Mainstreaming gender for sustainable soil management - Nomomente Institute
1. In your view, what is the relation between sustainable soil use, management and conservation (including soil fertility and health) and gender equality?
Healthy soils are crucial to supporting sustainable agriculture, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and a number of other ecosystem services. In turn, sustainable soil use, management and conservation relies on an understanding of the critical roles that soil plays, as well as on an understanding of women’s role in agriculture and food security.
Because women make up close to half of the global agricultural labour force, ensuring their equality in this realm is vital to sustainable soil use, management and conservation, as well as to meeting many of the Sustainable Development Goals. This means ensuring that women have equal access to opportunities for improving soil health, to land and secure land tenure, and to other resources, as well as addressing the particular constraints that women face. Attention must also be paid to how the intersectional identities of women (including women’s class, ethnicity, age, and status) impact on agricultural practices.
2. What are the distinct roles for women, men, boys and girls in sustainable soil management?
While more rigid rules with respect to the roles of women, men, boys and girls in soil management do exist in some places, there are also differences in understanding in terms of the need for living soils to facilitate sustainable agriculture, as well as with respect to the importance of what we call the “soil village” in raising strong, healthy plants.
3. What are the main gender-based constraints, including unequal gender relations and discriminatory norms that hinder sustainable soil management and contribute to soil degradation? What practical solutions and approaches could help overcoming such barriers?
There are a number of gendered differences and gender-based constraints that hinder sustainable soil management and contribute to soil degradation.
- Women may have different knowledge concerning agriculture and land management. This includes traditional knowledge, and may be related to the differing roles of women and men in agricultural practices (for example, land preparation, sowing, pest management, harvesting). Women and men may also be responsible for growing different types of crops, and thus have different knowledge in this regard.
- Women may face constraints with respect to landholding. Women often have smaller landholdings and less secure land tenure than men. These factors may impact their ability to control and make decisions concerning agriculture and soil management. Women may also have access to lower quality land than men.
- Women often lack access to resources. Women are likely to have lower income or other forms of capital than men. This may impact their ability to invest in agricultural improvements; to access agricultural technologies, equipment and technical information; to access agricultural inputs (organic or chemical); and to engage in longer-term land management activities (versus interventions with more immediate benefits).
- Women may have competing demands on their labour. Women often have a range of domestic duties that place constraints on their time, and may limit their ability to implement more time-consuming, labour-intensive agricultural practices.
- Women and children’s health suffer more in the absence of living soil. Women and children are more impacted by the lack of microorganisms in the soil in terms of gut health, and may suffer greater health consequences (including anxiety and depression) as a result.
4. How can the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment contribute to sustainable soil management and conservation? Which interventions at policy and project/field level are of utmost priority? What are some potential entry points for success?
Given the significant role women play in the global agricultural labour force, promoting greater gender equality and empowering women can lead to improved soil management and conservation.
Possible interventions include:
- Improving soil health understanding and education for women and girls
- Increasing opportunities to learn from grandmothers and other elders, and listening to the traditional knowledge of women, particularly Indigenous women
- Paying greater attention to intersectionality and the multiple ways in which women might be disempowered
- Advocating for more equal land tenure
- Understanding the devastating impact of toxic soil inputs to women’s fertility, reproductive health and offspring
Ms. Katherine Lofts