Closing the livestock gender gap in Southern Africa

Increasing capacity and knowledge for better interventions

Workshop participants working on an exercise

10 December 2014, Harare - Closing gender gaps in agriculture can generate significant gains for the sector and for the society as a whole by improving nutrition, food security and income levels, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, Chimimba David Phiri has said.

Speaking at a three-day training workshop on “Socio and Gender Analysis in Livestock interventions and management” that ended on December 4, Phiri said if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent.

“This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4 percent. Production gains of this magnitude could reduce the number of hungry people in the world tremendously,” said Phiri.

It is thus important that all stakeholders working in the livestock sub-sector acquire requisite capacity and knowledge necessary to identify gender gaps and address them in their interventions. When this capacity is not fostered and encouraged, national stakeholders formulating livestock-related policies and programmes, encounter the risk of leaving behind a big proportion of the active agricultural labour force, rural women.

The gender and livestock training workshop in the Zimbabwean capital was conceived and designed by the Social Protection and Animal Production and Health Divisions in FAOs Headquarters, with the support of the Subregional Office for Southern Africa. This activity was made possible through the Italian funded project: “Improving food security in sub-Saharan Africa by supporting the progressive reduction of tsetse transmitted trypanosomosis in the framework of the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development.”

Women face greater challenges

Livestock is a key asset for rural households worldwide and a primary livelihood resource for rural communities. An estimated 752 million of the world’s poor keep livestock to produce food, generate cash income, manage risks, increase resilience and build up assets.

Livestock widen and sustain three major pathways out of poverty namely: securing the assets of the poor, improving smallholder and pastoral productivity and increasing market participation by the poor.

It is estimated that rural women make on average up to 43 percent of the agricultural labour force, and in rural livestock-based economies, they comprise two-thirds (approximately 400 million people) of low-income livestock keepers.

“Despite rural women’s important contribution to agriculture and livestock, they face greater challenges than men in accessing natural resources, extension services, marketing opportunities and financial services as well as in exercising their decision-making powers,” said Francesca Distefano, FAO gender and development specialist.

“This also holds true for the Southern Africa subregion, where in smallholder agricultural production systems rural women play a vital, although often under-recognized, role,” she added.

Tasks different but complimentary

Women and men usually perform different but complementary tasks in livestock management; they take care of different aspects of livestock management and have therefore different knowledge about them. Raffaele Mattioli, FAO Senior Livestock Officer however explains the dynamic nature of roles.

“While gender roles may be deeply embedded in a community’s social fabric, they are not written in stone. These roles change over time and evolve when the social context of dynamic livestock keeping environment transforms. Due to rural-urban male migration, rural women have been seen to rise to the occasion and take over livestock-related tasks traditionally in the hands of men, engaging in different aspects of livestock management, from production, to processing and marketing. When given an opportunity to access natural resources, capital, skills and knowledge, women are more than capable to be successful livestock keepers and producers.”

The training workshop, which aimed at addressing emerging gender issues in the livestock sector, was attended by FAO livestock officers and representatives of ministries of agriculture and livestock from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and the host country, Zimbabwe.

As a follow up to this activity, participants have formulated national work plans on gender and livestock. Through these work plans they have committed to carry out a selected number of activities within their respective countries in order to follow up on and apply the acquired knowledge on gender and livestock. FAO will keep working closely with them to support the implementation of the activities identified and agreed within national work plans. The hope is to build a qualified group and network of national and regional stakeholders who will be able to guide and support their respective countries and the region in successfully identifying and integrating social and gender dimension in national livestock interventions.

Additional information is available here:

Photos

https://www.flickr.com/photos/faosouthernafrica/sets/72157649160191910/

Useful Links:

For more information on the workshop:

Raffaele Mattioli, FAO, Animal Health and Production Division - Senior Livestock Officer
Francesca Distefano, FAO, Social Protection Division - Gender and Development Consultant
Dorina Minoiu, FAO Subregional Office for Southern Africa - Senior Policy Officer

Media Contact:

Leonard Makombe | Assistant Communication Officer | FAO Zimbabwe | Harare, Zimbabwe | Email: Leonard. [email protected]