Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

I would really like to hear from other contributors about women's empowerment in relation to the extended family. Many interventions and also analytic frameworks such as the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) centre on strengthening and measuring women's autonomy in decision-making in the assumption that strengthening their voice will improve their bargaining power in intra-household decision-making. 

However, data I have been looking at from Nepal (obtained through GENNOVATE) suggests that in the surveyed community some of the strongest women innovators have secured the support of their extended family (the one they married into). In particular, the evidence suggests (and we are still analysing it) that women innovators in extended families consciously deploy their agency to 'sell' their project to family members. Innovator women manage intra-family (so to say) bargaining processes to their own advantage whilst maintaining social norms requiring women to consult. The trade-off in personal autonomy in decision-making is arguably compensated for by support from extended family members for the innovation project. Conversely, single women without extended family support networks may not benefit from support networks and the material resources associated with these, and thus find it harder to maintain innovatory practice.

Love to hear views on this and specific research papers, etc. would be great.

In response to the post by Nancy McCarthy I would like to draw attention to CIMMYT-CCAFS research in Malawi which investigated the potential of household methodologies, specifically GALS, to improve intra-household cooperation. One paper,  Exploring the Potential of Household Methodologies to Strengthen Gender Equality and Improve Smallholder Livelihoods: research in Malawi in maize-based systems has been accepted by the Journal of Arid Environments for a special issue on women and is thus forthcoming. A second paper, using quantitative survey data, is in preparation.  Our paper supports, empirically, Nancy's study. I paste in the abstract below. However, I want to point out that in Malawi there are huge differences in women's baseline empowerment between matrilineal and patrilineal areas and so it is important not to make generalisations such as 'women in Malawi are more empowered than in neighbouring countries'. NASFAM, our partner organisation, selected intervention sites in Malawi due to indicators they had previously collected which showed very weak to no participation in leadership structures etc.

Abstract to our Paper

Household methodologies (HHM) intervene directly in intra-household gender relations to strengthen overall smallholder agency and efficacy as economic agents and development actors. Strengthening women's agency is one mechanism for progressing towards collaborative, systemic farm management. It is expected this will contribute to improved farm resilience in the face of climate change, strengthen food and nutrition security, and improve other development indicators.

HHM are built around a vision, gendered analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT),an action plan, and indicators. Some HHM - including Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS), the focus of the research - use drawings making them easy to use for low-literate individuals. There is considerable evaluation report evidence of the efficacy of HHM in strengthening value chains, food security, and gender equality. However, this has yet to be complemented by a robust systematic evaluation of the methodology which includes non-intervention communities as controls. Here we report on the findings of a research study into GALS in Malawi where the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM) has been implementing GALS since 2013 with 4,274 farmers (2821 women and 1453 men to May 2016). We held sex-disaggregated FGDs with 40 GALS households and 40 non-GALS households, all NASFAM members. Community profiles and a matrix activity focusing on task allocation, asset distribution, and expenditures by gender with 125 non-GALS and 135GALS respondents were also conducted.

Our analyses indicate a significant shift towards sharing of on-farm tasks and household tasks, and joint realization of the benefits from agricultural produce in GALS households. They are building up portfolios of assets including livestock, houses, ox-carts, and land, unlike non-GALS households. Respondents in GALS households, particularly de facto women-headed households, report an increase in social standing and participation in community life. In both GALS and non-GALS households, men and women agree that men continue to dominate marketing and are final decision-makers. However, financial transparency and intra-household agreement on expenditures characterize households with GALS participants.

Unless gender issues was kept on the mind of all project key staff we could not close the gender gap.

At the institutional level: It is good the availability of gender specialist within project key staff, also we need to mobilize the project key staff to tackle gender issues seriously, their terms of reference should include their promotion for gender mainstreaming in policy and programme implementation processes.

At the community level: To enhance business skills for rural women and girls we need to train them on (market information, negotiation skills, bargaining skills and decision making), they will be prepared to be engage with private sectors.

One of the issues that has not been raised yet is the difficulty of entrepreneurship in general, and of farm entrepreneurship in particular. While this applies to both women and men, women may face additional challenges in lacking mobility to access more distant markets, being less aware of prices and standards, in being less able to interact with market intermediaries of the opposite sex, and in having less ability to re-allocate or postpone household and care work. To reduce failure rates, women’s enterprises may need additional support in terms of local availability of timely inputs, and processing/marketing support. The examples of the Indian dairy cooperative, Lijat Papad in India, or BRAC-supported agricultural enterprises in Bangladesh show how that support can be organized among women or in enterprise systems to reduce the risks and increase the benefits.

Gender, that is socially constructed relations between men and women. Agriculture is underperforming in many developing countries for a number of reasons. Among these is the fact that women lack the resources and opportunities they need to make the most productive use of their time. Women are farmers, workers and entrepreneurs, but almost everywhere they face more severe constraints than men in accessing productive resources, markets and services. This “gender gap” hinders their productivity and reduces their contributions to the agriculture sector and to the achievement of broader economic and social development goals.

The gender specific roles where women lose out, are deeply entrenched in the mindset of both women and men.

In one interaction with children in a rural school we asked the girls what they do when they go home? They replied, describing different household tasks like sweeping, fetching water, helping with cooking etc. When asked what their brothers do, the replies were: they go out and play, watch television, study etc. When asked why the brothers can't help with household tasks- there were surprise and blank looks. Some said the mother does not ask them ( brothers). With this discussion we tried to get them thinking on unequal gender roles. One teacher was unhappy with us for putting ideas in the minds of girls who are perfectly happy doing what they are. Especially since now they even go to school.

On other occasions when women are asked about what happens at dinner time and whether they eat with the rest of the family, the answer is invariably- they eat last and if there is insufficient food left they cook some more-( never done). Women eat last and often the least, but see nothing wrong with this situation.

There has to be change in mindset and for that, right from primary school, education should include the subject of gender equality.

The other aspects are: skill development; price tag on household work and that getting reflected in national statistics when women are classified as home-makers; equality of daily wages and many others.

Question 1: What are the main challenges rural women and girls are facing today?

The context of rural livelihood in developing country like Nepal has been changed into new characteristics, such as:

• Increased migration of men of working age
• Increased in flow of remittance money
• Shortage of men labourers
• Increased workloads of women
• Changing gender role
• Due to labor shortage, parts of agricultural land is left fallow  
• Due to heavy work burden and also under discriminative socio-cultural barriers, women still face problems in freedom of mobility and decision making, such as, over seeds, credit and market linkages, resulting on cutting down the coverage of agriculture.
• At the same time, it results on women’s overburdening of physical work and mental tension, such as, seeking labor to till the land, bargaining for labor charge with tractors for ploughing; in some cases, specially in case of single women, they face negative comments from society when asking for other men to help in agricultural work.
• Thus, rural women farmers, with their low literacy skills, less or no exposure, lack of access to information, technology and credit, together with absence of women extension workers, face a harder working condition in agriculture fields.
• Even if they get some consideration in agricultural inputs and services, it is not equitably distributed (despite Government policy guides equitable distribution of resources);
• There is deeply rooted caste discrimination making equitable distribution of resources impractical at the ground, under the culture of domination of higher case women and richer women over other so called low caste and poorer women; intersectionality is an element affecting equitable sharing of benefits from development.               
• Young women and men hardly undertake agriculture; however those who are occupied with agriculture, they hardly have access to agricultural technologies;
• Nevertheless some young women participate in agriculture training now as their mothers are less literate and over engaged with household chores and other agricultural work. The men youths complain that due to agriculture development policy provision, all agriculture training include more women (40% to 50%) rather than men participants. (based on findings of a research conducted by Women Leading for Change in NRM with Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, 2016).

How do the needs and priorities of rural women differ based on their age, education, household composition, resource base and cultural context?

Across all castes and ethnicities, age factor is a common determinant factor for women to claim and access services.  In Nepal, the rural society seldom sanctions open communication for younger women to men extension workers as well as going to market independently. They are also not allowed to decide on own about making choices for inputs, services or market mobility and participating in training and exposure visits, etc. This group of women is also required to take care of household chores, they are required to remain under control of husbands and both men and women–in-laws, whereas for elderly women these barriers are not very strong or less existent. In the same way, women from remote areas are more marginalized in accessing services and participation in agricultural development activities due to the lack of rural infrastructures, technologies, inputs suppliers, services and market infrastructures.  

The views about extended families and nuclear families differ from women to women in regard to obtaining support from family members. Indigenous culture.

How do some rural women manage to move forward and become successful entrepreneurs, whereas others are trapped in a life of food insecurity and poverty?

Education, exposure and agriculture development projects have contributed to women’s position to influence household decisions in agricultural choices.

In 2011-2012, I worked as a gender specialist in Nepal Economic Agriculture and Trade Activity (NEAT) Project[1], the project intervention promoted women lead farmers by policy adoption for at least 40% women leader farmers. A 39% women lead farmers were developed. I want to mention one case below: 

From Kailali district of western Nepal

One Tharu (indigenous) community woman developed as lead farmer initiated piloting of improved rice variety, when her father in law opposed, even saying that if the plantation fail, he will kick out his daughter in law from home. Despite having strong resistance from the family members, the lady continued to practice the improved variety; Later when the new variety produced three times more paddy than the usual production, the father in law began to claim, “My daughter in law is smarter than any other extension workers, she has done the best among all. Listen and learn from her, you will make better production.” In this case, the driver of her transformative decision making power or role can be credited to the project extension worker, who was also female and motivated the lead farmer to try for change, this not only enhanced the position of the daughter in law in production technology but also improved her RELATIONSHIP within the family.  

In some cases, when women live as the household heads, or women living single have some different experience of being free to decide on their own. Although in some cases, they would not feel confident enough to give final decisions without asking their neighborhood men. This is because of the existing norms about “men knowing better than women” in Nepali society. Also sometimes due to their limited skills for marketing or asking agro services, they rely on men of neighborhood. However with the growing trend of women cooperatives and women farmers groups in some places, these days women feel comfortable to discuss their problems in groups.

Question 2: Are we using the right approaches and policies to close the gender gap?

Very recently Ministry of Agriculture and Development (MOAD) of Nepal has developed (UNWomen supported) a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Strategy to mainstream gender equality and inclusion issues in the National Agricultural Development Strategy of Nepal.

MOAD has liberal policies to ensure involvement of women in all activities and services. However until and unless MOAD recruits rural women agriculture development extension workers, until Government provides special subsidy for poor , single women farmers, and until there is a special technology led and empowerment focused programme targeting women only groups, I do not think our rural women farmers could be given the appropriate share of respect and identity as the PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS in agriculture development debates and planning. Even if women work more than 80% in agricultural fields, normally men are defined as farmers, not women.  I think the first step must be that the government must acknowledge women ad the farmers and knowledgeable, ensure that local level officials and extension workers consist of 50% women and single and poor women farmers are given subsidized land, seeds, training and market linkage.    

In Bhutan I saw how well the government has developed the beautiful, comfortable, women and child friendly market place , cleanest, most hygienic, with sanitation provisions, canteen facilities, where I saw majority shopkeepers were women only. The farmers pay a very minimal charge of USD 3 per month for the space for individual shop; some pay USD5 per month; I wish every municipality provides such market spaces for women (and men) farmers’ market.

In one study done in Jajarkot, a remote village of western Nepal, the women farmers wished they could have rural transport and roads so that they could supply their products by themselves to the daily market in the nearest town. In the absence of rural road and transport, the women farmers are compelled to rely on outsider middlemen for their marketing of vegetables and maize. So provide rural agriculture development roads.  

Question 3: How can we best achieve gender transformative impacts?

What can be done to strengthen women’s voice and wellbeing in the household and the community? Many initiatives focus on empowering women in their productive role and as members and leaders of producer and community groups. While they become empowered in the public space, this does not necessarily translate into improved household dynamics and quality of life.

Support women farmers’ association, help them manage federations; provide young women farmers technologies  for communication and marketing besides production. Organize empowerment focused social mobilization of women in groups’ power. Engage both women and men of the same families in gender sensitization courses. Encourage integrated development  planning processes among various agencies for collaborative planning in food security nutrition purposes.

Has sufficient attention been paid in engaging men and boys for positive behavioural change? Do they understand the links between gender roles and inequalities, and their impact on the productivity and wellbeing of their households? Are their needs being overlooked, resulting in their marginalisation and disengagement from household development?

The trend of engaging men and boys along with women and girls has started in Nepal. We have men gender change agents developed by INGOs like CARE, Action Aid, etc. but very limited number. Yet this is a good initiation and has proven to be helpful for women’s advancement as well as men changing in attitude and behavior. This must be scaled up by government policy and strategies.

Feedback from the facilitator of the online discussion

The recent contributions have highlighted various barriers which result in women missing out on opportunities, including:

• Shortage of time: the huge burden of unpaid care work which takes up a big proportion of the time and energy of women and girls, leaving little for education, paid employment or their own businesses (Bedford from Italy); the seasonal workcare time trade-offs with negative implications not only for women’s opportunities for empowerment but also for the care of young children and their nutritional well-being (Rao from India); and the inability to share the care workload with men in settings where men have migrated to town (Rao from India);
• Cultural norms held by parents and families: which prevent women and girls attending training and mentoring events to broaden their horizons and develop skills, or to participating in developmentoriented meetings (Chander from India);
• Absence of legal recognition of women’s equal entitlements to resources as men (Rao from India), especially land tenure security (Holt from America);
• Chronic poverty: which disproportionally affects households headed by women (Houngbo from Benin).

What I have found particularly exciting in the recent contributions is the recognition of the importance of the household, not only in terms of women’s empowerment but also for transformational change that benefit all household members. McCarthy (from USA) draws attention to the benefits derived from cooperation within the household – through joint decision-making and shared visions – as distinct from women’s empowerment and increased bargaining power in the household. Houngbo (from Benin) talks about the importance of making households more viable and the role of reducing gender inequalities in a fight against chronic poverty, especially those headed by women.

Ways of supporting change in cultural and social norms at the household level include: family counselling (Chander from India), participatory approaches through household methodologies (Bedford, Italy) and the Gender/Family Action Learning System (Mbuchi from Kenya); breaking away from traditional gender roles by encouraging sons – as well as daughters - to help their mothers at produce festivals (Sahakyan from Armenia); and overcoming mistrust by hiring women trainers and inviting husbands to accompany their wives to training (Sahakyan from Armenia).

It is also recognised that, in some contexts, specific affirmative action is necessary to push forward on the women’s empowerment agenda. Examples include: creating space for women through women-only initiatives in Sudan (Marouf); promoting women’s dairy cooperatives in India (Chander); women’s employment on the metro train in India and positive media coverage of successful women (Peter); visibility for rural women’s produce through festivals in Armenia (Sahakyan); peer-to-peer exchanges among rural women initiated by the Huairou Commission (Holt from USA); child care facilities, especially in communities where men have migrated (Rao from India). Explicit legal recognition of women as farmers with equal entitlements as men (Rao from India), with legal frameworks both granting and protecting these rights (Holt from USA) is also essential.

The use of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) as a tool for identifying the principal sources of women’s disempowerment was noted (Huang from China).

This is very interesting and urgent topic since the women in rural areas still remain the most vulnerable. In recent years many NGOs in Armenia have been particularly active in addressing the problems of women in rural areas. Some examples that I'd like to share with you.

Harvest festival: Rural Life and Traditions-the aim of this festival is to gather the women from different regions of Armenia to  sell their fruits, vegetables, homemade jams, honey during the festival which is usually taking place in the capital of Armenia. Prior to the festival, the NGO, that is organizing the event is contacting rural women and doing trainings for them so that they know what is sold better, they help this women to do the packaging and helping them to make the product more marketable. And also the NGO does the whole PR and Marketing of the event. Many international organizations and ministries are being contacted, so that they are aware of the event and they come to buy natural products from rural women. One  very  good thing about this festival is that whole family of these rural women help them to participate for this event. So that young boys help their mothers with the logistics and selling the products. Although very young, theseboys and girls realize how important they are to their families and to the society.They see that their mom is doing something very useful to their families and they can be part of it. These way the division of work between men and women disappeares. These women may not become millionaires during the festival, but their mindset change:Rural women and their families feel appreciated and very respected,  they realize that they can do something with the resources they have, earn money and be helpful.

Trainings for Rural Women-at first when NGO's and minsitries started organizing trainings in remote areas of Armenia, it's been quite difficult. Most of the women in rural areas faced the issue that their husbands were not allowing them to participate in trainings, because of lack of trust and also it sounded strange to them, it was something new. The organizing NGOs decided that it will be easier at first to have women as trainers so that to overcome the barrier of mistrust of husbands. The women trainers held discussions with husbands and invited them to trainings as well, so that they know what's going on and also get involved in discussions held. Having a woman trainer and inviting men as well improved the situation a lot. Rural women and their husbands had an example of a woman trainer who succeded in life and now she was sharing her experience with others. These trainings were very much motivating and educating at the same time. And now the situtation improved a lot. Many male trainers visit rural areas and organize trainings on a wide range of topics. Women are eager to participate, since their husbands have nothing against and it's a good occasion to learn something new and useful and somehow get out of  everyday rural life and works.

A root cause of gender inequality, and major obstacle to women's empowerment, in both rural and urban areas, is the huge burden of unpaid care work carried out by women and girls. This takes up a big proportion of their time and energy, leaving little for education, paid work or starting small businesses. Redistributing the burden of care work within the family -- and beyond, with the state, private sector and the community bearing some of the burden -- is crucial to giving women and girls the possibility to be empowered economically and socially. Participatory grass roots approaches to intervening at household level include IFAD's Household Methodologies https://www.ifad.org/topic/household_methodologies/overview and the GALS.

The Societal norms sometime are big hurdles in achieving transformative impacts. Look for instance some norms in parts of India's rural areas:

1. Women will take food only when men have finished their meals. A wife is expected to eat only when husband has finished food. Generally, women are left with little food especially vegetables and better part of food cooked has already been eaten by males. Women mostly cook food and they are the last one to eat it.

2. Holding a baby in lap, feeding babies/baby sitting are considered unmanly in some societies/communities in parts of India.

3. Wife can not walk by the side of her husband, she has to walk a little behind. This conveys a lot about the prevailing mind-set which has many ramifications.

These are just a few of the social norms but speaks volume on gender relations in societies. Women are not allowed education after certain level and also, they can not go for jobs even if they are capable to take. Women running business is a distant dream in such societies. India has progressed a lot, there are many schemes and programmes and reservations for women at different levels to empower them. The societal norms mentioned above are getting weakened with passing time yet the progress in gender transformative impacts is slow due to these norms.

Recently we organized a Rural Youth Mentoring Programme (http://www.ypard.net/testimonials/mentoring-rural-youth-make-agricultur…;) to attract and retain youth in agriculture. We found it difficult to make it gender balanced since parents were reluctant to send their daughters  to mentoring programme, while boys had no such problem. In many other similar capacity building programmes, boys/men freely participate while women are left out not by choice but by familial pressure or circumstances. From here itself difference arise as women miss the opportunities, which otherwise could have equipped them with awareness, knowledge and skills to take up productive entrepreneurial tasks. We plan now, in coming months, to motivate parents to send their daughters to mentoring programmes, may be we have to work more in our efforts to motivate parents. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVKs) in India organize a large number of training programmes for men women, youth on various aspects of agriculture and value addition, here too often they face problems in ensuring participation of women. Women are not able to particpate full time due to their familiy responsibiliites, while men are not affected on this count. Its a matter again of unequal opportunities which can be corrected with suitable family level couunselling of all family members that men & women alike need training for better outcome of efforts.