Feedback on the Zero Draft of the Guidelines by World Vision Canada (Ms. Socorro Maminta and David Mbugua)
Review findings/results:
1. Part 1 – This section clearly captures the main challenges and barriers which hamper the achievement of gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights in the context of food security and nutrition. Nevertheless, there is still room to flesh out the following:
Sections 4 & 6: While these sections state that the “COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women and girls xxxxxx as a result of gender inequality and discrimination”, and “xxxxx the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it are having a negative and gender-differentiated impact on food security and nutrition”, they do not clearly explain how the pandemic negatively impacts on women and girls in the areas of food security and nutrition. To address this gap, would it be possible, for example, to include a narrative around women’s and girls’ gendered role as food providers and preparers which would make it more burdensome for them to search for or buy food for the family considering pandemic-related issues such as mobility restrictions, decrease in family’s purchasing power due to COVID-19 related job losses and inflation, heavier and unpaid care and domestic work due to stay-at-home orders (e.g., homeschooling responsibilities, taking care of young and elderly family members, taking care of the sick); added to these are inequitable household spending patterns on food, health services and education that women face?
Section 8: This section states that “xxx gender inequality persists as women and girls continue to face multitude and intersecting forms of discrimination in many areas.” Is it possible to add a sentence or two to provide examples to illustrate what these multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination are?
2. Part 2:
Section 23: Can we include a human rights analysis embedded in the context-specific gender analysis and approaches?
Section 25: Reinforcing the collection and use of gender-disaggregated data is great. However, having a feminist M&E system is also important by ensuring that data planning, collection and analysis includes participatory and inclusive approaches. For example, prospective participants (female and male) of various food security and nutrition-related interventions need to be actively involved in the interventions’ M&E process, from research planning to implementation, analysis and interpretation of data and reporting. This also requires the mapping, development and use of robust gender-transformative indicators to measure progress on GE changes in the agriculture, food security and nutrition sectors.
Section 28: Please include as one of the key stakeholders to collaborate and partner with the religious leaders/faith-based organizations as they are influential in shaping/influencing mindsets, values, norms and practices around gender equality and food and nutrition.
3. Part 3:
Section 33: It is important to emphasize that women’s participation, voice and leadership needs to be seen and heard along entire lengths of food value chains. Currently, women are over-represented in low-skill, labour-intensive (often informal) levels of value chains. However, to be effective actors, leaders and decision-makers means that women should be well educated and skilled which is not the case because girls tend to drop out of school and do not complete primary, secondary and tertiary education for varying reasons (early marriage, early pregnancy etc.).
Section 37: We suggest including the following in the Policy areas for discussion:
- Provision or strengthening of safe, affordable, and accessible infrastructure for childcare and elder care services for women with care responsibilities to free up some of their time from time-consuming care work which will allow them to actively engage in productive initiatives and assume leadership roles in agriculture and nutrition-related organizations and policy making fora/platforms
- Enhance resource allocation including scholarships for the education, capacity building, training, knowledge and information services, including personal and professional development for women and girls to better prepare them for leadership/decision-making roles
- Institution of flexible work arrangements for women and men to promote work-life balance
- Engaging men and boys to become active change agents towards a fairer distribution of unpaid care and domestic work and support advocacy for gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment and human rights
Section 37.iii: The institution/application of gender quotas is an affirmative action initiative to tip the scales of inequality in favour of diverse groups of women who have faced historical disadvantage and multiple layers of discrimination. While this is to ensure women’s representation in leadership positions in public and private sectors, this does not mean that the merit system which considers the qualifications of prospective candidates for certain leadership positions will be ignored or will not be taken into consideration. It is assigning a certain quota for women to ensure that they will be actively and deliberately considered in leadership posts. For example, if there are two equally qualified candidates and one is a female and the other a male, tipping the scale in favour of the female candidate will be part of the gender quota system.
Section 46: In addition to UN CEDAW, there are other international instruments which need to be referenced as they spell out key mandates which are essential in ensuring gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment and human rights impacting on violence against women. These are: UN Declaration of the Elimination of Violence Against Women; UN Declaration of Human Right; Convention Against Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights; and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Section 53: This section states that the “often lower percentage of women in higher agricultural education translates into a limited pool of available women extensionists, agricultural technicians, researchers, planners and policy makers” and “in many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, female agricultural researchers” or those who are critical to improving farm productivity for all farmers, are limited. It is recommended that incentives such as scholarships, stipends, free dormitories/accommodation, etc. be provided to female youth to take courses/educational programs in the agriculture and nutrition sector.
Section 56: Lack/limited access to agricultural advisory services is the result of several factors: 1) Low budgets allocated to the agricultural sector by governments. That means that staffing capacity i.e. agricultural extension staff/farmers ratios are low which makes it difficult for producers to receive timely information to guide their farming operations. 2) Very few government extension staff are female which means women are sufficiently served with information because male extensionist workers tend to focus on men than women in their service provision. Governments need to be intentional when recruiting agricultural extension officers to ensure gender balance.
Information asymmetry exists along value chains meaning that producers, especially women, rarely have good understanding of what is demanded by markets in terms of quality, quantity and price offerings. Promotion of ICT use should be enhanced and barriers to access to such technology by women addressed.
Section 80: To ensure that women participate and benefit from food value chains deliberate efforts should be made to identify VCs that have the greatest potential to promote gender equality. It should be noted that women often provide the labour needed to produce most cash crops/livestock which are owned by men and who also control the income generated from their sale. In some contexts, women are also responsible for marketing such produce. That means they have limited time available to produce “their crops” after fulfilling men’s labour needs. That not only increases women’s time poverty but also means they can hardly benefit from production of crops/livestock they have control over.
Section 82.iv: I suggest revising the following by adding the underlined words as follows:
Investments in technologies, rural infrastructure, transport and women’s specific activities (across food systems and along value chains) that support women’s activities, informed by a context analysis that applies a gender, human rights and intersectional lens, and strengthen capacities of diverse groups of women to use technologies or methods that reduce their work burden.
Dr. David Mbugua