Through our programmes, we have seen how empowering women is an effective strategy for poverty alleviation. Gender focused programmes benefit everyone in tea communities, and higher levels of gender equality are linked to better lives and improved livelihoods. Not only do they help women improve their financial status and meet their families’ economic needs, but they also improve the overall economic situation in tea communities. Empowering women is not just the right thing to do - it is also the smart thing to do.
When supporting women farmers, it is important to look at climate and gender as interrelated issues. Climate change directly impacts livelihoods, and the impact on women farmers is much greater. Poverty, illiteracy, and limited access to resources mean that women farmers are often unable to withstand climate shocks and are therefore more likely to suffer from reduced yields and profits.
Elizabeth, do you know where CSA is implemented at this moment?. I am interested to know more about the practices applied to different context: Africa, Latin America, Asia.
• In Oxfam Ghana, we have an initiative known as the Systems Innovation for Women’s Economic empowerment. In my experience working on this project, I realized that project and programme design usually leaves the beneficiaries out of the equation and project design. We usually use a top-down approach where we are developing interventions for the women rather than designing with them. I think we need to start looking at the bottom-up approach where the women are central to what we do and become co-creators to the process. This way, they feel part of the process, own it, and finally sustain it.
• Systemic approach to project and programme design. What I learned is that usually, addressing women’s needs are an after thought and not an integral part of what we do even though we preach empowering women in our work. We seem to be addressing things in part rather than holistically. Addressing women’s needs seem to be a dent, an add-on to what we are doing rather than it being integral. We need to start changing the usual way of doing business and start thing about how we integrate women’s needs within our busines models. How do we bring the women on board and start seeing them as co-creators rather than beneficiaries? I suggest we start the process with them because, we believe that the problem holders are also the solution holders. They just need a little push, the know-how and resources to get to where they want to be.
• Important entry points for companies to support women in their value chains include building the capacity and understanding of extension staff about the role of women in the value chains; developing training in a way that enables women to access it easily; organize women in associations; support time-saving equipment for women, etc. for. Eg. Forming women cooperatives seem to be a model that is working well in Ghana.
• We also found that practical, easily accessible tools and guides enable uptake and makes it much easier for those less familiar with gender to incorporate it into their approaches.
• We know that the challenges affecting smallholder farmers and the solutions that enable them to earn a sustainable livelihood are vastly different for women and men. Therefore, taking a strong gender lens is crucial for any Oxfam project – to ensure that it is not gender blind/harmful and ideally gender transformative. For ELF, all projects, had . While we did not necessary aim for systemic changes, all projects needed to assess and to some extent address gender issues. Companies involved in ELF had varying levels of experience in incorporating a gender lens into their smallholder and value chain projects. While some had their own well-established sustainability programmes, for others issues like gender were largely unfamiliar. Conducting a gender analysis as part of project design, for example, was a novelty for some companies that required not only technical support but also general explanations about the significance of women in smallholder farming. Through several ELF projects, Oxfam and our partners sought to convey to companies that women often play “invisible” though critical roles in a company’s value chain. And even if not immediately engaged in a company’s value chain, women are vital for the wider livelihoods of farming families. We know that sustainability of cocoa production depends on improvements in the livelihoods and resilience of farmers. This, however, can only be achieved if improvements in the cocoa value chain sit alongside wider improvements, e.g. through strengthening alternative income streams or improved nutrition. Women play a critical role in these activities, and projects that involve any aspect of smallholder livelihoods need a robust understanding of women’s lives and the challenges they face.
LISTEN. Understanding the nature of the barriers to women advancing and the specific priorities they have is critical to being an effective partner.
I learned from a female leader, Maria Once, who led a cocoa cooperative I was buying cocoa from in Ecuador. Maria shared how difficult it had been for her in her community being an outspoken woman and a successful farmers, which led to subtle and sustained denigration and attacks from her neighbors, and particularly the men in the coop. Having external partners validate an inclusive organization and the value of women’s leadership was critical to her to shift this dynamic, as the men in the coop began to see that her leadership was bringing them new and different resources and credibility.
There are SOOOOO many learnings. My key one is that we need collaboration, collaboration and more collaboration. Cross-sector collaboration especially is a huge lever of change. It unlocks win-win-win situations. It is equally important to work simultaneously on gender mainstreaming in Certification, with traders’ Farm Services models, Cooperatives Management, Governments and peers to name a few. For instance right now in cocoa we are working on a pilot to support Rainforest Alliance testing gender training for coops, at the same time as looking at de-risking one of our suppliers’ farm services model to include pre-financing for income diversification, as well as supporting Anader’s Gender Academy socialisation in the catchment areas of our dedicated coops.
Great point Danica. I agree that gender sensitisation is required for actors all along the value chain. Too often ‘women’s empowerment’ is framed as a ‘women’s issue’. When in fact, we need to see a holistic change where other actors also change their behaviour to remove the barriers which women face. We also need to see all actors taking accountability for the ways in which they impact women’s livelihoods.
A significant shift in social norms and institutions is required to ultimately achieve gender equality and girls’ and women’s empowerment in cocoa growing communities. Supporting women’s economic empowerment is not enough to unlock their full potential. A transformational approach that pursues gender equality and addresses the root causes of inequalities, including gender norms, is needed for lasting change.
Changing gender-related norms, behavior and attitudes is not easy, and will not happen over-night. Dedicated and concerted efforts are needed to create gender awareness. And one has to be patient because change will take time. Every step is important.
Anu, I would like to know more about monitoring and evaluation in your strategy. Do you measure impact? and what kind of indicators are developed in your programs?
Hello, my name is Hannah Clark. I work for Farmers Voice Radio. We work with partner organisation to raise the voices of farmers (and much of our work focuses on women farmers) through participatory radio programming. www.farmersvoiceradio.org We bring women together to discuss the issues that matter to them, ask the questions they want answered and connect them to the knowledge they need to make their farming a success. These discussions are broadcast on community radio in local language.
Time saving innovations are key. You cannot really promote income diversification targeting women if they are too busy with hundreds of household chores that take ages. COVID has exacerbated this sadly adding approximately 4 hours a day of unpaid work to women’s work load.
Stephanie, this is such an important point. And it highlights the importance of being aware of the possible unintended negative impacts from our work on issues of women’s empowerment. When we challenge power dynamics, there may be a backlash. For the women themselves, projects often place a demand on women’s time, and may place them under mental and emotional stress. If we are designing change projects, we need to include support e.g. including a budget line for psychosocial support or including mechanisms for mitigating and reporting gender-based violence, or seeking to reduce/redistribute unpaid care work before developing programmes on women’s leadership.
It’s important to be conscious of these imbalances and address them upfront, such as by:
factoring in women and wider households when contracting or registering farmers - so that they can all have access to information and services, like trainings. At Olam, we’re now updating our Olam Farmer Information System to register people in addition to the ‘head’ farmer, so they can receive SMS alerts and other communications relevant to them.
thinking about where trainings are located. In some countries, cultural norms may require separate trainings for men and women. Seperate isn’t just a matter of timing; in Turkey, our hazelnut team discovered that female labourers and farmers felt most comfortable having the training hosted in schools or in the home, and not on a farm or other venue.
support to women to enter traditionally ‘male tasks’. One was to introduce this is to include traditionally ‘male’ topics, like mechanical trainings, within larger topics so that women are more likely to participate. Another way Olam has done this is through training women as tractor drivers and machine operators in Zambia and Gabon - with great results for the business, and social surveys found a positive knock-off effect on their status in the communities, and on young girl’s ambitions and self-esteem as well
This effort was driven by the brand team wanting to make a difference and heavily supported by Heineken MX CEO. He was successful at modeling leadership in support of fighting gender based violence in the company.
With respect to education, these are the challenges we encountered through the Marcatus Mobile Education Platform:
Breakthrough all existing social barriers - Gathering farmers for trainings was a big issue: caste, timings, gender, different crop stages, distance,
Sharp planning and execution: Crop duration being only 90 days, field extension officers had to conduct trainings in addition to all their regular activities like distribution of farm inputs and crop monitoring.
Data management, detailed documentation of activities performed was a big challenge (starting with training)
Absence of women field extension officers: Convincing women farmers to attend the training was a big challenge for men field officers
I also wanted to highlight the importance of access to finance through Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) or other established approaches in rural communities and for women again. We have seen that these can have a considerable impact through our programmes in Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda Our Current Programmes - Ethical Tea Partnership : Ethical Tea Partnership
A2: Boys and men are needed as allies to break the current patriarchal power balance. The cocoa channel is an opportunity to reach and engage men as gender equality allies. Supporting livelihoods opportunities for women without considering these deeply embedded norms and social practices won’t have the desired impact and will not lead to lasting, durable change.