Purchase for Progress (P4P), a WFP pilot connecting farmers to markets. (wfp.org/p4p)
After five years of piloting smallholder-friendly procurement models in 20 diverse countries, Purchase for Progress (P4P) has released a new report reviewing how market development can and cannot promote women’s empowerment based upon five years of field experience.
We have summarized our key findings in regards to approaches most successful in promoting the equality of female farmers. If you are interested you can read more about our findings in the full report P4P’s Women’s Empowerment Pathways: Roadblocks and Successes
Context-specific action plans:
In order to empower women economically, the underlying causes of income inequalities must be addressed. Due to the immense variation between culture, religion, and infrastructure which can exist even in areas only a few miles apart, strategies to empower women farmers cannot be ‘one-size-fits-all’. Implementation must be informed by country-level, context- and culturally-specific assessments to determine the needs of women farmers on a community, regional and country level in order to tailor approaches which will address underlying causes of inequality while ensuring women’s well-being. This should be informed by a broader gender strategy which establishes long-term goals and guides the intervention.
Targeting women farmers:
Targeting women farmers can be challenging, because they may not be active in farmers’ organizations, and often produce crops for household consumption rather than for sale. Additionally, women farmers take on different and often overlapping roles; contributing their labour as unpaid family workers, taking on farm work as casual agricultural labourers, and sometimes as the principal producers of crops. Women in the different roles will have different needs and interests and it is important to target support accordingly.
Equipment and capacity development:
Labour and time saving technologies and practices that contribute to reducing women’s workload and save them time are an important aspect to address if market development programmes are to succeed in empowering women, both socially and economically. Women also need assistance to develop the capacity necessary in order to increase their incomes. For this, a vital first step is to provide them with training as well as agricultural inputs and credit so that they can produce more, aggregate their crops, and market them collectively. However, giving women farmers the tools to produce more and market their crops does not guarantee that they will be able to do so or benefit economically from their work.
Inclusion of men:
Effective gender sensitization efforts incorporate the needs of communities, responding to the opportunities, challenges, and recommendations identified by country- and region-specific assessments. One effective method has been to ensure the inclusion of both men and women during gender sensitization, in order to acquire the buy-in of the most influential members of communities, such as religious and customary leaders, who are generally male. Within P4P, this has often been achieved by stressing the economic gains for households and communities which embrace gender equality. In many contexts, these methods have assisted men to understand that women’s empowerment does not mean men’s disempowerment. In the same way, male authorities and community leaders have played vital roles in supporting the increased agricultural production and economic gains of women farmers under the P4P pilot.
Be aware of the risks:
By overlooking generations-old cultural norms, initiatives which seek to empower women can cause social isolation and risk the safety of participants. Malawi is one example where some women farmers reported forceful resistance at household level, as the male heads of household resisted their wives’ efforts to independently earn and control income. This highlights the importance of carefully designing culturally and context appropriate interventions in order to ensure the safety of women participants. Household negotiation is a powerful tool which can assist women to strategically gain voice and influence, while simultaneously reducing pressure within their households.
Tools for household negotiation:
A household negotiation approach emphasizes the inclusive management of household resources, assisting women and men to improve their collaboration at a household level. A woman farmer and field monitor named Mazouma, from Burkina Faso, says that in her community, many women are now able make family decisions in collaboration with their husbands, making it easier to manage their income. She also says that this has led to the increased inclusion of women in decision-making and planning in their farmers’ organizations and communities.
Any assessment of gender achievements must go beyond counting the number of women vs men involved. Nuanced examinations will inform new methods to more effectively facilitate the empowerment of women farmers. One such lesson learned for WFP was the importance of emphasizing the procurement of traditional “women’s crops”, such as niébé, in order to best increase women’s participation to sales.
Ms. Ahnna Gudmunds
This discussion topic makes me think about our early experience from P4P in Liberia where more than a decade of civil war had left the agricultural sector in pieces. The limited infrastructure that was in place prior to the conflict had been destroyed, and displaced communities returned to overgrown land. The few remaining farmers’ groups were loosely organized and struggled to produce high-quality rice in large quantities. When the P4P pilot was initiated in 2009, mistrust was pervasive among farmers – of one another, of the Ministry of Agriculture and of WFP. Identifying cooperatives to join P4P proved difficult, and members were wary of working together and therefore hesitant to hand over their rice to be sold collectively to WFP.
Working on building trust among smallholders, and enabling them to work collectively and take ownership of their businesses turned out to be a big challenge but also a big achievement. Here is the link to an article with more information about these efforts: https://www.wfp.org/purchase-progress/news/blog/p4p-liberia-building-relationships-and-growing-businesses
In addition, a colleague wrote a blogpost about how women’s groups in Liberia are not only seizing the P4P opportunity to produce and commercialize rice, but also to create their own personal peace and protection networks. You can read his blog post here: https://www.wfp.org/purchase-progress/news/blog/blog-women%E2%80%99s-ingenuity-determines-p4p%E2%80%99s-success-liberia