Gender and RIU: reflections prompted by the recent gender and market oriented agriculture workshop
16 February 2011

Tweet   

RIU was well represented at the recent International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) workshop on gender and market oriented agriculture, held in Addis Ababa from 31 January to 2 February 2011.


The RIU delegates at the ILRI gender conference making their points.

Grace Jokthan from RIU Nigeria and Agnes Ushang Ingwu from Abanbeke Development Association (a member of the Cassava Innovation Platform) joined a group of scientists, researchers, gender experts, development practitioners and government and donor representatives at the workshop.

Reflecting on the conference Dr Grace Jokthan, programme officer at RIU Nigeria, said:

"We discussed the fact that women are about half the population and very significant in terms of agricultural production in Africa. However, if women can be persuaded and supported to make agriculture a business, instead of just a subsistence venture, then there can be huge positive consequences for development indicators.

Women may need support to build their capacity to enable them to negotiate and determine cost and profit margin. However, there is a real danger that women can lose out. When agricultural products that women have traditionally grown for the family become cash crops, men become more interested in the production and may take over."

RIU's portfolio suggests, however, this may not be all bad. For example, following the mechanisation programme led by RIU Tanzania the tractors are driven by men, whereas previously the backbreaking work of preparing the fields had been a burden which fell disproportionately on women. To see this as a failure in gender terms because of the lack of women tractor drivers would be to misrepresent what was happening in the field.

The IILRI conference revisited the evidence on the difference between how men and women allocate their income; women are more likely than men to spend money on food, education and clothes.

The conference also looked specifically at the issue of value chains.

Dr Jokthan continued:

"The conference discussed the fact that developing strategies for value chains need to consider gender. Strategies need to be market oriented, flexible and not create unintended barriers to the participation of women. This chimed with RIU's work which is all about value chains."

The RIU innovation platforms are commodity-based, market-orientated and built on value chains. RIU has often selected its partners based on their practical work with women such as Rwanda's Maize Innovation Platform partners or involving ADA in the cassava work in Nigeria.

In some cases, such as the RIU poultry programme in Tanzania, engagement is based on families or households. Poultry keeping was assumed to be a enterprise that involved all the family, but when problems emerged which impacted on women's abilities to effectively take part in the programme, specific solutions were found - some of these were discussed in Vera Mugittu's update. This pragmatic approach to removing blockages as they occur is indicative of the way that RIU works.

In other cases market forces have dictated that women will be integrated into interventions. FIPS-Africa's market research showed that their village-based advisors, many of whom are women, had a large customer base of women, whereas traditional extensions services had a reputation of being mostly men talking to men. FIPS-Africa offers a combination of customised advice and access to farm inputs, especially seeds of improved varieties and fertilizer. So, in seeking the better seeds women also get advice; the fact that the advisors come to the homestead also helps ensure women are involved.

The World Bank has highlighted a number of practical steps which extension services can take to get more women involved.

In the closing presentation at the ILRI Gender and market oriented agriculture workshop is was noted that:

• the agricultural roles that women play differ greatly by country and culture
• an holistic approach is needed rather than looking at women's issues in isolation
• not all farmers are, or should be, market-oriented; most rural people will start their involvement in markets with informal ones, graduating to more formal ones as they gain experience and confidence
• new approaches are needed that suit market-oriented rather than subsistence-based smallholder agriculture
• case studies presented looked at the many different components of whole value chains, from production through marketing and consumption of agricultural products
• individual as well as collective action should be encouraged to make women ready to adopt new methods and technologies or to start shops or other enterprises
• flexible strategies are required that can accommodate people as they move, for example, from one commodity to another
• government-driven or project-driven strategies should make way for more stakeholder-driven strategies
• useful gender disaggregated economic data was available but the challenge was now to gather data on non-income factors, such as women's nutritional well-being, access to resources and changes in rights
• ongoing gender monitoring and evaluation are required
• more work is required to sensitize people to gender issues, to give women a seat at the table. This involves changing the attitudes of many, many men and that this will take time
• all successful agricultural development is context specific

Note
Abanbeke Development Association (ADA) is located in Cross River State in South East Nigeria. ADA is a small community-based organization that works mainly on women's rights issues amongst the Bette people in Nigeria. ADA is also working closely with RIU on the Cassava Innovation Platform and other agricultural developments.