Gender mainstreaming in rice production, Tanzania: In rice producing areas in the central parts of Tanzania, women traditionally take part in production and harvesting and are left out of decision making and marketing. In the farmer associations few women were represented in leading position and women generally would rarely speak their opinions or raise their viewpoints at member meetings. Work and results achivements: Efforts were made to increase the overall gender awareness through gender trainings, gender assessments and through the establishment of gender working groups within each association. Additionally, Women Power Groups were established as a means to give women a separate forum to discuss issues of their interest, encourage each other and build confidence in using their voice. These women groups, as well as other, mixed groups, were then assisted to start their own Village Community Banks (VICOBAs). As a result of these interventions women and men throughout the project areas report on more unity in the family and equality in decision making at the household as well as the farm level. Through the Women Power Groups women have stepped up to leading positions and to using their voice at farmers’ associations’ member meetings. Through their VICOBAs women groups have saved several million shillings and have been able to send their kids to school and start small income generating activities such as chicken rearing, bike rentals, increased rice production and local tuck shops to mention a few. Men and women have participated in trainings on system for rice intensification which has led to increased rice productivity by up to 300 percent. Both men and women have been empowered by the gender interventions and report a more satisfactory cooperation and family dynamics as results of the gender trainings.
Key Learnings • Having special focus on support for women to start up entrepreneurial activities – management
competence, finance, land titles, etc. – has proved crucial to engage more women. • Competence strengthening of more women than men in production areas, entrepreneurship, management of finance/ business, savings/ credit access, processing, value chain development and organisation – has led to increased women’s local business development and steering of own income; and improved living conditions, resilience to climate changes and overall poverty reduction for both women and men targeted. • Mixed gender mainstreaming trainings to build awareness and a separate mechanism to reach only the women (eg. specific competence building and women’s associations) has proved very beneficial.
Way forward Gender mainstreaming is continued to be mainstreamed into Norges Vel’s revised international strategy, and a manual on gender mainstreaming of the project cycle management was made in 2013. Norges Vel continues to work to both implement this and aligning work to further learning from other Norwegian and international good practices. Norges Vel today carries out workshops with partners and target groups in our projects on gender mainstreaming, and uses local gender expertise in addition to our own material and competence. We continue targeting women’s participation at least at the same level, or more as/ than men – in order to achieve increased and improved women’s economic and social empowerment through nature based entrepreneurship, SMEs, organisations, and business/ value chain development. We have the ambitions to finalise a field manual/ step-by-step handbook which can serve as support for project responsibles, project partners and producers’ organisations. This has to be used in locally fully adapted manners, to continue promoting gender equality and equity for men and women in all targeted areas.
• If women had the same access to resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 %. This could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 %. (FAO 2010-11 – Women in Agriculture) • Case studies indicate that women have less access to resources than men – and their participation in formal structures throughout the value chain is low (FAO 2012 – The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture)
The Royal Norwegian Society for Development
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