IFPRI's Reach-Benefit-Empower framework, and in AgriProfocus'/NFP's Gender in Value Chains toolkit). Gender dynamics also affect the use of these tools, as well as the dynamics around knowledge events and dialogues to advance the understanding of their potential. This is a big challenge within the food systems transitions agenda. Would the CGIAR gender network have smart solutions for this?
Anonymous
Use of WELI to study women in Agribusiness in Tanzania focusing on Livestock. The tool could be very long to capture all the sphere of women empowerment
Anonymous
Dear Joseph, thank you for comment and bringing our attention to Women Empowerment Livestock Index. Could you elaborate on your experience and insights in using this tool? What was the added value for Agribusiness in Tanzania?
Kate Ambler
AuthorHi Joseph, The length of tools is a very important consideration when they are being developed. Development of tools, particularly for measurement, should consider length, and shorter versions for use when more complete versions are not feasible could be a great addition to our toolbox. Researchers may also consider what domains are of most interest if time is a concern.
Anonymous
The Women's Empowerment in Livestock Business Index (WELBI) builds on the WELI (which, by the way, is being shortened into a medium and also short version) and focuses on the empowerment women in livestock business.
Anonymous
Innovation and technology that prolomgs shelf lives of fruits and vegetables have signifantly reduced post harvest loss, increase livelihood income of women smallholding farmers
Anonymous
Dear Rosemary, Thank you for joining the conversation and you raise a very interesting point. I am wondering if you maybe have experience or knowledge about particular challenges or barriers that women smallholding farmers face in accessing and using these technologies effectively?
Anonymous
Intervention strategies are very useful and effective at the household, producer organization and enterprise levels. The knowledge of the microfinance sector helped me to sensitize microfinance institutions to develop financial products and services adapted to the needs of rural women.
Anonymous
Thanks for this great post, Jennifer and Kate! For those who are not familiar, IFPRI developed the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) to track the impacts of ag development projects on women's empowerment. To monitor market inclusion interventions, we developed the pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) which includes the pro-WEAI indicators plus additional indicators to investigate barriers to market access and inclusion for different value chain actors. You can learn more about it on our WEAI Resource Center: https://weai.ifpri.info/. We hosted a policy seminar last week introducing two sets of pro-WEAI add-on indicators (one of which is pro-WEAI+MI) and its recording is now available on IFPRIs website at https://www.ifpri.org/event/introducing-pro-weai-complementary-indicators-nutrition-sensitive-agriculture-and-market. Please feel free to watch it and share widely with your networks!
Kate Ambler
AuthorYes this is a great resource! Our review paper was written before many of these markets related WEAI tools were available. So these are a huge new tool for the toolkit.
Anonymous
Gender blind technologies which fail to consider the different needs, concerns and power relations between women and men should be discouraged. Looking at the case of Nigeria, especially the cassava value chain; cassava is the most important staple crop and it continues to be an important source of income generation in poor rural areas, particularly for women. There is an increasing demand both locally and internationally for cassava derivatives such as starch and gaari. Although, men and women play active roles in all the activities of the value chain, however, women dominate the processing node while men are mostly engage in production. Women in particular are concentrated at the node of processing cassava into gaari (granulated cassava or cassava granules, a common food among many ethnic groups across Nigeria). Even with the recognition of the important roles that women play at this node, an important technology, the hydraulic press machine - a machine used for dewatering cassava mash in the process of making gaari proves to be gender blind. Why should such technology/machine be gender blind in the first place? And what was in the mind of the designer when they were conceptualizing it? Even with the fact that women constitute the majority of the end-users, the machine is heavy and requires high physical energy in its application. This places limitation in womens use and control of the technology. As a result, men enjoy greater advantage because they are able to serve as operators of the technology and they continue to charge high fees for women who needs the technology for gaari processing. Although, there had been development of an alternate technology that uses electricity and requires little physical energy, however, this machine is too expensive and not affordable for many women. In addition, shortage in electricity supply in many developing countries like Nigeria disrupt its use. All these have attending influence on the profitability and income that women cassava processors can get from the activity. Thus scientists, professionals and technology developers have to be intentional in addressing the different gender needs and concerns in technology and innovation development process. It is the right time that we stop perceiving women as passive actors in the technology sector. Gender needs and concerns need to be integrated right from the conception to monitoring and evaluation technology and innovation targeted at ensuring productivity and profitability in the agrifood systems.
Anonymous
Thanks for sharing this case & your very clear recommendation: Scientists, professionals and technology developers have to be intentional in addressing the different gender needs and concerns in technology and innovation development process.
Kate Ambler
AuthorThanks for sharing this interesting case. I think/hope that implementing some of the tools that we highlight in the paper will make these issues clear, and lead to the development of more gender sensitive technologies. Or policies that promote gender sensitive ways to use these more physically demanding technologies.
Anonymous
Gender tools and approaches are key in Gender mainstreaming activities for organizations, program staff or Gender Specialists or Gender coaches . I have been using Gender tools for a decade now and drawing expierences from Gender coaching trajectories and Gender trainings I conduct to diiferent catergory of audiences. There are key Gender tools I adapted from Agriprofocus tool kits which are spot on for me. Using these tools makes it easy to put your point across and can easily be understood. One of the tools is the Activity Profiling tool /Daily activity Profile . This tool creates awareness on the magnitude of the workload men and women have on a daily basis. During one of my community gender training with farmers in Western Uganda, some of the men in that training teatified that , they were not aware they were overloading women with work, they usually think its women's role to take care of the family. This tool is really an 'eye opener tool' in this aspect. This tool is normally used with farming households or producer organizations ,but can also be adapted for firms or factory workers. I recently used this tool during a Gender trajectory I just concluded with SNV Uganda under the Innovation Against Poverty. One of the companies adapted this tool for its factory production team. The company deals in renewable energy amd some of the products they produce are briquettes and energy saving cookstoves. The company had low produxtivity and one of the root cause was division of roles among female and male workers. The use of this tool made it easy to identify key roles (who does what on a daily basis), asign roles appropriately and the company also was able to identify that the cause of friction between the workers was due to a gaps/ gender issues affecting production process i.e. most of their task were manual and heavy e.g moulding mud ,and also needs climbing up where females would shy away from that. During development of the Gender Action plan, the company planned to automate most of their production processes to make certian tasks easier esp. for female workers.. They also provided female workers with overalls which made female workers to climb up the machines comfortably. The second key tool is the Access, and Control tool. As gender coaches or trainers,we usually apply this tool when assessing the acess, use & control of production resources. With my expierence, I realize we can use this tool at household and community level in any livelihood situations to help create awareness and make one understands who owns what, who decides and who controls. I recently recommended this tool to be used by one of the company in Uganda being supported by SNV under the Inovation Agianst Poverty program. The company is creating awareness and promoting access and use of pads (Makapads) among girls and women to improve mentrual hygiene. Through their activities, one of the gender gaps they identified is limited acesss to finance by women to acquire the pads. This through discussiojs, this tool helps the household to see the importance of providing the woman with pads but also identify who have access to income, who decides the use and discussions on who buys the pads, etc. The tool is good since it identifies the gap in access, use and control over resources but could be more meaniful if it went further to identifying practical approaches on how reaources could be mutually accessed, use and the benefits shared by both men and women. The other tool is the Gender Sensitive Mapping Tool. This tool too can be use by farmers and other value chain actors but I have also realized that non Agricultural companies can use this too. This tool is a powerfull tool that makes busineses to realize how gender sensitive their value chians are in terms of the number of male and female, who does what, and the contraints they face. It gives a very good map but company need to go extra miles to adapt and apply other practical tools and approaches to improve on the identified gaps e.g creating access to finance product if limited access to finance is the issue for low participation by women. The next key tool that can be used by organizations and companies is the Gender Scan tool. This is a powerful tool to conduct gender audit and allows orgnizations to be aware of their strength, weakneses , gaps and identify transformative actions to improve or become Gender sensitive. Most times organizations or companies are not aware of gender situations within their systems & operations. However, this tool collects more of qualitative data but for bussinesses that look at profit, there is need to improve on the tool to capture more quantitative data. Next to this tool best used by profit making companies is the Client Satisfactory tool, this tool is design to collect customers fedback on particular service or product offeree by the company. Feedback allows for improvemnt in product, clients satisfaction and bussiness growth. One other tool which is key to orgnizations is the Gender Action Plan (GAP), this helps to stop orgnizations from carrying out gender activities by default but rather do deliberate/intentional gender actions & plan for resources (time, finacial and human resources) as well. Expierence has shown that, there are a number of orgnizations that could be doing gender activities but not aware or not measured, yet with the Gender action Plan, it makes gender actions visible and intentional and also be able evaluate or measures the progress. There are a number of tools that are quiet impactful and allows gender mainstreaming alot easier. However, these toold can be use in combinations of approaches/methodologies. I have seen a number of approaches /methodologies that are very uauful to get the desired results e.g the HouseHold aproach which uses some methods like community change Agents as role models etc. The hosuehold approach is very good because it helps a couple or houshold members plan and act together and share resources. This tool is good, however building capacity of females within household to use the resources are key e.g financial literacy is one of those ways. Another is women Economic Empowerment Framework, this vividly shows women and company at different levels, what challenges they face and how organizations and companies can do to reduce the gap. The Gender Action Learning Methodologies (GALS) or the Journey Road Map, is one approach which supports the community and household makes development targets in a visual forms. One thing to note is that, getting change or impactful results from gender activities is a gradual proccess and changing norms or breaking cuktural barriers is not easy but with the right tools, approaches and intentional transformative actions, we shall get there #equality. "Together we can" ( ref. Agriprofocus Gender toolkits).
Anonymous
Thank you for this thorough and detailed response Felicity! It is so inspiring to learn how impactful gender sensitive tools can be. It is indeed a gradual process but examples and results such as the ones you shared keep me hopeful we are heading in a positive direction.
Anonymous
At ILRI we have been focusing on supporting women in livestock business for a couple of years now. We have adopted approaches to support women's empowerment (e.g. gender-responsive business incubation processes; mentoring; supporting access to finance etc) and also, (transformative) approaches to address the negative norms about women in business. In Tanzania, for example, women are not supposed to earn more than their partners. This means that, when their business starts to be lucrative, then they are pushed by partners to quit the business. We are working with Shujaaz to address these norms through social media. In Ghana women veterinarians are not appreciated because menstruating women are believed to kill the livestock if they enter the animal shed. Having only male vets means that women farmers have a limited access to animal health services and reduced animal productivity. We are working with CARE and CowTribe to address the norm preventing women from working as vets. Read more here: https://agrilinks.org/post/social-media-and-drone-technology-transforming-gender-norms-women-livestock-farmers
Anonymous
The SAPLING initiative (https://www.cgiar.org/initiative/17-sustainable-animal-productivity-for-livelihoods-nutrition-and-gender-inclusion-sapling/) is picking up on these interventions in Tanzania and Ghana and scaling them to Ethiopia, Vietnam and Uganda also to ensure that young women are involved in and benefit from livestock business. We are adopting various gender transformative approaches in all countries with local partners. We are measuring impacts on both women and youth empowerment, and on gender norms.
Anonymous
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Alessandra! It's great to learn about this scaling initiative and that the impact on gender norms is being measured. Can you already share some initial findings or lessons learned?
Kate Ambler
AuthorThis is so interesting to learn about. Through the Rethinking Markets initiative, we are also studying gender in livestock rearing, evaluating a financing mechanism that will target women in the household. The hope is women will move from just being labor to also participating in the market side of cattle rearing.