Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

One of the biggest tools we can use to address the barriers rural women face is about transforming gender norms and focusing on engaging men to change the way women can act in the household and community.   The Agriculture Extension Support Activity, funded by USAID’s Feed the Future in Bangladesh and implemented by Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) has seen that working not just on access to agriculture extension for poor women farmers, but also on transforming gender norms, can help solve some of the main problems women face. 

CARE as a technical partner of the project see impacts on time poverty.  The triple burden of productive work, household chores, and caring for children and the elderly means that in developing countries, women often work 16 hours a day.  A 2016 evaluation of gender impacts shows that women who had an opportunity to take part in gender dialogue sessions and used daily time use tools with their husbands had on average 1-2 hours more leisure time than the control group.  76% more women who had access to this opportunity got leisure time at all compared to the control women.

One of the major change in the social believe is recognition of the women as ‘farmer’. One of the male group member of the ‘PAKSHIA HAWLADER BARI’ producer group of Potuakhali district acknowledge and state that – “we (male person of the family) only do 40% of the work for mung bean cultivation which are mainly related to land preparation and seed sowing. All other work done by them. We didn’t recognize this earlier but during the daily time use session this fact has been come out.”  Not only the male group members but also the female members had the same realization after the session. As a result of such change, women farmers are now more confidant to communicate with extension worker – both public and private. Sub Assistant Agriculture Officer in Bhola mentioned that women now a days ask him for more suggestions through mobile phone calls and sometimes requests for an onsite visit.

In addition to helping the women get more time, the project also saw that women were able to overcome barriers to participating in leadership. It has been found that 28 were elected out of 116 female member of the groups contested for local electoral office this year. Women in the project are 69% more likely to be involved in production decisions, and 124% more likely to have participate in decisions about household spending than women who were not a part of the project.

Tania Sharmin

National Technical Coordinator, CARE

USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity Project

I believe in house hold approach of empowering a house hold to live in mutual understanding of each other.The Agriculture sector is the largest employer of the population and continues to offer enormous potential in employment and livelihood to Ugandans including the youth. In 2012/13, the agriculture sector employed 72% of the working population, 77% of whom are women and 63% are youths residing in rural areas (UBOS,2015).

using house hold approach to empower a house that includes both man,woman and  children will promote gender transformative impacts. social constructions that devalue the strength of another should be minimised and  promote gender for growth that seeks to focus on the strength of each other and how it contributes to the sustainable well being of each other.

CSW Consultation – Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) 5 August 2017

Challenges:

Rural women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change and extreme weather due to cultural norms, lack of power, and having unequal access to productive resources. Women are often excluded from training programs on new sustainable technologies and agricultural practices, making it difficult for them to adapt to changes in climate and make use of the most cost and energy efficient methods of farming. Also lacking representation in the political sphere, women are unable to influence policies that dictate how their communities will support sustainable development and mitigate climate change. This could lead to communities or countries adopting strategies that will benefit the large-scale farming done mainly by men, while failing to address the issues associated with smaller, household gardens that many women use for financial gain and livelihood. Women as the main caretakers in the home are highly dependent on water and energy resources. However, these resources are often located far distances away or are difficult to collect, and the roads leading to them are rarely safe, lacking sidewalks and clear road signs. This difficulty in accessing water and energy resources causes women to have to spend many hours a day collecting them when they could instead be gainfully employed and generating income. The poor access to natural and productive resources traps women in a cycle of poverty and food insecurity because they have less time to spend on income-generating activities and are also unable to participate in the decision-making process on policies that could improve their situations.

Approaches:

Gender mainstreaming is the overarching strategic approach for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment at all levels, as mandated by the Beijing Platform for Action. Results show that a consistent use of mainstreaming gender into other sectors leads to more effective policies, also for rural women. Even though the method has been known and practiced since over 20 years, it has not been applied systematically and therefore responses and impacts are still limited. A major challenge is the context-specific approach requiring teams with diverse expertise and the willingness to cooperate across disciplines.

Rural women have difficulty creating employment opportunities for themselves because of their unequal access to financial institutions and assets (loans etc.). In many communities, women are legally unable to own property, leaving them with nothing to provide as collateral for commercial loans. Without loans, credits and other financial assets, it is difficult for women to develop entrepreneurial economic activities that can lift them out of poverty and provide them with independence. In order to improve this, CSOs should work with governments and banks to develop low-cost loans available for women and women cooperatives working to generate economic empowerment for themselves.

Transformative Impacts:

In terms of “transformative change,” the following of the 2030Agenda’s sustainable development goals would have an enormous impact for rural women’s empowerment. The program Women 2030 enacted by Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) in cooperation with partner worldwide works to provide gender-responsive strategies for achieving SDGs, promotes gender mainstreaming on all levels and focuses, i.a. on SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 13 (mitigating climate change). SDGs apply to both the global north and south, and with projects designed especially for each region, the 2030Agenda can really impact women’s empowerment. Like stated before, a major obstacle for rural women is access to productive resources, so with the more sustainable technologies and practices implemented under the SDGs, resources will become more readily available to women, who will have to spend less of their time gathering them and will be able to spend more time on education and gainful employment. Efforts to achieve the SDGs will also engage the male population, who are prominent actors in the relevant fields of climate science and renewable technology, and if gender-mainstreaming is used in SDG achievement, men will be exposed to the issues facing rural women and will hopefully become more gender sensitive. One possible solution would be to build the capacity of rural women and women NGOs on social and professional development, while increasing their engagement in policy development. The creation of formal dialogue platforms would be useful in bringing together women CSOs and representatives from local and regional governments to not only increase women’s participation in the political sphere, but also to ensure that gender responsive strategies are used when drafting new legislative measures. This would also allow rural women to monitor the implementation of policies and be able to advocate for improved access to natural resources, especially water and energy, for better enactment of gender-equality laws, and for more sustainable rural development. These platforms for conversation will allow CSOs to bring the government’s attention to the issues facing women, and will provide women with the opportunity to develop greater agency.

Hi, some of my initial thoughts to contribute to the discussion, are as follows.

Main challenges for rural women

• Climate change and agrarian distress brought about by political, economic and environmental factors - leading to dispossession of resources (land, water, forest, etc.)
• The continuum of collapsing rural livelihoods, leading to distress migration and trafficking 
• Lack of gender responsive infrastructure (rural roads, energy, water, etc.), public services and social protection - thereby, aggravating women's unpaid work - not only in care work, but also in subsistence livelihoods
• Invisbility of women workers - as 'family farm workers' - and therefore, lack of social protection
• Multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination - ethnicity, regional diversity, geography, marital status
• Lack of rural women's voice and representation - in government, in unions, in farmer cooperatives, in all decision-making bodies 
• Gender based violence within the home and outside

Shifting approaches: Transforming gender relations and empowering rural women

• The concept of 'family farming' does a disservice to understanding and addressing intra-household poverty and inequality
• Focus on women as farmers - as individuals and as collectives (cooperatives, producer companies, unions) - rather than as 'family farmers'
• Strengthen agriculture policy with the larger framework of macroeconomic and trade policies (e.g. WTO), labour market dynamics and industrial policies - need to be coherent with and complement each other
• Need for human rights based approaches enshrined in CEDAW (Article 14), and its General Recommendation 34, as well as in the Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) 
• Need for a greater emphasis on ‘leave no one behind’ – defining a ‘farmer’ to include small and marginal, sharecroppers, agricultural workers, saltpan workers, fisherfolk, forest produce collectors and traders, etc. – all to be included in policy and programme for farming and agriculture
• Think beyond 'microcredit'/financial inclusion as a the sole staretgy with rural women
• Invest in learning, literacy, education and skills for rural women
• Advocacy on land rights to be holistic - include private land/inheritance, common property resources, water resources, etc.
• Investing in stronger institutionalisation of the gender agenda in design, implementation and monitoring of rural development and agriculture programmes - through audits, Gender Action Plans, gender-repsonsive budgets and MIS/data, capacity devleopment of staff/functionaries, etc.
• Organise, organise, organise....! And visibilise rural women/farmers...! 

UN Women's work in India

UN Women in India has supported the creation, expansion and activities of the Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM) – Forum for the Rights of Women Farmers. MAKAAM is an advocacy alliance that addresses the persistent poverty and vulnerability of women farmers and rural women, to build their resilience in the face of rising insecurities related to social, political, economic and environmental factors. Currently MAKAAM is forum of more than 120 individuals and organisations of farming women, of women farmers' collectives, civil society organisations, researchers and activists, drawn from 24 states of India. In 2016-17, the National Commission for Women (NCW) , Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM – Forum for Women Farmers’ Rights) and UN Women have come together in a unique partnership to collectively review legislation and policy frameworks, and advocate for removing barriers, as well as for creation of an enabling ecosystem for women farmers to realise their rights.

Read more here: 

http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2017/01/…

Through research and training inputs under an Action Research on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a flagship programme of the Government of India to promote rural employment, progress was made in adoption and implementation of Gender Action Plans (GAPs) in the Act, leading to increase in women’s participation; from 3 to 21% in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), 12 to 16% in the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and 17 to 30% in the state of West Bengal (WB). The success in these 3 states led an overwhelming demand by the Ministry for expanding the action research to 4 new states.

A related article: 

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/3/experts-take-subhalakshmi…

An older film: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pC-YVHSWpk

Some more information:

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/ruralwomen/unwomen-good-practice.h…

The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) with UN Women technical support drafted the first ever Community Operations Manual (COM) on gender and list of gender indicators for the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) with special focus on gender-responsive institutional mechanisms, capacity building of all rural development officers, and institutionalization of gender analysis and agenda setting. NRLM works chiefly with marginalised rural women and has the mandate of reaching out to 100 million rural poor in 6 lakh villages across the country. Five departments of the Ministry of Rural Development implemented Gender Audit Guidelines for 5 flagship programmes with UN Women support.

More on UN Women's work with NRLM:

http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/-/media/field-office-eseasia/docs/public…

A film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJwaOXTmkHQ

A project report: 

http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2016/10/…

Through UN Women's Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) Project more than 8,000 Dalit women manual scavengers were liberated in 3 states, and 6,657 women were provided alternative employment registering a 310% increase in income. 

Thank you for this opportunity. In my modest view, in relation to the changed context of recent decades, climate change merits special attention. Kindly find some points suggested for your consideration.

Q1

In all regions of the world, women play a paramount role in the management, conservation and use of natural resources. Their responsibility for growing food and collecting water and fuelwood has made them profoundly aware of their environments and the devastating impacts of deforestation, desertification and other forms of environmental degradation. The evidence is clear: climate change is having gender-differentiated impacts, and in many cases is intensifying the constraints that already place women, especially those that are reliant on agriculture for their livelihoods at a great disadvantage. Social, economic, political and cultural factors influence vulnerability and adaptive capacity and may render specific groups more susceptible to adverse change. For example, an empirical study conducted in Malawi (Asfaw and Maggio, 2015) established that weather shocks significantly reduce consumption and nutritional outcomes with more pronounced effects where the share of land area owned by women is higher, which suggests that in the context of high climate variability, women involved in agriculture are much more vulnerable than men and less able to cope with shocks.

Rural women rely more on biomass than men (such as wood, agricultural crops, wastes and forest resources) for their energy and livelihoods and ecosystem services for food security (through agricultural production and/or natural resource harvesting). This places them at greater risk to the negative effects of climate change. These gender differences in the use of natural resources and ecosystem services also explain gender differences in exposure to risk and vulnerability to biodiversity loss and changes in access to and management of natural resources and in their adaptive capacity. In many contexts, women also have more limited access to agricultural advisory services and formal rural institutions, further reducing their opportunities to gain knowledge and information about adequate coping strategies and climate-smart approaches.

Increasingly, research is documenting that the workload on women left behind is multiplied many- fold because the nature of migrant work being uncertain, remittance from migrant males is often sporadic. Agriculture remains critical for the family remaining at home to survive. Not only must the women do household work and child and elderly care, but also generate income usually by taking on their husbands’ role in agriculture. This too without access to capital or credit, while negotiating existing agricultural services dominated by men, where the women have to overcome several cultural barriers. In many areas these single women called drought widows or flood widows, especially in Southeast Asia, by their communities, report increased incidences of assault and violence. Environmental / disaster-driven forced migration is likely to increase further, according to IOM.

It is clear that climate change affects everyone, yet its impacts are often not gender neutral. Due to their socially constructed gender roles and statuses in society, women and men may experience the effects of climate change in very different ways. In order to design adequate solutions, a gender-responsive approach is needed for a nuanced understanding of the root causes of vulnerability and the defining factors of adaptive capacity, allowing gender-based inequalities to be redressed effectively.

Q2

In a consolidated framework developed by IFPRI,  the pathways through which climate change affects well-being at the individual, household, and community levels (kindly see . It can be used to promote a better understanding of the differential impacts of climate change on men and women and, similarly their differential responses. In the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, this framework emphasizes the value of information, livelihood resilience, institutions, and asset accumulation. Ultimately, the policy goal is to tackle distribution of assets and decision-making where these asymmetries are the underlying cause of women’s vulnerability to climate change and strengthening national and local institutions, fostering coherence between climate and agricultural policies, financing and investments.

The gender-climate-change-agriculture nexus is complex. However, there is convincing evidence that a deeper understanding of different behaviours, realities and capabilities of women and men in the agricultural sector (especially in relation to the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices), and the institutions and services supporting them (e.g. extension) services will have multiple co-benefits – both for productivity and gender quality (Kristjanson et al, 2017). Designing policy frameworks which enable coherence and convergence across the gender, climate and agriculture nexus are challenging as interventions need to manage trade-offs that may result in policy contradictions and they are more difficult to cost/quantify (IFAD, 2016). To identify technologies that are affordable easy to adopt/implement (particularly for women smallholders), government advisory services and climate information provision need to be tailored to the local agro-ecological conditions and benefit from multi-stakeholder processes through which local people evaluate and make decisions. A lot of good practices and materials exist that need to be upscaled.

Q3

On a positive note, while climate change can exacerbate existing gender inequalities in agriculture, it can also tap into women’s potential, if their role in adaptation and mitigation is recognized and they are provided with equal opportunities and equitable access to productive assets, markets, climate information services information, technology and training.

Women’s asset ownership was found to be significantly and positively related to uptake of some climate-smart practices. Where women have secure and rights : greater yields and increased food security is observed. When individuals had secure rights to land, they were more likely to use soil conservation techniques.

It was also observed that small-scale farmers with land rights were 60% more likely to make investments that prevent soil erosion. A study of 90 countries found that, as land rights instability increased, natural forests decreased. Increased land tenure security, in contrast, has been linked with decreased deforestation. Findings from Latin America show that female farmers tend to plant a diversity of crops, improving household resilience to the effects of climate change (e.g. Mexico and Bolivia) noting that women are playing increasingly important roles in maintaining knowledge about different plant varieties, as well as deciding which crops to plant, particularly as many men migrate away from the farm. Therefore therie is a strong business case to investing in women for climate-resilience .

There is an important opportunity to make use of previously underused (and under-recognized) abilities, knowledge and talents. To this end, a re-evaluation of agricultural practices and innovations will be required, hence the need for gender-responsive climate-smart agriculture.

Agricultural sectors feature in over 90% Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)[1] and more than 40 percent of the NDC submissions mention gender-related issues, at least 65 countries have considered gender as part of their national priorities either within the adaptation and/or mitigation areas of work. As countries and regional economic communities aim to mainstreaming gender in climate policy in the context of agriculture, especially in the implementation of NDCs, National Adaptation Plans and National Agricultural Stategies and Investment Plans, there are wide-ranging opportunities to develop interventions linked to key gender issues. This can bring about more effective and equitable participation of women smallholder farmers in climate change adaptation efforts and effectively enhance the overall resilience of food systems.

Future efforts need to aim to strengthen country-level planning, in harmony with private investors and development partners. In the increasingly challenging context of climate change, public programmes, such as disaster risk reduction and social protection, and insurance, will become increasingly important, by giving special attention to vulnerable groups, tailoring the insurance packages to different groups of clients (men and women, with or without a guarantee).

Crucial actions that support climate-smart agriculture also include the enactment and enforcement of conducive and inclusive agricultural policies and investments ; the improvement of relevant infrastructure and the distribution agricultural incentives; the provision of pertinent weather-related information, as well as weather, climate and extension services (equitable tenure, access and control rights as well as socially and environmentally sustainable technologies and employment opportunities. THese could be successfully advocated for by development agencies or NGOs, and they can make a real difference in enabling the development of inclusive food systems where rural communities thrive.

Investments however need to be significantly scaled up. Climate change adaptation in the agricultural sector is expected have a cumulative cost of USD 225 billion to 2050 (Lobell et al, 2013). Yet only 0.01 percent of all global grants address climate change and gender equality together , despite women’s proven pronounced vulnerability. Gender-responsive climate finance mechanisms are crucial to establishing sound policies and on-the-ground interventions. The two largest climate finance mechanisms, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) have corporate dedicated gender equality policies and action plans, carrying gender-specific conditionalities and call for “projects that produce economic, social and gender development co-benefits”. This is a most welcome trend, that needs to be met with action and commitment from all stakeholders in the way forward.

[1] Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are specific climate actions outlined by countries in committing to the international climate agreement that was achieved at the conclusion of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in 2015, to ensure the path towards a low-carbon, climate resilient future. INDC serve to clarify the overall scope of many national climate change plans and policies, including components such as adaptation and means of implementation

For many women, the biggest barrier they face is the societal belief of what women should be, and how they should be allowed to behave. That’s the underlying cause of a lot of barriers for rural women. CARE Ethiopia, and especially the GRAD project (funded through USAID’s Feed the Future), use Social Analysis and Action, a technique for engaging men and strengthening women’s wellbeing in the community. SAA creates community dialogue on social norms, and provides safe spaces for men and women to discuss challenges and come up with solutions. Following an Outcome Mapping evaluation process, the communities highlighted their results:

“Now we do not argue with our husbands like before. We discuss issues, especially about our resources like how to sell our land or cattle.”

- 40-year-old mother from Hawassa Zuria

According to the review process, women’s economic engagement appears to have been a stepping stone towards a number of other changes in gender relations, including women’s greater involvement in household livelihood decisions. Women’s participation in VESAs—often alongside their husbands—was an important catalyst for these changes.

The subtle signs of more equitable relationships—such as men and women eating together or calling each other by name—are rewarding and can be self-reinforcing, leading to ever greater communication, understanding, and trust in the relationship. For programs that aim to shift gender dynamics, it may be that putting more energy and focus on relationship behaviors such as these (rather than, say, insisting that men begin to take on previously taboo tasks) could lead to a more profound process of renegotiation of power dynamics in the household.

More information is available in the learning brief or the full evaluation.

For many women, the biggest barrier they face is the societal belief of what women should be, and how they should be allowed to behave. That’s the underlying cause of a lot of barriers for rural women. CARE Ethiopia, and especially the GRAD project (funded through USAID’s Feed the Future), use Social Analysis and Action, a technique for engaging men and strengthening women’s wellbeing in the community. SAA creates community dialogue on social norms, and provides safe spaces for men and women to discuss challenges and come up with solutions. Following an Outcome Mapping evaluation process, the communities highlighted their results:

“Now we do not argue with our husbands like before. We discuss issues, especially about our resources like how to sell our land or cattle.”

- 40-year-old mother from Hawassa Zuria

According to the review process, women’s economic engagement appears to have been a stepping stone towards a number of other changes in gender relations, including women’s greater involvement in household livelihood decisions. Women’s participation in VESAs—often alongside their husbands—was an important catalyst for these changes.

The subtle signs of more equitable relationships—such as men and women eating together or calling each other by name—are rewarding and can be self-reinforcing, leading to ever greater communication, understanding, and trust in the relationship. For programs that aim to shift gender dynamics, it may be that putting more energy and focus on relationship behaviors such as these (rather than, say, insisting that men begin to take on previously taboo tasks) could lead to a more profound process of renegotiation of power dynamics in the household.

More information is available in the learning brief or the full evaluation.

Contribution from the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) to the Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) – Rural women: Striving for gender transformative impacts.

Development policy and rural contexts (in relation to questions 1 and 2)

Challenges to the empowerment of women and girls living in rural settings cannot be generalized, either across regions or within countries. A variety of socio-cultural, economic and political factors specific to their different contexts create these challenges. Nevertheless, while in some respects challenging, these contexts can also contribute to creating enabling conditions to empower women. In this regard, for example, there may be variation in the organization of rural communities, including in the way in which households are structured. In some cases, a matriarchal form of social organization may prevail rather than a patriarchal one. The conception of family in African societies can differ from those found in other regions. Families in Africa can include community members and others beyond the nuclear family. Furthermore, the experience of women in rural areas is diverse, with the most disadvantaged included those with disabilities, pregnant or lactating, single mothers, widows, the chronically sick and the elderly. The economy in rural areas also varies, with some households deriving their income from agriculture, while others make a living from non-agricultural activities including the provision of services, such as tourism. That said, from, a global point of view, rural areas tend to be the poorest and the most deprived in relation to public services such as roads and transportation, sanitation, electricity, clean water and school facilities.

Key point: International and national development policy aiming to reduce gender inequalities and strengthen the empowerment of women should take into consideration the needs and priorities of women living in rural contexts that are diverse, while also learning from the similarities within and across rural areas, in order to effectively bring about change. Policy also needs to be flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing contexts. For example, rural settings can be affected by conflict or natural disasters, which have an impact on the configuration of households, and on the already impending need for basic services, and the employment demands from various sectors. 

Entrepreneurship, sustainable livelihoods and the relevance of education for women’s empowerment (in relation to questions 1 and 2)

It is important to have a common understanding of what it means for women to be entrepreneurial. There is a long history of attempts to define entrepreneurship. In our discussion, we adopted an understanding of entrepreneurship involving women being able to set up and run their own enterprise/business in ways that enable them to increase their socio-economic contribution to their household and society, while, at the same time, further enlarging their opportunities to achieve decent and productive work in ways that make societies more equal and just.

Women who are entrepreneurial in rural areas often benefit from family support, including financial resources to undertake proposed initiatives. They also benefit from arranged childcare that allows them to engage actively in entrepreneurial activities. Some of these women have had the positive experience of growing up with female role models who have themselves been entrepreneurial. The completion of basic education is a key factor in enabling women to go forward with entrepreneurial initiatives.  

However, the education women receive must be relevant to their needs and choices in ways that, in the long term, contribute to their human development and well-being, as well as to that of their household and community. Education can contribute to women’s entrepreneurship, but, importantly, also to other kinds of empowerment such as having voice and participation in decision-making that brings change in their living conditions, as well as in asserting their rights, including decisions on their reproductive health.  

It is not enough for girls and women simply to access education; that education must also be inclusive, equitable and of good quality. Importantly, curricular content and the pedagogical approaches used in formal and non-formal educational settings should not reproduce gender stereotypes (in roles, values and behaviours) that diminish women’s expectations for individual and social change.  Education should enable women to have the knowledge and skills to strengthen their ability to choose their future autonomously.

Some women may have access to education, but may, occasionally, find that, once completed, it has not been relevant to giving them a sustainable livelihood, to helping them find a place in the labour market, or to their life choices. Sustainable livelihoods imply a set of capabilities and assets which represent a means to a living. There may be a mismatch between available educational opportunities (including, for example, those in technical and vocational education), and the knowledge and skills that are needed for women to achieve sustainable livelihoods or lives they have reason to value. This mismatch prompts the question: What do you need to learn to be entrepreneurial or to improve your livelihood and where and how do you learn this?

At UIL, we support lifelong learning that is rooted in the integration of learning and living. It covers learning activities for people of all ages, in all life-wide contexts (families, schools, communities, workplaces, etc.), delivered through a variety of modalities (formal, non-formal, and informal) which together meet a wide range of learning needs and demands.

In rural areas, learning is taking place within families, in the community and across generations. There are cases in which the knowledge, experience and skills needed to run a small business are acquired by women within community self-help groups or families, or through self-directed learning. The government can play a key role, not only in ensuring that there is an employment structure responsive to or compatible with the educational and life choices of women, but also in recognizing and validating the knowledge and skills that women may already be developing outside formal schooling. It is important that women with such skills can move along flexible pathways into non-formal and formal educational opportunities that can lead into further employment and social development.

Key Point: Based on the principle of lifelong learning, the education sector, in collaboration with other sectors, should recognize, document, assess and validate any prior and ongoing learning undertaken by women which is relevant to their livelihoods, in ways that can lead to further education, work opportunities and life choices.  

How do women access information in rural areas and how does this empower them? How is their access to Information and Communication Technologies empowering? (in relation to questions 1, 2 and 3 and the CSW62 [2018] review theme):  

It is crucial for women to have free and ready access to key information that can further expand their opportunities for better work, education and health. In line with the right to education, the government should make sure that all girls and women have equal and free access not only to educational opportunities, but also to information on how to exercise this right.

Women in rural areas exchange information by word of mouth, and often by listening to the radio in their vernacular language. The radio is key in developing non-formal and informal learning. At the same time, radio content, as well as that disseminated by the media, can be influential in reproducing gender stereotypes, as well as in empowering women with information that can allow them to contest disempowering conditions. Radio programmes can disseminate information relevant to women’s rights and how to exercise them, while also helping women participate in long-distance education programmes. Overall, radio is a key technological tool that should not be underestimated in comparison to other more recent information and communication technologies, such as mobile phones. Though the use of mobile phones is increasing globally, according to marketing studies following mobile network subscriptions, rural areas often lack the necessary technological infrastructure to make the best use of these devices, including electricity and coverage from internet providers for whom extending a service to just a few subscribers does not make business sense. Private network providers and the state sector could consider partnering to provide such a service in rural areas. Overall, family households still struggle to afford a mobile phone device for each individual, not to mention mobile network subscription and related services. Furthermore, mobile phone devices in these communities often come with features in languages and scripts not relevant to the learner’s needs.

It was also noted that network subscription data alone cannot generate a picture nuanced enough to capture the reality of mobile use by women in rural areas. A device may be in the name of a woman’s husband, but she may the one overseeing its use in the household, leading to collective, peer-to-peer learning experiences with family members and the community. In general, however, women’s use of mobile phones can be restricted by low literacy levels (but not necessarily), lack of digital skills and prevailing socio-cultural norms and practices.

Changing deeply rooted gender norms (in relation to question 3)

The social and institutional transformation envisioned by policy and legal frameworks supportive of gender equality is difficult to achieve in practice. The desired change will take time, and needs to build on and/or take into consideration existing socio-cultural values and norms underlying gender practices and behaviours. Changing these might be the most difficult aspect. Yet, if all those with a stake in such change, including both women and men, are brought together by their traditional community leaders to discuss (in ways respectful of tradition) how all might benefit from the pursuit of a common good in relation to gender equality, there is a better chance that policy can be implemented in practice that has relevance to the well-being of people and their communities.

Here are some thoughts on the role of "farm wife" in comparison to "farmer," with regard to male and female roles on farms during my lifetime, (1950s to today,) here in Iowa USA. This was inspired by your discussion questions.

It's called: "Farmer Vs Farm Wife: Which is Most Highly Valued," but it addresses more than that: https://www.facebook.com/notes/brad-wilson/farmer-vs-farm-wife-which-is-most-highly-valued/1388893231148421/.

mKRISHI®  started as a Digital Innovation for rural masses at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Innovation Lab Mumbai.  But soon it was felt that mere introducing the technology would not yield the intended results. Hence, TCS' experience in "Problem solving" and "Program management" also came handy.  TCS picked up two large pilot projects, one with World Bank and other with IFAD, through it's partners to experiment few process improvement and project management models. This helped in creating a "participatory environment" where each stakeholder - including the women members of the family, participated. The experiences are shared in the attached ppt herewith.  

Some of the highlights are as below:

Creating a Mindset Change - (through Awareness) - most critical of all interventions and involved the role of NGOs, community development agencies and also spiritual organizations (as it runs deeper within the society).

Improve Accessibility (through ICT) - Mobility kind of created a "virtual open gate" through which "Window to the World (WOW)" was established. Information was accessible, right there, where the person was! This brought more awareness, about the changing world, rights of the individual and the role models!

Develop Livelihood - (through small scale Entrepreneurship) - Women in India had always been contributing in family agriculture business, but more like a "hidden labor".  But the concept of new "micro agro businesses" and availability of the credits and government funding / schemes, helped them to push to "pilot the enterprenuer" among them.  This was a role transformation i.e. from a housewife or house labor to an enterprenuer.  Access to finance brought lots of respects from family, it boosted the confidence and also brought "livelihood security" amidst agri crisis.

So overall a new world could be seen within the same age-old, village world. These interventions helped Mindset Transformation, from a society from “demanding subsidy” to “Self Reliance”.

Read the brief case study attached.

Hello everyone, great discussions going on and a great topic for discussions and to hear people's views on the topic. I am glad to give my little contribution. The topic "striving for transformative gender impacts" is best viewed from a collaborative point of view. I would like to give a case study of a project FAO implemented collaboration with Actionaid Kenya. The project “One voice against gender inequity: Addressing Gender inequalities in Food Security and Agriculture recovery in the Horn of Africa drought crisis” targeted mostly women groups in Mwingi and Kyuso wards. The women groups collaborated with youth groups to generate resource maps by use of GIS. The women understood where the health centres were located and the personnel in each health centre. They learned about the location of schools and the number of teachers in each school. They learned the location of water points and many other resources. In addition to this, the women and men in the targeted groups were also trained on the rights of women and human rights in general and understood both men and women had rights and that even women could be appointed to positions of leadership. The men confessed that the training helped them and they promised to support women candidates for elective positions and the women confessed that they were volunteering themselves for elective positions and they were campaigning freely to be elected without fear of being prejudiced or ostracized by the community.

The GIS resource maps helped the women to articulate their development needs with the county government such that the women took lead in discussing what they need the county government to do for them and not what the government should do for them. To me this is was very transformative that brings total transformation to the lives of rural women. The women partnered with the youth from their community who have embraced technology like GIS mapping, mobile technology and translated the information in language simpler for the women. Empowering the women and men in the community with information on development, statistical facts, accountability and leadership, their rights to make choices, training them on public speaking and how to articulate their development issues before policy makers and development actors and how to hold themselves and their leaders accountable and brings lasting transformative impact in our societies. Women can bring transformative impact in their homes and community if their minds are transformed and all limitations imposed on them by culture and traditions is lifted. This project helped me understand that information (empowering information) is power and is liberating and once women are organized into groups, have access to information and have support of men and youth, there is nothing that can stand in their way to transformative development.