Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook - part 2

MODULE 10

Gender and Natural Resources Management Overview

n the future, the natural resources needed to sustain the human population will exceed available resources at current consumption levels.1 Unsustainable and uneven consumption levels have resulted in an increasingly stressed environment, where natural disasters, desertification, and biodiversity loss endanger humans as well as plant and animal species. The challenge of reversing the degradation of natural resources while meeting increasing demands for them involves significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices (FAO 2007a). Effective programming and policies require understanding and addressing the genderspecific relationships to natural resources use and management and highlighting the linkages between natural resources, cultural values, and local knowledge. Addressing the gender-specific aspects of natural resources will provide policy makers with information for more effective natural resource use and conservation policies and will provide guidance for equitable access to natural resources. Here, one must assess the gender-differentiated impacts of environmental changes, including biodiversity loss, climate change, desertification, natural disasters, and energy development.

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KEY ISSUES IN NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Natural resources provide a range of goods and services— food, fuel, medicines, fresh water, fisheries, and air and water regulation—that support life on Earth. The rural poor in developing countries remain the most directly dependent on

natural resources for their food and livelihood security. Subsistence farmers, fishers, hunters and gatherers, and agricultural wage workers (more than 1.3 billion people) depend on the availability of usable land, water, and plant and animal species for their livelihoods (FAO 2004). Thus, the agricultural livelihoods of poor rural women and men depend on the condition of natural resources, particularly livelihoods of people living on fragile lands (World Bank 2005).

Over the past 50 years, ecosystems have changed more rapidly than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely because of the need to meet rapidly growing demands for food, water, timber, fiber, and fuel (MEA 2005).

Now climate change, caused largely by fossil fuel use, further threatens ecosystems. One strategy to mitigate climate change and reduce fossil fuel dependence emphasizes increased use of bioenergy from crops, which is likely to put more pressure on land, water, and species diversity. These changes contribute to the degradation of natural resources, which exacerbates poverty for some groups of people, especially people living in marginal environments (box 10.1).

This Module identifies and addresses five major challenges facing sustainable natural resource management and gender: ■ ■

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Biodiversity conservation and adaptation Mitigation of and adaptation to the effects of climate change and variability Bioenergy Natural disasters Land and water degradation and desertification.

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Box 10.1 Key Trends in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Bioenergy, Natural Disasters, and Desertification

Current changes in biodiversity are the fastest in human history, with species becoming extinct 100 times as fast as the rate in the fossil record; 12 percent of birds, 23 percent of mammals, and 30 percent of amphibians are threatened with extinction.

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The expected increase in biofuel feedstock production may lead to increased rates of genetic erosion.

Global fish stocks classed as collapsed have roughly doubled to 30 percent over the last 20 years.

An increase in so-called dead zones, where marine life can no longer live because of the depletion of oxygen caused by pollutants like fertilizers is expected.

Annual emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels have risen by about one-third since 1987.

Eleven of the warmest years since records have been kept occurred during the last 12 years.

In the twentieth century the average temperature increased by 0.74°C, sea level increased by 17 centimeters, and a large part of the Northern Hemisphere snow cover vanished.

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There are 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species that are in danger of extinction if the temperature increases 1.5 to 2.5°C. Only very large cuts in greenhouse gases of 60 to 80 percent can stop irreversible change.

Globally more than 2 million people die prematurely every year because of outdoor and indoor air pollution.

If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the people in the world could be subject to water stress.

Unsustainable land use and climate change drive land degradation, including soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, salinity, desertification, and the disruption of biological cycles.

In the first half of 2006, 174 disaster events occurred in 68 countries, affecting 28 million people and damaging property and assets valued at more than $6 billion. Annual economic losses associated with such disasters averaged $75.5 billion in the 1960s, $138.4 billion in the 1970s, $213.9 billion in the 1980s, and $659.9 billion in the 1990s.

Sources: IPCC 2007; MEA 2005; www.unep.org.

Addressing these natural resource challenges requires an understanding of their underlying causes. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), the main drivers of change include the following:

In addition, efforts aimed at reversing natural resources degradation must consider other factors, including the following: ■

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Climate change led by the burning of fossil fuels Habitat and land-use change, primarily due to the expansion of agriculture Overexploitation of resources, especially overfishing Deliberate and accidental introduction of invasive alien species Pollution, particularly nutrient loading, leading to a loss of biodiversity, agricultural productivity, and increased human health problems.

Understanding and changing natural resource tenure and governance as well as unequal patterns of access to and control over natural resources lie at the heart of reversing natural resource degradation. These issues are crucial to addressing the gender dimension of natural resources.

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Sociodemographic trends, including growth, migration, and diseases such as HIV and AIDS Economic trends, including economic growth, disparities, and trade patterns Sociopolitical factors, ranging from equal participation in decision-making processes to conflicts Technological change that leads to increases in crop yields and agricultural intensification practices, with severe consequences for natural resources.

Climate change, biodiversity loss, land and water degradation and desertification, and natural disasters share many common causes. Because a worldwide consensus recognizes the acceleration of climate change, efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change promise to have major consequences for natural resource availability and use. Many of

the solutions and problems of natural resources degradation lie in agriculture. Agriculture, heavily dependent on natural resources, also provides environmental services such as carbon sequestration. Agriculture occupies 40 percent of the land surface, consumes 70 percent of global water resources, and manages biodiversity at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels (FAO 2007a). Agriculture contributes to soil erosion, agrochemical pollution, and climate change, accounting for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions (World Bank 2007). Land and water degradation, shrinking biodiversity, and climate change threaten the viability of farming in various settings. Because of gender-differentiated roles and responsibilities in natural resources management, interventions must address the specific needs and opportunities of rural women and men, particularly the poorest, to reduce inequalities, stimulate growth, and reverse environmental degradation.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Improving natural resource management practices and protecting the environment require reducing poverty and achieving livelihood and food security among rural women and men. The following are some of the key gender issues in natural resources management interventions.

Rural women and men have different roles, responsibilities, and knowledge in managing natural resources

Rural women’s and men’s different tasks and responsibilities in food production and provision result in different needs, priorities, and concerns. Although rural women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities vary across regions and cultures, they often follow similar gender divisions of labor. In most regions men use natural resources in agriculture, logging, and fishing for commercial purposes more than women. In crop production in many regions of the developing world, men tend to focus on market-oriented or cash crop production, whereas women often work with subsistence crops, minor crops, and vegetable gardens. Women often grow a wider diversity of crops. In some cases men and women perform complementary roles—for example, men clear land, women plant and tend crops, and men harvest and market crops. However, observers have come to learn that these gender patterns are neither simplistic nor static. For example, women often work with their husbands in producing cash crops. In Kenya women grow green beans for the European market, and in regions where men migrate, women

take over household cash crop production. Also, gender divisions of labor vary substantially by age, race, ethnicity, and marital status. Consequently, their water use and management will vary accordingly. For example, men use water for irrigation systems, whereas women may not have access to irrigation systems for vegetable gardens and subsistence crops. In livestock management men often care for cattle and larger animals, and women care for smaller animals such as poultry and small ruminants. In many instances women also have responsibility for collecting fodder for animals, often depending on common property resources that are threatened in many cases.

Because women (and sometimes girls) are often responsible for providing their households with the basic necessities of life—food, fuel, and water—they rely heavily on natural resources. Men seldom have responsibility for collecting and using natural resources for household use. Earlier development efforts assumed that women’s fuelwood collection and use led to deforestation, but it is now known that the major problems related to biomass collection include women’s and children’s exposure to indoor air pollution and heavy workloads for women and girls. Environmental degradation increases women’s time for labor-intensive household tasks, such as having to walk longer distances for the collection of fuelwood and water. Decreases in agricultural production and household food security create additional health problems related to their increasing workload. Although both rural women and men play a critical role in natural resources management, women’s use, conservation, and knowledge of resources play a key role in shaping local biodiversity. Also degradation of natural resources can alter gender responsibilities and relations in households and communities.

Gender differences exist in rights and access to natural resources, including land, trees, water, and animals

In most societies women typically have fewer ownership rights than men (Rocheleau 1996). Women frequently have de facto or land-use rights as compared to men’s de jure or ownership rights. Women often have use rights that are mediated by their relationships with men. Thus, when women are widowed or divorced, they may lose these rights, as in recent cases of land grabbing from AIDS widows in southern Africa. How men and women use resources reflects gendered access. For example, women may collect branches and limbs from trees, whereas men may have rights to harvest trees, but for both men and women, insecure land

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tenure reduces incentives to make the improvements in farming practices necessary to cope with environmental degradation. Without secure land rights, women and men farmers have little or no access to credit to make investments in improved natural resource management and conservation practices. Poor rural women lacking secure land tenure often depend on common property resources for fuelwood, fodder, and food and, therefore, for the well-being of their households. The depletion of common property resources poses a severe threat to the livelihoods and food security of poor rural women and men. Women household heads remain at a particular disadvantage in terms of access to land, water, and other natural resources. A key point is that gendered relations and responsibilities in terms of natural resources are dynamic and subject to change.

Access to new technology, information, and training related to natural resource management remains highly gendered, with most of the related initiatives targeted to men

Despite numerous efforts to mainstream gender, many governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and development agencies find these efforts particularly difficult in the agriculture and natural resource arenas. For example, extension personnel in agriculture and natural resources frequently speak only to men, often erroneously expecting that the men will convey information to their wives. Until gender is successfully mainstreamed, women’s groups, organizations, and networks can increase women’s access to knowledge, information, and technologies (Agarwal 2003; Enarson and Meyreles 2004; Sachs 2007).

Degradation of the natural resource base can result in new forms of cooperation, conflict, or controversy between men and women or different ethnic groups

When natural resources become insufficient to support the livelihoods of the population, drastic measures result, such as men’s or women’s out-migration. Men’s out-migration leaves women to assume men’s traditional roles and responsibilities, increasing their work burden, but leaving them without equal or direct access to financial, social, and technological resources (Lambrou and Laub 2004). In some instances of severe drought, women migrate to secure extra income for their families (Alston 2006). The intrahousehold reallocation of labor can lead to a decline in agricultural production and in turn result in food insecurity and an overall decrease in financial assets (FAO 2005).

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Women are still absent from the climate change and natural resource-related decision-making processes at all levels

Equal participation in community-based decision making remains a complex and difficult goal to achieve, especially in the contexts of highly unequal gender and class relations. At the local level, more natural resource projects and interventions emphasize community-level participation. Careful and thoughtful planning in relation to gender must be exercised in the design of participatory projects. Community-level participation often leaves women’s voices and concerns unacknowledged. Even when women attend meetings or events, they may not feel free to voice their opinions, or their opinions and needs may not be taken seriously (Agarwal 2003; Prokopy 2004). Community participation often favors local elites, usually men, but sometimes elite women’s concerns directly conflict with and override poor women’s access to resources such as fuel and water (Singh 2006; Sultana 2006). Despite attempts to mainstream gender at the national and international levels, few women participate.

Gender is rarely a central issue in policy initiatives. Men tend to dominate in the newly emerging decision-making and policy arenas of climate change and bioenergy. Women’s limited participation in decision-making processes at international and local levels restricts their capacity to engage in political decisions that can impact their specific needs and vulnerabilities (Denton 2002; Masika 2002).

GENDER IN SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS FRAMEWORK

The Module applies a gender in sustainable livelihoods (SL) framework (see the Sourcebook Overview for more details on this framework). This framework conceptualizes the following elements as key in the livelihood strategies of the rural poor: assets, markets, information and organizations, risk and vulnerability, and policies and institutions.

The framework adopts a people-centered approach that places at the center the agricultural livelihoods of rural women and men and the natural resources management strategies they adopt. The SL framework also requires a holistic approach that integrates scientific, technical, and economic aspects with social and human dimensions. This Module applies the SL framework to natural resources management to highlight key gender concerns in programs and projects, and aspects of the framework will be applied in the different Thematic Notes as appropriate. To refrain from repetition, each component of the framework— assets, markets, information and organizations, risk and

vulnerability, and policies and institutions—will not be discussed in detail in each Thematic Note.

Assets

Rural women and men combine a range of assets to achieve their agricultural livelihood outcomes. Assets critical to rural women and men—not only for securing food and a livelihood for their household but also for the conservation and sustainable use and management of natural resources— include the following: ■ ■ ■

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Natural resource assets: land, water, forests, biodiversity Financial assets: credit, capital, and income Physical assets: technology, in particular labor-saving technologies Information assets: local knowledge, formal education, access to information.

A rural household with a large range of assets at its disposal will better cope with shocks and stresses, such as droughts.

Poor rural women and men have very limited access to assets.

Socially constructed gender roles and relations also influence women’s and men’s access to assets and the benefits obtained from these assets. Gender-based inequalities often result in women’s and girls’ limited access to assets, which generates implications for natural resources management conservation.

Women face a variety of gender-based constraints as farmers and managers of natural resources. In many societies discriminatory customary and social practices curtail women’s rights to land; women generally receive the most marginal lands.

Insecure land tenure reduces rural women’s and men’s incentives to improve natural resources management practices and conservation. Without secure land rights, women and men farmers have little or no access to credit, which is essential for making investments in improved natural resources management and conservation practices. Consequently the technological advances yielding substantial gains in agricultural productivity over the last few decades have often bypassed women farmers and reduced their productivity.

Markets

Access to markets varies by gender and location. Women tend to sell in local markets where they find demand for traditional varieties of crops. Men tend to sell uniform and exotic varieties in export markets. These gender differences in market access vary by location. Local trade can improve rural women’s and men’s livelihoods by providing them with a source of income and, at the same time, an incentive to manage, use, and conserve a variety of local indigenous plants.

However, women, in comparison to men, continue to face many challenges in accessing and benefiting from markets.

They face illiteracy, lack of market information, and transport to markets. At the national and global levels, unfair terms of trade still disadvantage poor farmers, including women. For instance, the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (see Thematic Note 1) poses direct challenges for poor farmers, particularly women, in accessing seeds for food production. Trade negotiations rarely consider women’s and men’s different knowledge and skills. They often neglect their use of assets in determining their livelihoods, and they overlook the potentially differential impact of their provisions on poor rural women and men.2 Information and organizations

Evidence from different regions shows that women often face more obstacles than men in accessing agricultural services and information as well as in participating in organizations.

Men relatives often mediate women’s access to information, markets, and credit. Fewer women than men participate in farmers’ organizations and commercial networks. Furthermore, agricultural extension services and technology development frequently target men, wrongly assuming men will convey information to women (Lambrou and Laub 2004). Because few women own land in their own names, they rely heavily on common property resources. As women and men use and manage natural resources in different ways, their full and equal participation in community-based decision-making processes remains critical for safeguarding local natural resources.

Risk and vulnerability

Degradation of natural resources disproportionately harms poor rural women and men and sometimes is the principal cause of poverty. In turn, poverty can lead to the overexploitation of natural resources. Rural poor people rely the most directly on natural resources and are the most vulnerable to changes in ecosystems. Significant differences between the roles and rights of women and men in many societies lead to increased vulnerability of women with the deterioration of natural resources. In some instances deterioration of natural resources results in the renegotiation of gender roles. To design ways to mitigate the negative impacts on rural women and men, one must understand the context of their vulnerability.

Vulnerability depends on the types of resources women and men rely on and their entitlement to mobilize these resources. (Those with limited access to resources will have the least capacity to cope with the impacts of natural

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resources degradation and are thus the most vulnerable.)

Natural resources degradation and natural disasters impact rural peoples’ ability to manage and conserve natural resources. These have differential impacts on rural women’s and men’s livelihood strategies, which also vary according to age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Policies and institutions

To understand the agricultural livelihood and natural resources management strategies of women and men at the household level, these strategies must be placed within the broader political, socioeconomic, and environmental context. This involves analyzing the current and potential impacts of policies, processes, and institutions on rural women’s and men’s livelihood strategies and outcomes. The political and institutional context includes the following: ■

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Policies: environmental, economic, energy/bioenergy, and trade agreements Legislation: such as land rights and intellectual property rights Incentives: such as for growing cash crops or improved varieties that could replace local varieties or for growing biofuel feedstock Institutions: extension services that promote technology developments and external innovations Culture: such as cultural norms and practices that may influence women’s and men’s access rights and cultural values that may influence gender-based decision making on crop, livestock, and fish selection and management.

Policies and institutional changes in sectors other than natural resources and agriculture include economic and energy development, demographic trends and migration patterns, incidence and impact of disease, and conflicts. Policies, processes, and institutions have different impacts on women and men’s access to and control over livelihood assets.

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Biodiversity: ■

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Understanding rural women’s and men’s roles and traditional knowledge of local biodiversity management, practices, and uses results in the development of innovations that meet farmers’ real needs and priorities.

Development interventions that recognize property rights of rural women and men over their knowledge systems and practices lead to the equal sharing of project benefits as well as increased biodiversity conservation.

More effective biodiversity conservation interventions result from attention to gender-differentiated opportunities and constraints in agrobiodiversity management.

Biodiversity conservation increases through recognizing the intellectual property rights of rural women and men.

Climate change: ■

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BENEFITS FROM GENDER-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS

Benefits from gender-responsive actions can be placed in several overarching categories.

General:

Rural women and men maximize their contributions to household food security.

Understanding and addressing the gender dimensions of environment and energy programs ensure effective use of development resources.

Gender relations improve and the social acceptance of women in decision-making positions increases.

By identifying gender-differentiated opportunities and constraints, project implementers make better-informed decisions and develop more effective environmental and biodiversity conservation interventions.

Intrahousehold relations improve with an increase in women’s control over household resources.

Women’s market participation increases as they become more active and successful in negotiations and trade.

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Households that are better equipped to cope with the impacts of climate change or extreme weather events can better use, manage, and conserve natural resources.

Efficient, cost-effective, and relevant interventions take place.

Gender analysis helps clarify the specific and often different needs, vulnerabilities, and coping strategies of women and men, so that they can be more adequately addressed in response to the impacts of climate change and variability.

Programs create opportunities to transform gender relations and empower women.

Bioenergy:

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Overall improvement is seen in natural resources management, use, and conservation and increased agricultural productivity.

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Access to more efficient technologies and modern energy sources reduces the health and safety problems associated

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with energy acquisition and use. Such access lifts rural women and men out of poverty and enables women and girls to live more productive and healthy lives.

The time burden of women and girls of walking long distances, carrying heavy loads, and collecting fuel in dangerous areas is reduced.

Access to more efficient technologies for household use can reduce health and safety problems associated with indoor air pollution (UN-Energy 2007).

Women who have access to modern fuels face a lighter cooking burden, which frees up time for educational, social, and economic opportunities.

Involving both men and women smallholders in bioenergy production offers the possibility of improved incomes and livelihoods.

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Gender analysis helps to clarify the specific and often different needs, vulnerabilities, and coping strategies of women and men to better respond to the impacts of disasters.

Gender-responsive actions better equip households to cope with and recover earlier from the impacts of disasters.

Postdisaster recovery efforts present opportunities to transform gender relations and empower women.

Land and water degradation and desertification: ■

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Affected households cope better with the impacts of desertification and more effectively manage and conserve natural resources.

Promoting the participation of women and men farmers in restoring ecosystem health facilitates the reestablishment of soil and land productivity.

Strengthening the capacity of rural women and men in dryland management enhances management of local

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natural resources and protects the environment from further stresses.

Increasing women’s access to information and extension services strengthens their ability to cope with and recover from dryland degradation.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Monitoring and evaluation of natural resources management projects provide means for learning from past experience, improving project formulation and implementation, planning and allocating resources, and demonstrating results as part of accountability to key stakeholders (World Bank 2004).3 By measuring change in the status of women and men over a period of time, gender-sensitive indicators assess progress in achieving gender equality. Researchers have little experience in the area of gender-sensitive indicators in the management of natural resources. To select an indicator, the cost of collecting and analyzing data against the quality and usefulness of the information in decision making must be weighed. The indicator should be relevant to the needs of the users, clearly defined, sex disaggregated, and easy to understand and use (FAO 2007b). Both quantitative and qualitative indicators prove useful (see also Module 16). Examples of gender-sensitive indicators appear in the Thematic Notes in this Module on biodiversity, climate change, bioenergy, natural disasters, and land and water.

However, Table 10.1 provides some example indicators across the range of topics.

Depending on the country or region, it may also be relevant to consider ethnicity and caste alongside gender (both as comparative indicators and when collecting data), because women of lower castes or ethnic minorities are usually in the most disadvantaged situation.

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Table 10.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Natural Resources Management Indicator Percentage of women and men actively participating in natural resource management committees (including bank account signatory roles)

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Over a set period, an increase of x percent in incomes from land-based activities (such as agriculture or forestry) among women-headed households in program areas

• Household surveys • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Number of women and men in climate change planning institutions, processes, and research (including disaster preparedness and management) at the professional and lay-community levels

• Institutional and university staff records

Bank records Committee meeting minutes Interviews with stakeholders Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) • Program and project records

Average number of hectares of land owned by women- and men-headed households

• Land registration department records

Changes in productive hours spent by, or earnings of women and men, from, household-level agroprocessing, fisheries-, or forest-based enterprises in comparison with baseline (or as percentage of household income)

• Case studies • Sample surveys

Community satisfaction (disaggregated by gender) with changes in natural resources management

• Interviews, before and after • Group interviews or focus groups

Number of women and men receiving training in natural resources management or innovative agroforestry techniques

• Program and project records • Training records

Number of men and women producing bioenergy crops

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Percentage of men and women farmers who have access to high-quality, locally adapted planting material

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders

Number of households headed by men, women, or couples benefiting from intellectual property rights

• Natural resources management committee records and meeting minutes

Number of women and men receiving environmental services payments for protecting watersheds or areas of high biodiversity

• Forestry or Natural Resources Management Department records • Global Environmental Facility records • Protected area management committee records and meeting minutes • Protected area management contracts

Percentage of men and women owning and using energy-efficient technologies and low-carbon practices

• Household surveys • Interviews with stakeholders

Source: Authors, with inputs from Pamela White, author of Module 16.

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Sources of verification and tools

Agricultural department statistics Agricultural extension records Cooperative records Household surveys

T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Gender and Biodiversity

iodiversity provides the basis for ecosystems and ecosystem services upon which all people depend.1 Biodiversity in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries underpins agricultural and bioenergy production (FAO 2007a; MEA 2005). Sustainable use and management of biodiversity result in global food security, environmental conservation, and viable livelihoods for the rural poor. For poor rural households, in particular, biodiversity remains a key livelihood asset, because these households are the most reliant on local ecosystems and often live in places most vulnerable to ecosystem degradation. A wide portfolio of genetic resources proves crucial to adapting and developing agricultural production systems and for regulating local ecosystems to meet the food needs of future generations.

The challenges of environmental degradation, including desertification and climate change, underscore the need to

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retain this adaptive capacity. Today the fundamental causeand-effect relationship between biodiversity degradation and poverty has been recognized. Indeed, biodiversity makes a vital contribution to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals and will increase in significance in the coming decades (FAO 2007a).

Yet genetic resources are being depleted at unprecedented rates. As mentioned in box 10.1, species extinction is happening 100 times as fast as the rate in the fossil record: 12 percent of birds are threatened with extinction, as are 23 percent of mammals and 30 percent of amphibians (www.unep.org; box 10.2). The main factors contributing to biodiversity loss include unsustainable technologies, destructive land-use practices, invasive species, overexploitation, and pollution (FAO 2005).2 Climate change, driven by fossil fuel use, changes species ranges and behavior

Box 10.2 Current Trends in Biodiversity Loss

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Biomes with the highest rates of biodiversity loss in the last half of the twentieth century are the following: temperate, tropical, and flooded grasslands and tropical dry forests (more than 14 percent lost between 1950 and 1990).

Wide-ranging areas have seen particularly rapid change over the last two decades: the Amazon basin and Southeast Asia (deforestation and expansion of croplands); Asia (land degradation in drylands); Bangladesh and parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, and the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa.

Based on recorded extinctions of known species over the past 100 years, extinction rates are approximately

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100 times greater than those characteristic of the fossil record.

Genetic diversity has declined globally, particularly among domestic species. A third of the 6,500 breeds of domesticated animals are threatened with extinction because of small population sizes.

Globally approximately 474 livestock breeds are classified as rare, and about 617 have become extinct.

Roughly 20 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed, and an additional 20 percent have been degraded.

Some 35 percent of mangroves have been lost in the last two decades in countries where we have adequate data.

Sources: FAO 2003, 2005; MEA 2005.

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(www.unep.org). Unfortunately, one key solution to climate change, the replacement of fossil fuel use with bioenergy, also threatens genetic diversity (see Thematic Note 3). Additional influential forces include agricultural development approaches that favor high-yield and uniform varieties of crops, the heavy use of agrochemicals, and the depreciation and devaluation of diversity and accumulated local knowledge (FAO 2003, 2007a; MEA 2005).

Poor rural households that depend heavily on biodiversity in forests, on common lands, and on their farms use diverse domesticated and wild plants for fuel, food, and building materials. Current policies and economic systems often fail to incorporate the values of biodiversity effectively (www.unep.org). To limit these losses and address the multidimensional problems of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, we need policies and programs that cut across sectors and encompass the technical, economic, and social spheres. The human and social dimension of biodiversity loss requires an understanding of its relation to poverty, as well as the gender-specific relationship to natural resources management.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Rural women and men play important roles in biodiversity management, use, and conservation through their different tasks and responsibilities in food production and provision.

Consequently they have different needs, priorities, and knowledge about diverse crops, plants, and animals. As natural resource managers, they influence the total amount of genetic diversity conserved and used. Women are typically involved in the selection, improvement, and adaptation of local plant varieties, as well as seed exchange, management, and saving. They often keep home gardens where they grow traditional varieties of vegetables, herbs, and spices selected for their nutritious, medicinal, and culinary advantages (box 10.3). Women, therefore, play an important role in maintaining biodiversity, working against the decrease in biodiversity caused in part by men favoring cash-oriented monocultures, as in the Mexican Yucatan (Lope Alzina 2007). Women are also the primary collectors of wild foods that provide important micronutrients in diets, are vital for the survival of their households during food shortages, and may also provide income. In the Kalahari Desert, fruits, gums, berries, and roots gathered by the Kung women provide 60 percent of the daily calorie intake. In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, women gather 141 different types of forest products (Momsen 2007). Women possess extensive, often unrecognized, knowledge of the location

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and uses of these wild and domestic plants. Recent studies Box 10.3 Cameroon and Uganda: Indigenous emphasize the importance Vegetables of garden vegetables, small liveIn Cameroon and Uganda, indigenous vegetables play an important role in both income generation and subsistence production. Indigenous vegetables offer a significant opportunity for poor women and men to earn a living, as producers and traders, without requiring a large capital investment. The indigenous vegetable market provides one of the few opportunities for poor unemployed women to secure a livelihood. Despite the growth in exotic vegetables, indigenous vegetables remain popular in rural areas, where people consider them more tasty and nutritious.

Source: FAO 2005.

stock, and wild plants for achieving household food security and nutritional well-being, especially among the rural poor.

However, women’s roles and knowledge are often overlooked or underestimated in natural resource management and related policies and programs (Howard 2003).

Local knowledge serves as a critical livelihood asset for poor rural women and men for securing food, shelter, and medicines.3 The different tasks and responsibilities of rural women and men have enabled them to accumulate different types of local knowledge and skills (FAO 2005).

Some studies have expressed concern that local knowledge is disappearing; women do not pass this information on to their daughters, and men no longer pass it down to their sons. Especially in women-headed households (because of HIV and AIDS and migration), changing dietary habits lead to the erosion of women’s knowledge of processing, preparation, and storage and lead to the erosion of plant diversity, family food security, and nutritional well-being (Howard 2003).

The type of knowledge farmers possess varies by age, gender, roles and responsibilities, socioeconomic status, and environment. Access to or control over resources as well as education, training, information, and control over the benefits of production also influence the type of knowledge rural women and men have. Experience-based local knowledge interweaves with cultural values and develops and adapts continuously to a gradually changing environment.

Rural women’s and men’s local knowledge, skills, and innovations raise the issue of recognition and protection of farmers’ rights.

Markets

Men tend to sell their crops in national or export markets (for uniform, exotic varieties), whereas women tend to sell in local markets where they find demand for traditional varieties (box 10.3). Trade can improve rural women’s and men’s livelihoods by providing them with income and, at the same time, an incentive to manage, use, and conserve a variety of local indigenous plants. However, women, in contrast to men, face challenges in accessing and benefiting from markets. For example, in the Bamana region of Mali, men have appropriated women’s vegetable gardens to establish marketgardening enterprises based on nontraditional foods (box 10.4), which has led to a decline in nutritional well-being.

At the national and global levels, unfair trade disadvantages poor farmers, many of whom are women. New agreements under the World Trade Organization influence biodiversity and have gendered impacts. Gender-based inequalities in access to and control over productive resources have concrete consequences (Randriamaro 2006). Trade negotiations rarely consider women’s and men’s different knowledge, skills, and Box 10.4 Mali: Changes in Agricultural Production, Gender Relations, and Biodiversity Loss A case study of the Bamana region in Mali shows how men dismissed agrobiodiversity and the local knowledge held by women. The introduction of exotic vegetables for market production, mainly a men-driven enterprise, led to a shift from subsistence production of a wide variety of indigenous food plants to market gardening of a limited number of exotic food varieties. This process has led to a change in gender roles, with men taking over women’s traditional vegetable gardens to establish commercial enterprises. Although traditionally responsible for growing local plant varieties for direct consumption, women were displaced to marginal lands. This has implications for women’s contribution to the food security of their household (reduced income and food production for household consumption) and their social standing in the community. Moreover, women’s exclusion from the garden realm may lead to changes in culinary patterns, a possible decline in nutritional status, and a reduction in local plant diversity and overall environmental stability.

Source: Wooten 2003.

uses of agrobiodiversity. The agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) poses direct challenges for poor farmers, particularly women, to access seeds for food production, food security, and nutritional well-being.4 Moreover, on the one hand, a shift toward production for the global market may be at the expense of local crop varieties for domestic consumption. On the other hand, globalization can give women and men small-producers the opportunity to target niche markets for fair trade or organic products and may go far toward protecting biodiversity (Momsen 2007).

Risk and vulnerability

The impact of biodiversity loss, particularly within common property resources, threatens household food security and livelihoods. These resources prove particularly important for poor rural women, who lack secure land tenure and depend on these common resources for fuelwood, fodder, and food and, therefore, the well-being of their households.

Commercialized agriculture often relies on the replacement of a wide range of locally adapted plant and livestock varieties with a relatively small number of uniform, highyielding varieties, causing the erosion of local plant and animal genetic resources (FAO 1996).5 With the increased commercialization of agriculture, technological improvements have created farming systems that are highly dependent on external inputs such as agrochemicals, and these systems often bypass women. Because of their limited access to financial resources, women may have difficulty acquiring seeds, technology, and fertilizers as well as information and training. These processes have negative impacts on small farmers, especially women, who rely on a wide variety of genetic diversity as part of their environmental risk management strategy. In turn, this erosion of resources can also lead to the loss of local knowledge and sometimes to changes in gender roles (box 10.4).

Clearly, biodiversity loss entails different consequences for women and men in the performance of their productive, reproductive, and community roles (Lambrou and Laub 2004). Coping strategies such as the improved management of biodiversity should give options for poor rural women and men to reduce their vulnerability to the effects of biodiversity loss and to build the potential to react to further changes (box 10.5).6 Poor rural women and men farmers often spread risk by growing a wide variety of locally adapted crops, some of which will be resistant to drought or pests, and livestock breeds that have adapted to the local agroecological zone (FAO/IPGRI 1996). Diversification, an important

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Box 10.5 HIV and AIDS—Rural Women’s and Men’s Coping Strategies Millions of households across Africa have been affected by HIV and AIDS. Rural women and men may respond with a range of coping strategies. For example, in Uganda rural households change the mix of farm products, focusing first on subsistence production and then on growing a surplus to sell in markets (Armstrong 1993). Another strategy is to reduce land under cultivation, resulting in reduced outputs (FAO 2003). In Uganda womenheaded households cultivate only 1.3 acre, on average, compared with affected men-headed households, which cultivate 2.5 acres, on average (FAO 2003). Some HIV- and AIDS-affected households have turned to livestock production as an alternative to crop production. Other households sell livestock to pay for medical bills and funeral expenses.

A trend has been identified where households raise smaller livestock (such as pigs and poultry) because they are less labor-intensive and often readily available to women.

Source: White and Robinson 2000.

coping strategy adopted by poor rural households, will protect them against climate change, desertification, and other environmental stresses. Women, in comparison to men, are often more vulnerable to the erosion of biodiversity, because they experience gender-based inequalities in accessing assets critical to livelihood security (Lambrou and Laub 2004).

Women and men farmers’ full and equal participation in programs and projects dealing with biodiversity conservation, management, and use affects gender-responsive outcomes. Researchers and breeders often work in isolation from women and men farmers and are sometimes unaware of their needs and priorities beyond yield and resistance to pests and diseases.7 Moreover, extension agents and research organizations tend to consider many local varieties and breeds to be low-performing and inferior. National policies that provide incentives such as loans and direct payments for the use of modern varieties and breeds contribute to the loss of genetic diversity and affect traditional gender roles.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

International policies and agreements regulate the management and use of biodiversity and agrobiodiversity.8 The

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majority of these instruments do not highlight the potential gender-differentiated impacts of their provisions. Only the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Global Plans of Action (box 10.6) recognize the key roles played by both women and men, especially in the developing world, in the management and use of biodiversity (Lambrou and Laub 2004).9 Unfamiliar with these policy instruments, extension workers, development agents, and farmers working on biodiversity and environmental conservation will find it challenging to understand their impact and to implement the relevant provisions in their daily work (FAO 2005).

The CBD advocates the fair and equitable sharing of genetic resource benefits. It also establishes a connection between sustainable conservation and development and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities10 (FAO 2005; Lambrou and Laub 2004). The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources responds to the outstanding issues not covered by the CBD and formally endorses farmers’ rights (box 10.7) through a legally binding instrument at the global level. Observers have noted a growing trend toward the recognition and creation of indigenous rights over genetic resources and related knowledge (FAO 2005).

Despite the increased recognition of the linkages between gender dynamics and biodiversity management and use, little progress has been shown in translating these into programs and projects for agrobiodiversity management and conservation at the local level (FAO 2005). Rural women’s vital contribution to the management of biodiversity, agricultural production, and household food security remains misunderstood, ignored, or underestimated (Howard 2003).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Experience shows that agricultural biodiversity management and related policies and programs have often failed to recognize the differences between rural women’s and men’s labor, knowledge, needs, and priorities. This negatively affects biodiversity, local knowledge, and household food security.

Community seed fairs in Tanzania

As part of the LinKS project, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized community seed fairs in Tanzania to raise awareness about local crop diversity. The FAO provided learning opportunities for the rural communities (including the younger generations), researchers, extension

Box 10.6 Gender and Biodiversity in International Agreements

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), the financial mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity, helps countries fulfill their obligations under the CBD. Since 1991 the GEF has invested nearly $7.6 billion in grants and cofinancing for biodiversity conservation in developing countries. The biodiversity portfolio supports initiatives that promote in situ and sustainable biodiversity conservation in protected areas and production landscapes as well as capacity building and knowledge dissemination (www.gefweb.org).

The Global Plan of Action on Plant Genetic Resources, adopted in 1996, provides a coherent framework, identifying priority activities in the field of in situ and ex situ conservation, sustainable utilization, and capacity building (FAO 1996). It develops activities and

Box 10.7 Farmers’ Rights—Protecting the Knowledge of Indigenous People and Local Communities Farmers’ rights are based on the recognition that farmers play a crucial role in the management and conservation of plant and livestock genetic resources. These rights include the following: ■

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Protection of traditional knowledge relevant to genetic resources for food and agriculture Participatory decision making at the national level on matters relating to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture The right to equitably participate in sharing benefits arising from the use of plant and animal genetic resources.

Source: FAO 2005.

staff, and organizations about the importance of crop diversity and local knowledge in food security. Women were the key collectors and savers of seeds. Seed fairs provided farmers with a meeting place where they could buy, sell, and barter seed, thus encouraging the conservation of crop diversity and the spreading of local seed varieties among women and men farmers. The seed fairs were organized on a local scale to make them accessible and affordable for the rural communities.

measures to strengthen women’s capacity to sustainably manage these resources (FAO 2005).

The Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources, adopted in 2007, presents the first internationally agreed-to framework to halt the erosion of livestock diversity and support the sustainable use, development, and conservation of animal genetic resources. The plan supports indigenous and local production systems and associated knowledge systems. In this context, the plan calls for the provision of veterinary and extension services, delivery of microcredit for women in rural areas, appropriate access to natural resources and to the market, the resolution of land tenure issues, the recognition of cultural practices and values, and the addition of value to specialty products (FAO 2007c).

After exchanging seed varieties, community members discussed local practices. Seed fairs increased local networks, the appreciation of local knowledge, and the roles and responsibilities of farmers in managing agrobiodiversity. (See other examples in Module 12, in particular Thematic Note 2.)

Agroforestry domestication program

A program in Africa supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has helped women and men in the domestication, cultivation, and sale of indigenous fruit and medicinal trees. The first phase of the program ran from 1999 to 2003 in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria. Training on vegetative propagation techniques enabled many farmers to establish their own nurseries. As a result of project, average household incomes increased, and women and men farmers acquired new skills in propagation techniques, such as grafting and the rooting of cuttings. The program has been particularly effective in improving the livelihoods and status of women. Women’s groups have established nurseries, enabling women to participate in income-generating activities. This has led to an increase in school attendance among children. The tree domestication program has also contributed to increased nutritional well-being at the household level, because the women also produce a variety of food for household consumption previously unavailable to them (IFAD n.d.).

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Guidelines for policy development on farm animal genetic resources management

Nepal and India: gender, genetic resources, and indigenous minorities

A joint FAO, South African Development Community (SADC), and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project in the SADC region developed policy guidelines that recognize women’s roles in livestock management. Those guidelines assist SADC member states in designing policies and a legal framework for the conservation, sustainable use, and management of farm animal genetic resources. The guidelines stress the need for the effective participation of all stakeholders, with a particular focus on women who own or manage a substantial amount of the genetic resources. In highlighting the vital role that women play, the guidelines call for their full and equal participation at all levels of policy making and implementation.

Furthermore, the project encourages the development of policies that provide incentives to farmers for the conservation and sustainable use of indigenous animal genetic resources, as well as for the protection of farmers’ rights and indigenous knowledge.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) carried out an action research project on agrobiodiversity management among three ethnic groups in the eastern Himalayas, with a special focus on gender. The three groups were the Rai of east Nepal, the Lepchas of Sikkim and Kalimpong, and the Chekasang and Angami of Nagaland, India. All three research teams received training workshops in gender analysis and writing skills. In Nepal the team built on six years of community development experience in participatory plant breeding to undertake an action research project to develop seed technologies for maize. The IDRC provided interested farmers with rudimentary plant-breeding skills (field isolation, plant selection, cob selection, storage practices). The organization provided timely technical action for maintaining seed purity in the course of the crop cycle and was successful in generating new seeds for the coming season. The organization also initiated similar activities with 50 farmers in an adjacent community. After a visit to eastern Nepal, two agricultural scientists from neighboring Sikkim and Kalimpong started a similar initiative with 20 farmers in Kalimpong, focusing mainly on the development of a disease management strategy for ginger, based on best practices from farmers.

The Philippines: indigenous knowledge systems and intellectual property rights

Funded by IFAD and implemented by the International Research Centre for Agroforestry between 2003 and 2004, this project aimed to provide technical assistance in documenting the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Subanen indigenous communities, especially that of women. The objectives included identifying and documenting traditional rice varieties and wild plants and animals, facilitating local participatory planning of natural resource management, and establishing property rights of local communities over their knowledge systems and practices. Men and women participated equally in learning new skills of technical documentation. The technical expertise of the Subanen members of the ethnobotanical documentation team, as well as of concerned women, was enhanced significantly.

Technical assistance helped the communities ensure that documentation material that was produced guaranteed their intellectual property rights. A memorandum of understanding signed by the government on behalf of the communities and based on their specific requests and stipulations secured their intellectual property rights and options for obtaining benefits from any future commercial or beneficial use of their knowledge. The project also awakened a strong interest in local women in continuing the reproduction of threatened rice varieties for in situ conservation and documentation (IFAD 2004).

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GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Rural women’s and men’s vulnerability to biodiversity loss must be understood, so planners can design ways to mitigate the effects of decreasing biodiversity. This implies an understanding of the following issues: ■

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Rural women’s and men’s different local knowledge of indigenous plant, fish, and livestock biodiversity uses and practices, including their cultural values and belief systems that influence their traditional knowledge and biodiversity management practices The livelihood constraints and opportunities of rural women and men who are managers and users of biodiversity and, in particular, the gender-based inequalities in accessing and controlling critical livelihood assets such as land, credit, technology, and information, as well as participation in farmers’ organizations and other decisionmaking processes The different ways rural women and men use biodiversity management practices to secure a livelihood in the

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face of environmental stresses such as floods and droughts and other shocks such as HIV and AIDS Strategies to improve farmers’ involvement and benefit sharing, in particular, the issues of farmers’ rights and obtaining prior informed consent, which should be considered within a legal and ethical context11 Eliminating incentives for uniform varieties and supporting rural women and men in accessing information about their rights to plant genetic resources (FAO 2005) Gender-sensitive participatory plant breeding, which contributes to the conservation and sustainable use of plant and animal genetic resources;12 as women and men use and manage agrobiodiversity in different ways, their full and equal participation in decision-making processes is critical for safeguarding local biodiversity.

methods by the local community and provides methods that reflect the actual needs of women and men.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

The following are examples of gender-sensitive indicators for biodiversity (FAO 2007b): ■

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Often the most appropriate solutions to local problems and needs combine traditional and scientific methods. This fusion enhances the adoption and acceptance of the new

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Percentage of men and women farmers who have access to high-quality, locally adapted planting material Number of households headed by men, women, or couples benefiting from intellectual property rights Ratio of men’s and women’s income from production of high-value horticultural crops Ratio of the number of livestock owned by men and women Amount of credit and microcredit available to women and men for improving livestock enterprises.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Gender Dimensions of Climate Change

lobal climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world today. In the twentieth century the increase in global average temperature reached 0.74°C, the average sea level increased by 17 centimeters, and the Northern Hemisphere experienced a considerable decrease in snow cover (IPCC 2007). Eleven of the warmest years since records have been kept have occurred during the last 12 years, representing an accelerating warming trend. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 projects additional global warming over the twenty-first century from 1.8 to 4.0°C.2 According to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, climate warming is unequivocal, evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising sea levels.

Long-term changes in climate include widespread changes in precipitation, ocean salinity, wind patterns, and extreme weather events. Extreme weather events resulting from climate change include droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves, and the intensity of tropical cyclones (IPCC 2007).

The increase in greenhouse gas3 concentrations accounts for most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century.4 The international response to climate change focuses on mitigation measures that aim to reduce greenhouse gases and enhance carbon sinks. Carbon sinks are the natural ability of trees, other plants, and the soil to soak up carbon dioxide and temporarily store the carbon in wood, roots, leaves, and the soil.

However, in recent years many observers recognize adaptation strategies as critical elements in reducing the vulnerabilities to climate-induced change to protect and enhance the livelihoods of poor women and men (Soussain, Burton, and Hammil 2003). Even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, climate change will continue for centuries, and the ability of the most vulnerable to adapt will remain a serious issue (IPCC 2007).

G

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Climate change poses a serious risk to poverty reduction and development, with adverse impacts expected on the environment, human health, food security, economic activity, natural resources, and infrastructure.5 Global warming will have profound effects on agriculture, forestry, grasslands, livestock, and fisheries and, thus, on food security (FAO 2007). The IPCC assesses that 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species are in danger of extinction if the rise in global average temperature exceeds 1.5 to 2.5°C. The sharpest impact of a changing climate will be the rise in incidence and severity of climate-related disasters such as increased flooding, particularly in Asia, as well as fiercer storms and prolonged droughts (see Thematic Note 4). The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report warned that global warming would cause widespread food shortages in the developing world (Harvey 2007; IPCC 2007).6 Although industrial countries’ use of fossil fuel and industrial processes contributes inordinately to greenhouse gas concentrations, people living in developing countries are most likely to suffer the consequences of climate change (box 10.8). This uneven distribution of the impacts of climate change occurs both between and within countries. Least-developed countries prove the most reliant on rain-fed agriculture and natural resources and are the most vulnerable to climate change. These countries generally lack the necessary adaptive capacities, such as a stable economy, infrastructure, technology, information dissemination system, and equitable access to resources. Poor people tend to live on marginal lands that are most subject to droughts or floods and are most likely to be affected by small changes in climate variability. Because of gender-based inequalities in accessing critical livelihood assets such as land, credit, technology, information, markets, and organizations, women have more exposure to these risks.7

Box 10.8 Examples of Projected Negative Impacts of Climate Change ■

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A rise in sea level exposes many communities to severe flooding from storm surges.

A decline in water availability may leave billions of people facing water shortages, especially in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent.

In the tropics and subtropics, even small temperature increases can impact crop production.

Desertification (in particular in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) and depletion of forests (in particular in the tropics and subtropics) lead to a loss of biodiversity.

Disruptive seasonal rainfall patterns lead to droughts and floods, impacting crop production and increasing food insecurity in many parts of the developing world.

Increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events combined with constraints on mobility lead to loss of life, injury, population displacement, and economic devastation in the least-developed countries.

example, rural women, and girls to some extent, frequently provide households with water and fuelwood for heating and cooking. The time needed for their work in gathering water and fuel will likely increase with water shortages and depletion of forests. Decreasing the time available to women for food production and preparation as well as participation in income-generating activities will likely affect household food security and nutritional well-being (see also Module 1).

Another example of climate change that directly impacts men and women differently is the effect of climate change on water quality and supply. Children and pregnant women are physically vulnerable to waterborne diseases, and their role in supplying household water and performing domestic chores makes them more vulnerable to diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera, that thrive in conditions of degraded water.8 Decreased water resources may also cause women’s health to suffer as a result of the increased work burden and reduced nutritional status. For instance, in Peru following the 1997–98 El Niño events, malnutrition among women was a major cause of peripartum illness.

Adaptation Sources: IPCC 2001, 2007; Martens 1998; Masika 2002.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Until recently, international climate change policy makers have neglected the gender dimension of climate change (Lambrou and Piana 2006a). A focus on technical solutions has ignored social and political factors (Masika 2002). The successful implementation of climate change policies and projects requires an understanding of the gender-based roles and relationships vis-à-vis natural resources, as well as the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change and the different risks and vulnerabilities of women and men. This includes the structural constraints that curtail women’s access, control, and ownership over assets (Denton 2002).

Research must also identify who is responsible for CO2 emissions and how social, political, and planning conditions might affect emission reduction (Lambrou and Piana 2006b). A discussion of some gender issues related to climate change follows.

Climate change impacts

Climate change could alter the tasks people perform and their time use, affecting men and women differently. For

At the local level, farmers continuously adapt to climate variability. They change crops or varieties, choose different harvest and sowing dates, alter land management, and employ water efficiency techniques (FAO 2007). Long-term climate change poses a new set of challenges to farmers dependent on natural resources, and so at the national and international levels, governments and development agencies play a fundamental role in building the capacity of farmers to cope with and adapt to a changing environment (Soussain, Burton, and Hammil 2003).

The adaptive capacity of people depends on how they can draw from resources to maximize their livelihood outcomes (Masika 2002), so adaptation depends on factors such as economic status, technology, health, education, information, skills, infrastructure, access to assets, and management capabilities (IPCC 2001). Differentiated power relations between men and women and unequal access to and control over assets mean that men and women do not have the same adaptive capacity; instead, women have distinct vulnerability, exposure to risk, coping capacity, and ability to recover from climate change impacts (Masika 2002). Although women are generally more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, they play an active role in adapting to its impacts to secure food and a livelihood for their household.9

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Gender components determine adaptation strategies in terms of how men and women can contribute. For example, as a result of gender-differentiated roles in agrobiodiversity management, women often have greater knowledge of indigenous plant varieties with important nutritional and medicinal values (FAO 2005). As the keepers of seeds, women often possess knowledge of a variety of genetic resources to adapt to varying climatic conditions such as resistance to drought or pests. However, because men have more secure access to land or land tenure, they have more incentive to contribute to effective natural resources management, use, and contributions necessary for adaptation.10 Gender also often determines who receives inputs for adaptation strategies. Frequently new agricultural technologies bypass women farmers, despite women’s knowledge.

For example, extension personnel introducing new varieties intended for higher drought or heat tolerance rarely speak directly with women farmers (Kurukulasuriya and Rosenthal 2003).

Finally, a gender component exists for the adaptive strategies that are pursued and the consequences of adaptation. For example, in New South Wales, Australia, women migrate away from farms for work, which enables men to remain in agriculture. In other regions impacted by drought, men migrate, leaving women, who have fewer resources, to perform agriculture. In either case, the drought strains traditional gendered relationships (Alston 2006).

Mitigation

Mitigation has revolved around the reduction of greenhouse gases and the enhancement of carbon sinks to absorb them (Boyd 2002).11 Although responsibility for carbon emissions resides primarily in industrial countries, fossil fuel use and industrial processes, rural poverty, and subsistence agriculture account for a portion of emissions of carbon dioxide that stem from deforestation and land-use change.12 In addition, rural poor women and men generally lack access to energy-efficient services that do not degrade the ecosystem or contribute to environmental change. Rural households typically rely on biomass for cooking and heating. Because women usually prepare food, their decisions about cooking fuels and efficiency can reduce carbon emissions. Households with lower average income and level of education generate lower emissions; however, they also have a lower mitigation and adaptive capacity. Low educational levels of women and men household members limit awareness of mitigation options, such as the use of energy-efficient devices (Lambrou and Piana 2006a). Therefore, as issues of

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sustainable energy development (renewable energy and energy efficiency) and sustainable transportation receive more attention, it is important to encourage and improve the active involvement of key stakeholders. Women’s active involvement in agriculture, and their dependence on biomass energy, make them key stakeholders in effective environmental management related to mitigation (Denton 2002).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Programs in Bolivia, Costa Rica, and India contribute to good practices and lessons learned.

Bolivia: Noel Kempff Climate Action Project

Unfortunately, many climate change projects fail to take gender into account. For example, in 1996, in the region of Santa Cruz in the Bolivian Amazon, the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project’s primary objective involved purchasing logging concessions and expanding the Noel Kempff National Park to 1.5 million hectares for conservation and increased carbon credits. However, the project failed to take into account a gender perspective that recognized the different power relations and cultural practices as well as the gender bias in institutions (Boyd 2002). The project also aimed to improve local agricultural and forest management practices, stimulate employment, and obtain 400,000 hectares of communal land for three key local communities. The project provided opportunities for the participation of both women and men, who successfully participated in some aspects of the project. The participants met some basic necessities, such as trying new varieties of crops and accessing credit. With a majority of men local and technical staff, women had little chance to join decision-making processes relating to the future of the park, land title, and other project activities. Men dominated public meetings, overlooking women’s needs and concerns, which ultimately were not reflected in the project activities. Boyd (2002) stresses that the project did not challenge existing gender relations and division of labor, nor did it empower women. The project’s enforcement of existing social structures and wide reliance on traditional norms in decision making weakened women’s ability to participate.

Costa Rica: Carbon emission mitigation through Payment for Environmental Services Programme

Since 1996 Costa Rica’s government has implemented the Payment for Environmental Services Programme (Programa

de Pago por Servicios Ambientales) to promote and encourage conservation, reforestation, carbon emission mitigation, and sustainable management of Costa Rica’s natural resources.13 The program offers economic rewards to landowners who conserve the forests on their land. However, most landowners are men, and women have little access to the economic rewards. To help resolve this problem, FONAFIFO (National Fund for Forestry Finance), the national institution in charge of implementing the program and promoting gender equity, imposes a fee. This fee goes into a fund to support women who want to become landowners.14 India: carbon sequestration project

An innovative agroforestry project in Gudibanda Taluk, Karnataka, India (implemented by the NGO Women For Sustainable Development [WSD]), supports local women and men farmers in planting mango, tamarind, and jackfruit tree orchards for harvest and carbon sequestration.15 The project supports women’s participation in decisionmaking processes. One way in which the project does this is by taking into account women’s time and cultural constraints when establishing public forums. The project set up a prototype carbon marketing facility to sell the certified emissions reduction of the global environmental services that the participants (poor rural women and men) provide.16 Because farmers have an average annual income of less than $100, they cannot afford to plant fruit trees without financial assistance. Success requires expensive irrigation changes and planting tools. Farmers will live on the carbon sales from their mango plantations for the first few years, until they harvest their crop. Fruit production should start about four years after planting, and one acre of crop will at least triple their annual income. The program anticipates sustainable incomes for women and men farmers, as well as the additional benefits derived from the ecofriendly farming techniques. The project lifetime is 35 years, with an estimated CO2 benefit of 23 tons of carbon sequestration per acre. The project target is 35,000 acres, for a total sequestration of 575,000 tons of carbon.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the main international policy instrument to address climate change, aims to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change. The UNFCCC, supported by the 1997

Kyoto Protocol, contains legally binding targets that dictate that industrialized countries must reduce by 2008–12 combined emissions of six key greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent in relation to 1990 levels.17 The Global Environment Facility and the Clean Development Mechanism (box 10.9) of the Kyoto Protocol play a role in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.18 GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Awareness and understanding of the complex links between gender roles and relations, the environment, and livelihood security will aid in the design of climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. To ensure women’s participation in climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, we must incorporate women’s needs and concerns in the design of relevant and successful climate change policies. Pinpointing specific goals within the main climate policies and developing corresponding indicators for monitoring and evaluation will help mainstream gender issues into climate change policies. Ways of incorporating women’s needs and concerns relating to mitigation include the following: ■

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Analyze women’s and men’s energy use, transport use, and other consumption patterns impacting climate.

Introduce more formal and informal education about the environmental impacts of their current life styles to increase men’s and women’s mitigation capacity (Lambrou and Piana 2006b).

Promote cleaner-burning fuel for household use to reduce harmful emissions, cut household energy costs, and reduce women’s and girls’ work burdens.

Increase poor women’s and men’s access to payments for environmental services.

Goals and issues related to adaptation include the following: ■

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Many women prove to be proactive at local levels in mitigating hazards and strengthening the disaster resilience of households and communities.

Make available to both men and women usable, sciencebased climate prediction information and incorporate existing local knowledge (FAO 2007).

Strengthen the capacity of rural institutions such as extension services to use appropriate tools and strategies, including participatory identification of current vulnerabilities and risk reduction measures, implementation of prioritized community-based disaster risk reduction

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Box 10.9 The Potential of the Clean Development Mechanism

In the Kyoto Protocol the Clean Development Mechanism allows for and addresses divergent objectives and priorities between the North and South. A bilateral agreement between an industrialized country and a developing country mandates reduced greenhouse gas emissions under the convention. Under the CDM industrialized countries invest in projects that increase economic productivity and may reduce local environmental problems in developing countries (Denton 2002).

activities, and increased capacity of communities to manage their resources (FAO 2007).

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Examples of gender-sensitive indicators in climate change include (indicators are from Aguilar 2007; FAO 2007) the following: ■

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Those projects that focus on technologies relating to household energy, food processing, forest management, and water pumping must target both rural women and men and take into account their different roles and responsibilities. However, extension services that convey this technology typically target men, who are perceived as the principal decision makers and users of these technologies (for a more detailed discussion, see Denton 2002; Wamukonya and Skutsch 2001).

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Number of women owning and using energy-efficient technologies, using renewable energy, and involved in sustainable forest management (climate change mitigation) Number of women and women-headed households receiving training and assistance related to disasters (such as the number of women who know how to swim) Participation of women in climate change–planning institutions, processes, and research (including disaster preparedness and management) at the professional and lay-community levels.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

Gender and Bioenergy

ver one-third of the world’s population, 2.4 billion people, rely on traditional biomass in the form of fuelwood, agricultural residues, and animal wastes for their primary energy needs (Sagar and Kartha 2007). Use of traditional biomass poses many problems: poor health, heavy workloads, land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. New forms of bioenergy, primarily liquid biofuels, are rapidly being developed as replacements for fossil fuels. Global interest in modern bioenergy—which includes liquid biofuels, biogas, and solid biomass—has grown rapidly in recent years.1 (This Thematic Note focuses on modern bioenergy; for a detailed discussion on the wider issues of gender and energy, refer to Modules 9 and 15.)

At a time when energy analysts anticipate a period of unpredictable oil markets, fossil fuel dependence poses a major risk for many developing economies. Oil imports now consume a large and unsustainable share of the meager foreign exchange earnings of many poor nations, offsetting any gains from recent foreign debt elimination agreements.

Unstable and unpredictable oil prices have complicated economic planning around the world and are further damaging poor economies (UN-Energy 2007).

Available energy services currently fail to meet the needs of the world’s poor. Four out of five people without electricity live in the rural areas of developing countries (UNDP 2004; UN-Energy 2007). Extending an electricity supply grid to remote households in rural areas is unlikely to occur quickly because of costs that are seven times the cost of providing electricity in an urban area (FAO 2006).

Given plausible economic and institutional assumptions, this century could see a significant switch from fossil fuels to bioenergy, with agriculture and forestry as the leading sources of biomass for biofuels (FAO 2005).2 Although increased production of, and access to, bioenergy offers only one of the possible answers to climate change and energy

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security challenges,3 a number of features make it an interesting but complicated option (FAO 2007). Locally produced bioenergy can supply energy for local agricultural, industrial, and household uses, in some instances at a lower cost than fossil fuels (UN-Energy 2007). Modern bioenergy, with appropriate policies, could help meet the needs of poor women and men who lack access to electricity, while generating income and creating jobs in poorer areas of the world.

Although the rapid development of modern bioenergy presents a broad range of opportunities for achieving sustainable energy, it also entails multiple trade-offs and risks.

The first concern relates to the impact of bioenergy on food markets, food prices, and food security. Current biofuels depend on food crops, including corn, sugarcane, soybeans, rapeseed, and palm oil. The boom in bioenergy has already resulted in some rises in food prices.4 A second concern is the impact of modern bioenergy production on sustainable livelihoods for rural households. If production and processing of biofuels occur through large-scale, vertically integrated commodity chains, small farmers will be unlikely to benefit. Efforts to use biofuels to promote sustainable development must include strategies to incorporate small producers (Sagar and Kartha 2007).

The rapid development of modern bioenergy requires careful handling of key social, economic, and environmental sustainability (UN-Energy 2007). New crops, farming techniques, and second-generation technologies (for example, fuels made from lignocellulosic biomass feedstock using advanced technical processes) now under development may mitigate some of the social, environmental, and economic costs associated with large-scale production of liquid biofuels and increase their potential and environmental benefits.5 Where we grow crops for energy purposes, use of large-scale monocropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and nutrient leaching, with negative consequences

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for local rural women’s and men’s ability to secure food and their livelihoods.

Most likely, new bioenergy production will involve largescale biomass production that does not necessarily benefit the rural poor. The challenge is to develop small-scale bioenergy concepts and technologies that local people can use and sustain. A transitional solution uses improved cook stoves, which reduce indoor pollution and burn fuel much more efficiently. Bioenergy options, such as small- and mediumscale biogas or gasifiers and power generators, operate with locally available biomass resources. They may become the most economical and reliable providers of energy services for poor rural women and men (UN-Energy 2007).

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Gender-differentiated issues related to bioenergy differ substantially among traditional biomass, small-scale biofuel production, and large-scale biofuel production.

Gender and traditional bioenergy

Rural women shoulder the burden of traditional biomass (fuelwood, manure, agricultural residues) collection. Many women spend up to three to four hours a day collecting fuel for household use, sometimes traveling 5 to 10 kilometers a day (WHO 2006). Women in women-headed households report water and fuelwood collection as their most timeconsuming tasks (FAO/IFAD 2003). In many African, Asian, and Latin American countries, rural women carry approximately 20 kilograms of fuelwood every day (FAO 2006). Increasing pressure on and degradation of these resources result in women walking longer distances from the safety of their communities. This increases their work burden, limiting time available for food production and preparation, household-related duties, and their participation in income-generating activities and educational opportunities.

Women’s limited access to fuelwood relates to the heavily gendered nature of rights and responsibilities with respect to trees. Mearns (1995) reports that in Kenya women are expected to provide their households with daily supplies of wood, but they lack access to tree farms. Men dominate tree planting, and trees planted in woodlots typically fall under men’s control. Rights to trees are tied to land ownership, which falls almost exclusively to men. Thus, although trees may be nearby, women may lack access to them and therefore walk long distances to gather wood or switch to other types of biomass for fuel, such as maize stalks or dung.

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Reliance on traditional biomass further entrenches gender disparities. When women spend many hours collecting traditional fuels, they do not receive education and training for productive income-generating activities. When withdrawn from school to gather fuel and attend to other domestic chores, girls lose literacy opportunities and suffer lifelong harm. They also have less time to participate in organizations and learn to negotiate in decision-making processes. Household use of traditional bioenergy locks people in the developing world, women in particular, into a cycle of poverty and ill health (UN-Energy 2007).

The most dramatic gender-differentiated and health benefits from the use of modern bioenergy relate to household applications. Traditional bioenergy uses affect the health of women more severely than men, because women traditionally bear responsibility for household-related duties, including food preparation (UN-Energy 2007).

Rural people rely heavily on biomass as their primary cooking fuel: 93 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 87 percent in India, and 93 percent in Indonesia (Sagar and Kartha 2007).

Open fires in the household produce unventilated smoke and expose women and children, who are most often indoors, to high concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants (Lambrou and Piana 2006).

Smoke inhalation from cooking indoors with traditional biomass increases the risk of major diseases and is the sixth largest health risk in developing countries. The rural poor in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa suffer the highest death toll (Schirnding and others 2000; UN-Energy 2007).

Many early efforts to reduce use of traditional biomass involved the development and introduction of improved cook stoves. These efforts had limited success. Some of the improved stoves were less efficient than claimed and were relatively expensive. Women were reluctant to give up traditional cook stoves because they preferred cooking with them, and the stoves offered additional benefits of heating and repelling insects. More recent cook stoves have achieved more success, especially in China and India, with estimates of 220 million improved cook stoves worldwide (Sagar and Kartha 2007).

Gender and modern biofuels

Shifting basic energy uses from traditional bioenergy (when used in unsustainable and health-damaging forms) to modern fuels and electricity poses difficult challenges (UNEnergy 2007). When household income increases, people typically switch to more fuel-efficient technologies. The push to modern bioenergy offers both possibilities and

challenges for enhancing gender equity. Poor rural women and men often lack the economic resources to use different bioenergy options.6 The rural poor, a disproportionate number of whom are women, do not have the means to purchase modern energy services. The cost and efficiency of a stove or other systems such as biogas or small gasifiers often deter women more than the actual cost of fuel (UNEnergy 2007).

Modern bioenergy may take the form of small-scale production or large-scale plantation production. Small-scale biofuel use has the potential to reduce women’s health risks from wood fires and reduce their work collecting fuelwood.

Biofuels have the potential to reduce women’s work burden, but they may also generate additional work if women produce the biomass to make the fuel (such as for biogas) (UNEnergy 2007).

The transition to liquid biofuels may especially harm women and men farmers who do not own their land and the rural and urban poor who are net buyers of food. “At their best,” according to UN-Energy (2007: 24), “liquid biofuel programs can enrich farmers by helping to add value to their products. But at their worst, biofuel programs can result in concentration of ownership that could drive the world’s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty.” The rural poor, women in particular, typically do not have official title to their land. Driving small farmers without clear land titles from their land will destroy their livelihoods (UN-Energy 2007).

Large-scale bioenergy production

Several key gender issues that may result from the production of large-scale biofuels include the following: ■

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Biofuels require the intensive use of resources including land, water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, to which small farmers have limited access. Women, and particularly women in women-headed households, will face greater barriers acquiring these resources and participating in biofuel production (Rossi and Lambrou 2008).

The large amount of land required for biofuel production will put pressure on marginal land and common property resources. Marginal lands are particularly important for women who raise food crops, collect fodder and fuel, and graze livestock. The conversion of these lands to biofuel crops might result in the displacement of women’s agricultural activities toward lands that are even more marginal, thus decreasing household food security (Rossi and Lambrou 2008).

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The potential loss of biodiversity from large-scale monoculture plantations may affect women and men differently.

The establishment of plantations on previously uncultivated land may threaten wild edible plant species. Women often rely on the collection and preparation of wild plant species for food, fodder, and medicine.

Livestock farmers will be particularly affected by biofuel production with the conversion of grazing land to crop land and the higher price of livestock feed. Livestock is especially important for the food security of poor farmers. The potential reduction in the number of animals, especially ruminants (cattle, sheep, and goats), raised by small farmers, will reduce their livelihood strategies. In many regions men are primarily responsible for managing cattle and buffalo, and their ability to raise these animals will be affected (Rossi and Lambrou 2008).

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 recognized the need to design environmental and energy programs with a gender focus (Salazar 1999). In 2001 the Ninth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development urged governments to address the health and safety concerns of women and children in rural areas related to the impacts of carrying loads of fuelwood over long distances and exposure to smoke from indoor open fires. In addition, the commission recommended international cooperation to promote equal access to energy through energy policy decision-making processes (Lambrou and Piana 2006).

In 2006 FAO launched the International Bioenergy Platform as a framework for bioenergy cooperation. This program aims to enhance access to energy services from sustainable bioenergy systems, emphasizing the provision of modern, gender-sensitive bioenergy services for local communities and the most vulnerable and poor.

In many developing countries, small-scale bioenergy projects could face challenges obtaining financing from traditional financing institutions. Although these projects could provide modern energy services to rural women and men currently lacking access, they will likely require credit mechanisms at all stages of production.

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Some observers have suggested that the rural poor, who have a small environmental footprint, gained positive experiences with the decentralized and small-scale production

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and use of fuel crops. The production and use of liquid biofuels from local feedstock improve access to sustainable and affordable energy for poor rural women and men (DESA 2007).

Zambia: Small-scale production of liquid biofuels

For the last seven years a group of Zambian women with the support from German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) have developed a soap-making enterprise using jatropha oil.

Between 2000 and 2001 the National Oilseeds Development Program, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of Zambia, carried out demonstrations on the various uses of jatropha oil through national agricultural and commercial shows. This project used a bottom-up approach, promoting women’s participation and ownership. In 2006 the Biofuels Association of Zambia mounted an awareness campaign on the potential of Jatropha curcas to provide practical substitutes for fossil fuels and its important implications for meeting the demand for rural energy services.

In its 2007 budget the Zambian government allocated $150,000 for research on J. curcas and other biofuels. Biofuels predominate in new energy policies, which often set standards for a specified minimum proportion of biofuels in blends for all consumers. In this project rural women and men are improving their livelihoods and generating income through activities related to the production of jatropha oil.

Tanzania and Mali: Small-scale biofuel production

In Tanzania a project has sought to introduce and expand production of jatropha as a cash crop for raw material for plant-oil industries. They demonstrated its potential in reforestation, erosion control, and reclamation of degraded land. Working with local women’s groups, the grantee (KAKUTE Ltd.) trained over 1,500 women and men in jatropha management techniques and planted more than 400 hectares of jatropha on marginal lands donated by the communities. The project successfully demonstrated the livelihood benefits of the crop, helping launch jatropha farming as a cash crop, while assisting others to begin soap-making businesses. Seventeen different village-based women’s groups coordinated the project.

Women produced the seedlings and cuttings for planting.

In the first four years of the pilot project, they sold 52,000 kilograms of seeds to oil processors for approximately $7,800, producing 5,125 liters of oil, worth about $10,250 on the local market, and 3.5 tons of soap, worth $20,533.

Although the amount of oil and soap produced does not

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approximate the capacity of the land to produce jatropha seeds, it goes a long way toward demonstrating the potential profitability of the crop. The project aimed to improve rural women’s and men’s livelihoods and income-generating activities using bottom-up approaches and promoting women’s participation and ownership.

The Mali Folke Center in Mali works with local rural women and men in developing plantations of jatropha.7 Working with the GTZ, they use a UNDP-led technology, a multifunctional apparatus called the Mali platform, which can run on crude jatropha oil. The platform generates electricity for the whole community and powers water pumps, crushes the oil seeds, and provides energy for a welding and carpentry shop. The Mali Folke Center converted its Toyota pickup truck to run on jatropha oil. Women, the main beneficiaries of the project, have cited the ability to use jatropha oil for soap making as more of an economic benefit than the energy.

Nepal: Biogas program

The World Bank’s biogas project in Nepal aims to develop biogas use as a commercially viable, market-oriented industry by bringing fuel for cooking and lighting to rural households. Subsidies provide a key element in making these biogas plants accessible to poor households. Between 2004 and 2009 the project will install 162,000 qualitycontrolled, small-size biogas plants in the Terai, hill, and mountain regions of Nepal. Revenue from the Community Development Carbon Fund will reduce the dependency on large government and external donor subsidies and will help expand the biogas installation to more remote and poorer areas. These biogas plants displace traditional fuel sources for cooking—fuelwood, kerosene, and agricultural waste. Each biogas plant can reduce 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. The project will generate approximately 6.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent during the 10-year crediting period. The Community Development Carbon Fund expects to purchase a minimum of 1 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent with the potential of additional purchase. The project engages household members to understand their needs, the possibilities of the technology, and where to locate it. The project estimates that women will save three hours daily per household using biogas for cooking versus cooking with collected fuelwood. Women use this time for child care, literacy training, and participation in community organizations. Biogas-fueled stoves also dramatically reduce indoor air pollution.

Costa Rica: Solar-powered cookers

The focus of a project implemented by the Fundación Sol de Vida (Foundation of Sun and Life) in the Santa Cruz and Nicoya counties of the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica is to promote the use of solar power for cooking and to build women’s capacity for other activities through constructing and using solar cookers. Over 130 households have switched from wood, electricity, or gas to solar cooking, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The project has reduced the health risks associated with wood burning and reduced women’s workload because they no longer collect fuelwood.

The project, led almost completely by women, has supported and built women’s ability to take action, particularly regarding the environment and livelihood issues. Its work illustrates how women’s solar energy can open up new opportunities for women and improve their standing in the community. Because women build the stoves themselves, the project covers only the costs of materials, in addition to small amounts for transportation and instructors for the workshops. After women learn how to build these cookers, they teach others to do the same. Sol de Vida has exported this model to Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

bioenergy project development and implementation (UNDP 2007).

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India: Large-scale biofuel production

India’s National Mission on Biofuels plans to bring 400,000 hectares of marginal land under cultivation of jatropha for biodiesel production (Rajagopal 2007). The biofuels plan considers these marginal lands to be of little ecological or economic benefit. However, these lands, which are common property resources, provide essential food, fuel, fodder, and building materials for the rural poor, especially the most vulnerable (Rajagopal 2007). In India common property resources contribute between 12 and 25 percent of a poor household’s income. The poorest households, often headed by women, rely most heavily on these common property resources. Thus, without specific interventions to benefit and include poor men- and women-headed households in the benefits of jatropha production, the livelihoods of the rural poor are likely to decline (Rossi and Lambrou 2008).

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Examples of gender-sensitive indicators in bioenergy include the following (FAO 2007; see also the Monitoring and Evaluation section in the Overview): ■

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GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Understanding and addressing the linkages among gender, environment, and energy undergird the success of

Rural women and men possess different needs and priorities vis-à-vis energy services. Multiple strategies for providing energy to the rural poor are needed, including promoting more efficient and sustainable use of traditional biomass and enabling poor women and men to switch to modern fuels and technologies. The appropriate strategy will depend on local circumstances.

We must reduce harmful emissions where dependency on traditional fuels will likely continue—for example, in the next two to three decades in Africa (UN-Energy 2007).

Additional measures may be necessary for small-scale women and men farmers to be included in medium- or large-scale biofuel crop production, such as policies supporting decentralized production, local use of the energy produced, and organization of cooperatives or other forms of participation.

Subsistence farmers, women in particular, remain less likely to shift their production to bioenergy, particularly if they live in marginal areas and have fewer options to counteract risks and higher discount rates. Organizing small-scale women and men producers’ groups can enhance local benefits. Cooperatives can play a useful role in linking large firms to independent growers (as in Brazil and Mauritius). However, projects require rural women’s participation in these cooperatives to ensure attention to their needs and concerns.

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Percentage of women-headed and men-headed rural households with access to electricity, water, markets, and adequate storage facilities Percentage of men and women owning and using energy-efficient technologies and low-carbon practices Percentage of men and women who participate in decisions about biomass use for energy Number of hours spent by men and women in obtaining biomass for household consumption and small-scale enterprises Number of men and women producing bioenergy crops.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 4

Gender and Natural Disasters

he incidence of natural disasters and related environmental disasters has escalated since the 1990s (UN 2001; UNDP 2004).1 In the first half of 2006 alone, 174 disaster events occurred in 68 countries, affecting 28 million people and damaging property and assets valued at more than $6 billion (UNDP 2007). The effects of earthquakes, landslides, drought, floods, storms, and tropical cyclones severely threaten human survival and sustainable livelihoods and pose a challenge to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (FAO/WFP 2005). Disasters cause major loss of human lives and livelihoods and destroy economic and social infrastructure (UN 2002). Climate change, environmental mismanagement, and degradation (including unsustainable exploitation of natural resources) as well as unplanned urbanization and uneven distribution of assets cause increased risk and vulnerability to natural disasters (UN 2002). (The focus of this Thematic Note is on natural disasters; for a wider discussion on crises relating to conflicts and wars, see Module 11. For more on climate change, see Thematic Note 2.)

Natural disasters, often exacerbated by environmental degradation and mismanagement, adversely impact the environment. With sound management, the reverse proves true, thus establishing a direct link between disaster mitigation and environmental management (King 2002). Natural resource degradation leads to an increased frequency of small- or medium-impact disasters, such as recurrent floods or minor landslides, as well as slow-onset disasters, such as land degradation and drought. Human activity has altered ecosystems. The ability to recover from natural disturbance has diminished considerably. For instance, deforestation impairs watersheds; raises the risk of fires, landslides, and floods; exacerbates droughts; and contributes to climate change. Destruction of coastal wetlands, dunes, and mangroves diminishes the environmental buffer system for coastal storms. All these contribute to making at-risk areas

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such as low-lying islands more vulnerable to extreme weather events (Abromovitz 2001). Although often excluded from databases evaluating disaster impacts, smallscale disasters often account for more aggregate suffering than major ones (UN 2001). Scientists project that these will continue to increase as a result of climate change (Abromovitz 2001).

A growing body of evidence links environmental degradation and competition for natural resources to many of the internal and international conflicts that contribute to many complex emergencies (McNeely 2000). For example, desertification exacerbated the conflict in Darfur because it forced people to migrate from their homes into areas where they competed with others for scarce land and water (Harvey 2007). Severe environmental stress—when accompanied by underlying social or ethnic conflict, poverty, and weak governance—contributes to violent conflict and complex emergencies (UN 2001, 2002).

Although natural disasters strike in the industrialized and developing worlds, developing countries remain the most vulnerable to these risks and sustain greater losses.

Countries that face similar patterns of natural hazards— from floods to droughts—often experience widely differing impacts when disasters occur. The impact depends in large part on previous investment in appropriate infrastructure, urban planning, and disaster risk management and reduction policies (UNDP 2004).2 Within developing countries, the poor and socially disadvantaged remain the most vulnerable. Often the rural poor occupy the most marginal lands, relying on areas prone to drought, flooding, and other hazards for precarious livelihoods. They also face greater exposure to hazards resulting from poorquality construction material and lack of access to information (Kumar-Range 2001). Rural poverty frequently determines risk for disasters such as flooding or drought (UNDP 2004).

Gender-based inequalities in access to livelihood assets, division of labor, and participation in decision-making processes result in women’s and girls’ increased vulnerability to the risks of natural disasters.3 Disaster risk reduction and management interventions must take gender into account to reduce vulnerability effectively. The impacts of natural disasters can be mitigated by using a gender perspective to address their root causes, including social, political, economic, and cultural vulnerabilities (UN 2002).

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Key gender issues include risk and vulnerability to disasters, postdisaster vulnerability, and disaster mitigation, response, and recovery.

Risk and vulnerability to disasters

Natural disasters affect rural women and men differently.

Women and girls have limited access to and control over critical assets that provide livelihood security, protection, and recovery, and thus they remain most vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters. Understanding their different roles and responsibilities—in agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, both within the household and at the community level—can reveal women’s and men’s different vulnerabilities (Cannon 2002).

Disaster statistics, for which sex-disaggregated data exist, show that women are more likely to die or be injured when disaster unfolds.4 Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die as a result of disasters (Aguilar 2008).

Women’s disaster exposure results from their overrepresentation in highly vulnerable social groups, including the poor and elderly, that are less able to prepare for, survive, and cope with disaster (UN 2004). Additionally for, women do not receive timely warnings or other information about hazards and risks (Fothergill 1998; UN 2001). Mobility restrictions, dress codes, and culturally ascribed roles and behaviors disadvantage women. A disproportionate number of women died in the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh because of cultural norms restricting their mobility outside the household. Less likely than men to know how to swim, women had few chances of escaping from the affected areas. More women than men died in the tsunami in Sri Lanka because they did not know how to swim or climb trees (Sachs 2007). Recent evidence also suggests that many women who drowned in the tsunami were looking for their children. Existing gender-based inequalities in the allocation of food within the household put women at risk (see also Module 1). For

instance, in Bangladesh women’s lower nutritional status in predisaster situations worsened during crises (Cannon 2002; Masika 2002). Because they lack mobility and resources, elderly women, those with disabilities, pregnant and nursing women, and those with small children remain most at risk in cases of emergency.

Postdisaster vulnerability

In postdisaster situations women remain more vulnerable than men. Women’s responsibilities in caring for household members increase after a disaster, as access to resources for recovery decreases. The daily work involved in providing food, water, and fuel for households after a disaster requires intensive labor. In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua, women’s household and care responsibilities increased, making it difficult for them to return to work (Nelson and others 2002).

In many parts of the developing world, discriminatory customary and social practices curtail women’s rights to land. This situation deteriorates after natural disasters. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes damage and destroy land vital to women’s and men’s livelihoods. Disasters disrupt land ownership and use patterns by killing land titleholders, destroying land records, and erasing boundaries. Other efforts delay and impede the equitable redistribution of land, including the location of refugee camps, the relocation of affected communities, and measures to increase future resilience such as no-construction zones (Brown and Crawford 2006). Poor and marginalized women and men often have little alternative but to remain in or return to disaster-prone areas (Masika 2002).

Natural disasters frequently result in the degradation of water sources. Children and pregnant women are particularly susceptible to diseases such as diarrhea and cholera that thrive in such conditions. Because of their roles in managing household water supply and domestic chores, women take greater risks.5 Women’s health may also suffer as a result of reduced nutritional status when their workload increases. For instance, in Peru following the 1997–98 El Niño events, malnutrition among women caused peripartum illness. Flooding or rise in temperature in highland areas can extend the range of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Also, HIV and AIDS and other diseases can exacerbate the disaster risks brought on by climate change, urbanization, marginalization, and conflict (UNDP 2004). Health problems during disasters have psychological components as well as physical ones. Rural women and men victims of disasters may suffer from a variety of psychological problems

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related to loss of family members, trauma, unemployment, and identity (Graham 2001).

To cope with small- and medium-scale, and slow-onset disasters, women (and girls to some extent) often take on additional roles and responsibilities. With water shortages and depletion of forests (as a result of wildfires, droughts, desertification, land degradation, and other occurrences), women and girls walk longer distances to collect water and fuelwood, sometimes far from the safety of their households. This decreases the time available for food production and preparation, with consequences for household food security and nutritional well-being. Girls sometimes leave school to help with the increased work burden. Food distribution in refugee camps has resulted in a significant drop in girls’ schooling rates.

As a result of slow-onset disasters such as land degradation and drought, men’s out-migration has increased in some parts of the developing world. In Brazil, for example, people call women household heads “widows of the drought” (Branco 1995). Women left behind take on men’s traditional roles and responsibilities, increasing their work burdens, but without having equal access to financial, technological, and social resources (Lambrou and Laub 2004).

In some regions women’s out-migration accompanies drought, such as in Australia, where women migrate to urban areas to seek additional income while their husbands remain on the farm (Alston 2006).

According to some estimates, 25 million environmental refugees have lost their homes because of environmental degradation or localized conflicts related to competition for resources (Tickell 2001). Uprooted populations generally encounter problems of protection and safety, with women in particular suffering sexual and physical abuse. Areas outside camps where women gather fuelwood and water can present dangers. Families frequently select girls to collect fuelwood used for the preparation of food inside refugee camps, and girls receive food in return. Women experience more violence while displaced than in normal circumstances, and violence against women increases in postconflict situations (FAO/WFP 2005). When displaced, women in particular frequently find themselves stateless and dependent on external assistance (Graham 2001). Gender and age determine entitlements to relief supplies, and access to food based on household registration procedures favors men in some settings.

Disaster mitigation, response, and recovery

People regularly cope with all kinds of “daily” disasters and have developed local strategies for reducing risk and

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responding to natural disasters (UN 2001).6 Although women and children remain most vulnerable, many women at local levels mitigate hazards and strengthen the disaster resilience of households and communities. In Central America, the Caribbean, and other regions where the proportion of women-headed households is high and women actively engage in economic activities, women assume leadership roles in situations such as food distribution that require organizational and administrative capacities, impartial judgment, and social commitment (Toscani 1998).

Responses by men and women before, during, and after disasters relate to their status, roles, and position in society (Kumar-Range 2001). Most studies show that women’s and men’s responses to a disaster follow traditional gender lines (Fothergill 1998). Women take responsibility for child care, household, and supportive tasks, whereas men take leadership positions. Men usually participate in the public sphere in formal emergency and planning operations, and they discourage women from participation in critical planning and preparedness decisions.

Household organization also affects resilience. In responding to and recovering from disasters, social and kin networks determine available strategies (Kumar-Range 2001). Women-headed households remain the most economically and politically disadvantaged in gaining access to these networks (Graham 2001). In addition, rural poor women and men often lack savings or assets to ensure them against external shocks (Masika 2002).

Emergency decision-making processes after disasters often exclude women. Women’s limited participation restricts their engagement in political decisions that impact their specific needs and vulnerabilities. Relief workers view women as victims rather than potential agents of change, which leads to the reconstruction of gender inequalities.

For example, failure to recognize women’s informal sector work may reduce their access to economic recovery assistance and undermine perceptions of women as full contributors to the recovery process. To take an active part in shaping projects that meet their needs, women must participate. Men are also at risk. Failure to recognize men’s socioeconomic and emotional needs may delay men’s longterm recovery (UN 2001, 2002).

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Natural disasters and environmental management appeared on the international agenda throughout the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990–2000). The Yokohama Conference in 1994 strongly emphasized the

links between disaster reduction and sustainable development. It also recognized the need to stimulate community involvement and the empowerment of women at all stages of disaster management programs. Additionally, the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the twenty-third special session of the United Nations General Assembly (2000) viewed a gender perspective as integral to natural disaster mitigation (Enarson and Meyreles 2004). In 1999 the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee issued a policy statement that requires all member organizations to mainstream gender when providing humanitarian assistance in emergencies. In 2005 the World Conference on Disaster Reduction emphasized integrating a gender perspective into all disaster risk management policies, plans, and decisionmaking processes.

A recognition of the social dimensions of disasters has resulted in increased attention to community involvement and ownership. However, gender perspectives in policies and strategies to prevent and respond to natural disasters (CSW 2002) have not yet received adequate attention.

Postdisaster reconstruction presents the opportunity to challenge existing gender relations and empower women to better respond to this challenge. Immediately following a disaster, the political climate lends itself to much-needed legal, economic, and social change in such areas as governance, land reform, skills development, employment, housing, and social solidarity (UN 2002). However, an excessive focus on relief assistance may obscure or compromise efforts to challenge these roles. Emergency relief used inappropriately may discourage independence and undermine local coping strategies. These strategies result in the reconstruction of vulnerability rather than the promotion of more equitable and sustainable conditions during the postdisaster window of opportunity for social change (UN 2001).

Major research gaps exist on the linkages among gender, environmental management, and disaster risk reduction at all levels—from climate change to local, small emergencies.

Further work must examine gender-based differences in vulnerability, livelihood impacts, and specific needs during disasters (UN 2001).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Interventions and life-saving strategies may succeed when gender differences have been properly understood and addressed (FAO/WFP 2005). The following examples of good practices and lessons learned from relevant projects take gender issues into account.

Safe access to fuelwood and alternative energy in humanitarian settings

An interagency program aims to promote safe access to fuelwood and alternative energy in humanitarian camps.7 When women leave camps to collect wood, they often experience gender-based violence. In Chad all humanitarian efforts include efforts to reduce gender-based violence. In Rwanda and Tanzania programs support safety improvements. In Sudan some women have successfully transitioned to the use of mud-based fuel-efficient stoves in the camps. In Indonesia policies promote access to sustainable timber and minimize illegal logging caused by demand for shelter. Large concentrations of displaced populations in camps place excessive pressure on already degraded natural resources. This endangers the food security and livelihood of nearby local communities and fosters resentment and controversial relations with the host population. People compete for charcoal and wood for fuel and timber for shelter construction. Alternative sources of energy have had a positive impact on the livelihoods of women and men. These alternative sources have reduced women’s and girls’ time and workload for fuelwood collection and have reduced the risk of gender-based violence.

Nepal: Community-based disaster management project

The UNDP currently implements a community-based disaster management project in Nepal aimed at disaster risk reduction. It represents a clear shift from postdisaster rescue and relief to predisaster mitigation and preparedness and mainstreaming disaster risk reduction. The main goals of the community-based disaster management project are to enhance the safety of women and men vulnerable to natural disasters and to protect common property and community resources in select disaster-prone districts. The project uses participatory approaches and capacity-building measures and aims to enhance the capacities of stakeholders at the community, district, and national levels in different aspects of disaster management. Additionally, the project focuses on supporting specific disaster mitigation measures to reduce the vulnerability of women-headed, displaced, and poor households. Activities include 50 percent women’s participation in training and education on HIV and AIDS, violence against women, and trafficking related to vulnerability during natural disasters.

Pakistan: Building capacity to cope with disasters

Pattan, a local NGO in Pakistan, increases community capacity to cope with disasters through supporting social

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organizations and developing local institutions. Previously Pattan worked in flood-prone areas that have unrepresentative community organizations dominated by local power elites, usually men. The NGO worked with the community to organize representative, democratic forums called Pattan Dehi Tanzeems (PDTs) that made collective decisions.

Barred by local tradition from joining the PDTs, women formed separate PDTs and overcame resistance to their participation. Pattan used the disruptive nature of floods to develop institutions enabling women to make key decisions.

The 1992 floods completely destroyed many villages, and so the NGO initiated a project to rehabilitate houses in which women participated in the PDTs. In Pakistan women maintain traditional (kacha) housing. The project involved women in the design and construction of improved (pakka) housing.

Households received loans, and women took responsibility for collecting money to repay loan installments. Initially, men objected to giving women this responsibility, but the NGO developed an easy-to-use monitoring system. The NGO introduced the concept of joint ownership of the new pakka housing. It took time for the concept to take hold, but men eventually saw the value in joint ownership. The experience of the housing project has given women confidence to take collective action in many other projects (Bari 1998).

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Understanding the gender dimension in disaster-related development processes requires addressing root causes and ensuring equitable and efficient risk reduction measures (UN 2002). A gendered approach considers (1) the specific roles and responsibilities of men and women in food security and agriculture, (2) their main constraints and needs, and (3) their ability to carry out activities under emergency situations and early rehabilitation (FAO/WFP 2005). The following are important principles of disaster management (see box 10.10 for additional guidelines): ■

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Understand gender-based differences in vulnerability and in livelihood impacts in natural disasters, including small- and medium-scale and slow-onset disasters.

Consider gender divisions of labor, time-use patterns, additional workload, and gender-based asymmetries in accessing and controlling livelihood assets (FAO/WFP 2005).

Recognize that community-based preparedness and response must consider women’s and men’s different physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities to reduce their exposure to the adverse effects of climate change

Box 10.10 General Guidelines for Disaster Management

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Create and implement, with the involvement of community groups and women’s groups, comprehensive rural and urban development strategies and land-use plans that provide opportunities to mitigate damages caused by hazards.

Include gender-based hazard mapping and social and environmental risk assessment at the appraisal stage of all development projects, involving women and men equally at all levels of the assessment.

Systematically include hazard proneness and genderbased vulnerabilities in environmental impact assessments and formulate disaster reduction measures where appropriate, with particular regard to the protection of lifeline infrastructure and critical facilities.

Promote agricultural technologies and give specific regard to addressing, from a gender perspective, environmental degradation hazards that threaten food security.

Recognize the expertise and local knowledge of women and men disaster survivors and empower

Source: UN 2001.

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them in the management of social and environmental hazards and prevention of disasters.

Target disadvantaged groups and households, and raise their awareness of women’s human rights and the critical role women play in coping with natural disasters.

Increase women’s access to risk management information through gender-sensitive early warning systems and target specific social groups for warning information to address gender-specific needs and circumstances.

Collaborate in the creation of networks that promote community access to gender-sensitive information and communication technologies that support information exchange on environmental management and disaster risk reduction.

Establish appropriate channels and mechanisms for information flow and dialogue that women and men in disaster-affected areas may access.

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(Lambrou and Piana 2006). The participation and involvement of local women and men are essential.

Create early warning systems and monitoring based on detailed information to minimize exposure to vulnerabilities and ensure preparedness. One strategy to increase preparedness is the creation of risk maps, including gender-based hazard maps (UN 2002).

Factor the effects of food aid, subsidies, and rehabilitation programs on women as the principal providers of food for the household. In documentation and registration procedures, women should have the right to register in their own names. Devote attention to ensuring that women household heads receive benefits (FAO/WFP 2005).

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MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Monitoring and evaluation processes enable staff to analyze the performance of emergency operations. Indicators include the following (FAO/WFP 2005):

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Percentage of aid targeted to the different needs of affected men and women Percentage of women elected and appointed to village committees Roles of women members in distribution committees (for example, weighing, rebagging, and monitoring that people actually got their entitlements) and whether this made the distribution fairer Percentage and number of women and men who benefited from the relief project Percentage of women and men who migrate and the impact of migration on the recovery pace within the village Impact on women’s income and livelihood options (for example, income-generating activities and new employment opportunities) Ratio of the number of women to men who received emergency project relief and distributed food rations to their families.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 5

Gender Dimensions of Land and Water Degradation and Desertification

and degradation affects more than 900 million people worldwide and as much as two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land (UNDP 2007a). Unsustainable land use and climate change drive land degradation, including soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, and desertification.1 Land degradation leads to the loss of plant and livestock genetic and species diversity, important sources of food, medicine, and commercial products (UNDP 2007a). Increased irrigation and expansion of agricultural land into former dry-season grazing areas exacerbate land degradation (FAO 2002). In Africa, 36 countries face dryland degradation or desertification (GEF 2003).

If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the people in the world could be subject to water stress.2 The decline in quantity and quality of water leads to overexploitation of surface and groundwater resources and magnifies problems related to desertification.

Water crises raise political tensions in many parts of the world, particularly where people share rivers and lakes across borders. Africans have the least access to clean water; the largest numbers of people with no access to basic sanitation live in Asia (UNDP 2005). Competition for increasingly precious water resources has intensified dramatically over the past decades. Water shortages, water quality degradation, and aquatic ecosystem destruction seriously affect economic and social development, political stability, and ecosystem integrity (UNDP 2005).

Desertification has emerged as one of the most pressing global environmental challenges facing the world today.3 Drylands occupy 41 percent of the Earth’s land area and are home to more than 2 billion people, 90 percent of whom live in developing countries.4 Dry and subhumid lands present unique landscapes containing a wide variety of biodiversity well adapted to the often harsh conditions that characterize these areas (CBD 2007). Some 10 to 20 percent

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of drylands have already degraded, with a much larger number under threat from further desertification (MEA 2005). Desertification, which leads to loss of production capacity, reduces the land’s resilience to natural climate variability and may temporarily affect climate change (UNCCD 2005). It results in persistent reductions in the capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as water, fuel, nutrients, soil fertility, and other necessities. Observers have seen a major decline in the well-being of women and men living in drylands (MEA 2005). Desertification contributes significantly to food insecurity and famine, the internal displacement of people, and international migration, and it creates environmental refugees who add stress to areas that may not yet have degraded.5 Pastoralists and farmers in drylands try to maximize herd size and crop production during good periods and to minimize losses and obtain some yield during periods of drought. Pastoralists may follow seasonal variations in vegetation by moving their livestock, sometimes over long distances. Resilience against fluctuations may mean bridging drought periods by drawing on local reserves, such as using different types of seeds or other adaptable genetic resources. Knowledge of local biodiversity minimizes risks in the face of land and water degradation. Rural women and men’s reliance on a variety of genetic resources, including plant varieties and livestock breeds, allows them to adapt their agricultural systems to changing environmental, economic, and social conditions. For instance, livestock helps provide a safety net when other sources of income are no longer available.

Desertification causes rural poverty, just as rural poverty contributes to desertification. Poverty induces women and men to increase pressure on deteriorating drylands and to exploit the natural resource base in unsustainable ways. This accelerates land degradation, leading to a reduction in productivity and incomes while decreasing the livelihood

options for poor rural women and men. The result is food scarcity, malnutrition, and economic and social instability, which increase poverty and further exacerbate pressure on the natural resource base.

Policies, programs, and projects implemented at the local, international, and national levels often fail to account for land and water degradation and desertification when addressing poverty and sustainable development.6 Land degradation and desertification cannot be addressed in isolation from other efforts to protect biodiversity, water resources, food security, and energy security and to combat climate change.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Combating desertification and reversing land and water degradation will help secure the livelihoods and overall wellbeing of women and men farmers and pastoralists. Land and water degradation impacts poor rural women and men most severely, because they directly depend on these resources for securing food and livelihoods (Lambrou and Laub 2004).

When drylands become degraded, rural women and men become vulnerable to food insecurity, malnutrition, disease, and loss of livelihoods (FAO 2003). Gender-based inequalities make rural women and girls more vulnerable than men. Caste, ethnicity, and other socioeconomic considerations interact with gender to make certain groups of women and men particularly vulnerable.

Rural women and men have different roles, responsibilities, and knowledge in managing natural resources. Consequently, the impact of land and water degradation on rural household members will vary according to gender. This division of labor results in women’s and men’s different priorities for water use and management. Men typically use water for agricultural production, principally for irrigating cash crops. Women play an important role in water management as collectors, users, and managers of water (FAO 2007a), and they use water for both agricultural and household purposes. As previously discussed, the task of providing domestic water almost always falls to women and girls.

Women also water some subsistence crops and vegetable gardens and spend considerable time collecting water for household use (for example, food preparation, drinking, and sanitation). Water collection makes up a large part of rural women’s work in Asia and Africa. In Senegal women spend 17.5 hours each week collecting water, whereas in Mozambique they spend 15.3 hours in the dry season. In Nepal girls play an important role collecting water, averaging five hours per week (Crow and Sultana 2002). In rural

Africa and India, 30 percent of women’s daily energy intake is spent in carrying water (Ray 2007).

Depletion of land and water resources may place additional burdens on women’s labor and health as they struggle to seek their livelihoods in a changing environment. Land degradation, water degradation and scarcity, desertification, and deforestation often cause women and girls to walk longer distances to collect fuelwood and water, with consequences for their health and sometimes exposing them to violence. In some cases, such as in Bangladesh, extraction of groundwater for irrigation has made drinking water pumps dry up (Crow and Sultana 2002).

Through their different tasks and responsibilities, rural women and men have accumulated knowledge and skills concerning the management and use of biodiversity in dryland ecosystems. This includes knowledge of local crop varieties, animal breeds, tree species, agricultural systems, and the medicinal and nutritional values of plants. Adept at managing their own scarce resources, rural women and men living in drylands have developed coping strategies to deal with periods of scarcity. Local knowledge provides a wide range of accumulated experience on how to manage natural resources in farming and grazing (UNCCD 2005). Rural women’s and men’s local knowledge proves crucial to the conservation, use, and management of drylands, including its biodiversity.

In southern and eastern Africa, some HIV- and AIDSaffected households have turned to livestock production as an alternative to crop production. People adopted this strategy when soils became infertile and crop management practices too demanding for the available labor. Other households sell cattle to pay for medical bills and funeral expenses. In pastoral societies, in which milk provides a major component of nutrition, selling cattle can contribute to malnutrition. Some households raise small livestock, such as poultry, which is a less labor-intensive practice and is often the responsibility of women (White and Robinson 2000).

Insecure land tenure reduces rural women’s and men’s incentives to make long-term investments in soil rehabilitation and conservation, which are crucial to drylands management. A reduction of agricultural productivity and more competition for relatively productive land leave women with the more marginal, fragile lands. The impact of environmental degradation on common property resources in drylands threatens household food security and livelihoods.

Poor rural women who lack secure land tenure depend on these common resources for fuelwood, fodder, and food— and, therefore, the well-being of their households.

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The projected increase in freshwater scarcity will cause greater stresses in drylands. Water shortages not only undermine agricultural production but also threaten the health of affected households. Local norms and customary practices can limit women’s rights to water resources (Gender and Water Alliance 2003). Access to water depends on land rights, control over resources, and social networks, all of which more severely restrict women than men (IFAD 2006).

Excluding women’s roles and perspectives in water and land management interventions will have adverse effects.

For instance, an inappropriate design or location of tap stands or wells may increase the time women spend collecting water (FAO 2007a). Many projects emphasize participation of men and women in water management associations.

A study in India found that (1) even when women are on water management boards, they choose not to attend meetings and send men relatives instead, and (2) women in different castes often have different needs for water, with elite women’s preferences determining the placing of hand pumps and thus decreasing poor women’s access to water (Singh 2006).

In southern and East Africa, HIV and AIDS have led to increased tenure insecurity for women and children. As women become widows and children lose their parents to AIDS, the incidence of “property grabbing” increases. The perpetrators are not always women; in some regions of Namibia and Zambia, sisters-in-laws are the main perpetrators (Izumi 2007). Most often, a husband’s relatives take land and other productive assets from the deceased’s widow or children.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

The international community has long recognized that desertification presents a major economic, social, and environmental concern to many countries in all regions of the world. In 1977 the United Nations Conference on Desertification adopted its “Plan of Action to Combat Desertification.” The United Nations Environment Programme concluded in 1991 that the problem of land degradation in arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas had intensified (UNCCD 2005). To tackle the problem of desertification with renewed efforts, the international community adopted the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 1994. The convention stresses the importance of a bottom-up participatory approach in identifying, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating projects that combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought. The UNCCD recognizes the role of women in rural livelihoods,

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explicitly encouraging the equal participation of women and men (Lambrou and Laub 2004).

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) also acknowledges the importance and uniqueness of the biodiversity of dry and subhumid lands.7 In 2000 the CBD Conference of the Parties emphasized the importance of increasing the knowledge base and supporting best management practices on dry and subhumid lands; the CBD also recognized the need for the full participation of women at all levels of policy making and implementation.8 The World Summit on Sustainable Development reaffirmed land degradation as one of the major global environment and sustainable development challenges of the twenty-first century, calling for action to address causes of desertification and land degradation and to restore land and address poverty resulting from land degradation (GEF 2003).

Linkages among biodiversity, poverty alleviation, and gender issues remain intertwined with land and water degradation and desertification. Because they consider it “nonscientific” or inferior, practitioners overlook or ignore rural women’s and men’s local knowledge on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Involving women in participatory land and water management promotes more sustainable land and water use, reversal of desertification, and improved socioeconomic conditions (Aswani and Weiant 2004; Nyssen and others 2004).

Projects that adopt a bottom-up participatory approach create an “enabling environment,” designed to support local women and men in achieving livelihood security.

Asia: Farmer-Centered Agricultural Resource Management

Supported by the UNDP and implemented by FAO, the Farmer-Centered Agricultural Resource Management (FARM) program was implemented in China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.9 Between 1993 and 1998, the program aimed to promote sustainable use and management of natural resources in agriculture and household food security in ecologically fragile, rain-fed areas. Recognizing that women farmers contribute significantly to agriculture, the program promoted women’s participation in decision-making processes and other activities at all levels. FARM adopted a participatory assessment planning (PAP) approach that incorporated a gender analysis tool—a practical tool for

examining activities, problems, knowledge, and access to natural resources of both women and men. The output of the PAP approach resulted in greater accountability and equitable sharing of benefits and ownership of assets. FARM also carried out training of trainers under FAO’s Socio-economic and Gender Analysis Program (SEAGA). The emphasis on gender has created awareness and improved understanding of social-equity issues among community members. Women have begun to play important roles in decision making and leadership management.

China: Wulin mountains minority-areas development project

This joint IFAD–World Food Programme project aimed to increase food and cash crop production through a range of land-improvement activities. These included the conversion of dryland to paddies, improvement of livestock and fish production, and literacy and numeracy training for women.

Improved drinking water supply systems and the introduction of labor- and time-saving technologies reduced women’s workloads. Small livestock husbandry provided additional income for food, school fees, and clothing, and drinking water systems and training improved hygiene and health. Women gained self-esteem and social position with their entrepreneurial success.

Egypt: Matruh Resources Management Project

The Matruh Resources Management Project, funded by the World Bank, seeks to break the cycle of natural resource degradation and poverty in the fragile ecosystem of Matruh, Egypt, in which Bedouin women play a critical role in rural production and environmental management. The project works closely with community groups to define the needs of women and men and ensure participation in preparing and implementing local resource management plans. To fulfill these objectives and enable the community groups to address gender issues effectively, project staff received early gender training. In addition, women extension agents based in each subproject area work directly with women.

The Gambia: Partial participation by women in irrigation program

Efforts undertaken through development initiatives have rarely succeeded in providing women farmers with secure access to irrigated assets.10 Sometimes women obtain access indirectly or acquire irregular or seasonal access, but even

when they do obtain use of irrigated land, they may end up losing this access. When IFAD-funded drylands projects attempted to ensure better access for women to irrigated land (for example, by designating the land only for women’s crops), men sometimes took over the crops, as in a rice irrigation project in The Gambia. However, “partial participation” by women in irrigation projects may still benefit women. Women’s consumption of water improved, even though their control of assets and status did not increase.

Women may also use water for their livestock or their domestic needs, even though they cannot use it for their crops. Indirect or limited access to irrigation water may somewhat improve their livelihoods in the short term.

Mauritius and Rodrigues: Capacity-building for sustainable land management

The UNDP implemented this three-year, $1.38-million project (including a Global Environmental Facility grant of $600,000) to design sustainable land management capacities in appropriate government and civil society institutions and user groups.11 The project’s long-term goal was to ensure that agricultural, pasture, forest, and other land management efforts in Mauritius and Rodrigues consist of sustainable, productive systems that maintain ecosystem productivity and ecological functions while contributing directly to economic and social wellbeing. Women participated actively in stakeholder consultations during the project’s formulation. Women represented 31 percent of overall participation at the inception workshop, where they voiced their needs and contributed their perspectives. Since that time, the project has ensured a good balance of women and men in training courses and other activities. A gender specialist conducts capacitybuilding exercises to ensure that the project takes gender issues into consideration in all UNDP-supported projects, including sustainable land management.

Niger: The Keita Project

The Keita Project, financed by the Italian Government and implemented by FAO with support from the World Food Programme, aimed at combating desertification in the Keita region of Niger. The project adopted a gender-sensitive participatory approach that led to better understanding of local land-use systems and husbandry. Its aim was to facilitate women’s access to income-generating activities (garden and fruit production, sheep production) and promote their participation in local and national-level organizations and

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activities. Time-saving technologies introduced by the project alleviated women’s work burden.

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GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

An assessment of gender-specific relationships to natural resources and of gender-differentiated impacts of land and water degradation and desertification will facilitate the development of effective projects related to land and water degradation and desertification. The following guidelines are of particular importance: ■

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Understanding the gender-based inequalities in accessing livelihood assets, in the division of labor, and in participation in resource planning and management provides a sound basis for the sustainable management of land and water.

To understand the gender-differentiated vulnerabilities and coping strategies in relation to land and water degradation and desertification, we must identify changes in land use, land scarcity, and the economy that affect the ability of women and men to meet their livelihood needs.

The success of sustainable land and water management requires women’s and men’s full and equal participation, through incorporating local women’s and men’s perspectives, needs, and priorities. In some cases, women can benefit from partial participation. Efforts to encourage women’s participation in decision-making processes and organizations should take into account women’s time and mobility restrictions. Serious efforts should ensure that women’s participation goes beyond tokenism. In addition, these efforts must acknowledge that women from different castes and classes may have different interests and power in making natural resource management decisions such as where to locate pumps.

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Strengthening the capacity of women and men users and managers of drylands resources remains one of the most important factors in reversing land and water degradation. Participatory processes and innovations in community-based planning and decision making work best to build capacity. Women must gain leadership positions, participate in organizations, and gain access to technology. Strengthening women’s group-based lending has sometimes enabled women to overcome requirements for collateral. Credit activities served as entry points for organizing women for broader activities (IFAD 2006).

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Examples of gender-sensitive indicators include the following (FAO 2007b):12 Land: ■

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Average number of hectares of land owned by womenheaded and men-headed households Percentage of women and men with de facto and de jure land rights Number of women and men with decision-making authority in cooperatives and marketing associations Ratio of number of men and women with access to credit based on land rights.

Water:

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Ratio of women and men who are members of water users associations Ratio of number of irrigated farms managed by women and men Change in the number of hours of labor required by men and women with the introduction of irrigation projects.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Gender, Biodiversity, and Local Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LinKS) for Food Security

PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

he goal of the LinKS project was to improve rural women’s and men’s food security and promote the sustainable management of agrobiodiversity.1 To achieve this goal, the organizers raised awareness of how rural men and women use and manage agrobiodiversity and promoted the importance of local knowledge for food security and sustainable agrobiodiversity at local, institutional, and policy levels. They worked with a range of stakeholders—development agents, researchers, and extension services—to strengthen their ability to recognize and value women and men farmers’ knowledge and use gendersensitive and participatory approaches in their policies, programs, and interventions.

Launched in 1997, the project, funded by the government of Norway and administered by FAO, operated in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Activities in Swaziland began in 2000 and continued until the end of September 2005.

The main strategy of the project was to support, build on, and strengthen the efforts of other groups already working on food security, indigenous knowledge, and agrobiodiversity issues in the four countries. These other groups included NGOs, research, training, and academic

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institutions; government agencies; and policy institutions.

The project teams and management used participatory approaches in project design, formulation, and implementation activities.

The project operated through three central areas of activities: ■

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Capacity building and training to raise awareness and develop tools and methods to enhance capacity, change development practitioners’ attitudes about rural women and men’s local knowledge, and stress the importance of this knowledge for sustainable management of biodiversity and food security Research on gender-based differences in farmers’ knowledge and management of biodiversity, highlighting the role of agrobiodiversity management for food security, and the different roles and responsibilities of rural women and men in the use and management of agrobiodiversity Communication and advocacy to enhance the exchange of information about the value of local knowledge in agriculture between communities, as well as with institutions that work with farmers and policy makers.

INNOVATIVE FEATURES

What’s innovative? The LinKS project played an important role in shedding light on how food security will have to build much more on local knowledge and agrobiodiversity with a clear understanding of gender implications, keeping in mind the continuously changing global socioeconomic and political conditions. The participatory management style, together with a holistic approach, represented a new and innovative approach for FAO in project implementation.

The LinKS project was conceived in response to the emerging international debates on the sustainable management of natural resources and participatory approaches during the early 1990s culminating in the 1996 International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In the period leading up to 1996, the understanding of gender and local knowledge systems and the rich source of information embodied in the knowledge, skills, and practices of women and men as managers and users of biodiversity were not very clear. Agricultural and rural development programs and policies, in particular those related to natural resources management, often failed to take into account

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rural women’s and men’s local knowledge systems in farming activities (Rocheleau 1996; Shiva 1996). Furthermore, research, science, and national policies tend to undermine the value of local knowledge, capacities, skills, and innovations of local farming communities to sustain and manage agrobiodiversity and secure food. The misconception that local knowledge proves inferior to scientific and technical approaches leads to a marginalization and loss of local practices and knowledge.

The LinKS project evolved with the aim to bridge this gap between local and scientific knowledge (box 10.11).

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BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

The project enhanced the capacity of participants in understanding the linkages between local knowledge, gender, and agrobiodiversity and incorporating these issues in their work through the use of gender-sensitive participatory approaches. Workshops organized to document traditional practices emphasized, first, the potential benefits and risks of sharing such knowledge, and, second, the responsibilities of researchers and development agents to record and document local knowledge. Several specific training workshops were organized to strengthen knowledge and skills in implementing gender-sensitive participatory agricultural and livestock research and training. Other capacity-building activities included the following: ■

About 1,125 people participated in the training workshops on gender, local knowledge, and biodiversity and the application of gender analysis and participatory methods.

A training manual, Building on Local Knowledge, Gender and Biodiversity, highlighted the specific concepts and links between these issues from the perspective of sustainable livelihoods.

A local pool of experienced trainers was built up to facilitate with the training workshops on LinKS issues and gender-sensitive participatory approaches.

Integration of local knowledge, gender, and agrobiodiversity issues in the educational curriculum of local training colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning (such as the Sokoine University of Agriculture).

Visits provided farmers, researchers, NGO representatives, and development workers an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences, and to take part in mutual learning experiences. In Tanzania, as part of a research project focusing on the management of animal genetic resources by the Maasai, pastoralists from various study areas exchanged visits to share experiences and views.

The project also supported 28 research activities that documented and increased understanding of the linkages between local knowledge, gender, and agrobiodiversity; reinforced collaboration between researchers and rural communities; demonstrated the complementarities between the local and scientific systems of knowledge; and enhanced the potential of developing approaches to increase food security and agrobiodiversity. The stakeholders identified three broad topics as particularly important: (1) traditional seed systems (box 10.12), (2) animal production and genetic diversity (box 10.13), and (3) the relation between HIV and AIDS and local knowledge systems (box 10.14).

Box 10.11 Linkages between Local Knowledge, Biodiversity, Food Security, and Gender Issues

Biodiversity serves as one of the most important natural assets for poor rural women and men. They rely on a diverse range of natural resources—crops, trees, livestock, fish—for subsistence production and sale. Yet, because of environmental stresses, introduction of new improved varieties and marginalization of local knowledge, biodiversity is lost at a rapid rate, posing a grave threat to long-term food security.

The different tasks and responsibilities of rural women and men result in accumulation of different types of local knowledge and skills. This local knowledge Source: FAO 2005.

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shapes and influences plant and animal diversity at both the gene and species levels. It also provides an important coping strategy for poor rural women and men vulnerable to the risk of environmental degradation and natural disasters. For instance, poor rural women and men farmers often spread risk by growing a wide variety of locally adapted crops, some of which will be resistant to drought or pests.

Thus, local knowledge, gender, and agrobiodiversity are closely interrelated.

Box 10.12 Tanzania: Traditional Seed Systems

Research activity on gender and biodiversity was set up in the southern highlands of Tanzania, a region heavily exposed to improved seed varieties. The goal was to improve the availability and accessibility of high-quality seeds of crop varieties preferred by farmers to enhance household food security. The main findings at the end of the project were the following: (1) some crop species had disappeared because of changes in weather, migration, government policies and interventions, or farmers’ preferences; (2) many varieties had been introduced; (3) in general, agrobiodiversity increased over the years; (4) levels of food consumption and their composition varied within the different socioeconomic groups; (5) food-secure households relied more on staple food and less on natural and collected crops; and (6) the informal system provided a better source of seeds and information for many farmers than the formal seed system.

Source: Author.

Box 10.14 The Relation between HIV and AIDS and Local Knowledge Systems A study on the impact of HIV and AIDS on local seed systems in both Mozambique and Tanzania showed the gender specificity of local knowledge.

Men and women are responsible for different crops; for example, a widower would not necessarily know or be able to produce, after his wife’s demise, the local crops she had planted. Her specific knowledge about local seed varieties would be lost. HIV and AIDS constitute a severe threat to agrobiodiversity. At the request of four communities in Tanzania, several local seed fairs enabled farmers to share and exchange their local knowledge and local seed varieties.

Source: FAO 2005.

The project’s communication strategy increased the visibility of women’s and men’s knowledge among communities, development workers, and policy makers. Communication activities conducted through participatory processes included the following: ■

Box 10.13 Tanzania: Animal Production and Genetic Diversity In the Mbarali district, a study was conducted to gauge local knowledge on breeding and selection of livestock in the Maasai community. The study examined the types of animals (cattle, sheep, goats) preferred and the criteria used to achieve the desired traits. These preferences were analyzed in relation to gender and age, roles and responsibilities, decision making, and goals of food security and herd survival. The objective was to let the Maasai pastoralists identify the gaps and make corrections. The threats or constraints to the pastoralists’ local knowledge for the sustainable management of indigenous livestock were identified, and possible solutions offered. The decreasing grazing land and water for livestock in the Mbarali district and livestock diseases were major constraints. (See also Module 14.)

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A total of 787 researchers, policy makers, and development workers participated in workshops and seminars organized to raise awareness and facilitate discussion of the issues.

Small workshops explored farmers’ rights and intellectual property rights. Through these workshops, the project fostered discussion of local knowledge and its link to biodiversity conservation and food security in each of the project countries.

Twenty short case-studies, 33 research reports, and two videos were disseminated to project partners through training workshops, seminars, and the LinKS project mailing list.

Agricultural fairs, contributions to national television and radio programs, national newspapers, and specialist magazines were given support.

A Web site (www.fao.org/sd/links/gebio.htm) provides useful resources and links to information sources.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

The project’s thematic focus and the scope of its activities, as well as the number of countries involved, made it a com-

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plex project to implement. Addressing and linking the main themes of gender, local knowledge, and agrobiodiversity brought conceptual and analytical challenges as well. Gendersensitive participatory approaches proved to be the most valid approach to achieve the project objectives.

The project adopted a holistic, interdisciplinary approach for understanding the linkages between gender, local knowledge systems, and agrobiodiversity management for food security. Research activities were designed in a process-oriented way to include the active involvement of all disciplines in planning, implementation, analysis, and interpretation. Because ministries, universities, and most NGOs traditionally work within a sectoral approach, such a multidisciplinary approach proved extremely challenging, Project partners experienced difficulties grasping the conceptual themes and applying them to their work.

Despite intensive training, the application of concepts to field work and data analysis remained unclear to researchers. Consequently, researchers participated in prefield training to ensure that they were able to document local knowledge in such a way that local communities benefited. Training workshops focused on the application of gender-sensitive participatory tools. It became clear that workshops were not sufficient to increase understanding of the concepts and their linkages; thus, a training manual was developed to address this gap.

The participatory management style of the project presented limitations due to existing institutional frameworks and bureaucracy. To mitigate these limitations, LinKS set up a special project structure that entailed national coordination teams with managerial responsibility for project activities in each project country. National team offices within the

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hosting institutions facilitated a closer collaboration with partner institutions.

A major lesson learned was that training prior to undertaking research, although important, was not sufficient. Participants often stressed the need for postworkshop followup, monitoring, and mentoring. LinKS tried to address this through intensive technical support throughout the research process, from research design, data collection, and analysis to interpretation and presentation. Furthermore, many researchers found analyzing socioeconomic data challenging and consequently failed to report research results in a coherent and eloquent manner, thus, pointing to the need for capacity building and developing appropriate training materials.

Research activities were closely linked to capacity building and advocacy. Government officers, researchers, and NGO staff who participated in the training and awareness workshops often developed research proposals for increasing recognition of the knowledge of men and women, documenting experiences, community-to-community exchanges, or follow-up action. All research activities explored the hypothesis that women are important custodians of knowledge in the management of biodiversity. Communication at the rural community level, conducted through participatory research processes, encouraged dialogue, feedback to communities, and follow-up action that further enhanced learning and empowerment. Research reports were shared with the local communities and stakeholders for feedback. Such feedback sessions were also important to identify follow-up action with the local communities and stakeholders to ensure that they benefited from the studies.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 2

India: Karnataka Watershed Development Project

PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

he aim of the Karnataka Watershed Development Project (KWDP) is to improve the productive potential of selected watersheds; the steps involved include the following actions:

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Enhance production and livelihood systems.

Strengthen community and institutional arrangements for natural resource management.

Promote participatory involvement of primary stakeholders/beneficiaries.

Offer assistance to women, the landless, and other vulnerable groups by supporting investments in income generation activities.

The project also aims to strengthen the capacity of communities to participate in planning, implementation, social and environmental management, and maintenance of assets. They will operate in a more socially inclusive manner within the framework of a watershed development plan implemented through community groups.

The KWDP, initiated in 2001 and scheduled to end in 2009, is being implemented in seven districts of Karnataka by the Watershed Development Department of the government of Karnataka and funded by the World Bank. The

target districts are drought prone and dominated by rainfed agriculture. High soil erosion leads to declining productivity. Groundwater from existing tubewells is only for three to four months after monsoon rains. Deterioration of common lands results from poor management.

The project addresses (1) social mobilization and institution building to help plan and implement participatory watershed treatments, (2) farming system intensification and participatory research, (3) income generation activities to benefit socially vulnerable and landless groups, and (4) capacity building, monitoring, and evaluation. The project is being implemented in a phased manner: phase 1 consists of 10 subwatersheds, phase 2 covers 20 subwatersheds, and phase 3 covers the final 47 subwatersheds. The project is now working mainly on the phase 3 subwatershed.

The project uses a complex institutional structure to develop critical partnerships between government technical specialists, NGOs, communities, local authorities, and research organizations, for instance, through the formation of community-based organizations such as self-help groups (largely women and landless), area groups (mainly landowning farmers), and a community-level executive committee. Self-help groups, the basic units of planning for income generation activities, are consolidated at the microwatershed level.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

What’s innovative? Program design promotes greater local participation and encompasses traditional soil and water conservation as well as rural livelihood development. The gender dimension of KWDP aims at creating opportunities for vulnerable groups, including women’s economic activity, access to basic resources, and participation in decision-making processes.

On over 270,000 hectares, soil and water conservation improved average crop yields to between 525 and 1,136 kilograms per hectare. Crop diversity, especially cash crops, increased to four to nine crops. Groundwater availability following monsoon rains improved to four to six months.

The project established 4,300 farmer groups and 6,600 new self-help groups to sustain participatory watershed management across 7,000 communities in 742 microwatersheds.

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The KWDP significantly impacts the lives of women.

Visible impacts include increased self-esteem, confidence, and decision-making ability; improved livelihoods; and economic empowerment.

Annual household income increased to approximately $373. Self-help groups flourished with project support. Taking into account member savings, project revolving funds, and leveraged commercial loans, the total potential capital base in these community groups is almost $13 million, which is being used to help establish small businesses, particularly among women and the landless. The majority of members are women. More than 60 percent of the self-help groups are linked to commercial financial institutions. Moneylenders are no longer a major force in these communities.

The success of self-help groups in creating savings resulted in women’s economic empowerment. Women in self-help groups better articulate their needs and plan their livelihood strategies. The majority of women feel that the project has offered several new opportunities, such as a teleconference, a satellite-based training program, and demonstrations.

Approximately 70 percent of the women and landless participating in the income-generating activity component preferred to enhance their incomes through livestock and poultry production. The project partners agreed to introduce village-based private veterinary service providers, “Gopal Mitras,” to promote effective and low-cost service to people. Field visits and monitoring and evaluation data confirm the important role that the Gopal Mitras now play in many communities. All Gopal Mitras use mobile phones to make it easier for people in more distant villages to call via a community call box. Earnings by the Gopal Mitras range from $75 to $375 per month, with an average of $125.

Women’s role in decision making has improved considerably at both the family and the community/institution levels. More than 70 percent of women reported that their life has changed for the better with respect to education, financial matters, marriages, and other social issues. At the institutional level, about 70 percent of women feel that their status has improved, their views are respected, and their social acceptance level has increased.

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CHALLENGES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

The discussion below surveys some of the lessons learned from past experiences.

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skill development modules stress women’s participation.

This project strives to improve the status of women, increase their participation, and empower them to be more self-reliant and self-confident. The project facilitated women and vulnerable groups to participate and express their views freely. Thus, the project addresses community empowerment, social justice, and gender equality.

The training provided by the project created a high level of awareness and confidence among the executive committee and self-help groups, but relatively less among the area groups. The training knowledge is utilized primarily for microcredit management and income-generating activity rather than for watershed activity. Women view access to credit as vital to their ability to earn income and to control their status and autonomy.

Marginal and landless people are the major beneficiaries of demonstrations in the project (81 percent). However, the spread of knowledge about watersheds remains limited. People conceive of the project as more of an income-earning enterprise rather than spreading knowledge about watershed management.

The increased financial stability through savings and employment generation (at the self-help group level) has substantially reduced people’s dependency on moneylenders. The extra earnings and employment opportunities have decreased out-migration, especially in the Haveri district and, to a lesser extent, in Chitradurga, Kolar, and Tumkur. Families now experience the opportunity to live together with family members. However, long-term employment generation is yet to be realized.

The Haveri and Kolar districts report slightly improved access to fodder and fuel, and a few districts report improved drinking water facilities. However, these issues largely depend on natural resource development and increased biomass, which require a longer period to show results.

Reasons for the limited participation of women include the nonsupportive social environment, cultural taboos, the presence of dominant caste and politically influential members, illiteracy, and a lack of clarity of benefits.

Specific emphasis on women’s participation in capacity building includes training programs and exposure visits.

Group formation, leadership, conducting meetings, and

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Self-help groups should develop a sense of identity, cohesiveness, and competence in areas such as managing their finances, taking up group income-generating activities (IGAs), and involvement in community affairs. IGA products produced under the project can be branded as “KWDP” as a unified marketing label.

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Women are usually unable to participate in community activities without the consent and support of men in their families and in the community. Men, therefore, need to be more aware of the importance of the contribution of women to the project and to the development of the village.

Women field guides can work effectively with women, and it is easier for women staff to interact with them in the community. More women field guides are needed, and they need to be trained in facilitating women’s participation and technical aspects of the project.

The involvement of women in project planning should be ensured, especially with respect to how they are treated, participation in productive work, and benefits of production. Open-house meetings at regular intervals ensure better transparency and participation.

Women committee members must be given specific responsibilities and made signatories to the bank accounts to emphasize the importance of their role.

Equal opportunities in employment and equal wages for men and women commensurate with the nature of work must be ensured.

Women should be given rights over village common property land to access the resources for their livelihood, and benefit-sharing mechanisms should be developed for wider participation.

Common property resources must meet daily household needs for fuel and fodder and provide livelihood options for women. Social fencing creates hardships for vulnerable groups. To circumvent the long gestation period for realizing the benefits, a buffer zone approach should be used to develop common property land.

NOTES Overview

This Overview was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. “Global Environment Outlook 4,” www.unep.org.

2. Commonwealth/International Labour Organization, WTO TRIPS Agreement, Globalisation and Gender Briefs, Series 2, July, www.ilo.org/dyn/empent/docs/F1599852333/ No%202%20-%20TRIPS.pdf.

3. For a full discussion on monitoring and evaluation, refer to Module 16.

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. “Global Environment Outlook 4,” www.unep.org. The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as the variability among living organisms from all sources, including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes they are part of; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.

The convention defines sustainable use as the use of components of biological diversity in a way and at a rate that does not lead to the long-term decline of biological diversity, thereby maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations.

2. Over the last few decades, agricultural development has been characterized by agricultural intensification and expansion, achieved mainly through technological advancements and the replacement of local plant or livestock varieties with improved, high-yielding, uniform varieties, as well as large-scale conversion of forests or other natural habitats to monocultural farming systems (FAO 2005).

3. Local knowledge is a collection of facts and relates to the entire system of concepts, beliefs, and perceptions that people hold about the world around them. This includes the way people observe and measure their surroundings, how they solve problems, and how they validate new information (FAO 2004; Warburton and Martin 1999).

4. Note that there is some contention between TRIPS and the CBD. TRIPS allows for the privatization of biological resources, but the CBD acknowledges that local communities have rights over these resources and the indigenous knowledge involved in their usage (Sahai 2003).

5. High-yielding exotic crops are often less nutritious than indigenous varieties. FAO’s 1996 State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture report states that the main cause of genetic erosion, reported by almost all countries, is the replacement of local varieties by improved or exotic varieties and species (FAO 2005).

6. “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation,” www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/60/27/2502872.pdf.

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7. Gerry Toomey, “Farmers as Researchers: The Rise of Participatory Plant Breeding,” International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Project No. 950019, www.idrc.ca/en/ev-5559-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

8. In addition to the ones listed here, the legal instruments relating to biodiversity include the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources adopted by FAO in the early 1980s to protect plant genetic resources; the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which promotes conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture; and the Global Strategy for the Management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources, which provides a technical and operational framework for assisting countries. Further information on these aspects is highlighted in Bragdon and others (2003).

9. Because of space limitations, the relevant policy instruments will not be discussed in detail here. For a discussion on these instruments from a gender-sensitive perspective, see Bragdon and others (2003); FAO (2005); Lambrou and Laub (2004).

10. For a full discussion on the intellectual property rights of indigenous and local communities, see FAO (2005); Lambrou and Laub (2006).

11. For a full discussion on these issues, see FAO (2005).

12. Cathy Rozel Farnworth and Janice Jiggins, “Gender and Participatory Plant Breeding,” CGIAR, Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, www.prgaprogram. org/modules/DownloadsPlus/uploads/PRGA_Publica tions/General/Reports/PPBMonograph4.pdf. Conventional breeding programs are recognized to have brought little benefit to some marginalized groups of farmers. However, encouraging examples can be found of projects in which women and men farmers are involved in crop improvement and breeding programs.

Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. The IPCC is a body of the world’s leading scientists convened by the United Nations. It has been established to assess scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

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2. Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the twenty-first century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the twentieth century.

3. The main human-produced greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chloroflurocarbons. Because of space limitations, this Thematic Note will not explore the scientific basis of climate change. For information, see the IPCC’s assessment reports at www.ipcc.ch.

4. This is an advance since the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001), which concluded that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

5. See also “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation,” www.oecd. org/dataoecd/60/27/2502872.pdf.

6. In this context, climate change was brought before the UN Security Council for the first time in April 2007, as the issue was identified as one of the key factors behind the conflict in Darfur, because desertification had forced people from their homes and into areas where they competed with others for scarce resources such as water (Harvey 2007).

7. See the Overview for this Module and the Key Gender Issues section in this Note.

8. See “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation,” www.oecd. org/dataoecd/60/27/2502872.pdf.

9. FAO, IFAD, and the World Bank have provided evidence through a number of their studies and lessons learned. See also Thematic Notes 1 and 4 and Module 11.

10. Human activity has altered ecosystems so extensively that their ability to bounce back from natural disturbance has diminished considerably. For instance, deforestation impairs watersheds; raises the risk of fires, landslides, and floods; exacerbates droughts; and contributes to climate change.

Destruction of coastal wetlands, dunes, and mangroves diminishes the environmental buffer system for coastal storms. All these contribute to making at-risk areas (such as low-lying islands) more vulnerable to extreme weather events (Abramovitz 2001); see also Thematic Note 4.

11. For a detailed discussion on mitigation policies aimed at reducing or avoiding greenhouse gas emissions in the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency, see Thematic Note 3 and Module 15. The causes of global warming can be reduced either by reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases or by subtracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (www.fao.org/clim).

12. www.fao.org/clim/mitigation_en.htm.

13. Payments for environmental services are a market-based conservation tool in which land users are paid for the

environmental services they generate. The central principles of this approach are that those who provide environmental services should be compensated for doing so and that those who receive these services should pay for their provision (see the Overview for more details).

14. www.fonafifo.com/index.htm.

15. For examples of best practices and lessons learned relating to sustainable energy development (energy efficiency and renewable energy), see Thematic Note 3 and Module 15.

For natural disaster projects, see Thematic Note 4 and Module 11.

16. For more information on this mechanism, see ftp://ftp. fao.org/agl/agll/docs/misc37 or www.climateindia.com.

17. “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,”http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng. pdf.

18. For a full discussion on the Clean Development Mechanism and gender issues, see Denton (2002); Lambrou and Piana (2006a).

Thematic Note 3

This Thematic Note was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. This Thematic Note uses the following definitions: Bioenergy: energy produced from organic matter or biomass. Bioenergy includes all wood energy and all agroenergy resources (FAO 2006; UN-Energy 2007). Biomass: material of biological origin (excluding material embedded in geological formations and transformed to fossils), such as energy crops, agricultural and forestry wastes, and by-products, manure, or microbial biomass. Biofuel: fuel produced directly or indirectly from biomass, such as fuelwood, charcoal, bioethanol, biodiesel, biogas (methane), or biohydrogen. Modern bioenergy: biomass that may be burned directly, further processed into densified and dried solid fuel, or converted into liquid or gaseous fuels using so-called first- or second-generation technologies, depending on their level of development.

2. For a discussion on the plausible institutional and economic assumptions necessary for bioenergy development, see UN-Energy (2007). Projections to 2050 suggest that bioenergy sources could supply 10 to 25 percent of total energy demand (FAO 2005, 2007).

3. As a low-carbon or carbon-neutral source of energy, biofuel systems with low-energy inputs into the production

process are already significantly contributing to climate change mitigation by replacing fossil fuels and through carbon sequestration in plants and soil biomass in perennial energy plantations (FAO 2006).

4. The demand for corn for ethanol in the United States doubled or tripled the price of corn in Mexico between 2006 and 2007, which led to a tortilla crisis. Poor Mexicans receive more than 40 percent of their protein from tortillas.

In the United States, chicken feed costs increased 40 percent between 2006 and 2007 because of rising corn prices (Sagar and Kartha 2007).

5. The full cycle of greenhouse gas emissions of bioenergy varies widely based on land-use changes, choice of feedstock, agricultural practices, refining or conversion processes, and end-use practice. If, for example, forest is converted into sugarcane, treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and refined with coal and natural gas, the resulting biofuel could have a greater impact on climate over its life cycle than fossil fuels (UN-Energy 2007). A recent study estimates that when the amount of land cleared to grow corn, sugarcane, and soybeans for fuel crops is taken into account, biofuels will have higher greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels (Fargione and others 2008).

6. Modern forms of energy such as electricity and petroleum-based fuels account for only a fraction of the energy use of poor rural communities. The expansion of the electricity grid is costly and often not affordable for poor communities, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa. Electricity from renewable energy sources such as small hydro, solar, and wind energy systems also has high capital costs. See United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), “Small-Scale Production and Use of Liquid Biofuels in Sub-Saharan Africa: Perspectives for Sustainable Development,” Background Paper No. 2 for Commission on Sustainable Development, Fifteenth Session, www.un.org/ esa/sustdev/csd/csd15/documents/csd15_bp2.pdf.

7. www.malifolkecenter.org.

Thematic Note 4

This Thematic Note was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. Annual economic losses associated with such disasters averaged $75.5 billion in the 1960s, $138.4 billion in the 1970s, $213.9 billion in the 1980s, and $659.9 billion in the 1990s (UNDP 2004; a billion is 1,000 million).

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2. The level of risk in relation to natural disasters in a society is determined by the levels of vulnerability combined with the level of probability of the occurrence of a natural hazard (flood, drought, landslide, earthquake, volcanic eruptions, storm, cyclone) as well as the level and intensity of such a hazard. See United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), “Environmental Management and the Mitigation of Natural Disasters: A Gender Perspective,” Report of the Expert Group Meeting, Ankara, Turkey, November 6–9, www.un.org/womenwatch/ daw/csw/env_manage/documents/EGM-Turkey-finalreport.pdf.

3. Social vulnerability to disasters is a function of human action and behavior. It describes the degree to which a socioeconomic system or physical assets are either susceptible or resilient to the impact of natural hazards and environmental changes (ibid.).

4. Whether it is a drought in Malawi (Vaughan 1987), a cyclone in Bangladesh (Ikeda 1995), or an earthquake in Mexico (Dufka 1988).

5. “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation,” www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/60/27/2502872.pdf.

6. For a full discussion on disaster mitigation, response, and recovery, see Module 11.

7. The agencies taking part are the DPKO, FAO, IFRC, IOM, OCHA, OHCHR, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNIDO, WFP, and WHO.

Thematic Note 5

This Thematic Note was prepared by Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University) and Marina Laudazi (Consultant), with inputs from David Boerma, Dominique Lantieri, Regina Laub, Sibyl Nelson, Andrea Rossi, and Reuben Sessa (FAO), and reviewed by Mary Hill Rojas (Consultant); Yianna Lambrou (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Erick Fernandes, Robin Mearns, and Daniel Sellen (World Bank).

1. “Global Environment Outlook 4,” www.unep.org/geo/ geo4/media.

2. Ibid.

3. United Nations University, “Experts Advise World Policies to Cope with Causes, Rising Consequences of Creeping Desertification,” www.inweh.unu.edu/inweh/drylands/ Algiers_news_release-Final.pdf.

4. Ibid. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), drylands include all terrestrial regions where the production of crops, forage, wood, and other ecosystem services is limited by water. Formally, the definition encompasses all lands where the climate is classified as dry

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subhumid, semiarid, arid, or hyperarid. This classification is based on Aridity Index values.

5. See note 56 above.

6. Ibid.

7. See Thematic Note 1 for details on the CBD. 8. “What Is Dry and Sub-humid Lands Biodiversity?” www.cbd.int/drylands/what.shtml.

9. FARM Programme, http://dbtindia.nic.in/FARM/ page1.htm.

10. IFAD (2006).

11. UNDP (2007b).

12. For more on monitoring and evaluation of natural resources management projects, see the Overview. For a full discussion on monitoring and evaluation in general, see Module 16.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Marina Laudazi (FAO), based largely on Lambrou and Laub (2006), and reviewed by Catherine Ragasa and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants) and Maria Hartl (IFAD).

1. Agrobiodiversity comprises the variety and variability of animals, plants, and microorganisms that are used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture, including crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries. It comprises the diversity of genetic resources (varieties, breeds) and species used for food, fodder, fiber, fuel, and pharmaceuticals. It also includes the diversity of nonharvested species that support production (soil microorganisms, predators, pollinators) and those in the wider environment that support agroecosystems (agricultural, pastoral, forest, and aquatic) as well as the diversity of the agroecosystems.

Local knowledge and culture can therefore be considered as integral parts of agrobiodiversity, because it is the human activity of agriculture that shapes and conserves this biodiversity.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Marina Laudazi (FAO), based largely on project documents, and reviewed by Catherine Ragasa and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants) and Maria Hartl (IFAD).

REFERENCES Overview

Agarwal, Bina. 2003. “Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family, and Market.” Journal of Agrarian Change 3 (1/2): 184–224.

Alston, Margaret. 2006. “The Gendered Impact of Drought.”

In Rural Gender Relations, ed. B. Bock and S. Shortall, 165–80. London: CABI. Denton, Fatma. 2002. “Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation: Why Does Gender Matter?”

Gender and Development Journal 10 (2): 10–20.

Enarson, Elaine, and Lourdes Meyreles. 2004. “International Perspectives on Gender and Disaster: Differences and Possibilities.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 24 (10/11): 49–63.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2004. The State of Food and Agriculture 2003–2004. Rome: FAO. ———. 2005. Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO. ———. 2007a. “Environment and Agriculture.” Committee on Agriculture, 20th Session, Rome, April.

———. 2007b. “Gender-Sensitive Indicators.” Draft, FAO, Rome.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2007.

“Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” IPCC, Geneva.

Lambrou, Yianna, and Regina Laub. 2004. Gender Perspectives on the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Masika, Rachel. 2002. “Gender and Climate Change.” Gender and Development Journal 10 (2): 2–9.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). 2005. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press. Also available at www.millenniumassessment. org/en/index.aspx.

Prokopy, Linda Stalker. 2004. “Women’s Participation in Rural Water Supply Projects in India: Is It Moving beyond Tokenism and Does It Matter?” Water Policy 6: 103–16.

Rocheleau, Dianne. 1996. “Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology Perspective.” In Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences, ed.

Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari, 3–23. New York: Routledge.

Sachs, Carolyn. 2007. “Going Public: Networking Globally and Locally.” Rural Sociology 72 (1): 2–24.

Singh, Nandita. 2006. “Women’s Participation in Local Water Governance: Understanding Institutional Contradictions.” Gender Technology and Development 10 (1): 61–76.

Sultana, Farhana. 2006. “Gendered Waters, Poisoned Wells: Political Ecology of the Arsenic Crisis in Bangladesh.” In Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and Water, ed. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, 362–87. Kolkata: STREE.

UN-Energy. 2007. Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision-Makers. New York: United Nations.

World Bank. 2004. Monitoring and Evaluation: Some Tools, Methods, and Approaches. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2005. Agriculture Investment Sourcebook. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2007. World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Thematic Note 1

Armstrong, S. 1993. “The Last Taboo.” World AIDS 29: 2.

Bragdon, Susan, Cary Fowler, Zenete Franca, and Elizabeth Goldberg, eds. 2003. Law and Policy of Relevance to the Management of Plant Genetic Rresources. The Hague: International Service for National Agricultural Research.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1996. State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

Rome: FAO. ———. 2003. HIV/AIDS and Agriculture: Impacts and Responses. Case Studies from Namibia, Uganda and Zambia. Rome: FAO. ———. 2004. “What Is Local Knowledge.” Module 1, fact sheet in Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO. Also available at www.fao.org/ sd/links/documents_download/Manual.pdf.

———. 2005. Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO. ———. 2007a. “Environment and Agriculture.” Committee on Agriculture, 20th Session, FAO, Rome, April.

———. 2007b. “Gender-Sensitive Indicators.” Draft, FAO, Rome.

———. 2007c. “Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources” Draft, FAO, Rome.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). 1996. “Working Group Meeting,” International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome, October 1–4.

Howard, Patricia. 2003. Women and Plants, Gender Relations in Biodiversity Management and Conservation. London: ZED Books.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2004. “Enhancing the Role of Indigenous Women in Sustainable Development: IFAD Experience with Indigenous Women in Latin America and Asia.” Third Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, IFAD, Rome. Also available at www.ifad.org/english/indigenous/ pub/documents/indigenouswomenReport.pdf.

———. n.d. “Tree Domestic Programs in Africa Help Families Out of Poverty.” IFAD, Rome. Also available at www.ruralpovertyportal.org/.

MODULE 10: REFERENCES

469

Lambrou, Yianna, and Regina Laub. 2004. Gender Perspectives on the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. 2006. “Gender, Local Knowledge and Lessons Learnt in Documenting and Conserving Agrobiodiversity.” United Nations University (UNU) Research Paper No. 2006/69, UNU, Helsinki.

Lope Alzina, Diana Gabriela. 2007. “Gendered Production Spaces and Crop Varietal Selection: Case Study in Yucatan, Mexico.” Journal of Tropical Geogaphy 28 (1): 21–38.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). 2005. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press. Also available at www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index. aspx.

Momsen, Janet. 2007. “Gender and Biodiversity: A New Approach to Linking Environment and Development.”

Geography Compass 1 (2): 149–62.

Randriamaro, Zo. 2006. Gender and Trade. Brighton, U.K.: BRIDGE/Institute of Development Studies. Also available at www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/reports/CEP-Trade-OR.pdf.

Sahai, Suman. 2003. “India’s Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights Act.” Current Science 84 (3): 407–11.

Warburton, Hilary, and Adrienne Martin. 1999. “Local People’s Knowledge in Natural Resources Research.” In Socio-Economic Methodologies for Natural Resources Research. Chatham, U.K.: Natural Resources Institute.

Also available at www.nri.org/publications/bpg/bpg05. pdf.

White, Joanna, and Elizabeth Robinson. 2000. HIV/AIDS and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greenwich, England: Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich.

Wooten, Stephen. 2003. “Losing Ground: Gender Relations, Commercial Horticulture, and Threats to Local Plant Diversity in Rural Mali.” In Women and Plants, Gender Relations in Biodiversity Management and Conservation, ed. Patricia Howard, 229–42. London: ZED Books.

Thematic Note 2

Abramovitz, Janet. 2001. “Unnatural Disasters.” Worldwatch Papers 158, October, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC. Aguilar, Lorena. 2007. Gender Indicators. Geneva: World Conservation Union.

Alston, Margaret. 2006. “The Gendered Impact of Drought.”

In Rural Gender Relations, eds. Bettina Bock and Sally Shortall, 165–80. London: CABI. Boyd, Emily. 2002. “The Noel Kempff Project in Bolivia: Gender, Power and Decision-Making in Climate Mitigation.” Gender and Development 10 (2): 70–77.

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Denton, Fatma. 2002. “Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation: Why Does Gender Matter?”

Gender and Development 10 (2): 10–20.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO. ———. 2007. Adaptation to Climate Change in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Perspectives, Framework and Priorities. Rome: FAO. Harvey, Fiona. 2007. “UN Climate Panel Detailed Potential for Global Conflict.” Financial Times, October 13.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2001.

Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II of the IPCC to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva: IPCC. Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep, and Shane Rosenthal. 2003. “Climate Change and Agriculture: A Review of Impacts and Adaptations.” Climate Change Series 91, Agriculture and Rural Development Department and Environment Department, World Bank, Washington, DC. Lambrou, Yianna, and Grazia Piana. 2006a. Energy and Gender Issues in Rural Sustainable Development. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. 2006b. Gender: The Missing Component of the Response to Climate Change. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Martens, P. 1998. Health and Climate Change: Modeling the Impacts of Global Warming and Ozone Depletion. London: Earthscan.

Masika, Rachel. 2002. “Gender and Climate Change.” Gender and Development 10 (2): 2–9.

Soussain, J., Ian Burton, and Anne Hammil. 2003. “Livelihoods and Climate Change: Combining Disaster Risk Reduction, Natural Resource Management and Climate Change Adaptation in a New Approach to the Reduction of Vulnerability and Poverty.” Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Wamukonya, Njeri, and Margaret Skutsch. 2001. “Is There a Gender Angle to the Climate Change Negotiations?” Paper prepared for ENERGIA for the Commission on Sustainable Development, Session 9, New York, April 16–27.

Thematic Note 3

Fargione, Joseph, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, and Peter Hawthorn. 2008. “Land Clearing and

Biofuel Carbon.” Science Express Paper, 319 (5867) February 7: 1235–38.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)/International Land Coalition. 2003. “Rural Women’s Access to Land and Property in Selected Countries.” FAO Report, FAO, Rome. Also available at www.fao.org/sd/2003/ PE07033_en.htm.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “Bioenergy— Committee on Agriculture,” 19th Session, Rome, April.

———. 2006. Introducing the International Bioenergy Platform. Rome: FAO. ———. 2007. Adaptation to Climate Change in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Perspectives, Framework and Priorities. Rome: FAO. Lambrou, Yianna, and Grazia Piana. 2006. Energy and Gender Issues in Rural Sustainable Development. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Mearns, Robin. 1995. Institutions and Natural Resource Management: Access to and Control over Woodfuel in East Africa, in People and Environment in Africa, ed. T. Binns.

New York: John Wiley.

Rajagopal, Deepak. 2007. Rethinking Current Strategies for Biofuel Production in India. Paper presented at the International Conference “Linkages between Energy and Water Management for Agriculture in Developing Countries,” Hyderabad, India, January 29–30.

Rossi, Andrea, and Yianna Lambrou. 2008. Gender and Equity Issues in Liquid Biofuels Production: Minimizing the Risks to Maximize the Opportunities. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sagar, Ambuj, and Sivan Kartha. 2007. “Bioenergy and Sustainable Development?” Annual Review of Environmental Resources 32: 131–67.

Salazar, R. H. 1999. “Mujer, medio ambiente: acuerdos internacionales.” In Género, sustentabilidad y cambio social en el México rural. Verónica Vázquez, ed. Mexico: Colegio de Posgraduados.

Schirnding, Yasmin von, Nigel Bruce, Kirk Smith, Grant Ballard-Tremeer, and Majid Ezzati. 2000. “Addressing the Impact of Household Energy and Indoor Air Pollution on the Health of the Poor: Implications for Policy Action and Intervention Measures.” Meeting Report, World Health Organization, Geneva.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). 2007. “Small-Scale Production and Use of Liquid Biofuels in Sub-Saharan Africa: Perspectives for Sustainable Development.” Prepared by Energy and Transport Branch Division for Sustainable Development, UN DESA. Commission on Sustainable Development, Fifteenth Session, Background Paper Number 2, April

30–May 11, New York. Available at http://www.un.org/ esa/sustdev/csd/csd15/documents/csd15_bp2.pdf.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2004.

Gender and Energy for Sustainable Development: A Toolkit and Resource Guide. New York: UN. ———. 2007. Gender Mainstreaming a Key Driver of Development in Environment and Energy. New York: United Nations.

UN-Energy. 2007. Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision-Makers. New York: United Nations.

World Health Organization (WHO). 2006. Fuel for Life: Household Energy and Health. Geneva: WHO. Thematic Note 4

Abramovitz, Janet. 2001. “Unnatural Disasters.” Worldwatch Papers 158, October, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC. Aguilar, Lorena. 2008. “Acknowledging the Linkages: Gender and Climate Change.” Paper presented at Social Dimensions of Climate Change Conference, World Bank, Washington, DC, March 5.

Alston, Margaret. 2006. “The Gendered Impact of Drought.”

In Rural Gender Relations, ed. Bettina Bock and Sally Shortall, 165–80. London: CABI. Bari, Farzana. 1998. “ Gender, Disaster and Empowerment: A Case Study from Pakistan.” In The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes, ed. Elaine Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow, 125–32. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Branco, Adelia de Melo. 1995. “Organizadas para Sobrevivir: El Caso de un Grupo de Mujeres del Sertao de Araripe.”

In Sociedad y Disastres, vol. 5. Lima: LARED. Brown, Oli, and Alec Crawford. 2006. “Addressing Land Ownership after Natural Disasters: An Agency Survey.”

International Institute for Sustainable Development, Winnipeg, Canada.

Cannon, T. 2002. “Gender and Climate Hazards in Bangladesh.” Gender and Development 10 (2): 45–50.

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). 2002. “Women’s Commission Adopts Agreed Conclusions on Poverty and Natural Disasters.” Press release, United Nations,www.un. org/News/Press/docs/2002/ WOM1333.doc.htm.

Dufka, Corrine. 1988. “The Mexico City Earthquake Disaster, Social Casework.” Journal of Contemporary Social Work 69: 162–70.

Enarson, Elaine, and Lourdes Meyreles. 2004. “International Perspectives on Gender and Disaster: Differences and Possibilities.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 24 (10/11): 49–63.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Food Programme (WFP). 2005. SEAGA for Emergency and Rehabilitation Programmes. Rome: FAO.

MODULE 10: REFERENCES

471

Fothergill, Alice. 1998. “The Neglect of Gender in Disaster Work: An Overview of the Literature.” In The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes, ed. Elaine Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow, 11–25. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Graham, Angus. 2001. “Gender Mainstreaming Guidelines for Disasters Management Programmes—Principled SEAGA Approach.” Document EGM/NATDIS/2001/ EP.1, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, UN, New York.

Harvey, Fiona. 2007. “UN Climate Panel Detailed Potential for Global Conflict.” Financial Times, October 13.

Ikeda, Keiko. 1995. “Gender Differences in Human Loss and Vulnerability in Natural Disasters: A Case Study from Bangladesh.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 2 (2): 171–93.

King, Angela. 2002. Introductory Statement. Commission on the Status of Women.46th Session, UN, New York.

Kumar-Range, S. 2001. “Environmental Management and Disaster Risk Reduction: A Gender Perspective.” Document EGM/NATDIS/2001/BP.1, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, UN, New York.

Lambrou, Yianna, and Grazia Piana. 2006. Gender: The Missing Component of the Response to Climate Change.

Rome: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization).

Lambrou, Yianna, and Regina Laub. 2004. Gender Perspectives on the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Masika, Rachel. 2002. “Gender and Climate Change.” Gender and Development 10 (2): 2–9.

McNeely, Jeffrey. 2000. “Biodiversity, War, and Tropical Forests.” Paper presented to Conference on War and Tropical Forests: New Perspectives on Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT, March 30–April 3.

Nelson, Valerie, Kate Meadows, Terry Cannon, John Morton, and Adrienne Martin. 2002. “Uncertain Predictions, Invisible Impacts, and the Need to Mainstream Gender in Climate Change Adaptations.” Gender and Development 10 (2): 51–59.

Sachs, Carolyn. 2007. “Going Public: Networking Globally and Locally.” Rural Sociology 72 (1): 2–24.

Tickell, Crispin. 2001. “Risks of Conflict: Resource and Population Pressures.” In Environmental Change and Security Project Report, Issue No. 7, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Princeton, NJ. Toscani, Letizia. 1998. “Women’s Roles in Natural Disaster Preparation and Aid: A Central American View.” In The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes, ed.

Elaine Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow, 207–12. Westport, CT: Praeger.

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United Nations (UN). 2001. “Environmental Management and the Mitigation of Natural Disasters: A Gender Perspective.” Document UN/ISDR, EGM/NATDIS/2001/ Rep.1, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, UN, New York.

———. 2002. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

Report of the 46th Session. E/2002/27, Economic and Social Council, UN, New York.

———. 2004. Making Risky Environments Safer: Women Building Sustainable and Disaster-Resilient Communities.

New York: UN. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2004.

Reducing Disaster Risk. A Challenge for Development.

New York: Swift.

———. 2007. “Natural Disaster Preparedness and Opportunities.” Paper prepared for Joint Meeting of the Executive Boards of UNDP/UNFPA, UNICEF, and WFP, January 19 and 22, New York: United Nations.

Vaughan, Megan. 1987. The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth Century Malawi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thematic Note 5

Aswani, Shankar, and Pamela Weiant. 2004. “Scientific Evaluation in Women’s Participatory Management.” Human Organization 63 (3): 301–19.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 2007. “What is Dry and Sub-humid Lands Biodiversity?” Available at http://www.cbd.int/drylands/what.shtml.

Crow, Ben, and Farhana Sultana. 2002. “Gender, Class, and Access to Water: Three Cases in a Poor and Crowded Delta.” Society and Natural Resources 15 (8): 709–24.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2002. Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA). Rome: FAO. ———. 2003. Gender and Sustainable Development in Drylands: An Analysis of Field Experiences. Rome: FAO. ———. 2007a. “Gender Mainstreaming in Water Management—A Pocket Guide.” Draft, FAO, Rome.

———. 2007b. “Gender-Sensitive Indicators.” Draft, FAO, Rome.

Gender and Water Alliance. 2003. The Gender and Water Development Report: Gender Perspectives on Policies in the Water Ssector. The Netherlands: Gender and Water Alliance Secretariat.

Global Environment Facility (GEF). 2003. Operational Programme on Sustainable Land Management. Washington, DC: GEF. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2006. Gender and Desertification—Expanding Roles for Women to Restore Drylands. Rome: IFAD.

Izumi, Kaori. 2007. “Gender-Based Violence and Property Grabbing in Africa: A Denial of Women’s Liberty and Security.” Gender and Development 15 (1): 11–23.

Lambrou, Yianna, and Regina Laub. 2004. Gender Perspectives on the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Nyssen, Jan, Jean Poesen, Jan Moeyersons, Jozef Deckers, Mitiku Haile, and Andreas Lang. 2004. “Human Impact on the Environment in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Highlands: A State of the Art.” Earth Science Reviews 64 (3–4): 273–320.

Ray, Isla. 2007. “Women, Water, and Development.” Annual Review of Environmental Resources 32: 421–49.

Singh, Nandita. 2006. “Women’s Participation in Local Water Governance: Understanding Institutional Contradictions.” Gender, Technology and Development 10 (1): 61–76.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 2005. Promotions of Traditional Knowledge. A Compilation of UNCCD Documents and Reports from 1997–2003. Bonn: UNCCD. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2005.

“Water Governance—The Gender Dimension.” Fact sheet, UNDP, New York.

———. 2007a. Sustainable Land Management: The Why and How of Mainstreaming Gender in Sustainable Land Management. New York: UNDP/GEF. ———. 2007b. Women and Sustainable Land Management.

Gender Mainstreaming Guidance Series. New York: United Nations.

White, Joanna, and Elizabeth Robinson. 2000. HIV/AIDS and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greenwich, England: Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO. Rocheleau, Dianne. 1996. “Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology Perspective.” In Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences, ed.

Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas Slayter, and Esther Wangari, 3–23. New York: Routledge.

Shiva, Vandana. 1996. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

FURTHER READING Overview

Alix, Jennifer, Alain De Janvry, and Elisabeth Sadoulet.

2003. “Partial Cooperation Political Economy and Common Property Resource Management: The Case of Deforestation in Mexico.” University of California, Berkeley.

Convention on Biological Diversity: www.cbd.int.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: www.un.org.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2001. SocioEconomic and Gender Analysis Programme (SEAGA).

Rome: FAO. Also available at www.fao.org.

Landell-Mills, N., and I. Porras. 2002. “Silver Bullet or Fools’ Gold? A Global Review of Markets for Forest Environmental Services and Their Impact on the Poor.”

International Institute for Environment and Development, London.

Pagiola, Stefano, Agustin Arcenas, and Gunars Platais. 2005.

“Can Payments for Environmental Services Help Reduce Poverty? An Exploration of the Issues and the Evidence to Date from Latin America.” World Development 33 (2): 237–53.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: www.unccd.int.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: www.unfccc.int.

Thematic Note 1

Berg, Trygve, Ruth Haug, and Kjersti Larsen. 2000.

“Research Guidelines: Gender Local Knowledge and Plant Genetic Resource Management.” Oslo: Agricultural University of Norway. Available at www.fao.org/sd/LINKS/ resources/resources.html.

Garí, Josep. 2003. “Local Agricultural Knowledge Key to Fighting HIV-AIDS and Food Security.” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs– Integrated Regional Information Networks, PlusNews, September.

International Development Research Centre (IDRC). 1998.

Gender and Biodiversity: Research Guidelines. Ottawa: IDRC. International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR).

1996. Recording and Using Indigenous Knowledge: A Manual. Silang, Philippines: IIRR. Sachs, C., K. Gajurel, and M. Bianco. 1996. “Gender, Seeds, and Biodiversity.” In Women Working in the Environment, ed. C. Sachs, 177–92. Washington, DC: Taylor and Francis.

MODULE 10: FURTHER READING

473

Thematic Note 3

Lambrou, Yianna, and Grazia Piana. 2006. Gender: The Missing Component of the Response to Climate Change.

Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Swedish International Development Cooperation Authority (SIDA). 2003. “Energy Policy and Equality between Women and Men.” Equality Prompt No. 9, SIDA, Stockholm.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2007.

Sustainable Land Management: The Why and How of Mainstreaming Gender in Sustainable Land Management.

New York: UN. UN-Energy. 2005. The Energy Challenge for Achieving the MDGs. New York: UN. Thematic Note 4

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge. Rome: FAO.

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Kumar, Shubh K., and David Hotchkiss. 1998. “Consequences of Deforestation for Women’s Time Allocation, Agricultural Production and Nutrition in Hill Areas of Nepal.” Research Report 69, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

Lambrou, Yianna, and Regina Laub. 2006. “Gender, Local Knowledge and Lessons Learnt in Documenting and Conserving Agrobiodiversity.” Research Paper No. 2006/69, Helsinki: United Nations University–World Institute for Development Economics Research.

LinKS training manual: www.fao.org/sd/LINKS/resources/ resources.html.

LinKS Web site: www.fao.org/sd/links/gebio.htm.

MODULE 11

Gender and Crises: Implications for Agriculture Overview

his Module examines the nexus between agriculture and crisis brought on by conflicts and natural disasters from a gender perspective. The focus here is on the exceptional circumstances, needs, and opportunities that arise for women and men in the aftermath of crises.

Although in many instances the impacts of conflicts and natural disasters are similar, the underlying conditions and environment that humanitarian and development actors encounter can be profoundly different as a result of political and security conditions. In situations involving armed conflict, the politically charged atmosphere affects every aspect of the economy, including agricultural production. By contrast, where natural disasters occur, conditions are not necessarily further exacerbated by military actions or political impasse. These differences can have significant effects on the agricultural sector, but the primary goal in all instances is to ensure basic food security and the protection or recovery of livelihood strategies.

Natural disasters and violent conflict can have severe effects on every aspect of agricultural production. When conflicts break out, the destruction of fields, roads, and markets through the placing of landmines or use of other weapons; the looting of food stores and plantations; and the displacement of local populations are often strategies used by warring parties. In this context women and men are also targeted deliberately and affected differently. Men are at higher risk of being killed or imprisoned and either flee to generate income elsewhere or are forced to fight. Women are

T

at high risk of sexual violence and displacement and of shouldering the full burden of productive work. The net impact on agriculture is significant. Studies from the 1990s indicate that for every year of conflict, agricultural production can drop by 12.3 percent; in the case of Angola, between 1975 and 1993 there was a 44.5 percent reduction (Zaur 2006). Natural disasters also have a heavy toll. In Asia alone, the 2004 tsunami and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan caused an estimated $1.81 billion in damage to the agricultural sector, including livestock, crops, fisheries, and related infrastructure (Kryspin-Watson, Arkedis, and Zakout 2006).

The gender dimensions were most starkly evident in the disproportionate number of deaths of women as a result of the tsunami in many places.

AGRICULTURE AND CRISES

Agriculture and related environmental resources can also be the source, cause, catalyst, or fuel of crises. The issues are often interrelated, but three dimensions must be considered: â–

Scarcity of resources: Scarcity is caused by population growth such that resources have to be divided between more people, or it is caused by increased per capita activity, resulting in increased demand. The combination can cause significant degradation of the needed resources. In Africa scarcity of land and continued environmental degradation are the main ecological dimensions associated with

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several conflicts. In Rwanda land scarcity was politicized and helped fuel the ethnic tensions that resulted in the 1994 genocide. In Somalia much of the fighting has concentrated in the agriculturally rich Jubaland region, where factions are vying for control.1 The 2007 “Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment” by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) points to severe environmental degradation and its effects on agriculture as causes of the conflict (box 11.1).

Abundance of resources: If scarcity catalyzes conflict, then the abundance of resources (agricultural, mineral, or otherwise) can fuel and sustain conflict. The poppy fields of Afghanistan and coca plantations of Colombia are key sources of income, fueling the drug trade and guerrilla warfare that plague each country. In Colombia the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) formed in the 1960s as a Marxist movement fighting against unequal distribution of wealth, land, and power. FARC turned to drug trafficking as its main source of income in the 1990s. With other armed groups (right-wing paramilitary units) and drug traffickers, FARC has militarized the countryside, caused mass displacement of rural populations, and disrupted agriculture and livelihoods, particularly among indigenous communities and jungle-based tribes.

An estimated 1.85 million people have been displaced. The U.S. government estimates that FARC supplies 50 percent of the world’s cocaine.2 Meeting demand, ensuring supply: The April 2008 food riots in Egypt, Haiti, and other parts of Africa rang alarm bells globally. Price hikes in agriculture are not uncommon.

But, as the UN Task Force on the “Global Food Security Crisis” states, “the world food situation is rapidly being redefined. . . . The recent trend of unprecedented increases in the price of food and overall import bills for the poorest countries, coupled with diminishing food stocks and difficulties accessing food by some communities, has created a host of humanitarian, socio-economic, developmental, political and security-related challenges.” The main driver of price hikes is the increase in demand, notably from China and India, but many other factors have contributed to create the “perfect storm.” The United Nations points to short-term causes, such as 30-year-low levels of wheat stock, combined with medium-term causes, including climate change and harvest failure due to extreme weather conditions. These factors are exacerbated by long-term resource scarcity, including water shortage, diminishing land for agriculture, and limited sources of energy and oil, which affect food supplies and prices.

Speculative financial activities on the part of hedge funds, including investments in commodity futures, national tax and tariff policies, and lack of investment in agriculture development and research are also contributing to the crisis. The poorest people in the poorest of nations are at the frontlines of this crisis. From an international standpoint, this is perhaps the first time in modern history that food insecurity and hunger are igniting violent protests simultaneously in many parts of the world. As the Task Force states, “This risk is particularly high in countries emerging from violent conflict, where fragile security, political and economic progress is easily derailed.”3

Box 11.1 Sudan: Environmental Degradation Causes Conflict

The UNEP study “Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment” notes that deserts have spread southward by an estimated 50 to 200 kilometers since the 1930s.

This land degradation is a result of different developments relating in part to Darfur’s increased population, which has grown sixfold over the last four decades to about 6.5 million. In turn there has been an explosion of livestock (from 27 million animals to around 135 million), which has caused overgrazing of the fragile soils. In addition, a “deforestation crisis” has led to a loss of almost 12 percent of Sudan’s forest cover in just 15 years, and some areas may lose their remaining

forest cover within the next decade. At the same time, average annual rainfall in El Fasher in northern Darfur has dropped nearly by half since data were first gathered in 1917. Increasing scarcity has also led to rising tribal antagonism over the last 20 years. These issues, together with increased banditry and political and economic neglect, catalyzed rebellion in February 2003 and have fanned ethnic conflict. Internally displaced persons and refugees are exacerbating the underlying conditions by cutting down trees, which depletes underground water supplies and thus adversely affects local populations.

Source: UNEP 2007.

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Structural conditions: The unequal distribution of resources is often rooted in colonial legacies, political struggles, and cultural practices. Tremendous gender inequity may also be embedded in the structural issues.

For example, in many instances colonial rulers ignored matrilineal land inheritance practices and excluded women from control over property. In modern times women face legal, political, and cultural barriers to the ownership and control of resources. Structural conditions result in the concentration of resources in the hands of a few, while a vast population is subject to shortages and scarcity, which can trigger and fuel conflict over time. In Burundi, for example, 80 percent of the country’s foreign exchange comes from coffee production. Government control over the sector helped finance the conflict against rebels in the 1990s. A government monopoly over exports at one end of the commodity chain was matched with fixing lower prices for producers at the other end. This inequity of resource distribution contributed to the mounting tensions.4 In Palestine (box 11.2), inequitable access to water has been a contributor to conflict (Homer-Dixon and Kelly 1995).

After a war or conflict has ended, the return of refugees and internally displaced persons and their claims to land can be a source of increased tension. In Burundi, which covers just 27,830 square kilometers, an estimated 115,000 internally displaced persons and 17,000 refugees were waiting to resettle in 2007. In Afghanistan refugees are returning to reclaim

land after two decades, often confronting their own relatives in their effort to get it back.

An increase in the value of resources, particularly shared land, can also trigger conflict. Where markets develop and farmers intensify production or population pressures increase, the value of resources goes up and competition may heighten. In some instances existing customary practices and informal processes of adjudication may quell tensions but can also fuel them if the access and rights to property rights of all stakeholders are not secure. This is pertinent in the aftermath of conflicts or natural disasters in which traditional practices and leadership structures may no longer exist.

Increased demand and production are also leading to the depletion of resources and destruction of ecological systems that have helped prevent or mitigate the impact of natural disasters. Most notably, clear-cut logging and road building result in a reduction of natural protection against landslides and soil erosion. Similarly, the destruction of coastal wetlands not only affects fisheries but also increases the risk of flooding. The negative impact can be seen in many ways.

MULTIDIMENSIONAL ISSUES OF AGRICULTURE IN TIMES OF CRISIS

To address basic survival, food security, and longer-term livelihood issues, early recovery strategies must fully integrate agricultural sector issues. The approaches needed vary considerably, however, depending on the conditions in each

Box 11.2 Gaza: Structural Inequity and Access to Water

In Gaza, following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord in 1993, a study revealed the inequitable access to water among Palestinians, Jewish settlers, and the Israeli population. Beginning in 1967, strict quotas were placed on the Arabs’ rights to pump water. Over the years, quota levels were maintained by banning the drilling of new wells or the rehabilitation of old wells, blocking springs, or uprooting citrus trees. In contrast, Israelis had no limits placed on them, which resulted in waste and overuse. Pricing structures were also disadvantageous to the Palestinians. Settlers received significant subsidies, paying $0.10 per cubic meter for

water that costs $0.34 per cubic meter; Palestinians, who received no subsidies, could pay up to $1.20 per cubic meter for water from local Arab authorities. Relative to per capita income, Palestinians were thus paying as much as 20 times the amount Israeli settlers paid for water. Water scarcity also led to increased salinity and thus a decline in crop yields for Gaza-based farmers.

Without extensive support to the agricultural sector and increased access to water, Palestinian agriculture went into decline. The consumption restrictions and water gap contributed to the friction between the populations.

Source: Homer-Dixon and Kelly 1995.

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case. Although there are common features to take into account, significant differences also exist:

These phases should also be considered.

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In any given country, an emergency or conflict can be unfolding in one area, while elsewhere in the same country the impact may not be as significant. For example, the effect of an earthquake decreases farther from the epicenter, and the conflict in northern Uganda is less visible in effect in other parts of the country.

An overlapping of events may occur (for example, Aceh and Sri Lanka were already struggling with the effects of conflict when the tsunami hit). This has implications for the type of actions possible (or constraints relating to security issues) and opportunities for addressing the agricultural sector.

Conflict situations increase the flow of arms and weaponry, thus creating greater insecurity for local populations and international actors.

In many postconflict states, opportunities present themselves for redressing structural and legal inequalities that have affected portions of the population. For example, land reform may be on the agenda. Legislation to end discrimination based on identity may be addressed.

These are key moments for tackling issues of gender discrimination as well. In the aftermath of disasters, such opportunities can also exist, and interventions designed with prevention in mind can tackle root causes.

Natural disasters can have either quick or slow onsets (such as earthquakes versus droughts), so the opportunities vary to prepare for, mitigate, or prevent the onset of a crisis. The type of identified hazard determines the necessary nature and type of intervention. For example, droughts can be predicted in advance and the effects mitigated to some degree at a lesser cost, whereas protection from earthquakes and mudslides is structural and costly, and these events can be less predictable. Nonetheless, emergency and early warning systems can be established for sudden-onset events.

Human-caused and natural emergencies can have both short and protracted effects in terms of displacement, as well as access to and usability of resources.

Response strategies can be significantly affected if conflict and political tensions are at play (for example, humanitarian relief in Tamil-controlled areas in Sri Lanka was more challenging than in other areas of the country after the tsunami).

In situations in which humanitarian emergencies are largely the result of conflict or political struggles, the options for effective response can be severely constrained and curtailed by political and military leaders.

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Precrisis: As a drought sets in or conflict escalates, the potential impact on agriculture can be determined.

Strategies to prevent and mitigate crises have been developed. Good early warning systems together with effective preparedness and emergency measures can considerably lessen the impact of a natural hazard. Often, however, where natural disasters hit randomly, no effective warning is given, as in the Asian tsunami of 2004 and the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran. Similarly, although conflict early warning systems exist, the information may not be conveyed effectively to those involved in the agricultural sector, and thus the opportunity for preventive measures or preparedness is limited. Effective communication and emergency preparedness planning to at-risk populations are central to the prevention and mitigation of crises.

During the crisis: Responding during the unfolding of a crisis is also challenging. Typically, natural disasters have a shorter time span than conflicts. Where conflict is the cause of a crisis, the international community may have less access to the affected areas. A danger also exists that external assistance and provisions are at risk of being exploited by partisans in the conflict and thus inadvertently fueling the violence. Moreover, it may not be economically viable to provide agricultural or related infrastructural support if it is at risk of being targeted during the conflict.

Immediately postcrisis/transition period: International assistance and presence increase dramatically in the immediate aftermath of conflict or natural disaster. The transition period is an important time for identifying and addressing root causes of crises and developing alternative preventive strategies for agricultural development.

These phases are not necessarily chronological or consecutive. In other words, even in the midst of a crisis or conflict it is necessary to consider means of mitigating and preventing further damage. This can help limit the negative impact of crisis on a given population. Where protective measures can be put in place, local resilience increases, and recovery processes will also be quicker. In 1999 in Sri Lanka, for example, the International Development Association (IDA) developed a community-based program to rebuild the irrigation systems that had been damaged by the ongoing conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam in the agriculture-rich North East Province. The IDA project focused on rebuilding roads and irrigation systems. Despite the ongoing conflict, the project ensured food security for 33,250

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people and enabled the cultivation of 212,944 hectares of prewar farmland (World Bank 2007; see also Innovative Activity Profile 1).

Although the postconflict or emergency period is rife with difficulties, it is also a time of great opportunity. In Rwanda, for example, after the genocide the national Rwandan Demobilization and Reintegration Commission offered a choice of livelihoods to former fighters. Some returned to agriculture, and others were given skills training to enter other sectors (UN 2005).

Particularly in postconflict settings, long-standing structural issues can be addressed. Land tenure, inheritance, and property ownership issues that create significant inequities and result in long-term food insecurity and livelihood challenges can be redressed. Opportunities also are present for promoting economic (including agricultural) diversification to decrease livelihood dependency on land or cash crops.

There is also a clear need and opportunity to reach out and draw on the resources and expertise of both the public and private sectors. Community-based resources must also be harnessed. The extent of damage requires a full division of labor, and the different skills and capacities of women and men must be included.

The arrival and presence of external actors, in particular those providing food aid, can have a tremendous impact on local producers, men, and increasingly women. Situation analyses and consultative processes are important not only for minimizing damage but also for understanding how local capacities can be strengthened.

Recovery and reconstruction programs, therefore, should be seen not only simply for replacing losses but also for redressing conditions that in the past heightened vulnerability. These programs provide a chance to make improvements and, in particular, to address the needs of underprivileged groups and inequalities, including on the basis of gender, that profoundly impact women’s and men’s access to food security and livelihoods.

GENDER DIMENSIONS OF AGRICULTURE DURING CRISES

Women, men, boys, and girls can have profoundly different experiences and face different risks in conflict situations and natural disasters. These experiences are shaped by and have a direct effect on their capacity to sustain livelihoods, ensure food security, and engage in the agricultural sector. In designing interventions, organizations must understand the social capital (gained and lost) as a result of a crisis and must recognize the gender differences in skills, knowledge, access,

and participation in agricultural activities. It is important to acknowledge that conflict and crisis tend to push women into the productive sphere (as men migrate or are embroiled in conflict). This shift can mean prompt empowerment, but it can also result in women becoming overburdened. External interventions can be helpful and harmful. The challenge is to understand the context and realities of people’s lives so that the assistance provided is beneficial to men and women.

Different physical risks and vulnerabilities faced by women and men

Natural disasters can be disproportionately deadly for women.

In the Kobe earthquake of 1995, 1.5 times more women died than men, and in the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami, death rates for women across the region averaged three to four times that of men.5 By contrast, conflicts are more deadly for men. In Iraq 90 percent of the dead are reportedly men.

Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 70 percent of the surviving population was women. Men, particularly younger men, are also more vulnerable to military recruitment and arrest than women in conflict-affected situations. Women (and their dependents) are at greater risk of forced displacement and exposure to insecurity in public spaces and camps for internally displaced persons and refugees.

Women’s exposure to sexual violence escalates during times of crisis. In conflict situations, rape is increasingly used as a weapon of war and ethnic cleansing. In the aftermath of natural disasters such as the tsunami, the breakdown of security and social structures fuels the incidence of rape. Within 10 days of the tsunami, the United Nations was receiving reports of sexual exploitation and rape of women, including as payment for being pulled out of the ocean (Lalasz 2005).

Although physiology accounts for some of the differences in mortality rates between women and men, other sociocultural norms also come into play. A 2005 Oxfam report notes that, on average, women and girls did not know how to swim or climb trees as well as their men counterparts; they were not taught these skills and thus were unable to rescue themselves.6 Women’s dress codes can restrict their mobility. Cultural norms that prevent women from leaving their homes unaccompanied (such as in Afghanistan and rural Bangladesh) increase the risks they face. In many earthquakeprone areas, women working in poorly constructed homes are at greater risk than men, who may be working outside in fields or in well-built public buildings. In India men survived an earthquake by virtue of sleeping on rooftops on warm nights. Local culture there forbids such behavior among women.

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Barriers to immediate relief

Women’s and girls’ access to relief can be inadvertently obstructed. In many societies women have subordinate public positions but still control resources and have power through informal networks and social ties. During crises and relief efforts, during which the process is heavily dominated by men, women are often systematically excluded.

Women’s marginalization can be compounded by a lack of physical security, increases in their domestic duties that prevent their participation in public efforts, and actions by external actors who may unwittingly empower self-designated men “leaders” to distribute relief.

There are also gender dimensions to food security and nutrition during crises. In many instances in which a food crisis takes place, women and girls reduce their intake in favor of other household members, particularly men and boys. This increases incidence of malnutrition among women. However, men are at greater risk during famines because they have a higher nutritional requirement. As a result, in many recorded famines mortality rates are higher among men than women.

Dangerous security conditions can limit women’s mobility and access to humanitarian aid or markets. Pregnant and lactating women in particular are at greater risk of malnutrition as a result of their physiological condition and limited mobility. Households led by men can also be at risk. Often men do not know how to cook or care for younger children, thereby exposing them to increased malnutrition. Similarly, single men and boys separated from their families are vulnerable to malnutrition. In camps in southern Kenya, for example, it was noted that the young men received food rations but did not know how to cook (UN IASC 2006).

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Different structural barriers

In addition to physical and psychological vulnerability, women and men can experience different structural barriers that affect their access to and control of assets. This includes the strength or weakness of institutions (formal and informal) and policies to address food security and agricultural needs and recognize the differential needs and changed circumstances of women and men. For example, land and property ownership and inheritance laws that are gender discriminatory pose significant risks to women’s livelihoods. This is partly compounded by higher illiteracy rates among women in many poor countries. Other barriers include the following: ■

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Access to assets: Cultural and legal barriers to accessing credit and physical infrastructure (such as transportation) needed for agricultural production can affect

women more than men. Women tend to work more out of the home and in the informal sector. The destruction wrought by natural disasters can trigger “decapitalization” and a reduction in women’s share of productive activities, formal or informal. They sustain direct losses (homes and production) and indirect losses as their share of unpaid emergency domestic tasks rises (for example, care for children who cannot attend school, the elderly, and the injured).

Access to markets: In crises, women’s small-scale trading networks can also be damaged, thus reducing a key source of income. Conflict situations, however, can limit men’s and open women’s access to markets. Men may flee, join armed groups, face imprisonment, or be killed during conflicts, which puts women under greater pressure.

Women take on responsibilities in public spaces, including in markets, and formal and informal employment.7 But they are at greater risk than men from physical infrastructure or external conditions (such as state of housing or public safety) and from sociocultural conditions, such as the acceptance of women’s entry in public forums and labor markets, sectors traditionally occupied by men.

Many women are forced out of these social spaces when conditions ”normalize.”

Information flows to and about women and men: Women and men access different sources of information. Women’s vulnerability is exacerbated by their subordinate position in traditional patriarchal societies and often lack access to information that men may have. In Peru fishermen were warned about El Niño and its negative impact on fishing. Women did not receive this information and thus had no chance to plan household budgets or save funds to withstand the crisis. In South Africa women farmers wanted seasonal climate forecasts to be available through community-based channels such as schools and not just over the radio. In attempting to balance their domestic, child care, and farming duties, they had no time to listen to the radio. Data and information (including sex-disaggregated data) are critical for ensuring accurate assessment. Where formal assessments cannot be undertaken, informal consultations are still valuable.

Opportunity in crisis: women’s empowerment and confidence building

For men, protracted crises, displacement, loss of income, and the associated sense of lost status and inability to protect their families can be profoundly disempowering.

Women are often forced into the public sphere. Although

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the burdens of care and responsibility mount, they also gain experiences, exposure, and confidence. Where there is protracted conflict and women are either in communities or in refugee camps, they often develop new skills to sustain livelihoods. By contrast, returning fighters (men or women) may have little or no skills relating to agriculture or production.

In situations in which natural disasters have destroyed their livelihood, men tend to migrate more quickly than women in search of employment and resources. They are less physically vulnerable and less culturally burdened with child care and other daily domestic responsibilities. Women are thus left to carry the family burden alone. Their limited and localized coping strategies can be critical for their own and their family’s survival. They also tend to work more communally. Ignorance of gender issues can also exacerbate women’s situation. Gains they may have made as a result of their activities and mobilization during the crisis are often lost because of external interventions. At a minimum, external actions must not harm local populations. To ensure this and sustain positive impacts, therefore, the gender dimensions of poverty and insecurity must be understood and addressed (box 11.3).

Although common patterns exist, no one-size-fits-all approach can be seized upon. The context is a key determinant of the risks and opportunities facing people in crisisaffected areas, a point made clear in the following quotation from an International Labour Organization document (Enarson 2000: vii): While tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and floods may occur with regularity, their social, political, and economic effects are neither inevitable nor “natural.” People’s relative risk of harm is a function of their exposure to hazards (e.g., residing in a seismic zone), their capacity to mitigate the effects of these disasters (e.g., seismic-zone construction standards, earthquake preparedness), and their social vulnerability (e.g., lack of income to retrofit housing, restricted social/physical mobility). Vulnerability, in turn, has physical and social dimensions, but is . . . a function of relative access to, and control over, key survival and recovery resources. Risk is differentially distributed between and within societies. The root causes [of] social vulnerability are deeply embedded, reflecting political choices made in the course of human settlement and political-economic and social development. . . . [D]isaster vulnerability is not synonymous with poverty or social class. Within societies, people’s relative ability to access or control key resources is shaped . . . by age . . . physical ability, citizenship status, racial/ethnic . . . cultural group, and gender.

Box 11.3 Key Principles for Effective Intervention ■

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Interventions should “do no harm” and should not perpetuate existing harm. Gender analysis helps to understand the different obstacles that potential beneficiaries face, their varying capacities to mobilize resources, and their different social and economic responsibilities and skills.

Without this basic understanding, we risk ignoring some sectors of the population, which may do damage and fuel the root causes of a crisis.

Identifying baseline conditions enables the provision of targeted and more effective programming to improve livelihoods over the long term. Without gender perspectives, existing local capacities can be squandered.

Ending gender-based poverty and food insecurity contributes to future, long-term prevention and survival strategies. Integrating gender perspectives is one means of reducing people’s vulnerabilities and building on their strengths and social capital. It can help identify tactics and strategies to increase their ability to prevent and withstand the effects of crises.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR GENDERSENSITIVE AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMMING IN CRISES

Addressing food security, livelihood, and agricultural developments in crises requires preparation and programming in phases: precrisis, during the crisis, early recovery, and postcrisis/recovery. The early recovery phase overlaps the duringthe-crisis and postcrisis/recovery phases (see fig. 11.1).

At each phase the full spectrum of the population and their differing needs, situations, and conditions should be considered. This includes the following groups: ■

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Sources: Anderson 1999; Naraghi-Anderlini 2007.

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Traditional rural communities directly affected by the crisis Rural communities indirectly affected Temporary displaced populations in rural areas Displaced populations in urban areas Urban populations and the related markets.

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Figure 11.1 Gendered Impacts of External Factors Status of assets and physical institutions and policies/ legislation

Precrisis populations involved in agricultural sectors • Rural populations (women, men, boys, girls) • Urban populations (w, m, b, g)

Financial, technical, political resources available (new/old)

Early recovery

During conflict/crisis

• Rural populations (men, women, boys, girls) • Urban population/displaced migrants (m, w, b, g) • Refugees/IDPs in camp settings (m, w, b, g) • Local communities adjacent to camps (m, w, b, g) • Refugees/IDPs resettled in new communities (m, w, b, g)

Access to information

Infrastructure (related to access to markets)

Access to markets

Postconflict from emergency transition period/early recovery to long-term development • • • •

Returning IDPs/refugees Receiving communities Returning ex-fighters and members New rural settlements

• Urban communities/permanent settlement of migrants • Resettlement of migrants to alternative rural communities (not their own)

Risks and vulnerabilities (new and old)

Source: Author.

These populations are not static. Over time, as the crisis continues or subsides, the makeup of the population also changes. For example, in the aftermath of crises the following are often found: ■

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Returning internally displaced persons and refugees into rural and urban settings Returning former fighters (opposition or state actors) New long-term settlements in rural areas Long-term settlers in urban areas.

External factors ranging from access to assets and markets to institutional conditions and policies can help or hinder people at each stage. Typically, a gender dimension contributes to the impact of such factors, with women facing greater barriers than men.

because single men may not have needed care-giving skills (such as cooking).

The World Bank, like many organizations, has institutional policies and commitments to ending discrimination against women, including the realization of the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of promoting gender equality. These policies could and should be used tactically at the country level to prompt dialogue and ensure the equal and equitable treatment of and attention to women alongside men. Three approaches to gender mainstreaming can be undertaken to ensure effective outreach and benefit to women and men (Greenberg and Zuckerman 2004). These strategies can be undertaken simultaneously, as part of a menu of options, or consecutively in a program: ■

INTEGRATING GENDER PERSPECTIVES

Gender differences exist within each subgroup. Widows, single mothers, and women-headed households typically face greater hardships than married women. Dependents (children or the elderly) in men only–headed households also may be more vulnerable than other household members,

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Targeted projects: Agricultural initiatives can be specifically targeted at either women only or men only to redress inequalities, lack of access or skills, and other issues. Even in broader programs women-only or menonly groups are important in order to gather information, build confidence, and address gender-specific needs before working with mixed groups.

Mainstreaming of gender perspectives: In designing interventions, planners will find it essential to identify

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and address factors that could obstruct women’s and men’s equal access and benefit. This process ensures the inclusion of women and men as equal beneficiaries so that discrimination is not perpetuated and programming is targeted correctly. Mainstreaming includes recognition of the different roles and contributions that women and men can make in communities and agricultural work. Mainstreaming also relates to external actors. For example, the presence of women staff increases access to women in traditional societies and allows for better understanding of their needs, capacities, and solutions.

Transformative programs: These programs are designed to transform or recalibrate gender relations by tackling the underlying structural causes and effects of inequality and food insecurity. For example, initiatives to change inheritance laws and practices (at the community level) can significantly alter the status and access of women to assets, particularly land.

disempowerment and profound socioeconomic change as they struggle to rebuild their lives and provide for their families. It is also a time when they garner new respect for women. Interventions must seek to reach all those affected and address their needs and sustain and strengthen their newfound capacities.

The Thematic Notes that follow explore the practical implications of gender perspectives in precrisis, midcrisis, and postcrisis settings: ■

The challenges for agricultural interventions in crisis situations include the following: ■ ■

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Reducing the vulnerabilities and risks to livelihood faced by women and men Strengthening existing capacities and social capital (and ensuring that interventions do not squander or crush these resources) Ensuring sustainable, long-term, equal access to opportunities, including to assets and resources and to information and markets Helping redress structural factors to reduce vulnerability in the future.

Crises and conflicts not only affect women and men differently but also have a profound impact on gender roles and relations. For women, the heightened physical vulnerability comes with exposure to public space and use of their survival strategies. They are often exposed to new skills and, although overly burdened with the trauma of displacement, also gain new confidence in their own abilities to cope and care for their dependents. For men, it can be a period of

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Thematic Note 1 highlights the nexus between agricultural practices and the relevance of gender to preventive action and disaster risk reduction. It frames the discussion around the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), specifically the demand for increasing women’s participation in conflict prevention, and the Hyogo Framework’s five priorities regarding risk reduction, notably, (1) governance, organizational, legal, and policy frameworks; (2) risk identification, assessment, monitoring, and early warning; (3) knowledge management and education; (4) the reduction of underlying risk factors; and (5) preparedness for effective response and recovery.

Thematic Note 2 examines the links between food, agricultural aid, and development during crises. It identifies the gender dimensions and highlights effective means of balancing this aid so that the specific needs of women and men in local communities are addressed and they benefit equitably.

Thematic Note 3 focuses on critical land issues, including tenure and inheritance rights, education, information, and outreach issues in the postcrisis setting from a gendered perspective. It highlights critical issues and lessons drawn from current and past crises.

Table 11.1 provides ideas for the monitoring of gender issues in crisis situations (although obviously the nature of the crisis may require very environment-specific monitoring).

Depending on the country or region, considering ethnicity and caste alongside gender (both as comparative indicators and when collecting data) may also be relevant, because women of lower castes or ethnic minorities are usually in the most disadvantaged situation.

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Table 11.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Crisis and Agriculture Indicator Number of deaths, disaggregated by gender, age, location

• Government records

Percentage of women and men receiving weather information— regular bulletins or extreme weather warnings—in accordance with their area of work or location

• • • • •

Percentage of women and men members of community-based disaster preparedness committees

• Community meeting minutes • Women’s community-based groups and NGOs

Balanced level of participation of women and men in decision making (at the local and national levels)

• Community meeting minutes

Number of men, women, and ethnic minorities who receive extension advice per month

• Agricultural extension records • Training records

Percentage of women and men actively participating as members of postdisaster reconstruction committees

• Committee meeting minutes • Interviews with stakeholders

Number and percentage of women and men receiving genderspecific disaster training

• Training records

Sex-disaggregated assessment of impact of disasters on men and women, girls and boys

• Project monitoring • Refugee camp management records

Percentage of women and men receiving land, emergency rations, replacement stock, seed, or loans

• Agricultural extension records • Refugee camp management records • Regional land department records

Satisfaction levels of women and men with postemergency management and reconstruction

• Focus groups • Interviews with stakeholders

Number and percentage of women reporting violence per month (such as threats, beatings, and rape)

• • • •

Percentage of women and men with access to insurance packages

• Household surveys

Changes at start and end of emergency support in household nutrition, health, education, vulnerability to violence, and happiness, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys, before and after • Project management information system • School records

Source: Authors, with input from Pamela White, Module 16 author.

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Sources of verification and tools

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Focus groups Household surveys Media National-level NGOs, particularly women’s groups Networks of health workers, community organizers, and human rights defenders

Interviews with community leadership Interviews with stakeholders Police records Refugee camp management records

T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Risk Management and Preventive Action

n agriculture, as in other sectors, preventing natural disasters and conflict-induced crises is better than needing to cure them. This principle is easily grasped, but the practice has been harder to undertake because there is still a tendency to address crises through an after-the-fact humanitarian response. Prevention and risk-management strategies are still evolving. The challenge to development actors, including those working in agriculture, is to implement programs that not only provide the stated benefits of improving livelihood and food security but also can help prevent or mitigate the effects of crises in the lives of women and men.

This entails recognizing the following points:

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Development can exacerbate conflicts and natural disasters. Therefore, existing practices must be reassessed to ensure that they do not inadvertently expose people to greater risk, diminish their coping capacities, or exacerbate the impact of natural disasters and conflict.

Disasters can be highly detrimental to developmental gains, and the impact of disasters can vary significantly between women and men.

A shift toward a culture of prevention and crisis-sensitive development programming may and often does require a change in the way work is done, a deep understanding of local culture and practices, and the inclusion of all sectors of society. Women and men have different capacities and strengths that should be drawn upon in making the shift toward prevention.

PROACTIVE PREVENTION

In 2005 governments participating in the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Hyogo, Japan, recognized the “importance of disaster risk reduction being underpinned by a more pro-active approach to informing, motivating and involving people in all aspects of disaster risk reduction

in their own local communities” (www.unisdr.org). The resulting 2005–15 Hyogo Framework for Action identifies five key areas requiring attention to prompt the shift toward proactive preventive actions: ■ ■

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Governance: organizational, legal, and policy frameworks Risk identification, assessment, monitoring, and early warning Knowledge management and education Reducing underlying risk factors Preparedness for effective response and recovery.

These issues are also related to the climate change debate.

Many now contend that global warming cannot be prevented in the short term, and so responses to the effects of climate change (including increased risks of natural disasters, such as flooding and drought) must be integrated into risk reduction and coping strategies.

Similar issues have been identified in the field of conflict prevention. Conflict early warning and response systems have evolved over the last 15 years, with an emerging discourse on gendered indicators and differential information that women and men may possess. Frameworks for conflictsensitive analysis and programming exist. Preliminary steps toward proactive prevention have been initiated by the UN system in West Africa and Central America, where they have worked with women’s groups. Because conflict is political, however, questions of state sovereignty continue to hamper external interventions aimed at conflict prevention and transformation. In the 1990s the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle emerged out of the discourse on addressing the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Part of the approach was to point out that states not only have rights but also have a responsibility to provide protection and security for their citizens. When such responsibility is abrogated, according to the R2P advocates, the international

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community has a right to intervene to minimize the loss of life and insecurity.

Despite the conceptual advances, the practice of conflict prevention is still limited, especially in states in which violence is impending. It has gained credence in postconflict situations in which the risk of resurgence (and the memory of violence) exists, and thus the desire for and commitment to preventive initiatives and peace building are stronger. In 2000 the UN Security Council passed resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security, a key development in the realm of conflict prevention and peace building. It was the first major international legislative document calling on states, multilateral organizations, and nonstate actors to ensure the participation and contributions of women in conflict prevention and to address women’s protection needs during conflict and in the recovery processes.

This Thematic Note highlights the nexus between agricultural practices and the relevance of gender to preventive action and disaster risk reduction. It frames the discussion around the provisions of resolution 1325, specifically the demand for increasing women’s participation in conflict prevention, and the Hyogo Framework’s five priorities regarding risk reduction.

PRIORITY 1. GOVERNANCE: ORGANIZATIONAL, LEGAL, AND POLICY FRAMEWORKS

Generating a culture of prevention is perhaps the most important and challenging issue. This involves raising awareness, building political will, and leadership. It further requires effective legislation, the establishment of an overarching national framework, and effective multilateral approaches, including mechanisms that do the following: ■ ■

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Link national to local actors.

Ensure inclusion of the different needs and capacities of different stakeholders in overall assessments and analytical frameworks.

Enable coordination between sectors.

Integrate risk reduction and conflict sensitivity into ongoing development policies and programs.

Prompt the development and implementation of strict compliance and regulation standards for infrastructural work.

Conflict and natural disasters affect societies in different ways. Typically, those who are most vulnerable under “normal” conditions are most affected when a crisis hits. Given that women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor and their unequal social status in most societies, they are often at

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greater risk than men. However, women are not passive actors. They are often proactive in their efforts to minimize risks and adapt to evolving conditions.

To be effective, state or multilateral initiatives must acknowledge and draw upon this duality of experience— vulnerability and ability to adapt—to guide and develop the policy frameworks and macrolevel initiatives that they establish. Drawing on research conducted among village women in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, a 2007 ActionAid report offers a set of policy recommendations with a view to mitigating the risks faced by communities, as well as means of assisting communities in adapting to the heightened risk and prevalence of natural disasters arising from climate change (Mitchell, Tanner, and Lussier 2007). They include the following: 1. At the bilateral or multilateral level, ensuring that adaptation funds under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have clear guidance and targeted measures for the inclusion of women in adaptation assistance projects and as beneficiaries. For mechanisms that are not directly operational, gender and poverty must be included as central guidance measures for negotiators. Recipient countries must have gendersensitive approaches in place and measurable outcomes specifically regarding the impact and inclusion of women as beneficiaries.

2. At the state level, policies and mechanisms relating to adaptation must ensure the following: ■ Women’s full participation in adaptation financing discussions and decisions ■ That women’s needs are considered and addressed in livelihood adaptation programming ■ That regressive sociocultural practices do not hinder women’s capacity to adapt ■ That the most vulnerable sectors are provided with insurance packages to prevent complete devastation.

The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India has initiated such a program (box 11.4).

3. Legislative guarantees are needed that promote and protect women’s equal rights to the following: ■ Relevant knowledge and information ■ Land and property ownership: laws that mandate joint titling of land and property can help reduce women’s vulnerability and risk of losing property or being evicted in the aftermath of disaster or conflict ■ Equal participation in decision making (at the local and national levels) ■ Access services such as agricultural extension and veterinarians.

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Box 11.4 India: Insurance for Low-Income Workers

Box 11.5 India: Including Grassroots Women in Disaster Recovery

SEWA represents low-income women workers in India’s vast informal sector. Under a basic program that asks for a fixed deposit of $22 and an annual premium of $1.85, its members can secure insurance against hospitalization (up to $43), house and asset insurance (up to $110), and insurance against accidental death ($870). Higher-priced schemes providing more protection also are available. Over a 10-year period, 2,000 women received benefits amounting to $327,400.

Following the 2004 tsunami, Caritas India’s Relief and Reconstruction Programme aimed at assisting the marginalized communities and vulnerable sectors of the population. The program shifted priorities following the intervention and inclusion of grassroots women in the decision making. The women prioritized the reconstruction of shelter and housing and the establishment of a communitybased disaster preparedness (CBDP) initiative with some capacity building. Women’s committees were formed to monitor the CBPD and shelter program.

The CBPD enhanced the knowledge of local actors—women, men, and children—in responding to crises. Each community devised and implemented its own local solutions to crises. These solutions include organizing a village emergency fund (composed of handfuls of rice and kitchen utensils) for flood-affected families, forming selfhelp groups and community task forces trained in firefighting, converting and controlling waste to rid villages of disease-carrying mosquitoes, and providing housing to widows and orphans and other vulnerable community members.

Source: UN ISDR, review of the relevance of eight MDGs to disaster risk reduction and vice versa, quoting SEWA, Jivika: Livelihood Security Project for Earthquake Affected Rural Households in Gujarat, www.sewa.org and www.sewainsurance.org.

4. Coordination mechanisms are needed to link national and local actors and empower grassroots communities in disaster mitigation. Experiences from Latin America and Asia illustrate the positive impact of women’s participation on the community’s well-being. The initiatives (box 11.5) have reduced communities’ dependence on external interventions while strengthening rapport and ties and transforming attitudes toward women and other marginalized groups.

PRIORITY 2. RISK IDENTIFICATION, ASSESSMENT MONITORING, AND EARLY WARNING

Risk identification, monitoring, assessments, and early warning systems are among the range of tools being developed and used to inform policies and programs focusing on risk reduction. Numerous obstacles remain to be overcome, however, including the need to shift institutional practices and business-as-usual approaches in development practice. Assessments and analytical frameworks often highlight gaps in existing practice and require significant changes in the formulation of projects and programs. But bureaucratic inertia and lack of familiarity with new initiatives can hinder the full integration of risk reduction and conflict sensitivity into program planning.

Consequently, one-time projects are often initiated alongside existing programs, but this can result in no significant change in practice. In other words, conflict and risk

Source: UN ISDR 2007.

reduction is not yet being effectively mainstreamed into development initiatives.

The issues are further complicated by the range and variability of risks that need to be considered. In Afghanistan, for instance, schools and clinics were built with light, flexible roofing to meet seismic standards as part of a $73 million program, but the roofs could not withstand the heavy snowfalls that are common in the region. In the winter many children were left without a school (Kryspin-Watson, Arkedis, and Zakout 2006).

In principle, gender perspectives should already be fully integrated into development planning. In reality, confusion and lack of understanding and awareness of gender differences have meant that gender perspectives remain marginal.

Often practitioners are unaware of the value that gender perspectives can bring to their work and how it can enhance the impact of their initiatives. If baseline assessments overlook the different needs and contributions of women and men, programs can be poorly targeted. Existing social capital can be overlooked, and negative consequences may be present.

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For example, with regard to early warning about environmental change in Peru, women in fishing communities complained that state officials informed the men of an impending El Niño (and its negative effect on fish stock), but women, who were responsible for household resources, were not informed. Similarly, in 1991 in Bangladesh, warnings about an impending cyclone were posted in public places. But because women were more restricted than men in their movements, many were not aware of the risks. This contributed to the disproportionate rate of death among women versus men (71 per 1,000 versus 15 per 1,000) (Seager and Hartmann 2005).

Various frameworks and initiatives do exist. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme provides extensive resources illustrating the relevance and means of integrating gender analysis to macro-, meso-, and microlevel agricultural programs. The World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme have taken preliminary steps toward integrating gender perspectives and indicators into their conflict and development analysis frameworks. Oxfam and other international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have developed tools and guidelines. In Nepal the NGO Center for Population and Development Action provided basic training in gender and social inclusion to government ministries as part of the peace-building process as a means of building state capacities to assess and integrate the differential needs of women and men in all sectors, notably agriculture, where women represent the majority of workers.1 Still, much of the existing information is not entering mainstream frameworks. This is reflected in a 2005 UNEP Division for Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA) report “Mainstreaming Gender in Environmental Assessment and Early Warning” (Seager and Hartmann 2005). The authors conclude that “neither DEWA nor UNEP has been proactive in bringing gender analysis to its work”. In highlighting the challenges, they also point to the following: ■

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A lack of research directed at the early warning, environment, and gender nexus The importance but lack of sex-disaggregated data relevant to early warning climate assessment The inherent problem of using an aggregated “household unit” as the level of analysis, which obscures the gender differences (sometimes profound) that exist within households The fact that “the field of disaster management is highly [men dominated] which typically results in the actions and knowledge of women being marginalized, unrecognized

and undervalued. Women are still poorly represented in planning and decision-making processes in disaster mitigation and protection planning” (Seager and Hartmann 2005: 30).

A shift in practice requires a preliminary attitudinal shift among analysts and practitioners. As long as gender analysis is perceived as a burden and a nonessential issue, it will not be fully integrated into assessments or early warning systems. Yet, given the differential roles, experience, knowledge, commitment, and capacities of women and men, it is clearly a fundamental aspect of risk reduction.

PRIORITY 3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND EDUCATION

The Hyogo Framework also calls on states to “ensure equal access to appropriate training and educational opportunities for women and vulnerable constituencies; promote gender and cultural sensitivity training as integral components of education and training for disaster risk reduction” (www.unisdr.org).

Knowledge management, like early warning, must be a two-way system. On the one hand, national or international policies, practices, and strategies must be made available to local communities so that they benefit from the progress being made, lessons being learned, and information being acquired.

On the other hand, at the local level, people (women, men, boys, and girls) have access to information and knowledge that are often needed to develop national responses and preventive strategies. Depending on their function in the household or community and their familiarity with their local environment, they may be the first to notice changes that are indicative of a larger phenomenon. They may also be the first responders to famine or other crises.

In rural Ethiopia, for example, FAO documents the use of wild-food and famine-food plants that are typically collected by children and women. When food shortages arise, “able-bodied men migrate to find work. . . . Women and children are left behind to manage as best they can” (FAO 2005: 1). Often women have better knowledge of local wild fruits and plants, their nutritional and curative values, and means of improving them. National strategies must incorporate methods of accessing specialized knowledge in a timely manner and ensuring that the stakeholders, particularly women, are included in the development of all aspects of risk-reduction strategies.

In many societies women and men access information through different channels. In rural communities women

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and men often work in separate spaces and sectors; thus, in the event of a natural disaster, it is essential that they are equally informed about risk-reduction strategies and that the information given to them is tailored to their environment. For example, if men engage in fishing and water-related activities, they need to know how best to survive potential earthquakes and tidal waves. For women, on the other hand, if they tend to work inside homes or in fields, the risks they face (such as a roof collapsing) and related survival strategies may be different.

They also need to be educated regarding the preparation of emergency kits or materials to take with them in the event of a natural disaster or conflict.2 Information and education regarding the maintenance of livestock and produce are another gender issue. In Nepal women expressed interest in the importance of skills training and exposure visits that could help them diversify their income-generation pool. Where monsoon crops are at risk of flooding, for example, they mentioned goat and poultry rearing as alternative activities (Mitchell, Tanner, and Lussier 2007).

In some instances, culture and traditional practices can appear to be obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and can contribute to the subservience of women. However, cultural practices are not static, and sensitive interventions can yield results. A 2004 study in India revealed that women performed 50 to 90 percent of all day-to-day care and management activities of domestic livestock and poultry (Ramdas and others 2004). Yet women were denied access to specialized knowledge relating to the healing of animals because for generations this knowledge was transferred from father to son. However, when traditional healers were told of the roles and responsibilities of women, they took a pragmatic approach, agreeing that it was important to share the information with women as well.

Another critical aspect of knowledge and information sharing is the integration of resource management into education curricula. Gender issues and the particular roles of women and men in communities can be a tremendous asset.

This was exemplified in northeastern Brazil as part of a groundwater management project in 2003. The project’s goal was to empower women, men, and children in sustainable and collective management of scarce water resources, as a means of reducing drought risk. The program integrated gender perspectives by acknowledging the different and important roles of women and men in water use and management. For example, it brought farmers (mainly men) together with teachers and health workers (mainly women) for capacity-building workshops, training and information exchange, and the collective development of educational

material. It also targeted younger community members, the future guardians of the land and environment, in an effort to educate them about resources and engage them in material development.

The social roles and responsibilities ascribed to men and women in each cultural context can and often do determine the education they have, the information they can access, and the limits they face in sharing their knowledge. Yet, as indicated above, ensuring the full inclusion of women and men in risk-reduction strategies is integral to the success of such efforts. Women need to be included because they have different information and skill sets that can help reduce vulnerability. They need to be included because crises often force them to cope with the consequences alone. They need to know because they, more than any external entity, are committed to ensuring food security and sustainable livelihoods for their families and dependents in the long run.

PRIORITY 4. REDUCING UNDERLYING RISK FACTORS

Reducing the underlying risk factors as much as possible is fundamental to prevention. In conflict prevention new initiatives that integrate peace building into development programming are emerging. This includes training community members in conflict resolution and mediation skills to enable more effective negotiations when tensions arise. In Cambodia, for example, village women are known as the “backbone of the forestry network” and are a strong presence in the environmental movement. In 2002 they led demonstrations against major logging interests and the abuse of people’s land rights. Trained in nonviolent action and mediation skills, they often intervene within and on behalf of communities to dispel tensions (McGrew, Frieson, and Chan 2004).

The international debate over natural disasters and climate change has evolved in recent years, with many experts asserting that efforts to curb global warming or reduce greenhouse emissions are not enough to protect the most vulnerable populations in the near term. Measures to adapt to climate change and reduce the risks of crises must be put in place.

Typically such efforts are highly localized, and to be effective they must be tailored not only to the local environment but also to the sociocultural context. Once again, gender comes into play, as women and men use and manage different resources and have differing roles depending on the context and immense potential for contributing to risk reduction.

In Bangladesh, for example, women use a variety of strategies to withstand the impact of flooding. They take

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livestock to higher ground, store seeds in higher places, seek refuge with relatives, or raise the levels of their homes using a plinth. To reduce losses from rotting crops, some have changed to crops that can be harvested before the flood season. Evidence of diversification is also seen. Recognizing the effect of the floods, women have switched to running fisheries alongside their vegetable farms. The women are frequently alone, because their husbands migrate to find work, and so they need (and many are demanding) skills training to enable a scaling up of their ventures and more effective access to markets (Mitchell, Tanner, and Lussier 2007).

In Nepal women are also developing asset-sharing strategies, including group saving programs and self-help groups to avoid private lenders and high interest rates. Many have also expressed interest in adopting labor-reducing technologies, multicropping strategies, and adopting moremarketable, drought-resistant crops, but typically women lack access to the necessary financial and technical resources (Mitchell, Tanner, and Lussier 2007).

In El Salvador, as well, there are community-based initiatives. During the rainy season, landslides are a regular occurrence, creating environmental hazards for the communities of Lake Coatepeque. Throughout a series of community meetings conducted in 2007, community members identified measures to prepare for natural disasters, including planting fruit trees and shrubs that require little water but can mitigate the effects of landslides, developing emergency evacuation plans and training women (who are more likely to be at home) to prepare basic necessities, making retention walls using chicken wire, and engaging church and community leaders to encourage people’s participation in disaster preparedness and planning (Morehead 2007).

Men and women living with the threat of crisis are committed to reducing risks wherever possible. They devise their own strategies but can benefit significantly from external guidance and support. Because of women’s traditional absence from public spaces, and particularly from decision making, women’s initiatives are often less formal and less visible but are essential and effective nonetheless. Acknowledging women’s roles and engaging with them is an essential aspect of any external intervention. No risk-reduction initiative can afford to overlook the capacity and needs of 50 percent of the population.

PRIORITY 5. PREPARING FOR EFFECTIVE RESPONSE AND RECOVERY

The steps noted in the preceding sections contribute immensely toward effective response and early recovery, as

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they help to limit the damage done. Nonetheless, the loss of life and destruction of property and livelihoods can be devastating with long-term effects. Gender issues are again central to recovery strategies as women’s and men’s survival strategies and needs often vary. The UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) produced a gender handbook for humanitarian action (2006) that provides a comprehensive and practical approach to the integration of gender perspectives in all emergency response processes. The handbook notes the following three basic steps: ■ ■

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Ask the difference between women’s and men’s experiences.

Undertake participatory assessments including women, men, boys, and girls together and separately.

Use the information to guide programming.

A critical first step toward effective response is knowing the demographics and profile of the target population and determining its specific needs and capacities. The collection of sex-disaggregated data is essential, as is analysis of the data to understand the implications. Where this is not done, the potential exists for compounding the existing vulnerability of sectors of the population, particularly women.

Understanding the division of labor and coping strategies of women and men is also important to effective recovery. In Sierra Leone, for example, a World Bank study noted that agricultural rehabilitation was hindered by the fact that seeds were distributed to households, and the household heads, who were typically men, were the source of information on what resources were needed. Yet women and men in Sierra Leone farm different crops and thus require different sets of tools and seeds (UN IASC 2006). Care International adopted an alternative approach of distributing seeds to all adults. In this way women obtained groundnut seeds (a crop typically planted by women), and this contributed to their income generation and empowerment alongside men.

Care’s approach was effectively gender mainstreaming with the benefit of empowering women as part of the process.

The IASC handbook provides a series of checklists and guidelines for a full range of issues (registration, shelter, provision of food and nonfood items, support to livelihoods, and health care). Its key message is that interventions should identify beneficiaries, work with them collaboratively, and adapt programming as needed. The framework for gender-sensitive emergency response and early recovery programming is summed up by the acronyms ADAPT and ACT collectively (box 11.6).

Over the last decade, reams of documents, policies, resolutions, and reports have been produced by states, multilateral

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Box 11.6 IASC Framework for Emergency Response ADAPT and ACT collectively: Analyze gender differences Design services to meet needs of all Access women, men, boys, and girls Participate equally Train women and men equally and Address gender-based violence in sectoral programs Collect, analyze, and report sex- and agedisaggregated data Target actions based on analysis Coordinate actions with all partners Source: UN IASC 2006.

organizations, and NGOs addressing the relevance of gender perspective to development, agriculture, conflict prevention, and disaster mitigation. Nonetheless, gender analysis is still an add-on or afterthought in the daily business of risk identification, assessments, warnings, and program implementation.

Misconceptions about gender issues and confusion among agency personnel (across many entities on the international and national levels) are compounded by limited data and analysis. Despite the evidence of their effectiveness, genderequitable approaches are not being embraced and implemented often enough. As a result, the practices are ad hoc, documentation is weak, and people remain vulnerable and excluded. Risk reduction and conflict sensitivity are increasingly being recognized as necessary ingredients for sustainable development. If gender sensitivity is not acknowledged and prioritized in the same way and across the five priority areas of the Hyogo Framework, the chances of effective action are diminished.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

From Relief to Recovery and Self-Reliance: The Relationship between Food Aid and Agriculture in Complex Emergencies

hen disaster strikes or conflict erupts, emergency food aid becomes a critical component of international aid. It saves lives and is generally recognized as being effective in containing the extent of suffering and damage caused by crises, but it is not a neutral entity. Conventional wisdom suggests that food aid is detrimental to agricultural development and creates a culture of dependency and even exacerbates conflict. Yet when crises disrupt agricultural production and distribution, displace populations, and render land unusable, food aid is of critical importance in the short term. The question, however, is when and how agricultural assistance should be provided.

How can it be provided given physical insecurity and potential for violence in many of the places where humanitarian emergencies persist?

This Thematic Note examines the links between food, agricultural aid, and development during crises. It highlights effective means of balancing this aid so that local communities benefit most. It also identifies the gender dimensions of this work. The Note draws on key findings emerging from recent studies undertaken by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Kingdom’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Oxfam, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and others.

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government, or from government to NGOs—is generally monetized to provide resources for development activities.

The monetization process—timing and choice of market— can have negative impacts on local markets. Food aid delivered to multilateral agencies such as the WFP is generally not monetized and is used in targeted project interventions resulting in a far lower likelihood of negative impacts.

In some instances, particularly where the food aid is significant, the positive economic impact can include indirect effects of growth in consumer demand for food and local products. Although studies on the long-term impact of food aid are relatively new, the OECD quotes a 2004 report on sub-Saharan Africa that concludes “large-scale food aid operations to meet short-term deficits in drought affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1980s and early 1990s were important in preventing destabilizing effects of covariant shocks on largely agricultural economies” (OECD 2006: 31). These positive effects are nonetheless contrasted against negative consequences, including the following: ■

EMERGENCY FOOD AID, SHOCKS AND CRISES

Although it is commonly believed that local agriculture is damaged by the arrival of food aid and relief, according to the OECD, in natural disaster situations, the impact on agricultural development—“either direct disincentive impacts on markets and production or indirect effects through policy”—varies (OECD 2006: 33). One factor that determines the likelihood of negative impacts is the type of food aid given. Bilateral food aid—from governments to

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The scramble to provide emergency relief often results in funds being diverted away from long-term projects designed to bolster self-reliance and recovery. According to Oxfam, for example, in May 2006, a month after its launch, the UN’s Consolidated Appeal for Somalia was just over one-quarter funded (27 percent). The majority was directed at immediate relief. In the same year, the appeal for Ethiopia had generated 78 percent of its funding requirement for food and 64 percent needed for water and sanitation, but projects aimed at longer-term solutions had received just 1 percent of the requested funds.1 Late-arriving, inflexible relief that does not allow a switch from imports to local purchases hampers the recovery of local economies affected by natural disaster.

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It can also contribute to changes in consumer preferences and increased demand for imported foods.

The restricted basket of commodities available as emergency aid creates difficulties in providing socially and nutritionally appropriate rations.

Preexisting development-oriented food aid programs can be helpful in times of crisis because the aid can be delivered more rapidly. The effect should not be overstated, however, because there can be significant targeting problems resulting from the inflexibility of geographical coverage and beneficiary selection at a household level. Typically the poorest and most vulnerable can be left out, particularly women and children. Some food aid implementers have explicit requirements, such as targeting women as recipients of food aid and seeking 50 percent representation of women in local food aid committees.

Political sensitivities can be exacerbated. For example, U.S.-sourced genetically modified maize in southern Africa in 2002 caused controversy and highlighted the political sensitivities in recipient countries—even in crisis—that can disrupt distribution plans and raise costs because of donor inflexibility on sourcing.

A culture of dependency can arise with no space or opportunity to nurture self-reliance.

Although “vulnerable” groups may be targeted as recipients, at times less attention and fewer resources are directed to addressing the causes of vulnerability or diversifying the agricultural sector or livelihoods to enable communities to withstand crises in the long term. The WFP and others do engage in a variety of development-oriented programs, including watershed management.

Governments that are reliant on revenue generated through bilateral food aid programming and sales may have no incentive to support long-term programs that bolster domestic food production.

Local procurement of food aid, as increasingly done by WFP, can foster market development. A risk of market collapse exists, however, if WFP no longer requires food after several years of procurement.

The potential negative effects of food aid are more notable in conflict-affected states. Government and opposition forces can exploit food aid provision for their own benefits and hold local populations hostage to their own demands. This violates the right to food as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, food and other forms of humanitarian aid have fueled conflict. The links between war, famine, and humanitarian aid became most evident in Ethiopia and Sudan during the 1980s and

conflicts that emerged in the 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, humanitarian agencies were able to expand relief operations into war zones and areas controlled by insurgents, but the assistance provided was exploited by warring factions. In some instances the food and clothes designed to reach the most vulnerable populations became a source of competition between factions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo following the Rwandan genocide, international aid literally fed the perpetrators and enabled them to continue the sporadic cross-border violence and fueled ongoing conflict in neighboring Burundi (Barber 1997). Conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone were among cases in which civilian populations were seen to be deliberately targeted as a means of creating displacement and ensuring an influx of international aid that was then used to fuel the violence.

Thus, on average, internationally procured food aid is seen as a second best option for responding to emergency situations. Where markets function and effective trade links exist, the OECD suggests that “financing of public imports through the commercial sector, and allowing the private sector to respond to rapidly changing market conditions” is more effective (OECD 2006: 32). The WFP procures its food aid locally where donor resources provide flexibility and local markets can support the demand without causing price rises, which would affect non-food-aid recipients. In some cases, for example, the WFP procures food and grains locally, even though some stocks have been imported commercially. The international response, says the OECD, “should be sensitive to the specifics of the options that are practically available, the social and economic environment and governance in the affected country. For example, in the 1991–93 drought crises in Southern Africa large-scale commercial imports were organized and arrived more quickly than food aid and so played the key role in averting a regional crisis. Allowing the private sector to respond to rapidly changing market conditions through commercial imports and stock adjustments, as in Bangladesh after the floods in 1998, limits the need for potentially destabilizing increases in public expenditure” (OECD 2006: 31).

Moving from food aid to agricultural assistance

The real challenge, however, is how and when to initiate assistance for local agricultural production. This is critical for food aid beneficiaries who may sacrifice food consumption in order to save food aid given as whole grain for planting. Recent years have seen a growing consensus on the need to shift toward early recovery and self-reliance as soon as

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possible. In part this is a means of mitigating the negative impact of food and humanitarian relief on conflict, but it is also recognition of the chronic and long-term nature of many of the crises that exist today. For example, the average length of displacement is now 17 years (taken globally among displaced populations; UNFPA 2007: 6). Affected populations cannot and should not be reliant on an ongoing cycle of short-term humanitarian relief. The situation is complex, however, as allowing displaced populations to settle can itself be a source of conflict with host communities and contribute to land and resource degradation. In addition, displacement can result in the loss of skills and knowledge in food production from one generation to the next, as household heads, typically women alone, have to develop alternative copying and livelihood strategies in the new environments in which they find themselves.

In 1997 the international humanitarian community produced the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response (Sphere Standards) as a means of setting a standard for the provision of aid to people affected by crisis and conflict. The guidelines touch on all aspects of humanitarian assistance, including the need to ensure food security and livelihoods. The standards address the full range of issues from conducting nutritional assessments to protecting production mechanisms, ensuring sustainable and diverse agricultural practice, and guaranteeing access to markets for producers and consumers in crisis situations.

Taking a step back and focusing on preventive measures, the World Bank report Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Projects (2006: 9) draws attention to the actors and stakeholders that need to be included. Consensus is emerging “on the best way to organize the components of national systems for hazard risk management has begun to converge around several key points.” First, the report notes that regardless of whether existing systems are centralized or decentralized, risk management involves multiple stakeholders, including representatives from a range of national-level institutions or sectors, including land-use planning, environment, infrastructure, communications, utilities, and health. Second, the report points to the importance of local level capacity and participation in comprehensive risk management. Reasons for this include the following: ■

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The effect of disaster is first felt by the community, and they are the first to respond.

Failure to understand the behavior and culture of the community can result in badly designed early warning systems.

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Involvement of local people builds self-reliance.

Reconstruction efforts are more effective if the community is actively involved and feels a sense of ownership.

Many communities are remote and rely on their own resources to cope with crises.

Preparation at the community level is a building block toward improving national capacities to respond and cope.

Increased community participation can lead to increased local pressure on governments to address disaster risk issues adequately.

Community-level focus allows for targeted identification of access, and engagement with a full cross-section of society, including the elderly, the disabled, the young, women, and minority groups who are often excluded (World Bank 2006).

Theory and realities on the ground, therefore, emphasize the need to shift from relief to interventions that aid early recovery and self-reliance. Yet international practice lags behind. A decade after Sphere, neither the standards set for protection of agricultural production nor those regarding access to markets are being fully met. Multiple challenges remain to be overcome: 1. The lack of security, particularly in conflict-affected areas, can be a major obstacle to the provision and implementation of agricultural programming. Access can be hazardous, land may be mined and unusable, and the presence of armed groups and the proliferation of weapons contribute to insecurity.

2. The lack of effective institutions and the collapse and loss in many cases of social capital are profound obstacles to any sustainable development effort.

3. Tensions exist between short-term relief efforts and longterm rehabilitation and development programming. In theory, early recovery and rehabilitation initiatives conducted during or after conflict or crises are meant to promote self-reliance and resilience and help transition societies from relief to development. In practice, however, the processes are at odds with one another. For example, relief efforts often operate on short-term (sometimes six months) budgeting cycles. Thus, the support provided is often piecemeal, as opposed to being comprehensive and infrastructural with longer-term durability.

4. Lack of coordination between donors contributes to the ad hoc and at times duplicative nature of the support provided.

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A 2007 ODI study (Longley and others 2007) offers further insight into the current gaps relating to agricultural programming in “fragile states”—those prone to, or affected by, conflict and those with limited ability to provide basic services (including guaranteeing food security) to their citizens. It critiques existing agricultural programming in such situations for being piecemeal and not tackling underlying structural and institutional issues that affect agriculture. It also notes that insufficient links still exist between agricultural programming and social protection. Reflecting on seed aid programs in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and southern Sudan, for example, the study highlights the following: ■

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In Afghanistan seed distribution was used to promote “new variants” to farmers without providing the requisite training to inform them about the seeds or activities such as trials and demonstrations to allow them to learn more. No systems are in place here for ensuring that aid agencies are accountable to their beneficiaries.

In Sierra Leone “lack of regulation in the procurement and distribution of seeds led to efforts to promote the local production of these inputs . . . involving community seed banks.” Yet observers noted few incidences of sustained and successful programs, “raising questions about the appropriateness” (Longley and others 2007: 2) of the initiatives.

In southern Sudan local seed production systems were formed in the 1990s. Yet they were overly reliant on NGOs, and when the NGOs were forced to pull out of the region, many farmers were unable to market their seeds. Concerns about dependency on NGOs and external actors remain.

The study calls for consideration of four overarching issues (Longley and others 2007): ■

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Addressing vulnerability and livelihood strategies: Agriculture may not be a source of livelihood for many of the poorest people, and it is necessary to assess and understand the structural causes of vulnerability, including sociocultural issues that affect equity and discrimination.

Coordinating a comprehensive approach: A more coordinated and comprehensive program of assistance to farmers is required that includes a diverse range of inputs and services.

Promoting markets: Private sector involvement is needed in the provision of agricultural services and inputs, and the strategy of stimulating demand through the provision of resources (cash or vouchers) to beneficiaries.

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Strengthening institutions: The paper advocates attention and enhancement of institutions as a means of supporting rural livelihoods and agriculture. In many instances significant reform of such institutions is needed to ensure that the root causes of conflict are addressed.

In addition, greater understanding of and respect for local coping mechanisms and traditional knowledge are needed, including understanding the gendered division of labor, so that interventions are appropriately targeted. An understanding of traditional knowledge and means of coping in crisis situations is also needed. Outsiders need to grasp the sociocultural context, while also drawing on their mandates to ensure that marginalized groups are not doubly victimized.

The link between agricultural assistance and institutional structures is of particular importance. For responders, however, a need exists to acknowledge the differential circumstances wrought by conflict and natural disasters. In conflict situations, relief aid is typically provided by external actors outside the confines of the state structures. Sometimes this is important because the state has no actual capacity to deliver the aid. At other times the key is to access communities directly without hindrance from the state. With the end of conflict, a noticeable shift occurs as rehabilitation and reconstruction aid is channeled to the state.

Transformative recovery

An overarching goal of international reconstruction efforts is to enhance state capacities to move reconstruction away from fragility toward sustainability. The dilemma, however, is that re-creating past status quos and systems can also mean re-creating the conditions that led to conflict in the first place. In other words, not only should outsiders avoid doing no harm with interventions, but they should also avoid perpetuating harm or discrimination that existed and contributed to the crisis. Thus, in postconflict situations the goal should not be simple recovery, but actual transformation and tackling of root causes to limit future vulnerability.

From the perspective of the agricultural sector, this touches on issues ranging from redressing land ownership and tenure, to rural governance structures, to policies relating to diversification of products and skills and market and infrastructure development.

In the case of natural disasters, however (where there is no violent conflict), the state and its armed forces are often the first responders. Donors and humanitarian agencies typically coordinate with the state to ensure the delivery

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of relief. In the aftermath, however, programming aimed at building up national capacities to manage and withstand crises is not focused on building state capacities per se.

Recognition and inclusion of the multiple stakeholders, at all levels, as the World Bank (2006) study says, are thus essential.

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KEY GENDER ISSUES

Men and women must be recognized among the “multiple stakeholders” noted by the 2006 Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Projects World Bank study. Interventions must build on the local knowledge and responsibilities of women and men in agricultural processes. For example, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, women play a central role in animal husbandry. In some areas in Pakistan they also manage the finances and resources. Practices vary across cultures. If interventions are planned based on assumptions or with disregard for the gendered dimensions of agricultural work, they can fail or do harm.

Emergencies and disasters affect people differently depending on their gender, stage of life, socioeconomic status, and cultural practices. Even within the same family or household unit, the impact and capacity to respond can vary. For example, in many instances women will eat less and share their portion with their boy children. Pregnant and lactating women can be at acute risk of malnutrition in crises. Similarly young men or men-only-headed families are also vulnerable because they often do not have the necessary cooking and food preparation skills. Recognition of these issues creates indicators of who the most vulnerable may be and can ensure more targeted, relevant, and early responses for those groups.

Crises: challenges and opportunities for redressing gender inequality

Crises—conflict or natural disaster, short or long term— can affect the composition of households with extended family members, widows, unmarried women, and others joining together. Often men are absent (because of death or migration), leaving women with multiple burdens in the public and private spheres. Changes in these situations are related to and affected by sociocultural norms, which in turn should inform relief and recovery programming. For example, even in a traditionally men-dominated society such as that of Nepal, it cannot be assumed that, in times of crisis, households are led by men and relief can be distributed through them. Elsewhere, past practices that favored the distribution of food and relief to men proved to be not

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Sale of relief aid in exchange for alcohol or other substances Sale or exchange of relief aid for weapons Common practices of polygamy so that distribution of family rations to one man results in lack of rations for other wives and children Malnutrition among young men in a displaced camp due to lack of cooking skills (and inability to use the rations provided).

The changes, while difficult, also create opportunities for addressing longstanding discrimination against women. For example, the WFP has initiated procedures to distribute relief primarily through and to women. This can benefit them in the short term and prompt greater empowerment over the longer term. Similarly, targeted efforts to allocate land and assistance to women in postconflict and crisis situations can be initiated. In postwar Cambodia and El Salvador in the 1990s women were recipients of land. Yet for the effect to be sustainable, equal access must be matched with equitable treatment and understanding of the underlying factors that could affect women detrimentally.

In the case of food aid, for example, local conditions (such as corruption, loss of food aid to local militia, distances that goods need to be carried, and weight of packages) can prevent equal access and expose women to further insecurity. In the case of land allocation, in Cambodia often the tracts given to women were of the poorest quality and in areas that were difficult to access. Moreover, women heading households required the assistance of men in their communities to undertake the hard physical work. For many women, simple ownership of the land was not enough to enable them to sustain a livelihood. In Rwanda after the genocide, changes in legislation to enable women’s inheritance of their husband’s property were not readily implemented at local levels, where they went against culture and historic norms. In effect, although opportunities exist, to avoid a backlash, intervention must be designed with sensitivity to the cultural norms. A key aspect of program design is to understand the differing roles, responsibilities, capacities, and constraints of women and men in the region in question. This includes understanding their traditional division of labor in the agricultural sphere, as well as the changes that have resulted from the crisis. Although formal needs assessments can be difficult to undertake in the midst of crises or where insecurity is rife, informal and ongoing consultations with different sectors can provide the necessary

MODULE 11: GENDER AND CRISES: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

information and ensure gender-sensitive programming as in the case of the Sri Lankan irrigation project (see Innovative Activity Profile 1).

Where the issues are addressed and integrated into programming, the positive impact is not felt by the individual beneficiaries but by the community as a whole. A 2004 study in El Salvador documents that in communities where women received basic support such as child care, they were able to participate in community development initiatives, whereas they were absent in areas where such support was not provided. The study indicates that where women were involved, the community’s overall development and economic standing were greater than in communities where they were not (Pampell-Conaway and Martinez 2004).

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Food aid and agricultural assistance are both necessary components of effective interventions in most crisis situations.

The key to sustainability, however, is to ensure that the aid provided is not perpetuating or harming the communities and stakeholders it aims to assist. This requires substantial knowledge of the ways in which the agricultural sector works, as well as the existing sociocultural underpinnings. If information is gathered during “normal” times, it can assist in planning for crisis response. Establishing networks of local communities and organizations can be a means through which information is gathered and shared. The capacities built locally can also be a critical aspect of early recovery.

The FAO (2003) and the UN’s IASC (2006) have developed frameworks for conducting needs assessments and establishing contact groups to inform external actors of the changing nature and conditions of affected populations.

Similar approaches can be taken in formulating agricultural initiatives. IASC guidelines on food security, for example, offer advice on gathering information about the following issues disaggregated by sex: 1. Demographic factors, including numbers of landless poor, herdless pastoralists, poorest in caste or ethnic groups, most marginalized communities (by composition and sex), migrants (long and short term) 2. Local capacities, including ■ Understanding the local division of labor between women and men ■ Identification of preexisting community structures (formal and informal) and how or by whom they are led; in

many cases women have structured networks of support that may not be overtly visible but are essential for effective food production, storage, and sales ■ Understanding the importance of local and householdbased power structures relating to use of food, land, livestock, tools, finances, conservation, storage, and other productive resources, to ensure that interventions are tailored to each group and are culturally appropriate ■ Understanding the skills needed by women and men (particularly those returning from conflict) 3. Changes in social factors, including ■ Household composition ■ Division of labor ■ Needs (including of the sick, elderly, the young, and their caretakers) ■ Different needs and coping strategies of women and men (for example, dislocation and the loss of jobs and social standing can traumatize and disempower men, whereas for women, taking on new responsibilities, while difficult, can also be a source of empowerment) 4. Changes in economic factors, including ■ Incidences and nature of poverty (for example, it is typically high among widowed women) ■ Identification (through consultation) of forms of intervention that are most targeted and beneficial to the full cross-section of the population (for example, for many of the very poorest with no land or livestock, cash or vouchers are a means of generating a livelihood) ■ Ensuring equitable access to markets for food procurement and the sale of goods (for example, in Bangladesh a “ladies’ corner” was established in one local market to provide a culturally accepted space for women to sell their goods) ■ Ensuring that subsidies do not inadvertently harm women’s and men’s food and crop production and incomes 5. Political conditions that can affect women and men differently, including ■ Discrimination based on group identity ■ National and customary practices and laws that limit equal access to agricultural resources, particularly land and access to agricultural services (including training, equipment, seeds, and support) ■ Changes in legislation to promote gender equality (and the potential backlash locally or among select groups) ■ Access and involvement in consultation processes and decision making, ability, and constraints related to engaging with external actors and donors

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6. Institutional and security factors, including ■ Mechanisms and arrangements to enable full participation of community members (men, women, differentiated by age, economic status, and so on) in consultative processes ■ Physical security threats facing women (and men) in traveling to and participating in markets and accessing support ■ Impact of landmines and weapons on women’s and men’s ability to work fields and reach markets ■ Impact and incidences of sexual- and gender-based violence that threatens women’s security and negatively affects their capacity to engage in agricultural work

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7. Information gathering and dissemination, including ■ Ensuring effective outreach to women and men in rural communities through use of special measures (for example, partnership with community radio and networks of rural health workers) where necessary to inform most excluded groups (for example, widows in Afghanistan or Dalit women in rural Nepal with no literacy skills and knowledge of dialect languages) ■ Ongoing consultative processes or forums (such as village-level councils) to enable all stakeholders to provide feedback on the impact of the interventions and participate in problem solving and decision making.

MODULE 11: GENDER AND CRISES: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

Managing Land and Promoting Recovery in Postcrisis Situations

and issues—from tenure to usage, ownership, reform, and redistribution—are a critical feature in crises and emergencies. “The relationship,” states a 2004 USAID study, “is stark, whether we are talking about how land issues function as causal or aggravating factors in conflict, or whether we are thinking about land-related issues that arise in post-conflict settings.”1 Access and usage are not only a question of immediate survival but have sociocultural implications tied to issues of history and identity.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a case in point. On the Palestinian side, the incursion of Israel into the “Occupied Territories” is not just a military issue, it also has meant the destruction of homes and orchards and their replacement with modern housing, erasing the identity of their owners.

Land is also a cause of and can fall victim to natural disasters. Overuse, deforestation, and desertification can lead to landslides and flooding. Earthquakes and tsunamis can wreak devastation on a massive scale, sometimes causing irreparable damage.

As a crisis or conflict continues, the issues become even more intertwined.2 Displacement and resettlement among new communities can ignite new tensions. The destruction of traditional social networks and family structures, the increase in women heads of household and widows, and the inevitable reformulation of relations give rise to disputes, as people from diverse communities (or identity groups) often have differing approaches and practices relating to land management and usage. These changes spill over into the postconflict and crisis setting, and if they are not addressed, they can cause a resurgence of violence.

This Thematic Note focuses on key land issues in the postcrisis setting from a gendered perspective. It highlights critical issues and lessons drawn from current and past crises. Additional gender analysis related to land can be found in other Modules in this Sourcebook. The Rural Development Institute (RDI) identifies the following linkages between women, land, and improving livelihoods:

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Women represent over 50 percent of the world’s population and provide 60–80 percent of the world’s agricultural labor, yet research indicates they own less than 5 percent of the world’s land.

Assets and income in the hands of women result in higher caloric intake, better nutrition, and food security for the household than when they are in the hands of men.

Women’s property rights increase women’s status and bargaining power within the household and community.

Secure land rights provide women with greater incentives to adopt sustainable farming practices and invest in their land. More than 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women, yet women in most African countries do not have secure rights to the land they farm.

Providing women with secure rights to land has the potential to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS on food security and reduce high-risk behaviors.

POSTCRISIS ISSUES

Physical recovery from crisis (manmade or natural) is complicated by practical issues such as weakened local management structures; the loss, destruction, or falsification of records; and the return of IDPs and refugees who make claims on land or have it allocated to them. As noted in a 2004 FAO publication, governments and donors rarely consult, coordinate with, or compensate local communities with regard to the resettlement of refugees and IDPs (Unruh 2004).

Differing interpretations and implementation of international laws and norms pertaining to land access can also cause difficulties. Sometimes the confusion arises among donors themselves with “disagreement . . . as to the direction that the development of the property rights system should take after a conflict, with differences often tied to the economic and foreign policies of the donor countries involved” (Unruh 2004: 3). The drive toward private property ownership 499

can clash with traditional communal tenure and ownership practices, as well as demands for social justice and equitable distribution of resources. This can be particularly stark in the case of widowed or single women claiming the right to live on their family property while the law prohibits women ownership.

Security plays a role as well. In postconflict settings, mined land is useless for cultivation and is a drain on limited resources because demining is slow and expensive. In Afghanistan and Mozambique, for instance, much of the most fertile lands was mined. It is also a public health issue.

Farmers are often driven (or need) to cultivate mined land that has lain fallow but expose themselves and their family to great risk, as landmine victims require long-term care and assistance. Women in particular are more vulnerable if harmed because in many societies men may shun them if they can no long perform household duties. Lack of effective security structures is another challenge. Criminal gangs and splintered armed groups can emerge in the vacuum created by a weakened state. Extortion can become commonplace, as in Nepal, where it emerged during the Marxist-led conflict. Sexual violence is a common feature and can debilitate women’s productivity and movement. State-sponsored confiscation or expropriation also occurs, fueling tensions and stifling economic growth.

Time is another key factor. Immediately after the crisis need and demand exist to move quickly to resettle people and regenerate the economy and livelihoods. Many states emerging from conflict may not have the personnel or technical capacities to address the issues. As stated by FAO, “in post conflict situations a land rush can occur after a conflict, which very quickly outruns the ability of a re-establishing formal tenure system, and the best intentions of government and donors to manage. This can take community and household land tenure, resettlement, eviction, restitution and disputing in directions that are largely outside of the control of a slowly reformulating formal tenure system” (Unruh 2004).

Inevitably, the combination of traditional practices, the lack of women in decision making, and the lack of sensitivity among policy makers and international actors to the differential experiences and needs of women and men results in the inadvertent exclusion of women as beneficiaries.

Yet the difficulties that emerge in postcrisis environments come with new opportunities to review and redress long-standing or root causes of conflict and discrimination. Just as there are conflicts that arise over land issues, so too can peace agreements set into motion land reform and reallocation. The recovery period can also be a time for national institutions to review and revise legislation that

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discriminated against one group or sector of the population.

In South Africa, for example, the changes in legislation were directed at benefiting the majority black population that had endured decades of discrimination. The influx of international aid and technical support can help establish alternative livelihood opportunities. Mechanisms for resolving disputes and ensuring more equitable access to land can be put in place. After experiencing a crisis—especially a natural disaster—national and community leaders and stakeholders may be more amenable to embracing more sustainable livelihood methods as a means of reducing risk and future vulnerability.

LAND AND TRANSFORMATIVE RECOVERY: THE CHALLENGES FACING WOMEN

The challenges and opportunities present in postcrisis environments affect women and men. In most instances, however, the challenges facing women are greater than those faced by men. The reasons vary according to region and culture. On the one hand, women, more than men, are engaged in agricultural production and the cultivation of land. On the other hand, women farmers’ literacy and educational skills are more limited than those of men. Often they have little or no legal protection or ownership rights. Cambodia in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime and the 1991 peace agreement is a case in point. Women are responsible for 80 percent of the food production, yet most have no control or ownership of the land they work. Nearly 50 percent of women farmers are either illiterate or have basic primary school education (World Bank 2004).

The situation is exacerbated by natural disasters or conflict, as men migrate for waged employment, join armed groups, or are targeted by them, leaving women alone in rural settings. In Honduras, for example, the proportion of women-headed households doubled in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 (Bradshaw 2004). In effect, the vulnerability and disparity that exist for women under “normal” situations (for example, lower skills and education, less access to decision making, no formal ownership rights) are exacerbated when crises emerge and livelihoods and traditional social systems are destroyed. Initiatives aimed at promoting recovery must therefore aim to address and resolve some of the baseline criteria that contribute to the gendered disparity and vulnerability.

The key issues facing women in postcrisis settings have been noted in a range of reports, including a 1999 UN Center for Human Settlement (Habitat) study (UN Habitat 1999), and are summarized in the following five sections.

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Legal barriers

In many instances women’s rights to land, housing, or property are limited during times of peace. Their rights are circumscribed by customary practices whereby access is determined by men relatives. In many societies women have no right to own, rent, or inherit property in their own name.

Across Asia and Africa women often need their husband’s permission to access credit or acquire titles independently (Farha 2000). Conflict and crises can exacerbate this. As refugees and IDPs they lose access to their homes and properties. Once the crisis subsides, the situation does not improve.

As widows (or with spouses missing), as women heading households (caring for siblings or elderly relatives), as daughters or sisters, they often have no legal protection or claim on their homes or properties, yet often they are the sole caretakers of families. In Rwanda, for example, a decade after the genocide women led some 30 percent of households (Brown and Uvuza 2006). In Aceh, after the tsunami, women have been caught in disputes with in-laws or men family members laying claim to land and property (Fitzpatrick 2007). In Palestine women are subjected to not only the confiscation of land by Israeli forces but also social pressures to renounce inheritance rights when husband or fathers are killed (Farha 2000).

Registration and recordkeeping

Recordkeeping and documentation can also have significantly different implications for women and men in postcrisis periods. Customary practices and the protection afforded by clan elders are often destroyed during crises, making women more vulnerable. In many cases only the men head of household is recorded, and property, whether or not it is jointly owned, is recorded under men’s names. Sometimes it is inadvertent. In Java, Indonesia, for instance, customary practices dictate joint ownership by husbands and wives. Yet when registration was put in place, the registration forms provided space to register only a single owner, and typically men’s names were recorded. This minor bureaucratic oversight had significant implications for people’s lives (Brown and Uvuza 2006: 25).

Often during conflicts, administrative offices and records are deliberately destroyed in looting and property ownership becomes a disputed issue. In natural disasters the destruction of records is among the many consequences. In the recovery period, systems are put in place to handle claims.

But with men absent or dead, women may face challenges to their claims of joint ownership. Even where state laws give men and women equal rights, without proactive efforts to

realize and protect women’s rights, they can be neglected or abused. In a 2007 Oxfam study in Aceh (Fitzpatrick 2007), the issues women raised regarding their ability to claim property included the following: ■

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Their access was limited, because only the men members of their families were registered on property titles.

They were too traumatized to venture into the public sphere and make their claims.

With their primary responsibilities as caregivers and providers for their families, they had neither the time nor the resources to mobilize and assert their rights.

Other factors that affect women include the following: ■

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Their traditional social networks are destroyed, and they have less access or capacity to influence local leaders, who are often charged with decision making.

They face entrenched sociocultural barriers, so decisions are often made against them and in favor of men.

They lack information or knowledge about their legal rights or where to get assistance.

Land allocation and reform

Peace processes or political transitions often catalyze land and property reform, liberalization, or reallocation programs.

Such programs, however, are often hampered by a lack of sufficient resources from the outset. For example, in Guatemala prior to the civil war, 2 percent of the population owned 70 percent of the land. The 1996 peace accords included a provision for land reform. Land taxes and a land fund associated with an autonomous government agency (Fontierras) were among the mechanisms established to enable the reform, but the costs of undertaking land reform far outweighed the allocated budget. By 2006 it was estimated that only 2 percent of the demand had been met.3 The purchase of the land amounts to only 30–40 percent of the total costs associated with sustainable land reform, according to one Africa-focused 2006 World Bank Study (Van den Brink and others 2006). Other costs associated with resettlement, housing, start-up grants, agricultural inputs, training, and advisory services are also critical to success, yet they are rarely accounted for. South Africa, for example, has allocated a realistic budget toward land purchases but underfunded the nonland costs (Van den Brink and others 2006).

Women, especially widows or women heading households, are often losers in land reform programs. Before the conflict in Cambodia, for example, women’s rights to ownership were

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recognized. They had equal access to land through inheritance, and acquisition through cultivation. However, the postwar period coupled with liberalization policies has marginalized women, making them more vulnerable to market forces, debt, and landlessness. Close to 50 percent of war widows have no access to land. Of those who do, some 84 percent have less than 0.05 hectare of often poor quality land, making it difficult to sustain a livelihood (World Bank 2004).

The reasons for disparity vary. One reason is lower literacy levels among women and less knowledge of land titles, tenure requirements, or new land laws. In family disputes (or divorce) women do not have knowledge of their legal rights. Another reason is that in many places women are also socialized to care for elderly and sick parents and are thus more likely than men to spend savings, go into debt, or sell assets to provide care. Yet another reason is that social stigma is attached to women engaging directly with men regarding legal issues or local authorities. This can impact their inheritance rights, because their men relatives may keep the certificates of entitlement and directly (or indirectly) pressure women to conform to societal norms (McGrew, Frieson, and Chan 2004).

Equality but not equity: the multiple burdens of women

As noted above, although the law may often offer some protection or rights to women, in practice societal forces present obstacles to the realization and implementation of the law. In effect, there is legal equality, but in practice, the situation is not fair or equitable.

As heads of households in postcrisis situations, women have the combined burden of domestic and agricultural responsibility. Many cannot make full use of their land or maximize their production and revenue with limited literacy skills and an overwhelming combination of domestic and productive duties. They often have no knowledge of or time to seek out information regarding their rights or the nature of titling procedures. Their exclusion from the men-dominated bodies that administer land issues and are an integral aspect of social and political networks compounds the problem.

Compared to men, women farmers also tend to have less access to high-quality inputs or information about improved techniques. Often agricultural extension staff are predominantly men. As such, in many traditional societies they cannot engage in face-to-face contact with women farmers.

Moreover, little attention is given to the fact that women and men specialize in different tasks. Research and outreach to women’s specialized tasks are limited.

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Women typically have less access to credit. According to FAO, where data are available, only 10 percent of credit allowances are extended to women.4 Their access to markets is also more circumscribed. Security concerns and domestic duties prevent women from engaging in market-related activities and accessing basic services (including health or education regarding land management). Thus, even where land laws may espouse equality or be progressive (such as the one passed in Cambodia in 2001), the differences between women’s and men’s access and opportunities remain stark.

International financing: helping or harming?

International aid comes rushing in after crises, but the impact on women and men can vary deeply. Women can be inadvertently negatively affected. Issues that arise include the following.

Location and resettlement of refugees and IDPs. At times, international actors do not consult, compensate, or coordinate sufficiently with local communities regarding the settlement of refugee or IDP populations. Differences in customary tenure practices versus government practices can cause increased tensions and fuel conflict between the two communities.

Competing ideologies and lack of coordination between donors. Donors can have differing interpretations of or priorities relating to international laws and norms and how they affect land tenure issues in postcrisis settings. Donors’ policies can be contradictory. Many may support gender-equality measures but unwittingly undermine equality as they call for a shift toward a market economy and privatization as a precondition for the provision of financial assistance. This means a shift away from customary titling practices toward private ownership. Where customary practices hold sway and are the only safety net available to women, the move toward privatization can be devastating. Widows (who traditionally were permitted to remain in their homes until death or remarriage) find themselves evicted by men heirs keen on generating an income or benefiting from increased land prices that are a common feature of postcrisis countries.

Ad hoc approach to international laws especially women’s rights. Within the framework of international laws and conventions, numerous provisions articulate women’s rights to property ownership (see summary in box 11.7). The World Bank, like other entities, has its own policies and guidelines.

In many postcrisis settings, women’s rights advocates rely on such provisions to further their demands and ensure protection for women. Yet support provided by international actors—bilateral or multilateral entities—is at best ad hoc.

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Box 11.7 Summary of Selected Key International Laws and Standards

UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1980), adopted by 191 UN member states, includes the following: ■

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Article 15: “State parties . . . accord to women equality with men before the law”; “they shall give women equal rights . . . to administer property.”

Article 16: “the same rights for both spouses in respect of the ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposition of property.”

The Habitat Agenda (1996), adopted by all UN member states, commits governments to “providing legal security of tenure and equal access to land to all people including women . . . and undertaking legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property.”

UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Resolution 15 (1998), urges all governments “to take all necessary measures . . . to amend and/or repeal laws and policies pertaining to land, property, housing which deny women security of tenure and equal access and rights to land, property and housing, to encourage the transformation of customs and traditions which deny women [this] security, and to adopt and enforce legislation which protects and promotes women’s rights to own, inherit, lease or rent land, property and housing.”

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000): “Calls on all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective, including . . . the special needs of women and girls during repatriation, resettlement and for rehabilitation, reintegration and post conflict reconstruction.”

Source: Author.

Cultural relativism is often used as an excuse to avoid the pursuit of measures that can protect women, despite the fact that the demands for such changes are often emerging from grassroots communities themselves. Inconsistency, apathy, or ignorance of institutional policies can heighten women’s vulnerability at a time when they are struggling to survive and maintain their households and communities.

USEFUL LESSONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADDRESSING GENDER DISPARITIES

Despite the difficulties that arise, major crises also create new opportunities for tackling gender-based disparities regarding land ownership, tenure, and use. Most important, perhaps, is that many women come to the fore as a result of the effects of crises. As refugees and IDPs, they often have an opportunity to mobilize, gain awareness of their rights, and assert their demands. Support from international entities can strengthen their capacities while still ensuring that the demands are locally driven and homegrown. Moreover, women themselves are the best navigators of their cultural terrain. If informed of the international policies and norms, they can be effective in bridging the purported divisions between the policies and traditional practices without

prompting a backlash or accusations of cultural insensitivity. Opportunities include the following: Peace accords as a key entry point. Peace accords can be a key entry point for addressing land reform. As in Guatemala, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, land ownership and occupation are clearly among the most contentious yet critical issues to be resolved. Just as marginalized ethnic or indigenous groups may demand their rights to land, specific discrimination against women can also be highlighted. In Sri Lanka in 2002, a women’s coalition comprising local and international women’s rights advocates held lengthy community-based consultations to identify women’s concerns around the then-emerging peace process. Land issues were among the issues noted (box 11.8).5 The recommendations they developed were aimed at national parties to the conflict as well as international entities involved with supporting the implementation of agreements or assisting recovery.

New constitution and legislations. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and South Africa are just some of the countries where women’s mobilization, political pressure, and public demands enshrined their rights to property ownership in the constitution and legislation. In South Africa, the land reform legislation introduced following the end of the apartheid era explicitly addresses gender equality. Within

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Box 11.8 Sri Lanka: Women’s Concerns and the Peace

“Land rights appear to be one of the most difficult and contentious issues throughout the northeast. The displaced [people] need to reclaim their land and property and receive compensation for loss and damage.

Those who cannot return must be resettled elsewhere.

Those occupying land and property abandoned by the displaced or evicted must vacate such property and be re-settled. Women and, in particular, widows and women heads of household must be given title to land and property. Issues of inheritance for women must be clarified and women’s right to land & property protected.”

Recommendations made by the Mission: 1. Land laws must be reformed to ensure equal rights of women to inherit and dispose of land and property.

2. Where necessary, lands must be surveyed to establish boundaries.

3. Ownership rights should be respected, and persons living in houses owned by others should be provided with alternative accommodation.

4. Widows and relatives of the disappeared need assistance in accessing the documentation they require to prove their rights to property and inheritance.

Source: Excerpts from Women and Media Collective (2002).

the Land Affairs Department a Sub-Directorate on Gender Affairs was also established. In Rwanda, in the aftermath of the genocide, inheritance laws were changed in 1999 to allow equal inheritance rights for sons and daughters and to protect women’s joint property rights in formally registered marriages. In 2005 parliament adopted a new Land Law to establish rights to land and leaseholds, resolve uncertainty in land holdings, and encourage consolidated use as a means of promoting productivity. The law will be implemented through a series of more issue-specific legislation and regulations.

Such legislative changes provide a new normative framework through which the issues affecting women can be addressed. However, they are often neither sufficient nor comprehensive. For example, the 1999 inheritance law does not provide protection to women in consensual unions (or other customary practices) and has been interpreted to limit a widow’s claims on her husband’s properties. Typically local women’s organizations are among the first to identify such gaps. To address them, they require assistance and support from a variety of actors, including international agencies.

In any context, effective and equitable implementation of new land laws requires a number of other measures to inform the cross-section of stakeholders at national and community levels and ensure their support and adherence.

Nepal offers an example of an opportunity to implement legal change. As the peace process began there in 2007, local NGOs identified some 103 laws that discriminated against women. The state must take a lead in repealing or striking

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down such laws and drafting new provisions that explicitly recognize and protect the independent and equal right to property ownership and inheritance for women and men.

NGOs and international agencies can provide technical and financial support to local actors. They can lead research and analysis to provide the necessary information. They can lead by example, incorporating existing international norms and standards in their own practices.

Protecting women’s rights in registration.6 As noted earlier, registration procedures are critical to ensuring equal and fair access and ownership of land: ■

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In Vietnam, when it was discovered that only men were being registered on land titles, new certificates were issued that included space for the names of both spouses.

In Cambodia, at the time of registration, an assistant is nominated at the village level with responsibility to inform women and the most vulnerable members of the community of their rights and to assist them in making land claims or objecting to existing claims.

In Aceh recommendations for more equitable practice include making joint titling mandatory. Registration forms could include questions about existing spouses or others who are co-owners of the land (for example, men or women siblings).

In addition, as noted by the Sri Lankan women (box 11.8), land must be surveyed, and all stakeholders (with special outreach to women) should be included in community mapping, consultative, and adjudication processes.

Inclusive consultations. Direct interaction and consultation between the makers and implementers of land policy and women’s rights groups are essential for understanding the specific issues facing women and the contributions women can make toward effective resolution and implementation of land reform policies.

In 2006 the Rural Development Institute (RDI) and Women Waging Peace (renamed the Initiative for Inclusive Security) cosponsored a workshop for Rwandan government personnel and women’s civil society groups with the goal of enabling direct discussions about the implementation of the new land laws and remaining gaps regarding women’s protection and needs. The women’s groups formed a policy and law task force to comment on forthcoming legislation and provide lawmakers and government officials with recommendations to better protect women’s land rights. Similar initiatives could be sponsored in other settings. The effect is beneficial to all stakeholders.

Outreach and education programs with special attention to women. Informing land administration officials, the judiciary, and others involved in land adjudication and communities about upcoming changes is fundamental. As part of the officials’ training, there is an opportunity to alert them to and highlight the specific needs of women.

Ensuring targeted outreach to women to inform them of their rights (and the processes being put in place) is also a key dimension of many initiatives aimed at improving laws and practices: ■

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In Cambodia government initiatives included targeted outreach and education programs for women and other groups at risk of being harmed by reform processes. The interventions were scheduled for times and located in places that were easily accessible to women.

In Rwanda the National Women’s Council, a governmental body with representatives at the community level, was interested in taking a leading educational role in the implementation of new land laws in 2006.

In Nepal, ASMITA, a magazine owned and run by women journalists with a focus on women’s rights, has been a key conduit of information about and for Nepalese women.

The magazine’s target audience is semiliterate rural women; thus, it is picture heavy. The publishers also produce booklets and posters addressing issues such as women’s land rights and other legislative changes.7

Data, research, monitoring, and impact. In many postcrisis settings, little documentation and analysis exist regarding the impact of legislation or customary marital property

and inheritance practices. In Nepal, for example, the direct impact of conflict on women and the related migration of men are not fully understood in the context of land ownership. Yet land reform is a key element of the 2007 peace accord. Without this information, new laws, policies, and programs can inadvertently do harm or exclude the majority of women, as in the Rwandan 1999 Inheritance Law. A paucity of sex-disaggregated data and analysis in terms of the impact of crises on women and the effects of provided aid or assistance also exists. Reflecting on responses to Hurricane Mitch, a 2004 study by the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) states that “There are still not many statistics on impact differentiated by gender. Most of the agencies interviewed indicated that they did not explicitly take gender into account and did not break down their data on the disaster by sex nor analyze their results from a gender perspective” (Bradshaw 2004: 19). A review and revision of existing data collection methods and frameworks are needed to enable sex-disaggregated data gathering at the household and other basic levels.

Finally, implementation needs to be monitored and adjusted to address the needs of all sectors of the community. RDI’s recommendations for Rwanda’s 2005 Land Law resonate in other instances: ■

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The implementation of new laws should be piloted and assessed from a gender perspective. Women and men should be directly targeted regarding their experiences of the different dimensions of the program, ranging from their exposure to the public education efforts to registration. Comparative case studies should be conducted to highlight the differential experiences and needs of women and men (for example, widows, women heading households, and married women and men). Monitoring and evaluation of the pilots, including consultations with the target groups, should inform and be addressed in the draft legislation and related regulations, programs, and budgets.

Resources should be dedicated to the development of a specialized monitoring and evaluation process and technique that can be applied nationwide once the legislation is being implemented. The process can include and inform policy makers as well as civil society actors and other stakeholders, with a view to identifying gaps and obstacles at an early stage and enabling their resolution.

Existing assessment frameworks and questionnaires, such as those developed by FAO, ECLAC, and other entities,8 can be adapted and tailored to each case.

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CONCLUSIONS

To be sustainable and to reduce vulnerability, recovery has to be transformative. Crises present the opportunity to initiate new practices and systems. The challenge is to balance the drive toward returning to a status quo and recognized past practices with the need to address the practices that contributed to the vulnerability. External interventions must

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seek to raise awareness among local leaders of the existing gender disparity and the consequences for the community as a whole. Local populations and leadership are often open to change in the aftermath of a crisis. They also are often conscious of the extreme vulnerability of women and are ready to seek solutions. External actors should prioritize the provision of technical assistance and support to enable this shift.

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I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Food Aid versus Agricultural Support and Sustenance of Social Capital

SRI LANKA: NORTH-EAST IRRIGATED AGRICULTURAL PROJECT

n 1983 war broke out between the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE). 1 Over the years the North East Province of Sri Lanka, where the conflict has been most violent, has been devastated. Before the war nearly twothirds of the population depended on farming, fishing, and livestock as their main source of livelihood. The conflict destroyed much of the irrigation system and road infrastructure. It also caused mass displacement and the collapse of social institutions such as farmers’ organizations. Gender-based disparities in income and occupation resulting in higher poverty rates among women were further exacerbated by war, as women were burdened with traditional men’s tasks as well. War-affected communities and displaced populations in the region have been exploited by both sides. The conflict hampered international humanitarian efforts. According to a 1999 British Refugee Council briefing document, “the restrictions and delays in agricultural inputs [were] in part . . . responsible for a substantial reduction in agricultural production with resulting decrease in jobs and income.”2

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What’s innovative? The recognition and inclusion of the Women’s Rural Development Societies in this project was a significant achievement. Before the project, these groups had not been given the chance to play such a central role in the well-being of their communities. The project gave them the chance to build their institutional strength, as well as demonstrate their capacities to contribute to and gain the respect of the community as a whole.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

Amid these difficult political, human, security, and logistical conditions, the International Development Association in collaboration with the GoSL initiated a community-focused project to (1) help conflict-affected communities in the northeast and adjoining areas reestablish at least a subsistence level of production and community-based services through assistance for jump-starting agricultural and smallscale reconstruction activities, and (2) build the capacity of such communities for sustainable social and economic reintegration. Initially, 398 villages were included in the program, of which 30 were in the Jaffna district (Wanasundera 2006).

The project was the first large-scale development project funded by any major donor in the area after the outbreak of war in 1983. It was thus a pioneering initiative for the restoration of livelihoods among the internally displaced population and conflict-affected people. Its proactive outreach to ensure the full and equal inclusion of women and men was also innovative. The successful implementation of the project in the first two years paved the way for other major donors, such as the Asian Development Bank and Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, to plan and implement similar complementary operations in the North East Province targeting the conflict-affected people.

Typically, irrigation tanks provide water for irrigation and drinking water for rural villages in Sri Lanka.3 The project focused on the revival of agricultural production in conflictaffected villages through the restoration of irrigation tanks damaged by the war or abandoned by people fleeing the villages. The irrigation tank restoration was complemented by the rehabilitation and provision of essential village facilities, such as village access roads, drinking water facilities, construction of community buildings, and support for income-generating activities to enable the displaced people

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who returned and were returning to the villages to revive their livelihoods. To plan and implement these interventions and ensure care of the rehabilitated facilities at the end of the intervention, the project facilitated the revival of community organizations, such as farmers’ organizations and women’s community-based organizations (CBOs) that existed in the villages before the outbreak of the war but were weakened or fell apart because of the war.

The project’s development focus was therefore appropriate and timely to provide sustainable livelihoods for conflictaffected people and encourage the return of the IDP. At its start, the project had four major components. A fifth component, the livelihood support activities (LSAs), was added halfway on the basis of the experiences emerging from the initial implementation and the priorities identified by the target population.

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The rehabilitation of irrigation projects. The project sought to rehabilitate 400 irrigation projects, including refilling breached sections of embankments, raising low spots on embankments, repairing or replacing sluices, fixing and improving spillways, repairing scheme access roads, and cleaning and desalting main canals and irrigation tanks.

Community capacity building and small-scale reconstruction. The project financed community capacity building, including support and partnership with Madar Sangam, the women’s rural development societies (WRDSs); support for social mobilization, including repaired rural roads and drinking water facilities; and technical assistance to community-level organizations.

Feasibility studies. Feasibility studies were done for rehabilitation of the 10 most dilapidated major irrigation schemes in the North East Province and in the border villages of the four neighboring provinces.

Provision of technical and financial management auditors.

Given the limited banking facilities available, the project financed independent technical and financial auditors to ensure transparency and accountability.

Livelihood Support Activities. The LSA was added in 2002 to make the project more inclusive. It provided an opportunity for the landless and the most vulnerable families, as well as women, who could not benefit from irrigation tank rehabilitation to access project support.

The Development Credit Agreement was amended in December 2002 to permit (1) livelihood support grants to WRDSs and (2) WRDSs to provide repayable loans to members for undertaking small individual household income-generating activities related to (a) agriculture

and allied activities, (b) improved production and marketing of commodities, (c) promotion of various microenterprises, and (d) construction of common assets such as community buildings.

Although security conditions and the mobility of people in the project area slowly improved after the signing of the ceasefire agreement in February 2002, the situation in the project area remained precarious following the LTTE’s withdrawal from the peace talks in April 2003, the LTTE’s internal conflicts in March 2004, and the tsunami disaster in December 2004.

Despite these constraints, the project successfully achieved its development objectives and completed its physical targets, as is evident from the Implementation Completion Report.

KEY ELEMENTS

The following section discusses key elements of the project.

Community consultations. When the project was initiated, the conflict between the GoSL and LTTE was raging. Because of the consequent security constraints, conventional project preparation activities (social assessments, institutional analysis, baseline surveys, and beneficiary consultations) could not be undertaken. However, wide consultation was undertaken with the main stakeholders, including the North East Provincial Council, district secretaries and government agents in the project area, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commanders of the Sri Lanka army (SLA) in the project area, and the political wing of the LTTE. The project director, a woman, was based in the region and had in-depth knowledge of the active communities and organizations. According to external assessments, other project officials were not as sensitized to the gender issues, but she was and selected Madar Sangam (WRDSs) as an implementing partner because of their efficiency (Wanasundera 2006).

Lessons drawn from past experiences, including a previous World Bank irrigation project, demonstrated that a simple operation focused on irrigation rehabilitation through community participation was possible in the North East Province.

Active participation of conflict-affected communities. The project design also recognized the need for active participation of the conflict-affected communities in the planning and implementation of the project interventions.

Inclusion of and support to women. From the outset within the community capacity-building component, specific attention was given to the inclusion of WRDSs. The project director knew the groups’ work and integrated them into the project implementation. The idea was embraced

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by project officials, other local partners, and the community, as they experienced the “dynamism” that the WRDSs brought.4 Additional adjustments were made later to ensure that women and landless people could benefit from the project.

Pragmatic and tailored project design. The implementation design was simple and pragmatic and recognized the unique context of the conflict situation and the related constraints. Interventions were planned in both “cleared areas” (areas under the military control of the SLA) and “uncleared areas” (areas controlled by the LTTE), the division of which changed continually at first. The difficulties that the project team faced included (1) working staff of line ministries and departments based in Colombo (capital of Sri Lanka), who were reluctant to travel to the North East; (2) requiring clearance from the SLA and the LTTE before moving any government and Bank staff, vehicles, and construction materials into uncleared areas; (3) developing monitoring mechanisms for project funds needed in the uncleared areas that were acceptable to the SLA and the GoSL; and (4) working in areas where there were no formal banking facilities. To address these difficulties, the project design included developing strong partners and consulting with them to determine pragmatic and simple solutions. The partners include the SLA, NGOs, UNHCR, ICRC, and independent technical and financial auditors.

Localized responsibility and accountability. The project management responsibility was fully devolved to the North East Provincial Council (NEPC), despite claims by several central government ministries based in Colombo to become the lead ministry for project implementation. However, the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government was appointed as the anchor ministry for the project, but its role was limited to a facilitative role for matters that could not be resolved at the NEPC level but required the attention of high levels of the government, including the Treasury and Ministry of Defense.

The NEPC devolved implementation responsibility to the participating districts to enable transparent and consultative selection of focal villages and beneficiaries, close liaison with other development partners at the district level, and better supervision and monitoring. The implementation at the district level relied upon collaborative working partnerships between relevant provincial council agencies and the district wings of the central government departments. This arrangement promoted collaborative working partnerships between the agencies of the provincial council and the central government within the districts. The design included NGOs as implementing partners. This was appropriate because the NEPC lacked capacity and prior experience in

community mobilization, and the partnering CBOs and NGOs (including Madar Sangam) had already been engaged in community-based activities in the project area.

Key role of partnerships. The inclusion of SLA, ICRC, and UNHCR as formal members of the project steering committee proved to be invaluable in identifying and targeting focal villages, coordinating and monitoring project activities, enhancing accountability and transparency in the use of project resources in uncleared areas, and facilitating security clearances to ensure speedy and timely mobility of staff, vehicles, and construction materials to project sites.

Independent auditing. The inclusion of both independent technical auditors and financial auditors, carried out by private sector agencies for the first time in a Bank-funded project in the country, was important to GoSL, particularly to SLA. The engagement of audits not only satisfied their concerns about transparency and accountability in the use of development funds in the prevailing risky environment, but also helped the Project Management Unit in enhancing the diligence in financial management and engineering quality of the design of subprojects during the implementation.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

An estimated 55,000 families benefited from the project (31,000 farm and 24,000 nonfarm families). The project, centered around 378 small and medium irrigation schemes, reached more than double the anticipated targeted families and total population, totaling 275,000 people, of whom 123,750 were men and 151,250 were women. At the time of project’s conclusion: ■

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369 irrigation schemes had been rehabilitated (others were near completion), enabling the cultivation of 24,980 hectares of prewar farmland.

1,294 kilometers of roads were rehabilitated.

The original target of rehabilitating 300 drinking wells was increased to 775 (to address needs), of which 754 were completed.

379 village-level multipurpose buildings were completed (as planned). Of these, 291 were taken over by rural development societies (RDSs) and WRDSs. The buildings serve as meeting places, shelter for kindergartens, mobile clinics, and other purposes.

Women were given access to credit through the LSA to start microenterprises, including poultry raising and grinding mills.

The project, recognizing the women’s groups’ commitments, also prioritized women’s organizations in several village/field assessments (Wanasundera 2006).

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The project successfully reactivated, created, or strengthened a total of 1,057 CBOs—371 farmers organizations, 369 RDSs, and 317 WRDSs—in all focal villages. These CBOs engaged in planning and implementing project-supported activities satisfactorily in their respective areas of responsibilities. The project contributed to community capacity building through (1) introducing and supporting bottomup planning processes of developing Village Social Profiles and Village Development Plans facilitated by NGOs; (2) providing training on procurement, financial management, and technical aspects of project-related civil works; and (3) creating linkages between CBOs and government offices, such as the Irrigation Department, Agrarian Service Department, Provincial Road Development Authority, and the Rural Development Department.

The WRDSs and the resultant empowerment of women were one of the project’s most important achievements. Prior to the intervention, institutionalized groups of women did not exist in the focal villages. The WRDSs included the majority of women in the villages targeted, and their representatives demonstrated strong leadership. The WRDSs were seen by many as being the most robust village-level CBOs, catering not only to women but also to the poor and the vulnerable.

Although the LSA component was added later, the impact was significant. The WRDSs administered loans to a total of 18,975 households. The LSA was new to project staff, but by reaching poor households, it boosted the overall impact of the project. All loan recipients were women, and the activities undertaken were in most cases geared to their economic empowerment (microcredit enterprises) and household food security (as noted above). The success of the LSA was largely attributable to effective management of the loans by WRDSs. By and large, the capacities of the WRDSs for financial management increased, although more systematic support would have enhanced them further and should be included in future projects.

The project design did not specifically provide for an institutional or implementation arrangement for ensuring construction quality of civil works, nor did it provide for developing practical management information and monitoring and evaluation systems.

The successful implementation of the project led to the preparation of a follow-up operation. The Bank’s board approved the Second North East Irrigated Agriculture Project in 2004. By 2007, progress had been slow. The project was restructured to be more demand driven, flexible, and resilient in light of the reescalation of the conflict.5 However, the impact of increased levels of violence in the region was not known fully at the time of writing.

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GENDER-SENSITIVITY APPROACHES

From a gendered perspective, the project was somewhat inclusive and sensitive to the differential experience and capacities of women and men, but this was partly ad hoc.

The woman local project director was the key to identifying and integrating the WRDSs into the process. According to FAO, other “officials implementing this project understood little of gender issues” (Wanasundera 2006: 21).

The project documents do not provide detailed information on the processes and approaches taken to ensure equitable inclusion of women and men in the consultative processes and as beneficiaries. Nonetheless, they do refer to the work done and achievements relating to women. No analysis or reflection on the impact of the project on men per se is included as well, or why the farmers’ organizations (run by men) were not as effective as the WRDSs. At the outset, the project consciously adopted two strategies: mainstreaming and transformative approaches. Recognizing that this still excluded a significant portion of the women’s population, the project added a third strategy halfway through that was directly targeted at women: the LSA component. These three strategies are summarized in the following: ■

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Mainstreaming: The selection of a woman project leader was a key step. Her knowledge of and selection of the WRDSs as implementing partners was a good example of mainstreaming. From the outset, the project leaders included women in the consultative processes and as beneficiaries. Although the project could have integrated women into the RDSs, there was recognition of the efficacy of enabling women to operate in new parallel structures, as opposed to trying to find their voice and leadership in preexisting (and perhaps entrenched structures). The approach taken from the outset was very pragmatic. The goal was to assist conflict-affected populations, and this naturally included attention to women. The selection of the WRDSs was also pragmatic in part because they were known to be effective, committed, and able to reach all affected populations. Their selection was not perceived as an overt focus on women only, which could have caused a backlash among the community and landowners.

Transformative: A key goal and achievement of the WRDSs was to empower women and increase their roles in local decision making and management. The selection of the WRDSs by the project director was itself transformative because it brought their work (and commitment) to the attention of the project officials. The FAO also

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notes that in programs (run by other agencies) in which men-dominated NGOs were selected as project partners, women remained marginal beneficiaries with access only through small entities. The partnership with the project also increased the WRDSs’ status (and women’s status) in the communities. As stated, the project did not highlight this as an overt goal but implicitly wove this dimension through the practical initiatives. This enabled women to demonstrate their leadership at the community level alongside men, without creating a backlash or being seen as the sole beneficiaries of the intervention. That women’s organizations were prioritized in field and village assessments is indicative of how the project staff became aware of (or changed their attitudes) toward the relevance and potential of women in recovery programming.

Targeted: The project realized that despite its efforts to integrate women in the community structures, many women (particularly the very poor and landless) were still not benefiting from the intervention. The LSA component sought to redress this by targeting loans to women specifically. Giving implementation responsibility (and technical support) to the WRDSs was also a means of enhancing their management capacities. Interestingly, the introduction of the LSA late in the process could be a positive technique for providing targeted support to women. If others are already benefiting from the intervention, they may be more willing to acknowledge that the very poor are still excluded and thus be supportive of (or at least not against) targeted efforts to reach them.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

The degree of gender sensitivity that emerged in this project was not overtly planned at the outset. It was a positive and somewhat unanticipated outcome, but one that does indicate that gender-sensitive assessment and analysis are critical to a program’s overall effectiveness. The lessons and issues that emerge for future projects include the following: ■

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Women-run CBOs are often the most effective partners in supporting the poor and the most vulnerable. Where women’s organizations are not included as project partners, women typically do not benefit from the resources available and remain marginalized and more vulnerable (Wanasundera 2006).

Delivering assistance directly to communities and forming strategic alliances between key stakeholders are critical determinants of project success in conflictaffected situations.

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Anchoring a project at the provincial level can increase ownership at the local level and facilitate project implementation, particularly in “pause-in-conflict” and postconflict situations in which institutions have become weaker but need to revive their lost capacity quickly to engage in broader reconstruction programs, as was the case with this project.

Innovation and flexibility in project design, initial piloting of project activities, and close and competent supervision are important if projects are prepared quickly in conflict-affected situations.

In a conflict situation, securing technical assistance to build local capacity is critical. The changes wrought by conflict and the impact in every sector are overwhelming for states and grassroots communities. These impacts are exacerbated over time as education and skill-building opportunities diminish (because of violence), technocrats or other skilled citizens migrate, and the violence forces isolation on those left in rural areas. Communities (and governments) often need support to assess and understand the changed conditions, the needs that exist, and means to work when basic infrastructure is weakened or destroyed (such as no banking systems).

Selecting villages in poorer areas and activities targeted at poor and landless people ensures that the benefits of irrigation-led projects reach communities and families most in need of assistance.

The full inclusion of women’s structures at the village level can be an effective means of drawing upon and strengthening women’s leadership.

Livelihood support to women can make a project more inclusive and has tremendous potential for alleviating poverty. It would be necessary, however, to ensure that every sector in society is benefiting equitably and that “traditional” community leaders are informed and consulted about targeted support to women. Otherwise a risk of backlash exists.

CBOs need sufficient training and technical backup to sustain project-created assets. This can range from training in maintenance of the new infrastructure to management of resources and funds to monitoring and accountability methods and consultative decision-making practices.

Continuous monitoring and assessing of project processes and impacts with beneficiary participation should be part of project monitoring and evaluation systems. It is not sufficient to have technical auditing without a clearly defined practical quality management system in place. Such monitoring should include collection and

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analysis of sex-disaggregated data at the outset, midpoint, and end of the project to assess if and how women and men have benefited. It could also include consultations with beneficiary groups (or individuals) to determine whether needs were met and how processes can be improved.

The project reports and documentation should provide more information and analysis of the strategies and tactics adopted to ensure women’s inclusion. This should

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include analysis of the reactions of and interactions with the traditional leadership in the community. In addition to the quantitative data needed, a description and analysis of processes undertaken would be helpful for future efforts. For example, the project should document how men and women were consulted (as groups, individuals, together, separately) and what differences the approaches made. The impact of the interventions (such as grants to landless women) should also be documented.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 2

Niger: Taking Preventive Action with Food Banks

iger, one of the poorest nations in the world, is a landlocked Sahelian country with a predominantly agrarian society. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas characterized by subsistence crop production and livestock keeping. Sixty-three percent of Niger’s population lives below the poverty line, and the country’s policy makers are confronted with high illiteracy and child mortality rates. Women and women-headed households constitute the country’s poorest and most vulnerable social group.

Niger’s agricultural production is hampered by insufficient and irregular rains, which lead to frequent droughts.

Low soil fertility, parasite attacks, and a high population growth rate aggravate the pressure on agricultural production. As a consequence, the country is faced with chronic food insecurities, particularly during the so-called hunger season, which is the season before the harvest. In 2004 Niger experienced insufficient rains and locust attacks, which caused a severe food crisis in 2005. The Maradi region and women and children were hit especially hard. The crisis was described as a situation in which food was either not available or not accessible to the population.

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As a reaction to this situation, the government of Niger, with the support of foreign donors, established an emergency program in 2005 to distribute free food, emergency seeds, and fodder. In 2006 IFAD and the Belgian Survival Fund started a second emergency program, which established food banks to ensure sustainable supplies of food and, ultimately, to relieve food insecurities of vulnerable households. The program targeted the most vulnerable women in the Maradi region.

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The most vulnerable in the population, women in a particular region in this case, are exclusively targeted.

Food bank beneficiaries elect and control the management committees, which results in high commitment to the operations of the food bank.

Management committees are intensively trained on the regional level to ensure efficient operations of the bank.

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Villages in the Maradi region with a food deficit of more than 50 percent were identified as target villages. Selected communities were informed extensively about the setup of food banks.

Within the target villages, the most vulnerable women were identified according to predetermined criteria.

These included the possession of land and livestock assets as well as the income and food security situation of the household. According to these criteria, women were classified as extremely vulnerable, very vulnerable, vulnerable, and slightly vulnerable.

In every village, management committees consisting of a president, treasurer, and secretary were appointed by a general assembly of food bank beneficiaries. The members were selected on the basis of their displayed commitment. Most of the committees were composed entirely of women. In villages with very low women’s literacy rates, a literate man was appointed secretary. Committee members were then trained at the regional level on how to manage food banks and were provided with management manuals to be used on a day-to-day basis.

After the establishment and training of the management committees, food was purchased and a storage place (the food bank building) was arranged. The initial food stock financed by the project was about six tons per bank.

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Food distribution (of mainly cereals) takes place weekly during the hunger season, which generally runs from July through September. Only women may take a food loan from the bank. After the harvest, recipients have to repay the bank in kind the amount of food taken out plus 25 percent interest. The interest rate is determined by the management committee and may be lowered in times of bad harvests. Stocks are thus recovered and stored for the next hunger season.

The allocation and recovery of the food stock are managed entirely by the elected committee member. Finally, a followup and evaluation process at the regional and governmental levels was established to assess clearly which households benefited and in what ways. The evaluation process is carried out jointly by the management committees and the project managers. Because the food banks started in 2006, no quantifiable impacts on beneficiaries are yet available.

Over the period of one year (2006–07), 111 food banks in 111 villages were set up. About 683 tons of cereals were distributed, which benefited 26,000 households in the Maradi region, or approximately 200,000 persons. Census data that quantify how many women, apart from the woman loan holder, live in a beneficiary household are not currently available. Eighty percent of the beneficiaries were food secure for less than six months a year. Repayment rates for the loans are 97 percent, which is unusually high.

Consequently, the increase in food stocks varies between 10 and 25 percent in the target villages. Part of this success is attributable to the fact that beneficiaries of the bank are actively involved in the bank’s management. This kind of empowerment gives rise to a close personal identification with the food bank and consequently results in high repayment rates.

GENDER APPROACH

The project targets and deals with women directly in all its stages, which is unusual for the men-dominated society that prevails in Niger. The project targets the most vulnerable women in the Maradi region, and only they are allowed to take out food from the food banks. Remarkably, the management committees of the food banks are predominantly composed of women, who are actively involved in the establishment of the bank. In addition, the management committee controls the allocation and recovery of the food stock. Committee members and beneficiaries meet regularly to discuss problems and needs associated with the food bank and decide upon the potential solutions.

Placing the project management and control into the hands of beneficiaries is unique in this context and has

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empowered rural women in a positive way, as illustrated in the following section.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

The impacts of the project have yet to be quantified because the project began so recently, in 2006. Still, it is reported that the food banks allowed the beneficiaries to cover most of their food needs during the hunger season. The increase in food availability led to a reduction in malnutrition, particularly for women and children, who were able to increase the number of meals available to them. For example, children received two to three meals, on average, during the hunger season. With a larger availability of food, the number of meals increased to three to five meals each day.

Other direct impacts of food banks are related to the coping strategies that rural households employ during a crisis. For example, agricultural productivity of the target households improved because farm households were no longer forced to redirect household labor off-farm to earn additional income for food purchases. Productivity also rose because the physical capacities of farmers increased because of regular food intake. In addition, farmers were no longer forced to harvest their crops prematurely, which often leads to lower yields.

The higher availability of food, supplied by food banks, also resulted in lower rates of livestock sold to raise income for food supplies. Livestock usually belong to women in Niger. Therefore, the higher food availability led to a higher retainment of women’s assets. Similarly, households took out fewer loans, which they often resort to in response to a crisis, resulting in lower household debts.

Interestingly, indirect impacts have also been reported.

Through their active involvement in the formation and management of the food banks, women raised their organizational capacities in areas that are traditionally men dominated. Moreover, closer social networks evolved among women, who started to share a common goal. Most importantly, by targeting and involving the most vulnerable women, the project helped them improve their social position and decision-making power within the household and the village.

To ensure the continued success of food banks, further steps have to be taken. The stock of food should be increased to about 10 tons per bank to allow for the coverage of food needs during the whole hunger season. Moreover, upgrading of storage facilities and further strengthening of management capacities are necessary to improve the performance of the food banks.

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LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

Establishing food banks where food is taken as a loan and repaid in kind is an approach not frequently followed in Niger and other developing economies. Yet the project illustrated that food banks can serve (1) to act as an efficient tool to ease a food crisis, (2) to prevent sustainably future food crises, and (3) to avoid having the most vulnerable households be hit hardest by food shortages. Food banks may also act as an instrument to relieve household debt and to prevent the outmigration of young men to earn off-farm income. Placing the management and control of the bank into the hands of the beneficiaries is a unique element of this project that resulted in a high commitment to the project and thereby may cement its success and sustainability. The empowerment of vulnerable groups, particularly women, in the management of the bank may be a channel for improving these groups’ social position in the village and in the household.

NOTES Overview

The Overview was written by Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Kaori Abe, Suzanne Raswant, Ilaria Sisto, and Richard Trenchard (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Ian Bannon, Lynn Brown, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. “Ecological Sources of Conflict,” Somaliland Times, March 15, 2003, www.somalilandtimes.net.

2. “Colombia Displacement,” May 3, 2007, www.alertnet. org.

3. “Background Information,” The UN Secretary General’s High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis,” www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/background.shtml.

4 “Burundi: Land Tops List of Challenges for Returnees,” June 14, 2007, www.irinnews.org.

5. See S. Gabizon, “Natural Disasters and Gender,” Women in Europe for a Common Future, www.wecf.de.

6. Eric Neumayer and Thomas Plumper, “The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002,” Social Science Research Network, January, www.ssrn.com.

7. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories men have left the agricultural sector for better-paying jobs, but as men’s unemployment has risen, increased pressure has been put on women to generate incomes through their agricultural work and informal employment (Esim and Kuttab 2002).

See www.erf.org.eg.

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was prepared by Sanam NaraghiAnderlini (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Kaori Abe, Suzanne Raswant, Ilaria Sisto, and Richard Trenchard (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Ian Bannon, Lynn Brown, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. Author involved in the program, December 2007.

2. In Liberia and Timor-Leste, community activists noted that in the rush to flee the onslaught of violence, women tend to carry mattresses with them, not cooking pots or other utensils needed for food preparation. (The author of this Note participated in a UNFPA workshop in which the issues were raised, in Tunis in June 2007.)

Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was prepared by Sanam NaraghiAnderlini (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Kaori Abe, Suzanne Raswant, Ilaria Sisto, and Richard Trenchard (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Ian Bannon, Lynn Brown, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. “Long Term Recovery Sidelined in East Africa Food Crisis,” press release, May 2006, www.oxfam.org.

Thematic Note 3

This Thematic Note was prepared by Sanam NaraghiAnderlini (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Kaori Abe, Suzanne Raswant, Ilaria Sisto, and Richard Trenchard (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Ian Bannon, Lynn Brown, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. David Bledsoe and Michael Brown, “Land and Conflict, A Toolkit for Intervention,” USAID, www.usaid.gov.

2. John Unruh, “Post Conflict Land Tenure, Using a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach,” LSP Working Paper No. 18, www.fao.org.

3. Estimate by IDRC, available at www.idrc.ca.

4. “Women and Sustainable Food Security,” www.fao.org.

5. The full report is available at www.lines-magazine. org/Art_Feb03/WomenMission.htm.

6. As documented in Brown and Uvuza (2006).

7. Women’s News Network, “Nepal’s ASMITA Brings Women Powerful Advocacy,” January 10, 2008, women newsnetwork.net.

8. ECLAC 2004, FAO/SEAGA program.

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Innovative Activity Profile 1

This Innovative Activity Profile was prepared by Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Kaori Abe, Suzanne Raswant, Ilaria Sisto, and Richard Trenchard (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Ian Bannon, Lynn Brown, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. The descriptions and assessment provided here are predominantly drawn and largely directly quoted from the official project documents available at www.worldbank.org.

2. The British Refugee Council, Sri Lanka Monitor Briefing, October 1999, “The Food Aid Weapon,” www.brcslpro ject.gn.apc.org.

3. Irrigation tank is the name used in Sri Lanka to describe a lake or reservoir of water constructed to capture and store seasonal rainfall for use in irrigation during the dry season and for domestic use in the villages. Most of the rural human settlements (villages) have typically evolved and located near irrigation tanks.

4. In a communication with the author, the World Bank project director stated that the idea was introduced and welcomed. The FAO document points to the “dynamism” that the WRDSs brought.

5. Available from www.worldbank.org.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

This Innovative Activity Profile was prepared by Ira Matuschke (Consultant) and reviewed by Nata Duvvury, Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); and Hubert Boirard and Maria Hartl (IFAD). This was heavily from the author’s experience and from several sources: Government of Niger (2007), IFAD (2007a, 2007b); Roumanatou and others (2007); and UNOPS (2007).

Greenberg, Marcia, and Elaine Zuckerman. 2004. “The Gender Dimensions of Post Conflict Reconstruction.” Gender and Development 12 (3): 70–82.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas, and Kimberley Kelly. 1995. “Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict, The Case of Gaza.”

Part 1, Occasional Paper, Project on Environment, Population and Scarcity, June, American Association for the Advancement of Science and the University of Toronto, Washington, DC. Kryspin-Watson, Jolanta, Jean Arkedis, and Wael Zakout.

2006. “Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management into Rural Projects.” Disaster Risk Management Working Paper No. 13, April, World Bank, Washington, DC. Lalasz, Robert. 2005. “The Indian Ocean Tsunami, Special Challenges for Women Survivors.” January, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, DC. Naraghi-Anderlini, Sanam. 2007. Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

United Nations (UN). 2005. “Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration (DDR), and Stability in Africa.” Conference Report, UN, New York.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 2007.

“Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment,” June, UNEP, Geneva.

United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee (UN IASC). 2006. Women, Men, Boys and Girls, Different Needs, Equal Opportunities. Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Aid. New York: UN. World Bank. 2007. “Restarting Irrigation in Sri Lanka’s Farming Zone.” “IDA at Work,” May, World Bank, Washington, DC. Also available at www.worldbank.org.

Zaur, Ian. 2006. “Agriculture and Conflict: A Conceptual Framework for Development.” Master’s thesis, Tufts University.

Thematic Note 1 REFERENCES Overview

Anderson, Mary. 1999. Do No Harm, How Aid Can Support Peace or War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Enarson, Elaine. 2000. “Gender and Natural Disasters.”

Working Paper No. 1, IFP/CRISIS, Recovery and Reconstruction Department, September, International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva.

Esim, Simel, and Eileen Kuttab. 2002. “Women’s Informal Employment: Securing a Livelihood against All Odds.”

Working Paper 0213, Economic Research Forum, Cairo.

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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge.”

FAO, Rome.

Kryspin-Watson, Jolanta, Jean Arkedis, and Wael Zakout.

2006. “Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management into Rural Projects.” Disaster Risk Management Working Paper No. 13, April, World Bank, Washington, DC. McGrew, Laura, Kate Frieson, and Sambath Chan. 2004. Good Governance from the Ground Up: Women’s Roles in Post Conflict Cambodia. Washington, DC: Hunt Alternatives.

Mitchell, Tom, Thomas Tanner, and Kattie Lussier. 2007.

“We Know What We Need: South Asian Women Speak Out on Climate Change Adaptation.” ActionAid/Institute for Development Studies, London.

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Morehead, J. 2007. Risk Diagnostic and Needs Assessment of the Coatepeque Caldera, El Salvador. San Salvador, El Salvador: International Organization New Acropolis.

Ramdas, Sagari, Nithya Ghotge, Nandini Mathur Ashalatha, M. L. Sanyasi Rao, N. Madhusudhan, S. Seethalakshmi, N. Pandu. Dora, N. Kantham, E. Venkatesh, and J. Savithri.

2004. “Overcoming Gender Barriers: Local Knowledge Systems and Animal Health Healing in Andrha Pradesh and Maharashtra.” In Livelihood and Gender: Equity in Community Resource Management, ed. Sumi Krishna, 67–91. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Seager, Joni, and Betsy Hartmann. 2005. Mainstreaming Gender in Environmental Assessment and Early Warning.

Nairobi: United Nations Environmental Programme.

United Nations Fund for Population Action (UNFPA).

2007. Global Review of Challenges and Good Practices in Support of Women in Conflict and Post-conflict Situations.

New York: UNFPA. United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee (UN IASC). 2006. Women, Girls, Boys and Men: Different Needs—Equal Opportunities. Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Action. New York: UN. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN ISDR). 2007. “Gender Perspectives: Working Together for Disaster Risk Reduction.” ISDR, Geneva.

Thematic Note 2

Barber, Ben. 1997. “Feeding Refugees or War? The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid.” Foreign Affairs 76 (July/August 1997): 8–14.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2003. SocioEconomic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme Handbooks. Rome: FAO. Longley, Catherine, Ian Christoplos, Tom Slaymaker, and Silvestro Meseka. 2007. “Rural Recovery in Fragile States: Agricultural Support in Countries Emerging from Conflict.” Natural Resource Perspectives No. 105, February, ODI, London.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2006. “The Development Effectiveness of Food Aid: Does Tying Matter?” OECD, Paris.

Pampell-Conaway, Camille, and Salomé Martinez. 2004.

“Adding Value, Women’s Contribution to Reintegration and Reconstruction in El Salvador.” Women Waging Peace, Washington, DC. United Nations Fund for Population Action (UNFPA), 2007. Global Review of Challenges and Good Practices in Support of Women in Conflict and Post-conflict Situations.

New York: UNFPA. United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee (UN IASC). 2006. Women, Girls, Boys and Men: Different

Needs—Equal Opportunities. Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Action. New York: UN. World Bank. 2006. Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Projects. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Thematic Note 3

Bradshaw, Sarah. 2004. “Socio-Economic Impact of Natural Disasters: A Gender Analysis.” UN ECLAC, Santiago, Chile.

Brown, Jennifer, and Justine Uvuza. 2006. “Women’s Land Rights in Rwanda.” Rural Development Institute, Seattle.

Farha, Leilani. 2000. “Women’s Rights to Land, Property and Housing.” Forced Migration Review (April 7): 23–26.

Fitzpatrick, Daniel. 2007. “Women’s Rights to Land and Housing in Tsunami-Affected Indonesia.” Oxfam International Policy Paper, Asia Research Institute, Singapore.

McGrew, Laura, Kate Frieson, and Sambath Chan. 2004.

“Good Governance from the Ground Up: Women’s Roles in Post Conflict Cambodia.” Initiative for Inclusive Security, Washington, DC. United Nations Habitat. 1999. “Women’s Rights to Land, Housing and Property in Post Conflict Settings. A Global Overview.” Land Management Series No. 9, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), Nairobi.

Unruh, Van. 2004. “Post-Conflict Land Tenure Using A Sustainable Livelihoods Approach.” Livelihood Support Programme (LSP), Working Paper 18, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome.

Van den Brink, Rogier, Hans Binswanger, John Bruce, Glen Thomas, Frank Byamugisha, and Natasha Mukherjee.

2006. “Consensus, Confusion, and Controversy: Selected Land Reform Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Working Paper No. 71, World Bank, Washington, DC. Women and Media Collective. 2002. “Women’s Concerns and the Peace Process: Findings and Recommendations.”

Report of the International Women’s Mission to the North East of Sri Lanka, October 12-17, 2002. Women and Media Collective, Colombo.

World Bank. 2004. “A Fair Share for Women, Cambodia Gender Assessment.” World Bank, Phnom Penh.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

Wanasundera, Leelangi. 2006. Rural Women in Sri Lanka’s Post-Conflict Rural Economy. Bangkok: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

Government of Niger. 2007. “Rapport d’Achèvement du Programme d’Urgence 2006 Financé sur Don FIDA No. SUPPL-IT-52-NE.” Niamey.

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International Fund for Agricultural Development. 2007a.

“Niger—L’Experience du PPILDA/AGUIE dans le Renforcement de la Sécurité Alimentaire. des Actions á Soutenir.” IFAD, Rome.

———. 2007b. “Oeuvrer pour que les Ruraux Pauvres se Libèrent de la Pauvreté au Niger.” IFAD, Rome.

Roumanatou, E., D. Hamado, and A. Aboubacar. 2007.

“Expériences des Banques des Soudure au PPILDA.” Niamey.

United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). 2007.

“Projet de Promotion de l’Initiative Locale pour le Développement á Aguié. Rapport de la Mission de Supervision.” Dakar, Senegal.

Environmental Management.” United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations, New York.

Macdonald, Mott. 2007. “Brazil Working with Both Women and Men to Promote Gender Balance.” In Gender Perspectives: Working Together for Disaster Risk Reduction, ed. R. Alain Valency, 3–6. Geneva: UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

Pusch, Christoph. 2004. Preventable Losses: Saving Lives and Property through Hazard Risk Management. A Comprehensive Risk Management Framework for Europe and Central Asia. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Thematic Note 2 FURTHER READING Thematic Note 1

Fordham, Maureen. 2001. “Challenging Boundaries: A Gender Perspective on Early Warning in Disaster and

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Kryspin-Watson, Jolanta, Jean Arkedis, and Wael Zakout.

2006. “Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Project,” Disaster Risk Management Working Paper No. 13, April, World Bank, Washington, DC.

MODULE 11: GENDER AND CRISES: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

MODULE 12

Gender in Crop Agriculture Overview

CROP AGRICULTURE, GENDER, AND PATHWAYS FROM POVERTY

he proposition that agriculture, including crop production, is the only realistic driver for mass poverty reduction and rural development in most of the developing world, and perhaps particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is now accepted by many academics, international development organizations, and national governments (Lipton 2005; World Bank 2007) (box 12.1).

A further proposition, emphasized in a recent World Development Report (World Bank 2007), is that farming is a key pathway out of poverty for women, and that women’s prospects for taking this path improve when they have better access to resources. Because of their limited access to essential production resources, such as land, labor, and inputs, women’s role in crop agriculture is often restricted to producing subsistence food crops with low potential to generate income. The prospects for women to expand their incomes through alternatives such as seasonal migration or labor markets outside agriculture are limited. Women’s mobility is usually more constrained by social and cultural norms, and women play a central role in raising and caring for children.

An important element of development strategies that rely on agriculture is to enable women to improve food production and—depending on the context—to move beyond subsistence production into higher-value and market-oriented production (World Bank 2007). Women, more than men,

T

spend their incomes on food, with consequent improvements in household food security, nutritional security, and especially the development of children. In Guatemala the amount spent on food in households whose profits from nontraditional agricultural exports were controlled by women was double that of households in which men controlled the profits (World Bank 2007).

As a means of understanding agriculture’s present and prospective role in development and poverty reduction, developing countries can be grouped into three broad categories: agricultural-based economies, transforming economies, and urbanized economies (World Bank 2007).

Farmers (including women) in each category face different challenges in improving their living conditions. This Module focuses on agricultural-based economies, in which many poor women rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and in which improvements in crop agriculture can yield the greatest impact. This Module and accompanying Thematic Notes also examine the role of gender in high-value and organic crop production.1 CROP AGRICULTURE AND EARLIER DEVELOPMENT TRENDS

To understand changing perceptions of crop agriculture and its role in development, a review of earlier development trends and policies is important. A major principle in the development of crop agriculture has been to raise the yields of a selected number of staple food crops. This effort,

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Box 12.1 Shared Views of Agriculture as a Driver of Poverty Reduction and Rural Development Food and Agriculture Organization: “There has been a shift in the general trend of giving low priority to agriculture as compared to industrialization. A new recognition is growing in many parts of the world of the crucial role of the agricultural sector for increasing export earnings, generating employment and improving food security.”

World Bank: “Rural poverty is as diverse as are the rural poor in their livelihood strategies, but in most of the poorest developing countries agriculture is the main source of rural economic growth.

That is why improved agricultural productivity and growth are central to the Bank’s strategy.”

International Fund for Agricultural Development: “Investment in agriculture is the key to meeting the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] given that 75 percent of the world’s poorest people, living on less than a dollar a day, live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods.”

Department for International Development, United Kingdom: “Agriculture should be placed at the heart of efforts to reduce poverty . . . [as] there is a mass of evidence that increasing agricultural productivity has benefited millions through higher incomes, more plentiful and cheaper food, and by generating patterns of development that are employment intensive and benefit both rural and urban areas.”

Sources: DFID 2005: 1; FAO 2007a; IFAD 2007; World Bank 2003: xv.

originating on a wide scale for developing countries in the middle of the twentieth century, led to vast increases in food supplies in many Asian countries (Tripp 2006).

The 1960s represented a time of great hope for agriculture in developing countries. This decade marked the beginning of what became known as the Green Revolution in Asia, the principal manifestation of which was the distribution of short-strawed, fertilizer-responsive varieties of wheat and rice. For a few years it looked as if the strategy of supplying appropriate varieties and complementary fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs could end rural poverty and chronic food shortages (Tripp 2006). Eventually it became

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evident that these new packages of technology were not spreading evenly among farmers; they mostly benefited farmers in favored environments with access to productive soil and irrigation facilities. Evidence emerged that widespread adoption took place in countries and regions that invested in infrastructure development and input and credit supply while supporting and stabilizing the prices of cereal crops (Gabre-Madhin, Barrett, and Dorosh 2003).

Attempts to address this imbalance and replicate Green Revolution experiences in less-favored regions led to the conclusion that farmers in “complex and risk-prone” areas (Chambers 1997) were unable to benefit from standardized technology packages and that alternative processes of technology development were required. The poverty levels of many farm households precluded any reasonable hope that they could take advantage of technologies requiring a significant financial investment (Tripp 2006).

Market orientation was and remains another important driver for crop agriculture development, resulting in improved crop varieties (notably hybrids) with uniform yields and crop characteristics and a dependence on external inputs and technologies. In market-oriented crop production systems, access to production resources is crucial, which poses potential gender inequalities. These inequalities are widened even further because very few improvements in farm technology have been devised to overcome women’s constraints.

Efforts to intensify agriculture by promoting large-scale farming and commercial crop production for export, farm mechanization, improved seed, fertilizer, and pesticides have been linked mostly to cash crop production, from which men are more likely to benefit. On the other hand, where surplus staple crop production is sold, local food and seed markets are flourishing. These types of markets are often dominated by women (Smale and others 2008).

RETHINKING CROP AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

Crop agriculture faces a new set of challenges. The persistence of poverty reveals the need to reconsider development strategies to improve equity and access. The environmental costs of previous crop production strategies are another important consideration. So-called second-generation problems with Green Revolution technologies have been observed. For example, evidence is at hand that rice yields in Asia are reaching a plateau (Horie and others 2005). Serious questions are being asked about natural resource degradation and the long-term sustainability of some intensive

cropping systems (Murgai 2001; Oluoch-Kosura and Karugia 2005).2 The use of agricultural methods that rely heavily on external inputs has caused 38 percent of agricultural land to be lost to soil erosion and depletion. Although soil erosion is a common effect of various land-use practices, 70 percent of annual erosion is estimated to occur on land used for agricultural purposes (Crucefix 1998).

The recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) delineated the negative impact of intensive agriculture on vital ecosystem services and biodiversity—outcomes that were not considered sufficiently in the past. A growing body of evidence shows that the poor depend and will continue to depend on biodiversity as an important livelihood resource (Ash and Jenkins 2007), whereas modern crop production is based on only a few plant species (Gruère, Giuliani, and Smale 2006).

Climate change and its potential consequences for agricultural production also require urgent attention in strategies for crop agriculture development. The role of crop diversity is an important element to consider in developing such strategies.

New methods of plant breeding have also affected current crop production strategies, and their impact on gender in crop production is not yet established. For example, the private sector has invested substantially in developing genetically modified (GM) crops, such as Bt maize, with a clear commercial focus. Bt maize contains an endotoxin from Bacillus thuringiensis that protects plants from insect pests such as corn borers. Disease-resistant crops, herbicidetolerant crops, biofortified crops,3 and renewable energy crops are just a few additional examples of new technologies that are available or under development.

All of these factors make it important to reconsider how and why crop production technologies are developed.

Although market orientation remains an important driver of new crop technologies, new niche markets are emerging for organic and fair trade products, among others, which could offer an opportunity for women to participate.

Innovation in agriculture now gives greater emphasis to processes that depend on local resources, including knowledge and skills, natural resources, and social structures. The realization that most technologies need to be adapted not only to local agroecological conditions but also to individual socioeconomic farm circumstances is an additional justification for promoting innovations based on local resources and skills, and the development of such resources and skills certainly offers an opportunity for empowering women as well as men farmers and their communities (Tripp 2006). It

is important to recognize that this strategy does not entail a wholesale rejection of external inputs to improve productivity, but rather the increased recognition and reinforcement of complementarities and a thorough analysis of resource availability and needs in subsistence and commercial production systems.

The Thematic Notes that accompany this Module demonstrate the extent to which using local resources is vital for improving crop agriculture. The first two Thematic Notes focus on gender in relation to soil and seed, two of the primary natural resources essential to crop production. A central theme of these Notes is the role of human and social capital in the knowledge-intensive management of agricultural technology. The Notes also identify potential complementarities between (1) local and external inputs and (2) knowledge and institutions. The third Thematic Note focuses on gender and crop protection, because crop protection is another knowledge-intensive area with high potential to improve crop productivity.

WHY IS GENDER A VITAL CONSIDERATION IN CROP AGRICULTURE?

Addressing gender is crucial in crop agriculture for reasons discussed in the following sections.

Women play vital but unrecognized roles in crop production, household food security, and household nutrition

The need to increase food production is clear. Growing populations and declining agricultural productivity are leaving millions without secure sources of food. Yet advances in food production are constrained by the “invisibility factor”—in other words, by women’s major but largely unrecognized roles in agriculture.

Although detailed statistics are not available and figures vary depending on the geographical context, it is fair to say that women supply a large proportion of the agricultural labor and in some societies produce up to 80 percent of the food crops (FAO 2007b). Failure to recognize this contribution is costly. It results in misguided policies and programs, forgone agricultural output and associated income flows, higher levels of poverty, and food and nutritional insecurity (World Bank 2007).

It is widely understood that gender and household food security are fundamentally linked. Many cultural and regional differences exist in women’s involvement in crop

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production, but rural women are the main producers of the world’s staple crops—rice, wheat, and maize—which provide up to 90 percent of the food consumed by the rural poor. Women sow, weed, apply fertilizer and pesticides, and harvest and thresh crops. Their contribution to growing secondary crops such as legumes and vegetables is even greater.

Grown mainly in home gardens, these crops provide essential nutrients and are often the only food available during the lean seasons or when major crops fail (FAO 2007b). Yet women often have the least access to means for significantly increasing output and yields.

Women’s contributions to crop production are not just qualitatively but quantitatively invisible as well. Statistics on women’s yields, women’s technology adoption rates, and women’s uses of inputs are rarely reported, which proved problematic in developing this Module (the importance of gender-disaggregated data is discussed in Module 16).

Women manage complex, species-rich production systems

Women tend to manage complex production systems with multiple functions, purposes, and species. These systems are not designed to maximize the productivity of any single crop but to ensure overall stability and resilience among the crops that are produced. This agricultural reality is often overlooked when yields of a single crop are taken as a criterion for evaluating the performance of crop production.

Given the increasingly severe weather events caused by climate change, criteria such as crop stability and resistance may be valued more highly in the future.

Women have limited access to agricultural services and inputs, are more likely to lack assets, and grow more subsistence crops

Women farmers are more likely to be asset-poor subsistence farmers. In sub-Saharan Africa it has been calculated that agricultural productivity could increase by up to 20 percent if women’s access to such resources as land, seed, and fertilizer were equal to men’s (DFID 2007), yet women still face serious constraints in obtaining essential support for most productive resources, such as land, fertilizer, knowledge, infrastructure, and market organization (these issues are discussed in detail in other Modules). The ease of obtaining agricultural services and inputs is even more important in light of women’s heavy workloads and time constraints outside of agriculture.

Although rightly contending that the effectiveness of development strategies hinges on reaching African smallholders,

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agricultural experts seldom recognize that most of Africa’s smallholders are women (World Bank 2007)—as seen by the costly errors that have arisen from ignoring the fact that women smallholders may face different constraints than men do, and that such constraints are therefore an important part of the problem. The Agriculture for Development Policy Brief (World Bank 2008: 1) states, “The design of many development policies continues to assume wrongly that farmers and rural workers are men. The important role of women in agriculture in many parts of the world calls for urgent attention to gender-specific constraints in agricultural production and marketing. Mainstreaming gender in agricultural policies and programs is essential for development success.”

Beware narrow assumptions about women’s “food security first” agenda

Women’s engagement in farming is commonly associated first and foremost with a food security agenda. Although this statement is certainly true, such a narrow view will limit women’s engagement with commercially oriented crop production and will do nothing to help women achieve their broader livelihood goals (NEF 2006). In many situations, women combine both food production and commercial agriculture, although often on a small scale. The gender division of activities in crop cultivation can be quite complicated, with different fields being cultivated for different purposes by men and women or family groups, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Women often manage the home gardens, and small-scale crop production can contribute significantly to women’s incomes as well as to household food security. Women often grow “minor” crops with limited or no market value. However, it is important to realize that women have the potential and the right to participate in more commercially oriented crop production. Local markets offer a good opportunity to earn income through small-scale sales of staple crops and vegetables. Often these opportunities are only seasonal.

Crop production is the primary employer of women in most countries

Crop production is still the primary source of employment for women in most developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Almost two-thirds of rural women are from low-income households. Women-headed households are the poorest among these, making up more than 35–40 percent of all heads of household in some parts of Asia (Balakrishnan and Fairbairn-Dunlop 2005). Box 12.2

Box 12.2 Women in Agriculture and Crop Production: Indicative Statistics

Box 12.3 Bolivia: Adjusting Local Agriculture to the Loss of Rural Labor

Although statistics on women’s role in agriculture are not widely available—a failure that the Food and Agriculture Organization, in conjunction with other United Nations agencies, is seeking to address—it is nevertheless possible to glean some indicative data from the literature and databases:

In Sucre, Bolivia, the labor-intensive harvest and preparation of quinoa coincides with a seasonal migration of laborers to the nation’s cotton-, sugarcane-, soy-, and wine-producing areas. In areas significantly affected by this migration, women often remain in charge of the farm but face an increasing lack of labor to process quinoa for home consumption and sale in local markets. It has been argued that if quinoa can be made a commercial crop, generating sufficient income to obviate the need for migration, then sufficient labor may become available for postharvest processing.

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In Southeast Asia, women provide up to 90 percent of the labor for rice cultivation.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women produce up to 80 percent of basic foodstuffs, both for household consumption and for sale.

Women perform from 25 to 45 percent of agricultural field tasks in Colombia and Peru.

Women constitute 53 percent of the agricultural labor in Egypt.

Fewer than 10 percent of women farmers in India, Nepal, and Thailand own land.

An analysis of credit schemes in five African countries found that women received less than 10 percent of the credit awarded to men smallholders.

Only 15 percent of the world’s agricultural extension agents are women.

Source: FAO 2007c.

presents some indicative statistics on women’s importance in agriculture and crop production.

Women are not only vitally involved in crop production—their role is expanding. Development strategies will be compelled to address gender concerns very explicitly because the number of women involved in and responsible for crop production in developing countries appears to be growing so rapidly. Known as the “feminization” of agriculture, this sociodemographic trend is causing temporary as well as permanent shifts in women’s responsibilities and tasks. An important factor behind this trend is the migration of young men in search of more lucrative employment off of the farm. The depredations of HIV and AIDS in subSaharan Africa have also encouraged this trend. In some areas the feminization of agriculture has altered the availability of labor for producing crops, which in turn may alter cropping patterns, tasks, and crop technology preferences (see Thematic Note 4, Module 7). An example from Bolivia (box 12.3) gives indications of these trade-offs.

Source: Jonathan Hellin, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, personal communication, 2007.

A potential advantage of migration is that it provides additional cash to invest in crop agriculture and facilitate a move from subsistence to more commercially oriented agricultural systems. These shifts can offer new opportunities for women but can also imply cultural changes and a redefinition of gender roles in crop production. Gladwin and others (2001) observe that in “most parts of Africa, women consider farming for food as part of what makes them women and gives them a gender identity.” In other situations women themselves are the ones who migrate in search of employment, which again has significant consequences for crop production. These intrahousehold socioeconomic changes are important to understand and consider in any crop production intervention.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

The following discussion describes the key gender issues in crop agriculture and the potential benefits of addressing them.

Gender and crop choice

As pointed out earlier, cash and export crops are frequently regarded as “men’s” crops and subsistence crops as “women’s” crops.4 The standard explanation for this division of crops by gender is that women are responsible for feeding the family and thus prefer to grow subsistence crops for the household, whereas men are responsible for providing cash income and thus raise cash and export crops.

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In general, however, it is difficult to tell whether women grow lower-value subsistence crops because they have different preferences and concerns or because they cannot access the land, inputs, credit, information, and markets that would permit them to do otherwise (Doss 1999). In Ghana, for instance, women farmers view maize production as a productive, income-generating activity yet refrain from growing maize because they lack the capital to purchase the required inputs (fertilizer, herbicide) or hire someone to plow the fields. Instead they continue cultivating cassava and yams, which require fewer external inputs. Moreover, the majority of women consider maize cultivation to be a risky enterprise because the crop is sensitive to drought (AdjeiNsiah and others 2007; see also Thematic Notes 1 and 2).

Cultivation not only of different crops but also of different varieties of the same crop may also vary by gender.

Maize, for instance, may be grown as a cash or subsistence crop. High-yielding maize varieties were introduced in many areas to generate a marketable surplus, but many of these varieties had different processing, cooking, and storage characteristics than the local varieties. The high-yielding varieties were often promoted as cash crops. Consequently in many places local varieties are considered “women’s” crops, and high-yielding varieties are considered “men’s” crops (Badstue and others 2007). To the extent that highyielding varieties are grown for cash and local varieties for food, this gender-variety pattern may persist. However, as high-yielding varieties that meet the consumption preferences of smallholder farmers are developed, the distinctions between subsistence and cash varieties may become blurred.

For instance, both hybrid maize and local maize can be viewed as either subsistence or cash crops, depending on a farmer’s circumstances and market opportunities. A case study in Tanzania (FAO 2008) showed that groundnut yields would determine whether the crop was controlled by men or women. If the groundnut harvest was good, men sold the produce in the market; if it was not, control would remain with the women.

Gender differentiation also occurs with respect to combinations of crop species and varieties. Commercial systems feature homogeneous varieties of a single crop species, whereas traditional cropping patterns are much more diverse. As noted, women tend to manage complex and species-rich production systems designed to ensure overall production stability and resilience. Some traditional crops determine the social status of men and women and are linked closely to traditional knowledge and culture. They are also integral to social capital because of their important roles in ceremonies and traditional meals. In this sense,

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changes in crop diversity can alter social capital formation and power relations (Howard 2003).

The loss of crop diversity could also threaten poor people’s ability to adapt their agricultural enterprises to climate change. A recent study by Cline (2007), which reinforces the likely negative impact of global warming on crop agriculture, indicates that the combined effects on agriculture are likely to be seriously unfavorable in developing countries, with the most severe losses occurring in Africa, India, and Latin America. These rapidly emerging issues need to be taken into account in designing interventions in crop agriculture. Understanding women farmers’ production strategies with respect to crop stability and resilience will enable agricultural research and development interventions to strengthen farmers’ capabilities to adapt to climate change and improve family food security.

Gender and crop management tasks

In most parts of the world, men and women tend to work at different tasks. Numerous time allocation studies have examined which household members perform which farm tasks (for example, see Hirschmann and Vaughan 1984; McSweeney 1979; Pala 1983). These studies often identify some tasks as men’s tasks and others as women’s tasks. For example, in Kenya women reported that men were responsible for building the granary, and women were clearly responsible for hand digging, harvesting, and transporting the crops (Pala 1983). Although many tasks may be viewed as exclusively women’s or men’s, in practice the divisions are blurred, and both men and women are involved. Relatively few tasks are done only by men or only by women (Doss 1999).

That women throughout Africa tend to provide more labor for agriculture than men—and almost always provide more total labor—has implications for technology adoption. Even if they know they can increase productivity, women may be unable to increase the number of hours that they spend working. Simple comparisons of hours worked do not capture issues related to the type of work being done and the energy expended. The value of time will vary by season and task; thus, people will be interested in saving the time that is the most costly (Levi 1987). However, to the extent that the tasks vary by gender and the value of women’s time is lower, farmers may be more inclined to adopt technologies that save men’s time.

The gender division of labor appears to change in response to changing economic opportunities. As noted, when men leave agricultural communities in search of

higher earnings, women assume many traditionally “men’s” tasks. Men usually move into traditionally “women’s” crop activities when those activities are perceived as having become more productive or profitable. Women in Burkina Faso traditionally picked shea nuts, for example, but now that sales of shea nuts are profitable, men are becoming involved, often with the assistance of their wives. Another factor behind changes in labor allocation for different tasks is the adoption of new technologies. For instance, the mechanization of “women’s” tasks may cause men to take greater control of those tasks. The extent to which these changes benefit or disadvantage women and men is not always clear, and it is difficult to predict a priori what changes will occur (Doss 1999).

Seasonality further influences labor allocations. Compared to Asia, where irrigated agriculture is much more common, in Africa the seasonal demands for labor are more pronounced, because crop agriculture is mainly rain fed and the growing season is relatively short. In Africa, 50–70 percent of the labor is required within a four-month period; comparable figures for Asia are 40–50 percent (Delgado and Ranade 1987). If this seasonal demand coincides with migration by men, women’s burden of labor becomes even higher and negatively affects overall crop production, because women will have to prioritize labor allocation between food and cash crops.

Research and extension systems can become more effective in developing sustainable crop production systems if they adopt a gender perspective that heightens their understanding of the distinct roles, needs, and opportunities of different household members (see also Module 7).

Gender and knowledge differences

Men and women can accumulate very distinct and rich sets of agricultural knowledge and skills as a result of gender divisions in the tasks they undertake, such as seed management and conservation and pest and disease management.

Many studies show that men and women have different preferences and criteria for choosing among crops and varieties and performing such activities as selecting seed, cultivating, harvesting, and processing (Howard 2003).

Because women tend to manage complex farming systems, they have developed multiple assessment criteria for crop system performance, encompassing risk minimization, vulnerability, and other objectives that must be considered in promoting innovations.

Local knowledge of men and women farmers is an important asset in innovation and technology development,

especially for such key crop production issues as seed management, plant breeding, crop protection, and soil fertility management. Understanding gender differences in local knowledge and recognizing the contribution women can make in this field are important, because women are more frequently involved in traditional farming practices. Knowledge difference can reveal important opportunities to contribute to crop improvement or crop and variety selection (see the discussion of farmer innovation in Thematic Note 1 and seed management in Thematic Note 2). Knowledge differences must also be understood to improve the effectiveness of any technology dissemination or extension process (see the discussion of integrated pest management in Thematic Note 3).

Gender and access to information, organizations, and markets

Information—appropriate information, given and received on a timely basis—is critical to the development and use of technical innovations and improvements, yet women frequently cannot obtain such information. Agricultural research and development, including extension services, have been dominated by men and have largely ignored women’s role in crop production (Jiggins, Samanta, and Olawoye 1997) and have not focused on women’s needs for technology and information. Social norms and cultural practices can prevent women from participating in development interventions or information campaigns. Using more appropriate information channels is one way to address this situation (see Thematic Note 3). Another strategy is to provide more relevant information by specifically addressing gender aspects of crop production.

Over the last two centuries, societies have invested considerably in complex institutional arrangements to advance technological innovation in agriculture. Many of these institutions have overlooked women and have marginalized women farmers in terms of technology adoption. Genderresponsive actions should enable women farmers to take greater advantage of extension systems and increase the accessibility of new agricultural technologies and innovations. Organizational innovations, such as participatory research, farmer-extension linkages, and strengthening the linkages between formal and local seed systems, can improve women’s livelihood outcomes by ensuring that technologies meet their needs. These issues are discussed in greater detail in Thematic Notes 1 and 2, which describe potential complementarities between formal and informal organizations (see also Module 7).

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Markets will continue to influence the choice of crop species and varieties in important ways. Markets can offer opportunities for women as well as men, and crop interventions must not fail to consider this point (examples include assessing the export potential for women’s crops or facilitating women’s participation in niche markets for organic or fair trade produce). Markets are also important for providing agricultural inputs. Because women so often lack the economic resources or mobility to reach input markets, improving access to local markets can be particularly important for them (see also Modules 5 and 8). For example, as discussed in Thematic Note 2, local seed markets are an increasingly important means for women to obtain improved crop species and varieties and exchange knowledge. Flourishing food markets for local consumption can render distinctions between cash and subsistence crops less obvious, and local markets give women an opportunity to become involved in crop commercialization.

KEY AREAS FOR INTERVENTION

Soil—specifically soil productivity and fertility—is a key asset for resource-poor women and men. The degradation of soil through overuse and erosion can severely limit people’s livelihoods. Because sustainable soil management is fundamental to the future of crop agriculture, Thematic Note 1 discusses interventions specifically designed to help women sustain soil productivity.

Diversity—both in the types of crops grown and in the genetic makeup of specific crops—is another important asset, especially for resource-poor farmers. Farmers may select crops and varieties of crops that make it possible to pursue a greater range of livelihood strategies (which may vary by gender among household members), enhance household food security, and minimize risk. For example, the failure of one variety or crop may be mitigated by the survival of others. Strategies to understand and conserve genetic diversity must not overlook the fact that women often have different means of accessing and exchanging seed (Thematic Note 2).

Women and children are often directly or indirectly involved in crop protection, and their limited access to information about safe pesticide use imperils human health and poses an environmental hazard. Twenty to forty percent of the world’s potential crop production is lost annually to weeds, pests, and diseases (CropLife International 2007).

Crop protection strategies that may be particularly relevant to women are discussed in Thematic Note 3.

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For each of these key areas for intervention, the following points should be kept in mind: ■

■

■

■

Women and men, depending on their cultural and social backgrounds, perform different roles and have varying responsibilities in agriculture—in crop production as well as crop management. A better understanding of these differences will help to address the prevailing gender issues.

In making decisions about their livelihoods, men and women have different perceptions of what is important.

Men and women base their decisions on information from different sources.

The unequal power relationships between rich and poor, men and women, must be understood to achieve equitable development and full participation of women.

Interventions must be developed based on a comprehensive understanding of the needs that women and men identify to improve their situations. The strategic interests of women and the most disadvantaged groups need to be addressed to improve overall crop production and reduce poverty.

The adoption and use of new technologies and inputs are strongly affected by who controls and owns a given crop. Failure to understand and address these and other socioeconomic dimensions of crop production means that interventions are bound to fail. All interventions that aim to enhance the productivity of crop agriculture must take explicit account of gender. The principal concerns are well known; many are discussed specifically in this volume. As a matter of course, women farmers must have access to information, credit, and other inputs, as well as the organizations through which markets are accessed and policies are influenced. Years of experience confirm that these things are still easier said than done. At the same time, it is critical to acknowledge the “feminization” of agriculture (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa) and overcome the bias of associating women’s farming exclusively with a food security agenda. Recognizing women’s involvement in commercial crop production and ensuring that they benefit from research, extension, credit, land tenure rights, market access, and other elements of production, innovation, and participation still requires a significant organizational shift in many agricultural services. Without such a shift, it will be difficult to broaden the base of women farmers who can adopt crop technologies, and thus it will be difficult for agriculture to contribute to poverty reduction, environmental

sustainability, and economic growth as envisioned in many countries.

MEASURING CHANGE: GENDER-SENSITIVE MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

It is important to be able to measure the impact that crop and soil initiatives have on men and women beneficiaries,

their families, and communities. Table 12.1 gives some ideas for indicators and sources of verification, though clearly modifications are required for each program.

Depending on the country or region, it may be relevant to also consider ethnicity and caste alongside gender (both as comparative indicators and when collecting data), because women of lower castes or ethnic minorities are usually in the most disadvantaged situation.

Table 12.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Crops (continued) Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Over a set period, an increase of x percent in household incomes from crop-based activities among women-headed households and poor households in program areas

• Household surveys • Project management information system • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Changes over x-year period of project activities in household nutrition, health, education, vulnerability to violence, and happiness, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys, before and after • Project management information system • School records

Number of local farmers involved in fair trade production and marketing groups, disaggregated by gender

• Sales records of group

Number of women and men holding management or treasurer positions in natural resource management groups

• Bank account records • Committee meeting minutes

Number of farmers using zero tillage, mulch, cover crops, and new innovations to decrease labor needs and increase soil fertility, disaggregated by gender

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders • Observation

Changes in soil condition in farmland, before and after program activities (such as nutrient levels, percentage of ground cover)

• Department of Agriculture surveys • Farm records • Participatory monitoring by villagers or herders

Number of women and men actively involved in participatory research and innovations

• • • •

Percentage of men and women farmers who have access to highquality, locally adapted seed

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders

Percentage of men and women farmers who implement seed saving and participate in local seed supply systems

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders • Program records

Seed type preferences, disaggregated by gender and ethnicity

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders • Seed sales records

Number of men and women participating in community seed bank management

• Committee meeting minutes • Program and project records

Number of women and men participating in training on integrated pest management

• Training records

Awareness of safe practices for handling agricultural chemicals and access to appropriate protective equipment, disaggregated by gender and ethnicity

• • • •

Adoption of recommended practices and technologies among men and women farmers, before and after program activity

• Case studies • Interviews of farmers • Sample surveys

Agricultural extension records Interviews with stakeholders Observation Participatory monitoring

Focus groups Observation Posttraining assessment Stakeholder interviews

(Table continues on the following page)

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Table 12.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Crops (continued) Indicator Gender differences in workload as a result of introduced practices or new technology for crop production

• Case studies • Gender analysis (such as comparative time clocks of men’s and women’s activities) • Participatory rapid appraisal • Sample surveys

Percentage of women and men community extension workers and professional agricultural extensionists

• Department of agriculture records • Project records

Numbers of years of formal education of farmers, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys • School attendance and examination records

Level of satisfaction among women and men with access to and quality of extension and training services

• Interviews of farmers • Sample surveys

Women or other disadvantaged groups actively participating in management committees and boards of producer groups and cooperatives

• • • •

Source: Authors, with inputs from Pamela White, author of Module 16.

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Sources of verification and tools

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Committee meeting minutes Interviews with stakeholders Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) Program and project records

T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Gender and Soil Productivity Management

WHY CONSIDER SOIL PRODUCTIVITY FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE?

ealthy, fertile soils are integral to the goals of sustaining agricultural livelihoods, attaining food security, and fostering agricultural development.

Because most high-quality agricultural land is already in production, the marginal benefit of converting new land diminishes. In West Asia and North Africa, at least 87 percent of suitable land is already farmed; in South Asia, the corresponding figure is 94 percent (FAO 2006). Natural resources such as land and water are increasingly scarce, and their quality is declining. Growth in food production will depend primarily on further intensification of agriculture, mostly in high-potential areas (FAO 2005a). Yet unless considerable care is taken, intensification can exact a heavy toll on soil health, fertility, and productivity.

A recent report on how to meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015 argues that improving soil health is the first entry point for correcting soil nutrient imbalances, improving agricultural productivity, and thus reducing hunger, particularly in Africa (UN Millennium Project 2005: 13). Soil fertility is an important component of soil health, along with organic matter content and microorganism populations. Another critical entry point for improving soil productivity and reducing hunger is the adequate, location-specific choice of crops and crop management practices.

As population pressure increases in many areas, especially sub-Saharan Africa, traditional fallow and crop rotation systems no longer maintain and restore soil fertility.

When soils become less productive, crop yields stagnate or decline, and farmers become more dependent on external inputs to maintain crop productivity. Although soil fertility losses are particularly worrisome in Africa (box 12.4), they are also severe in tropical Asia and Latin America, where soil nutrient losses are high in agricultural systems compared to

H

natural ecosystems (Hartemink 2004). Other factors, such as soil erosion and climate change (leading to more severe weather events), have further depleted soils and heighten the need for more holistic soil management approaches.

Women—especially if they are the main providers of staple food crops—are particularly affected by declining soil fertility. Men often control the best land with the best soil to produce commercial crops, and women more often farm marginal land. They have limited or no access to external inputs such as fertilizer. Often they have less access to land itself, because inheritance laws and other legal and cultural norms favor men (see also Module 4). When women own farmland, their plots are generally smaller than those owned by men. In Mexico, for example, women own less than 20 percent of all farmland (Korinek 2005), and in 2000, 56 percent of women farmers owned less than 2 hectares, compared to 35 percent of male farmers (White, Salas, and Box 12.4 Africa: Consequences of Unproductive Soils Agricultural production is the main source of economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa, where the declining health and productivity of the soil indicate that it is rapidly losing its value as a critical agricultural asset. Not only can less food be grown on unproductive soils, but the production of cash crops for export is endangered. It is essential that agricultural production and soils be managed in sustainable ways, so that the present generation is fed and soil conditions can improve to support future generations.

Source: “Sustainable Land Management and Soil Productivity Improvement in Support of Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa,” www.fao.org.

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Gammage 2003). In this respect women face a complex challenge: they have to produce their crops on poorer soil, often on smaller areas, and with fewer or no inputs.

EVOLVING APPROACHES TO GENDERRESPONSIVE SOIL FERTILITY MANAGEMENT

Developing countries’ approach to soil fertility management has evolved considerably over the last 50 years. Researchers have shifted from an almost exclusive focus on inorganic (chemical) fertilizer toward a broader range of approaches and nutrient sources (NEF 2006). At least in the research community, the value of integrated nutrient management— “the judicious manipulation of nutrient stocks and flows” (de Jager, Nandwa, and Okoth 1998: 37)—is now widely accepted.

The high climatic risks, uncertain markets, and poor infrastructure characteristic of many low-potential, isolated zones have challenged the economic wisdom of using high levels of external inputs and placed a premium on technologies that rely relatively little on such inputs (IFAD 2002). Many recognized alternatives to inorganic fertilizer are available. The use of animal manure, agroforestry, legumes, living mulch, compost, and other technologies that enhance soil fertility is traditional in many farming systems, especially systems that are managed and controlled by women. In other contexts, such technologies have been promoted actively (Uphoff 2002). The value of conservation agriculture has been established in many locations, with important lessons to be drawn (FAO 2005b).

Low-external-input strategies to improve soil fertility are often labor and knowledge intensive, however. Consequently they may be difficult for resource-poor farmers to adopt, given their limited access to labor and information, especially in remote areas where few formal institutions exist to strengthen human and social capital.

Despite the recognized importance of low-externalinput strategies, chemical fertilizer remains the basis of soil fertility management in many farming systems and most intensification trajectories (NEF 2006). Chemical fertilizer is central to most extension messages, and the use of nitrogenous fertilizer continues to increase rapidly in the developing world (van Dam 2005). For a host of economic and logistical reasons, however, resource-poor farmers, including women, cannot apply fertilizer at high rates. The cost of fertilizer can represent a high proportion of the total variable cost of production, an investment that poor farmers can ill afford where there is a risk of crop failure (FAO 2006). Fertilizer is often sold in quantities too large for poor

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women to buy. Fertilizer may be considered too risky to buy, especially when it will be used to produce food crops with little possibility of generating cash income. Even when farmers can afford fertilizer, they cannot always obtain it.

Access is often directly limited by inadequate infrastructure and transport facilities.

Conventional soil improvement technologies based solely on the use of external inputs have widened the divide between better-off and resource-poor farmers. External inputs require cash and access to markets, so women engaged in subsistence agriculture have benefited least from their introduction. The vulnerability of resource-poor households often makes them averse to risk and discourages them from pursuing new activities or adopting new practices and technologies (ICAD 2004). The introduction and promotion of low-external-input technologies, which would rely on resources that are more easily available to women in small-scale production systems, could improve their soil fertility management capacities and address disparities between better-off and less-favored households, because these technologies are better suited to the latter.

As mentioned earlier, improving soil productivity is a key to improving food security. Women may benefit from improved crop production by selling surplus in the local market. Enhanced crop productivity could thus be a starting point for livelihood diversification. Increased soil productivity also increases returns to labor, which is especially important for labor-constrained women, because it may free time for additional activities. Zero-tillage systems, cover crops, and mulches, for example, can significantly improve soil productivity and at the same time reduce labor for weeding. These alternatives are often context specific; mulching, for instance, is more appropriate for smallscale farming.

Women farmers often apply different criteria to assess soil productivity, because they are more concerned with the overall output of the cropping system (often a mixed cropping system). Mixed cropping systems may yield as much or more food as monoculture systems, and often they are designed to foster overall crop stability and system resilience. Agricultural research and development interventions can be better targeted if they take these local strategies for managing soil productivity into account.

Combining fertilizer use with other soil productivity management strategies, such as mulches, cover crops, or intercropping, could further improve the stability and resilience of cropping systems, characteristics that are gaining importance in light of the potential negative effects of climate change.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

It takes time to improve soil productivity. The results of investments in soil productivity are usually not seen in the first years. The lag time between investment and results means that farmers may face a trade-off between meeting their immediate needs (which may lead to nutrient mining) and ensuring the longer-term sustainability of their land (DFID 2002). It also means that land tenure is a major influence, both on the maintenance of soil fertility and on the ability to intensify farming sustainably. Because women so frequently lack secure access to land, they may be reluctant to invest in soil improvement. “Secure access” to land refers not only to having legal title to the land but also to having the power within the household to make and influence decisions about how the land will be used. A possible scenario, for instance, is that men household members will start managing a formerly unproductive field once the women have invested labor and resources to enhance its soil productivity.

Extension systems continue to direct information on soil improvement largely to men (see also Module 7). The imbalance between men and women extension staff reduces the effectiveness of extension services for women farmers, and the apparent failure to focus on women’s crops and production systems renders many extension messages meaningless for them. Because fertilizer recommendations are usually designed for monoculture systems, they are difficult for women to apply in mixed cropping systems.

Extension systems supply limited information on alternatives to chemical fertilizers, partly because research systems

still have limited capacity for studying the synergistic effects of soil amendments (such as manure and compost) and inorganic fertilizers (DFID 2002).

In some countries the withdrawal of subsidies for inorganic fertilizer has reduced its availability for resource-poor farmers, including women. An alternative policy could be to adopt “smart” (targeted and time-bound) subsidies that increase the possibility that poorer farmers will use fertilizer, especially by making small packages of fertilizer available at a reasonable price (DFID 2002).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Actions to address key gender issues in managing soil productivity can be clustered into three categories: (1) the use of chemical fertilizer; (2) the use of low-external-input technologies, including synergistic effects of fertilizer and other practices; and (3) the appropriate choice of crops and crop management practices to enhance soil productivity. The actions and corresponding lessons are discussed in the sections that follow.

Chemical fertilizer use in gendered crop agriculture

The use of chemical fertilizer needs to be considered from a regional perspective (table 12.2). The African continent (including North African countries and South Africa) has consistently represented only 2–3 percent of world fertilizer consumption; the share for sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) is generally less than 1 percent (FAO 2005a).

Table 12.2 Regional Disparities in Chemical Nutrient Consumption, 2002/03–2003/04 Nutrients (000 tons) Change (%)

Percentage of world total

2,924

–0.7

2.1

3,528

–0.9

2.5

50,612

51,751

1.0

36.3

3,660

3,887

1.1

2.7

Latin America

13,230

13,191

–1.0

9.3

North America

22,022

22,024

1.0

15.4

3,162

3,233

1.0

2.3

20,882

20,937

1.0

14.7

Region

2002/03

2003/04

Africa

4,278

Central Europe

4,086

East Asia Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Oceania South Asia West Asia Western Europe World

4,607

5,678

1.2

4.0

15,142

15,436

1.0

10.8

141,681

142,589

1.0

100.0

Source: “IFADATA Statistics,” www.fertilizer.org.

Note: Bold faced entries are regional totals.

THEMATIC NOTE 1: GENDER AND SOIL PRODUCTIVITY MANAGEMENT

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The regional averages hide considerable variation among countries. Whereas fertilizer use is increasing rapidly in southern Africa (Crawford, Jayne, and Kelly 2005), it is stagnant or declining elsewhere in Africa. The majority of Africa’s farmers (many of them women) are smallholders with less than 2 hectares (Altieri 2002), and they grow most of their basic food crops with virtually no or minimal fertilizer. For example, 72 percent of millet, approximately half of all food legumes, and nearly all yams and cocoyams are produced in this way (Altieri 2002). In Tanzania and Uganda, the average use of chemical fertilizers is less than 1 kilogram per hectare per year, which implies that most land is never fertilized (Wynen and Vanzetti 2002).

Overall trends in fertilizer consumption can be summarized as follows (FAO 2006): ■

■

■

■

Fertilizer consumption has increased substantially, although not consistently, in countries with rapidly increasing exports of agricultural commodities, such as Argentina and Brazil.

Structural adjustment programs implemented to correct financial imbalances in certain developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s negatively affected fertilizer use among small-scale farmers.

In countries where centrally planned systems, with their heavy support to agriculture and planned allocations of fertilizer, were superseded around 1990 by market-oriented systems, fertilizer consumption fell abruptly.

In the few developing countries where governments continued to support fertilizer use, sometimes despite pressure to the contrary, fertilizer consumption continued to increase.

Unfortunately, no systematic national or global data sets compare fertilizer use by gender. Indirect evidence for the unequal use of inorganic fertilizer can be obtained by analyzing fertilizer use by crop species where data are available.

According to FAO: In Latin America seven crops (maize, soybean, sugar cane, beans, wheat, coffee and rice), plus vegetables and fruits, account for 88 percent of the total fertilizer consumption. A substantial proportion of the fertilizer is used on agricultural cash and commodity crops for the domestic commercial market and export. Although statistics are not available, it seems that little fertilizer is used in the subsistence/small-scale farming sector. In SSA the main crops to receive fertilizer include maize, millet and sorghum. In South Asia and Southeast Asia about 60 percent of fertilizers are used on cereals. In South Asia, crop production is oriented towards supplying domestic

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demand, whereas Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Viet Nam are also important exporters.

FAO (2006: 55)

The data suggest that the larger share of fertilizer is applied to commercial crops, which indicates that women use only a small proportion on their staple crops.

Many reasons account for women’s limited use of fertilizer. As mentioned earlier, because fertilizer is mainly sold in large quantities, it is a big investment, especially for cashconstrained women. Women usually have less access to transport and find it more difficult to carry bags of fertilizer home. In remote rural areas, fertilizer is not usually readily available, and thus it is especially difficult for women, who have fewer opportunities to leave the village, to obtain. All of these constraints reveal strategic entry points for interventions that could improve women’s use of fertilizer.

It is also important to emphasize that fertilizer is usually promoted in conjunction with other technologies, especially improved crop varieties. The long-term sustainability of such “packages” depends on the continued availability of their components. Box 12.5 illustrates the problems inherent in this approach and demonstrates why it is vital to address gender inequality in access to assets and services.

Alternative crop management practices for improved soil productivity

For resource-poor farmers engaged mainly in subsistence production, low-external-input technologies are usually a more affordable way to improve soil productivity. Crop rotations, improved fallows, agroforestry systems, integrated soil and water management practices, and the choice of suitable crops are some of the options. It is important to emphasize that the crop management practices described in this section as a means to enhance soil productivity do not exclude the use of external inputs. The use of these practices and the use of external inputs can be complementary, depending upon the resources and socioeconomic situation of each farmer.

As mentioned, low-external-input technologies are often based on local practices that have been adapted in light of additional knowledge and skills. Recognizing the beneficial effects of legumes on soil productivity, women farmers often grow legumes in combination with other crops such as tubers and cereals, but this practice requires, among other resources, farmers’ time and knowledge. Because the lack of labor is often cited as a major constraint to the adoption of low-external-input technologies, it is essential to match the

Box 12.5 Ghana: Nuances of Success among Men and Women Farmers

The Ghana Grains Development Project is one of the few African success stories of long-term donor support to strengthen national research and extension for food production. Ghana is also one of the few African countries with sustained increases in per capita food production. The Ghana Grains Project focused primarily on increasing the output of maize and cowpeas through the development and adoption of welladapted varieties and management practices for each of Ghana’s agroecological zones. Graduate-level training was provided to about 50 scientists, nearly all of whom returned to the project. Annual maize production rose from 380,000 tons in 1979, when the project started, to more than 1 million tons by the project’s end in 1998. Maize yields increased by 40 percent, from 1.1

tons per hectare to 1.5 tons. The project’s bottom-up approach integrated farmers in all stages of the research and included a socioeconomic assessment of the technology. Large-scale extension programs to promote the varieties and practices, supported by Sasakawa Global 2000 (a nongovernmental organization [NGO]), enabled more than half of all maize farmers in Ghana to adopt improved varieties, fertilizer, and planting methods by 1998. After fertilizer subsidies were removed, fertilizer use dropped to 25 percent, challenging the approach’s sustainability. Adoption was significantly lower among women farmers (39 percent) than men (59 percent), reflecting differences in access to assets and services, and especially the biases in extension.

Source: Canadian International Development Agency, personal communication 2006, cited in World Bank 2007.

labor demands of such technologies carefully with household labor availability. These issues are especially important for women farmers who have specific seasonal labor-use patterns and who have no recourse to assets and services (World Bank 2007).

Some low-external-input technologies require no more labor than current practices. Others, such as conservation tillage, are attractive precisely because they save labor. In some cases (such as stone bunds for soil conservation), the initial labor investment for establishing the technology is high, which can limit adoption if the work coincides with peak labor periods. In Burkina Faso, for example, stone bunds contribute to soil and water conservation, promoting higher yields and, eventually, higher returns to labor. Nevertheless, 48 percent of women involved in their construction claimed that the bunds added to their workload, and only 12 percent said the bunds lightened their work (Atampugre 1993).

A further criticism of the application of low-externalinput technologies is their highly context-specific nature, which means that they must be adapted to particular agroecological and socioeconomic conditions. Although much of the responsibility for local adaptation is ultimately borne by farmers themselves, these technologies clearly imply an even greater burden for national agricultural research systems (Sumberg, Okali, and Reece 2003). A shift to participatory innovation development—a process that combines local and external knowledge and skills—is required, supported

by training and capacity building among researchers, extension staff, and participating farmers. The shift to participatory development of innovations has important positive consequences for the development of human and social capital, as seen in the following examples. For a range of cultural and socioeconomic reasons, women often must be specifically approached and encouraged to participate in such initiatives.

The examples also indicate the wide range of options available for integrated soil fertility management. Farmerled research initiatives (Budelman and DeFoer 2000; DeFoer and Scoones 2001) have demonstrated the promise of complex responses to nutrient scarcities that include organic as well as inorganic nutrient sources. Rather than favoring one approach over the other, observations in the field indicate that farmers are interested in experimenting with organic and chemical fertilizers to better attune responses to local needs, a process that inevitably requires an integrated approach.

Involving women in soil fertility management innovations.

It is widely acknowledged that the sustainability of projects and programs to develop technology is linked closely to the participation of the target audience. Such participation is especially important in projects that rely on the traditional knowledge of women farmers to develop soil fertility management innovations. Many promising experiences in promoting farmers’ innovations in soil management have been

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described, but two projects funded by the Netherlands offer examples that are especially pertinent for working with women farmers: (1) Promoting Farmer Innovations (PFI) and (2) Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation in Africa (ISWC). These projects, which operate in several African countries—including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda—aim to establish multistakeholder platforms for technology development and encourage women’s participation.

For instance, in all of Ethiopia, research and development related to land husbandry have usually ignored the potential of women’s knowledge and innovation. Women’s domestic work has low status in Ethiopian society, and their productive work in agriculture is seldom acknowledged. As a rule, women in rural families do not regard themselves as farmers and would not present themselves as innovators in land husbandry. This situation is not unique to Ethiopia.

Among farm families in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the PFI also found that women did not come forward to show and explain their own innovations; instead, men household members assumed this task, even though they did not understand the innovations as well as the women did (Critchley, Ong’ayo, and Njoroge 2001).

Many factors can explain women’s lack of self-esteem with respect to their farming activities: traditional beliefs and attitudes regarding women’s role in rural society; women’s low levels of formal education; the limited mobility of women compared to men, who often migrate to towns or other countries to seek work; and women’s poor access to external information. In Ethiopia ISWC endeavored to recognize women’s innovation in land husbandry as a means of changing perceptions of this activity, including the perceptions of the women themselves, and of increasing the women’s self-confidence and capacity to contribute to development. The first steps were to gather evidence of innovation by women farmers (box 12.6) and to make these accomplishments more widely known through training, tours, and exchange visits.

Promoting the use of legumes as mulch and cover crops.

The use of legumes to improve soil productivity is well established in traditional agricultural systems and in technologies developed more recently by researchers. Projects promoting the use of legumes as green manure have often achieved limited impact, however, because they ignored farmers’ multiple criteria for selecting suitable legume species. Women in particular resisted adopting species that people could not eat, even if they were the best choice for improving soils. Failing to involve men and women farmers in the selection of appropriate legume species may limit a project’s impact. An example from Malawi (box 12.7)

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Box 12.6 Ethiopia: Women’s Innovations in Soil Fertility Management A village study in Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, revealed that women in different wealth classes pursued different types of innovation. Poorer women could take fewer risks, but this did not mean that they were less innovative—in fact, the opposite may have been the case. Poorer women felt that it was too risky to borrow money and preferred to find ways of using their current resources more efficiently. In improving soil fertility, for example, they tried to use animal manure whenever possible, but poorer households had few or no livestock and little access to this source of natural fertilizer. Some women who headed poorer households found alternative means of fertilizing their land, such as allowing animals of relatives or friends to graze their land in return for the dung. Many women used cooking ash as fertilizer; one, who had a particularly large amount of ash from kilning pottery, finds it to be an excellent soil enhancer. These practices are not new to the area, but they indicate women’s efforts to maintain soil fertility with the slim resources available. It is likely that a deeper study of fertility management would reveal innovative means developed especially by poorer women.

Many of these women are reluctant to respond to the “encouragement” (through credit) of using artificial fertilizers, because they fear they will be unable to repay their debt if the rains fail.

Source: Haile, Abay, and Waters-Bayer 2001.

emphasizes the importance of placing farmers at the center of research and extension to improve the adoption of legume-based technologies.

Choosing new and more profitable crops

Soil fertility is only one component of overall soil productivity. Many more possibilities are available to enhance soil productivity. The selection of appropriate crops, in combination with soil-improving practices, is one alternative, as seen in Bangladesh (box 12.8).

The Bangladesh case highlights the importance of promoting innovations that mesh with the livelihood strategies of women across wealth categories, especially poorer and landless women whose prospects for participation may

Box 12.7 Malawi: Gender Dimension in Legume-Based Soil Improvement Technologies

Box 12.8 Bangladesh: Homestead Vegetable Production In the Saturia region of Bangladesh, credit and training were provided for women to grow vegetables on small plots on or near their household compounds. The improved vegetable varieties, which could be purchased from a local NGO, included tomatoes, okra, Indian spinach (pui shak), red amaranth (lal shak), radishes, eggplants, amaranth (data), kangkong (kalmi shak), mung beans, and sweet gourds. Because the vegetables were cultivated on homestead land, it was easier for landless and land-poor households to participate, and their vegetable consumption increased.

A recent impact assessment found that the technologies were relatively easy to adopt. They required very little land and only a small cash investment.

Women did not need to move beyond the homestead. The nutritional benefits for the household were high. Women could coordinate vegetable cultivation relatively easily and flexibly with their many other household tasks. The technologies were unlikely to increase vulnerability, because they were grown on homestead land where security was easily ensured. Nor were any other crops likely to be displaced, as homestead land is rarely used for cropping. Women and their families liked the fact that they could produce vegetables within the homestead without risking the harassment and loss of reputation they would suffer from working outside it.

Legumes are uniquely suited for enhancing soil productivity and providing nutrient-enriched grains and vegetables for farmers with few resources. Yet the substantial barriers to diversification with legumes, including their establishment costs and moderate yield potential, indicate a need for long-term engagement and farmer-centered research and extension.

A case study in Malawi illustrates that experimentation with legumes and their adoption can be fostered among even the most resource-poor smallholders. Multieducational activities and participatory research involving farmer research teams were carried out within 80 communities. Over five years, more than 3,000 farmers tested legumes and gained knowledge of their contributions to child nutrition and soil productivity. Legume systems expanded on an average area of 862 square meters in 2005 (772 square meters for women and 956 square meters for men, indicating a gender dimension to legume adoption). Farmers chose edible legume intercrops such as pigeon peas and groundnuts over the Mucuna spp. green manure system.

Women in particular preferred the edible species to meet their combined goals of food security and soil improvement.

Source: Kerr and others 2007.

Source: Hallman, Lewis, and Begum 2003.

initially appear bleak (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2007). It also shows the potential for empowering women beyond the initial bounds of a project. In areas where market infrastructure is available, vegetable sales could empower women in the sense that earning money could increase their decision-making power within the household. In some areas it could create opportunities for women to move into public space, such as the market, to sell produce themselves.

Women who become members of groups involved in NGOsponsored development projects gain self-confidence from their solidarity with the group and the added status of being part of an outside organization.

Although the rapid expansion of horticultural crop production appears to hold considerable promise for poor people who depend on agriculture, including women, the

experience in Bangladesh shows that if interventions based on new and more profitable crops are to succeed among women, the interventions must operate on a scale that is accessible to them. Experiences from large-scale vegetable production, for example, are not only different but are probably more suited to (men) farmers with far greater resources. The production of horticultural crops increases the returns on land about 10-fold compared to returns for cereal crops (World Bank 2007). It generates considerable employment in the field—horticultural crops require about twice the labor input per hectare of cereal crops— and generates more off-farm jobs in processing, packaging, and marketing. Women hold many of these new jobs, although they often work under unfavorable conditions (see also Module 8).

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Yet the possibilities for resource-poor farmers to invest in large-scale production of horticultural crops are limited. Horticultural crops are management intensive, a variety of crops are grown, the cash outlay is large, and the use of chemicals is heavy (inflicting considerable harm on the environment; horticultural crops account for 28 percent of global pesticide consumption; World Bank 2007).

Horticultural enterprises are risky because of pest outbreaks and volatile prices. Fruit production requires an investment of several years to recoup costs. The production of high-value horticultural crops for export leads to labor shortages, which force women to reduce the time devoted to independent income-producing activities or crops under their own control, with potentially negative impacts on food security.

Organic production, with the corresponding practices to maintain soil fertility and soil health, may be a potentially more benign alternative to conventional, high-value horticulture. The organic food movement has been endorsed by FAO, which maintains in a recent report (FAO 2007) that organic farming fights hunger, tackles climate change, and is good for farmers, consumers, and the environment. Organic farming is now regarded less as a niche market within industrial countries and more as a vibrant commercial agricultural system practiced in 120 countries on 31 million hectares of cultivated land and 62 million hectares of certified wild harvested areas. The organic market was worth $40 billion in 2006 and is expected to reach $70 billion by 2012.

The strongest benefits of organic agriculture are its use of resources that are independent of fossil fuels, are locally available, incur minimal agroecological stresses, and are cost effective (FAO 2007). Some have argued that women farmers, who already rely on few external inputs, may be well positioned to become organic producers and benefit from the rising interest in organic produce.

A report from the International Institute for Environment and Development in the United Kingdom (Datta and Kar 2006) examined 14 NGOs promoting ecological agriculture in Bangladesh. Most of the NGOs ran programs that encouraged poor women to grow vegetables using organic fertilizers and pesticides on homestead land. This practice was extended to larger farms, generally controlled by men landowners. Farmers received environmental education and training along with financial and technical support. The training in organic agriculture had a significant impact on homestead farming and commercial farming. The awareness of organic agriculture rose significantly, particularly among women, who used organic fertilizer and actively promoted these technologies outside the project boundaries.

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Despite the promise of organic production practices, it must be remembered that organic agriculture shares many of the attributes of low-external-input agriculture. It is labor intensive and knowledge intensive and requires a range of local inputs, such as manure and compost, which are not always available. Yields of organic crops are often lower than yields of nonorganic crops. Conventional farming inputs, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, are easily available, and farmers can use credit to purchase them. Landless and smallholder farmers depend on sharecropping, which forces them to maximize short-term benefits from conventional farming, depend on the immediate returns gained from using chemical inputs, and forego the longer-term benefits from organic farming.

Finally, obtaining organic certification is a costly process that requires a good amount of organization, even among farmers with considerable assets. The successful establishment of organic production systems will therefore require targeted services and infrastructure, including transport and markets, especially if women and the poor are to benefit.

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

The following guidelines and recommendations apply to practitioners: ■

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The lack of gender-disaggregated data on the use of fertilizer and other soil productivity technologies mirrors the lack of attention given to this subject and makes it difficult to analyze the impact of interventions from a gender perspective.

Experiences thus far have focused either on using fertilizer to address short-term soil fertility problems or on the development and promotion of low-external-input technologies. Although the complementarity of these approaches is mentioned in the literature, there is little evidence of their combined use in farmers’ fields. The judicious use of affordable doses of inorganic fertilizer, combined with other soil fertility technologies, may offer good prospects for women to improve overall crop production. A better understanding of the synergistic effects of soil amendments (such as manure and compost) and inorganic fertilizers is essential—along with improvements in research and extension capacity to develop and promote combined technologies.

Support is needed for research to adapt existing methods of fertility management to specific agroecological zones and to cropping systems managed by women in those

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zones, and for extension to promote these techniques in ways that include women. Research on fertility management technologies that specifically addresses women’s resource constraints and livelihood strategies has been limited.

Land tenure is a major influence on the maintenance of soil fertility and on the ability to intensify farming in a sustainable way. Given that farmers must have secure access to land if they are to invest in it, soil productivity initiatives must be accompanied by initiatives to secure women’s access to land (see Module 4).

Women’s empowerment through participatory approaches to technology development is critical. Although projects seek to involve men and women, in practice women’s participation in soil improvement projects is often limited. A systematic effort is often needed to increase women’s participation.

A final lesson is that more holistic soil productivity indicators are needed for monitoring and evaluation, especially with respect to the gender effects of soil management interventions. Until soil productivity management interventions are monitored and evaluated in a gender-disaggregated way, meaningful conclusions on the gender equality of interventions will be extremely challenging to obtain (see also Module 16). Men’s biases in adoption do not necessarily mean that a particular technology is inappropriate

for women; better targeting and institutional and policy support may be needed to make the technology more accessible for women.

Soil productivity management interventions need to be monitored and evaluated within a wider livelihood context.

Measuring short-term, single-crop productivity gains will not capture the full picture. Direct and indirect impacts of interventions, both quantifiable (such as yields, incomes, and labor requirements) and qualitative (such as system resilience and stability or women’s empowerment), need to be taken into account. Productivity gains in one crop do not translate directly into increased household income, and benefits are not equally shared between men and women household members.

Furthermore, a need is present to develop monitoring and evaluation criteria that measure the contribution of soil productivity technologies to minimizing the risk of adoption for women farmers. Questions that elicit information on women’s reliance on and contribution to different livelihood assets, such as labor, knowledge, and local natural resources, are important for understanding the potential impact on women. This list, although certainly not comprehensive, nevertheless indicates the importance of assessing technologies on the basis of criteria that extend beyond simple production data and of relinquishing the “one-sizefits-all” approach in developing and promoting soil management technologies.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Gender in Seed Production and Distribution

Seed is one of the most crucial elements in the livelihoods of agricultural communities. It is the repository of knowledge passed from generation to generation, and the result of continual adaptation and innovation in the face of ever-greater challenges for survival. The potential benefits from the use of good quality seed of adapted varieties by farmers can be enormous, and the availability of quality seed of a wide-range of varieties and crops to farmers can increase productivity, reduce risks from pest, drought and disease pressure, and increase incomes.

Production increases through the use of adapted varieties in a given area can create employment opportunities related to processing, marketing, and other activities generated through quality seed production.

ASBP (2006: 6) farming community’s food security depends heavily on its seed security. Women’s need to ensure good supplies of their preferred varieties of seed can be particularly acute, because women are often the main growers of food to feed the family. Although both men and women farmers regard seed as a key resource for food and livelihood security, it is crucial to remember that important socioeconomic and gender differences in seed diversity, seed security, and food security must be understood to target any seed interventions effectively (FAO 2008b).

Farmers participate in multiple seed systems that help them produce and obtain the seed they need. These systems (box 12.9) can be divided broadly into formal and local (sometimes called “informal,” “traditional,” or “farmer”) systems. Commercial farmers rely mostly on formal systems, which are responsible for the flow of improved and hybrid seed. Subsistence farmers tend to rely more on local systems. Local systems are responsible for flows of seed of traditional as well as modern varieties, which enter the system through different processes (Sperling and Cooper 2003). Farmers may mix seed from different sources if they lack sufficient seed or if they wish to experiment with or

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modify a traditional variety. Farmers may incorporate improved varieties and expose them to local conditions and management, fostering their local adaptation. Local knowledge of men and women farmers is important because they manage different crop species and varieties and may participate in different seed systems for different purposes.

Although much attention has been paid to the development of formal, national seed systems, their contribution to noncommercial production systems remains limited.

One widely recognized problem in many countries is the extended time between the initial identification of new varieties and their eventual release, seed production, and sale, which considerably delays adoption. In many countries local seed systems provide by far the largest share of seed for noncommercial crops. An estimated 80 to 90 percent of all seed used to produce staple food crops in subsistence systems comes from local seed systems (FAO 2008b; GTZ and CGN 2000).1 In local seed systems, farmers themselves produce, disseminate, and obtain seed directly through their own harvested crops or through sale, exchange, or barter with others in the local area (ASBP 2006; Sperling and others 2004).

For resource-poor farmers, especially women, the local seed system is not surprisingly the main and most reliable source of seed (FAO 2008b; Pionetti 2006; Smale and others 2007), but medium-scale and better-off farmers also rely on seed from this source (FAO 2008b). An important reason for relying on local seed systems is that small-scale farmers, especially women, often grow a diversity of crops to minimize the risk of total crop failure and food insecurity (box 12.10). Another reason is that women in many societies are in charge of selecting and storing seed of many traditional food crops. Often these crops are valued for specific attributes: they are cheaper, available in small quantities, better adapted to local conditions, and easier to obtain, and they possess other qualities (for food preparation, ceremonies, or

Box 12.9 What Is a Seed System?

Box 12.10 South India: Seed and Crop Diversity in Women’s Livelihood Strategies

Seed systems are often large and complex. A seed system generally encompasses a large number of individuals, organizations, and institutions involved in different functions related to seed, such as plant breeding research and the subsequent multiplication, processing, storage, distribution, and marketing of seed. Seed systems, very broadly defined, can be categorized as informal (or traditional) or formal seed systems.

Individual farm households are the foundation for informal seed systems, in which each household performs numerous seed system functions on its own. The formal sector, by contrast, consists of public and private organizations with specialized roles in supplying seed of new varieties. Different types of seed from organizations and individuals in one stage of the seed chain will flow to the next stage through informal and formal channels. Rules and regulations, such as procedures for releasing new varieties of seed to the public, intellectual property rights regimes, seed certification programs, seed standards, and contract law influence the structure, coordination, and performance of the seed system.

Women farmers in South India frequently point out that they could not grow such a wide range of crops if they did not have the seeds “in their hands.” One farmer articulated the issues as follows: “Where would we get small amounts of seeds for our traditional crops if we did not save them ourselves?”

Small-scale farmers need relatively small amounts of seed for a large number of crop varieties: 100 grams of sesame, 500 grams of black gram, 1 kilogram of finger millet, and a handful of roselle seeds. Women farmers also want to grow very specific crops in addition to staples such as sorghum or maize. There is no guarantee that formal seed agencies can provide seed for all of these crops.

Thanks to their carefully maintained seed stocks, the women can maximize the number of crops grown on their land and achieve a varied and nutritious diet.

Source: Pionetti 2006.

Source: Maredia and Howard 1998.

other uses) that are integral to cultural traditions. Seed of most of these crops and varieties is not developed or supplied through formal channels.

Although the local seed systems are well adapted to farmers’ specific production environments, they often face numerous constraints. Traditional varieties have been and continue to be lost for a variety of reasons (including conflict, drought, change in preferences, and research and extension campaigns promoting modern varieties). Interventions to strengthen local seed supply systems, such as establishing seed banks and breeding and multiplying seed, are gaining popularity among NGOs and public institutions that supply seed. Often such initiatives enable formal and informal systems to work in complementary ways. Farmers also express demand for seed of new and improved crops and crop varieties and for improved seed management and processing technologies, which can be supplied by the formal seed system.

Small commercial seed enterprises might be a good means of serving these markets, which may not be attractive

to large private seed companies and poorly served by public seed agencies. Partnerships between public and private agencies (for example, a public research organization could supply seed for multiplication and sale to small, private entrepreneurs) may be another means of catering to these markets. Because women are responsible for selecting and saving seed in many traditional farming systems, commercial seed production presents good opportunities for including them as entrepreneurs, as contract farmers to multiply seed, and as marketers as well as employees.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

The following sections describe the key gender issues in crop agriculture and the potential benefits of addressing them.

Seed sources and access to information differ by socioeconomic group and gender

As mentioned earlier, an apparent gender bias exists in access to formal seed systems. Men, who are generally more involved in growing commercial crops, seem to access and benefit more easily from formal systems. Women, in turn,

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rely more heavily on local systems to obtain seed for staple and minor crops. A resource endowment bias has also been observed. Resource-poor farmers—men or women—generally lack the cash to purchase seed of modern varieties from formal seed suppliers. In Bangladesh access to irrigation was a significant determinant of whether a farmer would adopt modern rice varieties (Hossain 1988). A study in Ghana revealed that farmers preferred different rice varieties depending on whether they would be grown under highinput or low-input conditions (Stirling and Witcombe 2004). Gender-responsive action in the local seed sector should increase the availability of adequate seed and thus increase food and livelihood security for resource-poor farmers—especially for crops that are less interesting to commercial seed suppliers.2 Encouraging local seed banks, establishing small-scale seed enterprises, and facilitating local seed exchange through an enabling policy environment are some measures to consider.

Based on their different portfolios of crop species and varieties, men and women can contribute different knowledge of seed characteristics

Aside from multiplying and distributing seed, local seed systems are important sources of knowledge of seed characteristics and management. Gender differences in local seed knowledge and skills are an important asset for strengthening links between the local and formal seed systems. Given women’s traditional roles in selecting and saving seed, they can be strategic partners for forming liaisons between formal and informal seed systems. The formal system can play a more significant part in developing and supplying seed if it adopts a gender perspective—in other words, if it succeeds in understanding and addressing the seed needs of different household members.

Women’s role in local markets and small seed enterprises

Local markets are often a crucial link in local seed systems.

Local markets bring in grain, which farmers can subsequently sort and use for seed. These local “seed-grain markets” differ from formal outlets selling seed that is specially produced as seed, on specialized fields, within the framework of a seed business enterprise.3 In many African and Latin American contexts, vendors of local seed and grain are to a large extent rural women. Farmers are sourcing less and less seed from their “classic” informal source (their own stocks) and depending more on local seed and grain markets (Smale and others 2007).4

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Women increasingly participate in the formation and management of small seed enterprises (World Bank 2005).

These more recent experiences need to be monitored and evaluated carefully to better understand their contributions and impacts on improved seed security and overall livelihood security. Applying a gender perspective to analyze and improve seed systems will help to overcome or at least reduce existing biases in access to, availability of, and use of adequate seed.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

The following sections detail critical policy and implementation issues.

Public versus private seed enterprises

Seed provision is at an important crossroads in many developing countries. Donor support to public seed enterprises has diminished because these enterprises have been inefficient. Strategies for supporting the private seed sector are still evolving. A major challenge for public and private seed enterprises is to ensure repeated seed sales, because farmers may purchase seed once and then save it from their harvest.

The emergence of a private seed industry is almost always based on sales of hybrid seed, which must be purchased anew each season or yields will decline, or on seed that farmers find difficult to save, such as vegetable seed. Seed of many other crops (particularly self-fertilizing crops with a low seed multiplication factor that are grown mainly for home consumption) is less likely to be available through a nascent private seed industry based on large, centralized seed enterprises—a vision that shows the formal seed sector’s bias toward men and commercial farmers. Opportunities may present themselves for including such crops in small, locally operating seed enterprises with lower transport and overhead costs, however. The development of small, local enterprises could be a means for women to break into seed markets and supply the local and improved seed of crops and varieties that are neglected by large commercial seed companies.

Seed regulations and crop and variety protection

Numerous national and international policies influence the development and operation of formal and local seed systems. In many countries the regulatory and legal framework for the national formal seed system limits the development of local seed systems and directly affects women’s position within them.

National seed regulations are usually based on international standards that are often incompatible with the reality of farmers’ lives.5 They restrict the free exchange and marketing of seed. The combination of compulsory variety registration and seed certification, as practiced in countries in Europe and elsewhere, heavily constrains the efficient functioning of the formal seed sector (notably the development of small-scale seed enterprises) and the development of alternative seed systems (GTZ and CGN 2000). The same constraint arises from the implementation of strong intellectual property rights regimes (World Bank 2006) and arrangements restricting access to genetic resources (Louwaars 2007).

The development of small-scale seed enterprises and local seed markets requires an enabling policy environment. A clear recognition of the roles and contributions of men and women farmers to seed development and management will necessitate a review of farmer’s rights, access and benefitsharing regulations, and intellectual property rights.

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Past experiences highlight the need to look at both local and formal seed systems, their linkages, and the policy environment that affects them.

Interventions focusing on the local seed system

An analysis of the local system is the starting point for any strategy that aims to strengthen and build on the existing system. A blueprint approach to seed system development will not work; a thorough analysis of the limiting factors of each existing system is vital. Within a household, for example, interests or priorities with respect to seed management may vary by gender and age group. Within a community or region, wealth status or ethnocultural differences can affect knowledge, preferences, and access to critical resources such as seed (FAO 2008b). Projects operating at the community level must be aware that stakeholders are likely to have different needs and priorities (GTZ and CGN 2000). The identification of weaknesses or gaps in seed security will help to define activities that can improve household and community seed security. For example, community seed banks (box 12.11) and community seed fairs (box 12.12) both help to strengthen local seed systems. Managed successfully, they can foster seed exchange networks and establish local institutional mechanisms to supply seed, especially of traditional varieties, within a community. National seed security will improve when local seed security is increased.

Interventions strengthening the formal seed system

The formal seed sector’s achievements have been summarized as follows: Since the 1960s, scientific plant breeding that developed improved varieties suited to smallholders in subtropical and tropical areas—the green revolution—has been one of the major success stories of development. Initially spearheaded by semidwarf varieties of rice and wheat and improved varieties of maize from international agricultural research centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), public breeding programs in developing countries have released more than 8,000 improved crop varieties over the past 40 years.

In the 1980s and 1990s, improved varieties are estimated to have accounted for as much as 50 percent of yield growth, compared with 21 percent in the preceding two decades.

World Bank (2007: 160) Because these achievements have not been uniform across regions or socioeconomic groups, formal seed systems must develop better strategies for developing and disseminating seed of improved varieties to reach resourcepoor farmers.

Plant breeding interventions. Countless breeding interventions aim to address the nutritional and production constraints of resource-poor farmers and significantly improve household food security. Perhaps the most controversial of these interventions is the development of GM crops. Even more than conventional hybrids and other modern varieties, GM crops face significant barriers to dissemination and adoption. Most GM crops in developing countries are currently produced in large, commercial production systems, as they require inputs, knowledge, and management skills that are not available to all farmers. The private sector is the main force behind the development of these crops, and many questions arise about their suitability for poor, small-scale producers.

Attempts are being made—often by public organizations in collaboration with private enterprises—to develop GM crops that tolerate unfavorable crop production conditions common in developing countries, such as poor soils or drought. Vitamin- and micronutrient-enhanced crops, as well as crops that produce vaccines and other pharmacological products, are also envisioned in plant-breeding strategies to improve health and reduce poverty. Despite these efforts, numerous challenges remain in developing and approving GM crops that can be considered to benefit poor people. The accessibility and suitability of such crops, including the potential ecological and socioeconomic risks for resource-poor households, must be assessed further (see Thematic Note 3).

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Box 12.11 Enhancing Local Seed Systems through Community Seed Banks

Community seed banks help to meet the complementary goals of improving local food security and recognizing and maintaining the contributions of local crop diversity. Seed of traditional varieties frequently cannot be obtained in the market. Instead, rural people exchange seed within their villages or with people from neighboring villages. This kind of seed exchange is an important instrument for seed supply and diffusion; it is usually based on kinship, traditional relationships, and cultural practices. The establishment of a community seed bank empowers local people to select and multiply seed of traditional crops and varieties of their choice. By facilitating access to seed, especially among women, seed banks often encourage and sustain cultivation of traditional varieties and household seed security. The banks also help farmers to contribute and communicate their knowledge of seed storage technologies. Two examples of community seed banks follow.

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In Paraiba, Brazil, frequent droughts and farmers’ small landholdings mean that families often cannot produce enough grain to use as food and to save as seed for the next year’s crop. Genetic diversity has also been eroded by the preference for seed of commercial rather than local varieties.

Commercial varieties are grown to meet market demands and are also used for distribution in government seed programs. Community seed banks help to reverse this trend through participatory, collective efforts to grow and supply seed. In addition to conserving biodiversity, the banks enable

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farmers to be self-reliant by supporting the timely provision of seed.

In Jeypore, India, interested households contribute a specific quantity of seed to the community seed bank. Seed is mixed with powdered neem (Azadirachta indica) and karanja (Pongamia pinnata) leaves to preserve it from storage pests. The village committee (palli samithi) forms the seed bank management committee, which consists of three men and women who share the responsibility of managing the bank. The bank records the names and quantities of seed required by needy farm families, and it distributes the seed. The involvement of women has strengthened the seed bank and the seed exchange system. The women perform vital tasks such as periodically monitoring seed quality. About 200 farmers (men and women) are actively involved in the program. The seed bank primarily stores seed of 15 traditional paddy cultivars, along with some millet, oilseed, and vegetable varieties. In 2000 about 700 kilograms of seed were handled.

Apart from their impact on food security, seed banks can improve socioeconomic conditions in rural communities, especially the status of women. By establishing self-help groups to operate seed banks, women can become more active in decision making and more self-confident, and can communicate more easily with government officials or outsiders. Men can become more supportive of women, and conflict between men and women can be reduced.

Sources: Authors; FAO 2002 (India example); FAO 2008a (Brazil).

Seed distribution interventions. Farmers like to experiment with new crops and varieties, and innovative distribution strategies could facilitate poor women’s access to improved seed. Packaging seed in small and affordable quantities could be one way of increasing women’s access. It is also important to recognize that seed of improved varieties and hybrids often gives the best yields when grown in conjunction with fertilizer and improved crop management strategies (following specific spacing, irrigation, and weeding practices, for example). The availability of these additional resources can be a crucial precondition for successful adoption of improved seed, yet many women lack access to cash and irrigated land.

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A detailed analysis of available resources is therefore necessary before promoting such varieties among women.

Interventions strengthening links between local and formal seed systems

In developing countries, farmers’ demand for seed is complex and diverse. It would be unrealistic or inefficient for the public, formal seed sector to attempt to meet total seed demand; nor would private, commercial seed providers be able to address all of the seed requirements of resource-poor farmers (Almekinders, Louwaars, and de Bruijn 1994).6

Box 12.12 Increasing Seed Diversity and Local Knowledge through Community Seed Fairs

Box 12.13 Decentralized Participatory Plant Breeding Decentralized and participatory plant breeding approaches allow farmers to select and adapt technologies to local soil and rainfall patterns and to social and economic conditions, using indigenous knowledge as well. Participatory plant breeding and varietal selection have reduced the development and dissemination of new varieties in some cases by 5 to 7 years, which is half the time (10–15 years) taken by conventional plant-breeding programs.

In very poor areas of South Asia where rice is produced without irrigation (and where the Green Revolution never took hold), participatory plant breeding is now paying off, with strong, early adoption of farmer-selected varieties that yield 40 percent more grain in farmers’ fields. The approach must be tested more widely in the more heterogeneous rain-fed environments of Africa, where involving farmers, especially women, in selecting varieties has shown early success for beans, maize, and rice. The cost effectiveness of the approach for wider use also needs to be evaluated.

Community seed fairs have shown positive results, especially for women farmers. Community seed fairs offer a venue for displaying and freely sharing seed of different crops and varieties. Seed fairs also offer a good opportunity for knowledge to be shared across generations, between farmers, between communities, and with research and extension staff, thus contributing to expanding farmers’ social networks (FAO 2006). Experiences from a range of organizations indicate that these informal settings encourage women’s participation.

In China, for example, participants in seed fairs promoted by the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) included 80–150 farmers, local agricultural technicians, officials, scientists from the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, CBIK staff, and other guests. Often the share of women participants was as high as 70 percent, because women are closely involved in farming and are the key decision makers when it comes to choosing new varieties. Farmers in each area have their own seed exchange networks but rarely have access to new species and varieties from outside their network. The seed fairs, which were relatively new for participating farmers, served to improve the flow of seed and information within and among communities and to promote the conservation of a wide crop genetic resource base.

Experts were invited to give speeches on topics of interest, such as marketing organic produce. Yao and Hani traditional healers took the opportunity to exchange knowledge about medicinal plants.

Source: Adapted from World Bank 2007: 160–61.

Sources: Authors; CBIK (China example): www.cbik.org.

A recent World Bank evaluation of the Seed Systems Development Project (SSDP) in Ethiopia, a project ongoing for over 10 years, rated its outcome as moderately unsatisfactory (DEReC 2007). The SSDP achieved its main objective of decentralizing and strengthening the government seed-producing agency (the Ethiopian Seed Enterprise), but it failed to achieve its secondary objective of promoting seed production by private firms and fostering local seed production by farmers.

Recognition is growing that stronger links between local and formal seed systems can lead to the development of an

integrated seed system in which formal and local actors each play a role. This approach does, however, require collaboration between the many actors involved—breeders, genebanks, and seed projects operated by the formal sector; farmers; and NGOs. Experience with participatory plant breeding initiatives offers some insight into the potential for fostering an integrated approach (box 12.13).

Traditional breeding approaches tend to focus on one characteristic (such as higher yields, more stable yields, or disease resistance). Although the results may be impressive with respect to that particular characteristic, farmers, especially women, may not like the accompanying changes in other characteristics (such as grain color, taste, and ease of processing). In this instance, the knowledge and criteria that men and women use in selecting seed and in their other crop improvement efforts offer the opportunity to strengthen links between local and formal seed systems.

Enhancing communication between local and formal seed systems. Food and livelihood security can increase significantly when shortcomings in local seed systems are resolved.

For example, in areas of Bangladesh where CABI’s Good

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Seed Initiative used videos to outline techniques to improve rice seed quality, seed yield rose an estimated 10 percent. This initiative (supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation) aims to strengthen farmers’ ability to guarantee food security and improve their livelihoods. The approach, which combines local technologies with those developed by formal research organizations to help women produce quality seed, is now being tested in Africa. CABI, WARDA (Africa Rice Center), and their partner organizations in West Africa and Uganda seek to reach as many as 10,000 farmers. Additional videos will be produced locally as the value of the approach spreads.

Introducing new varieties into the local seed system. Farmers’ experimentation with new varieties and the subsequent introduction of adapted and accepted varieties can potentially strengthen cropping systems by increasing yields, improving drought resilience, boosting resistance to pests and diseases, and capturing new market opportunities (Sperling and Remington with Haugen 2006), all of which could widen women’s livelihood options. It is important to realize, nevertheless, that not all “improved” varieties will benefit farmers in all agroecological and socioeconomic situations. A careful gender-disaggregated analysis of demand for particular varieties is warranted. Sperling and Remington (2006) discuss key steps for ensuring that characteristics demanded by farmers are considered in introducing new varieties.

Local seed and grain markets, discussed earlier, can offer a good venue for introducing new varieties. These markets, which are frequently visited by rural women, have virtually no formal access to new varieties, to basic (foundation) seed as an input, or to seed quality control services. Even so, there are dramatic examples of how quickly new varieties (including beans in western Kenya and green gram varieties in eastern Kenya) can move through local markets, as farmers spread the word that the new varieties on offer really do perform.7 Because the buyers and sellers in local markets are frequently women, the opportunity to support both groups of women by linking new varieties to local seed and grain markets appears substantial. The following actions are necessary to further strengthen women’s capacity and access in this context: ■

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Greater support needs to be given to increasing the quality of seed for the crops and varieties in greatest demand in the markets (these may be local varieties or new ones). Suppliers of large quantities of seed and grain to the market require training to produce better seed

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(which does not need to be certified). Most training is concentrated in small community-based groups, often funded by development projects, but general knowledge on how to improve seed quality must be mainstreamed in farming communities.

The capacity to produce high-quality seed is not enough; farmers and farmer groups require much more training in agroenterprise development. Seed enterprises need to yield profits on a continual basis. The commercial sector has shied away from selling seed of subsistence and open-pollinated crops because the profits are limited. To stimulate consistent demand for this kind of seed, communities must diversify seed production by crop and variety and, crucially, ensure that they have a sustained supply of new and appreciated seed.

In reference to the point above, direct links need to be forged between those who breed new varieties and those who can multiply and distribute seed at a decent price.

Right now, new varieties filter through to communities at an unacceptably slow rate. Research systems have to deliver new materials not only to seed parastatals and commercial producers but directly to important community-based nodes throughout a country.

Traders and farmer groups need continued access to advice on quality control that is enabling and not threatening. A trader who becomes known for truly good seed should eventually be able to garner worthwhile price margins.

Encouraging the formation of small-scale seed enterprises.

The formation of small-scale seed enterprises—that is, farmer seed enterprises—meets dual objectives: to distribute and promote sustainably modern crop varieties and to establish a regular source of “clean” seed of local or modern varieties. Yet experience indicates that a certain level of resources (such as labor and land) is required to manage farmer seed enterprises successfully; the resource requirement could exclude or discourage women from participating. Some alternative strategies may be better suited to the limited resources controlled by poor people.

For example, the Malawi Smallholder Seed Development Project established by ActionAid in 1995 uses two seed production strategies. The less-poor farmers are encouraged to produce certified seed and operate independently, although they still face marketing problems, for which new approaches, such as the use of stockists, are being investigated. The poorer farmers (many of whom are women) are organized into community groups to produce and distribute seed on a communal basis using group revolving funds (box 12.14). The second strategy has provided encouraging

Box 12.14 Malawi: Community-Based Seed Production

Box 12.15 Southern India: The Role of GenderSensitive Policies for Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights

Through the Malawi Smallholder Seed Development Project, groups of smallholders produce improved seed as a means of enhancing household food security. The project has organized 5,405 smallholders into 235 community-based groups to produce seed. Group members are selected through a participatory rural appraisal to identify and assess needs of poor households. The project’s concentration on the poorest households has ensured that many more group participants are women, who also perceive greater advantages in belonging to groups than men do. About 70 percent of group members are women, and over 80 percent of the seed-producing groups are composed entirely of women. Women’s groups are better organized and their revolving grants for seed production have higher repayment rates than those of men’s groups. Women get higher seed yields, generate better savings, and sustain more cohesive groups.

In the dryland farming systems of South India’s Deccan Plateau, women’s roles in maintaining seed and crop diversity enable rural families to cope with the region’s many environmental demands. Here seeds and their management form an economy all of their own, whereby self-reliance in seed, crop diversity, and nutrition are closely intertwined.

But as seed increasingly becomes the “property” of private seed-producing enterprises, this selfreliance is undermined. Plant variety protection enables private companies to cover the cost of breeding new varieties, but it can restrict the scope for farmers to save their own seed through a mix of technological, legal, and economic strategies.

These strategies include reducing the genetic variability of new crop varieties through pure line breeding methods; intellectual property rights regimes, such as breeders’ rights and patents, which make it illegal for farmers to reuse seed; variety registration and seed certification schemes backed by economic rules; and gender-blind laws that provide no scope for enhancing women farmers’ practices, choices, and concerns in the realms of biodiversity and seed production.

Source: Musopole 2000.

evidence that women’s skills and scarce resources can be mobilized to strengthen seed systems and enhance family seed and food security.

Interventions to foster an enabling policy environment

Source: Pionetti 2006.

KEY IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

All of the initiatives discussed earlier could benefit from complementary efforts to foster a favorable policy environment, such as the development of seed legislation that protects breeders’ rights, interventions that strengthen farmers’ rights, and more flexible interpretation of seed laws to support local seed systems. To stimulate the private sector and at the same time support local seed systems for crops that are often ignored by the private sector, welldesigned seed and intellectual property rights laws will need to go hand in hand with the recognition of farmers’ rights—a balance that is not necessarily easy to attain.

Policies for plant variety protection and intellectual property rights must also be gender sensitive. In some instances formal seed interventions and policies can be counterproductive, especially for women’s participation in the seed system (box 12.15).

The guiding principle in any seed intervention is that seed security is a key component of food security. Women are the main food producers in farm households, and so their seed security—in other words, their access to reliable supplies of good seed—is of the highest priority.

A clear assessment of seed demand should be the first step in designing any seed-related intervention. The precise nature of the demand for seed will significantly determine the appropriate seed supply response. It is important to understand exactly why farmers seek seed off the farm: ■

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Are farmers (men and women) searching for new varieties (which may simply require an initial introduction of seed)?

Are men and women farmers purchasing hybrids (which can be supplied by a commercial enterprise)?

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Do farmers have seed quality or management problems (which require specialized seed enterprises or extension advice to improve farm-level seed management)?

Do seed purchases indicate a poverty-induced seed shortage (which will not be addressed by conventional seed provision)?

As formal and informal seed systems focus on different crop species and varieties and seem to serve different clienteles, they should be considered complementary. Both systems have strengths and weaknesses on which development interventions can be based. As seen earlier, women farmers are already active in local seed markets and informal seed systems, and they could make important contributions to emerging small-scale seed enterprises.

The formal seed system can enhance the quality and functioning of the informal seed system by, for example, implementing capacity-building activities addressing both men and women, strengthening community seed banks, and improving seed selection and storage.

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These activities require multistakeholder interventions targeting the following actors (GTZ and CGN 2000): ■

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Individual farmers and farmers’ groups, especially women farmers Small seed enterprises NGOs and development agencies Researchers and technicians of national systems Policy makers Public and private seed companies.

Seed policy should create a framework that enables public and private resources to be used to meet genderspecific demand for seed and that fosters an enabling environment for the synergistic development of the formal and informal seed system. This enabling policy environment will take into account such issues as secure tenure rights for women farmers and improved access to resources, such as inputs or irrigation.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

Gender and Crop Protection

ome 20–40 percent of the world’s potential crop production is lost annually because of the effects of weeds, pests, and diseases (CropLife International 2007). New pest problems continue to develop. Attempts to control agricultural pests have been dominated by chemical control strategies, but the overuse of chemicals has adversely affected human health, the environment, international trade, and farm budgets. All of these concerns justify giving high priority to crop protection in development interventions.

Agriculture ranks among the three most hazardous occupations in developing and industrial countries, alongside mining and construction (World Bank 2007). The leading cause of injury on the farm is the improper use of chemicals. Poor awareness of safe practices for handling chemicals and a lack of appropriate protective equipment also contribute to injuries.

Crop protection strategies—the management of pests, diseases, and weeds—have changed dramatically over time.

The intensification of agriculture alters agricultural practices significantly. For example, in intensive agricultural systems, more traditional and labor-intensive physical and biological crop protection measures are superseded by pest-resistant varieties and more capital-intensive use of pesticides.1 In marginal areas, the generally small returns to these expensive chemical inputs make them difficult for farmers to use (IFAD 2002). The recent development of crops that are genetically modified to resist specific pests and diseases presents yet another crop protection alternative to farmers, but the benefits and risks of this technology are still poorly understood in many settings, especially with respect to gender differences.

Pesticides can increase agricultural productivity, but when handled improperly, they are toxic to humans and other species. Aside from the health concerns posed by pesticide residues in food, unintentional poisoning from exposure kills an estimated 355,000 people each year, two-thirds

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of them in developing countries.2 The costs of medical treatment, lost labor, and reduced long-term productivity can be high. Many farmers in developing countries overuse pesticides and do not take proper safety precautions because they do not understand the risks and fear smaller harvests. Making matters worse, developing countries seldom have strong regulatory systems for dangerous chemicals: pesticides banned or restricted in industrialized countries are used widely in developing countries. Farmers’ perceptions of appropriate pesticide use vary by setting and culture.

Additional negative environmental effects and socioeconomic costs include the debt incurred by farmers to purchase these inputs, the loss of local knowledge and practices once used to protect crops, and dependence on external sources of inputs.

As with so many capital-intensive technologies, the poor, including women and children, are the ones least able to benefit from their use. Recent research in India, for example, shows that small-scale and marginal farmers take loans from private finance corporations to purchase inputs and then, unable to pay their debts, become answerable to moneylenders (Mancini and others 2005). Ultimately farmers may be forced to sell their land to cover their debts, thereby losing their only economic asset. The same study also found marginal farmers to have a 10 times greater risk of severe pesticide poisoning than large-scale farmers.

A study by FAO, WHO, and UNEP (2004) broadly estimates that between 1 million and 5 million cases of pesticide poisoning occur each year, resulting in several thousand fatalities. Pesticide fatalities are overwhelmingly a developing country phenomenon. Although developing countries use just 25 percent of all pesticides produced, 99 percent of deaths from pesticide poisoning occur in developing countries. Children and women are especially at risk.

In Egypt, for example, more than 1 million children who help to manage cotton pests are exposed to pesticides.

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An agricultural production model is urgently needed that starts to internalize the external costs of pesticide use and incorporates the prevention of ill health, environmental contamination, and the conservation of biological capital into production processes and markets. This goal is specified in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Agenda 21, Chapter 14, deals with promoting sustainable agriculture and rural development, and section I covers “Integrated pest management and control in agriculture” (UN 1992). The Agenda explicitly mentions women as a specific target group for interventions.

KEY GENDER ISSUES

The following sections detail the key gender issues in crop protection and potential benefits of addressing them.

pesticide use. High levels of pesticide poisoning among resource-poor farmers, especially women, are often reported to be linked to low levels of literacy and education.

In many cases, the husband is responsible for buying pesticide from the cooperative, market, or storekeeper, and no information is passed between the husband and wife about safe use—with the result, for example, that women reuse pesticide containers for storing or transporting their crops or cooking supplies. Often pesticide products are not labeled, but even if they are, many women cannot read the information. Although educating people in proper pesticide management is extremely important, education alone will not prevent poisoning. Other factors also require attention, including difficulties in obtaining protective gear, which may be costly, may not be supplied by employers, or may be inappropriately designed for hot climates (London and Bailie 2001; Mancini and others 2005).

Gender and pesticide exposure

It is important to gain a better understanding of how women are exposed to pesticides in agricultural production, as well as the differential patterns of pesticide use between women and men. Marginal farmers are often engaged in professional pesticide spraying and therefore subject to continuous exposure. Women and children are specifically at risk because they are frequently employed in mixing pesticides and refilling pesticide tanks (Rother 2000). Women and children also perform secondary activities that have been neglected in studies dealing with direct exposure.

Extremely time-consuming operations such as weeding are often performed by women and children during the peak spraying season, when residue levels in fields are high (Mancini and others 2005) and can cause secondary poisoning. Women are also exposed to pesticides in the home, for example, by washing pesticide-soaked clothing and disposing of (or using) empty chemical containers.

Women’s involvement in piecework and seasonal labor, and the unfavorable conditions associated with such work (such as less training and protective equipment), increase their risk of pesticide exposure. Women are particularly vulnerable to pesticides at certain times of their lives, especially when they are pregnant. Growing evidence of associations between pesticide exposure, women’s reproductive health problems, and health problems passed on to offspring adds to the concern over pesticide poisoning in women (London and Bailie 2001).

Gender and knowledge of pesticide risks

Compared to men, women are usually less informed about safe pesticide practices and the dangerous side effects of

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Pesticide use is costly and unsuited to women’s cropping strategies

Pesticide use is capital intensive: the pesticide, sprayer, and protective gear all must be purchased. Women’s limited access to productive resources often makes them more reluctant than men to purchase inputs such as pesticides to use on their crops (which are usually food crops). The blanket recommendations commonly provided by extension units or displayed on pesticide labels may be inappropriate for women’s complex mixed-cropping systems. To benefit women, pest control mechanisms must be tailored to the pests encountered in staple and minor crop production.

Inconsistent benefits of alternative pest control technologies across socioeconomic groups

“The distribution of benefits from commercial genetically modified crops is uneven. Although these crops are now grown more widely in developing than in developed countries, to date the benefits have been uneven, concentrated in developed countries and a few commercial crops.”3 The challenge remains to develop and win approval for GM crops that are suited to the agricultural preferences and constraints of poor women and men. In the near term, the application of new molecular biotechnologies and new breeding strategies to crops that are specifically relevant to smallholder production systems in developing countries will probably be constrained for a number of reasons: the lack of reliable longer-term research funding, inadequate technical and operational capacity, the low commercial

value of the crops, the lack of adequate conventional breeding programs, and the need to select the relevant production environments (FAO 2004: 24).

These strategies include promoting alternatives to hazardous chemicals; improving training and information for women and others in agriculture; and reducing access to dangerous agrochemicals.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Many governments have inadequate legislation overseeing problematic pesticides and herbicides. Where the legislative framework is in place, enforcement capability is often weak.

The viability of occupational health and safety structures and functions in developing countries is also a primary concern.

Agriculture tends to be excluded from many national labor laws and is not subject to any comprehensive international standard. Where regulations exist, they are often sporadically applied because of inadequate legal provisions, low levels of unionization, and insufficient labor inspection. As women form a large percentage of agricultural laborers, they are directly affected by this lack of oversight (see also Module 8).

The chemical industry heavily promotes the use of pesticides for crop protection. In developed countries, on the one hand, the industry markets “new-generation” pesticides that have high efficiency ratios (small doses achieve maximum results) and limited adverse effects on people and the environment. In developing countries, on the other hand, significant quantities of outdated pesticides remain in circulation, and extension agencies and pesticide sellers may not necessarily promote “new-generation” pesticides, which in any case are expensive. Instead, farmers buy older, cheaper, and more hazardous products. As much as 30 percent of the pesticides sold in developing countries do not meet international quality standards. FAO has recently expressed concern about the proliferation of cheap unlabelled pesticides in Africa (FAO/WHO 2001). Many are adulterated, unauthorized, or illegal.

The current drive for economic growth and agricultural trade promotes an approach to food production that emphasizes agribusiness, land consolidation, and contract farming (IIED 2003), in which pesticides play an established role. Although these production systems are important in some segments of the farming community, they do not address the specific circumstances and priorities of resource-poor women farmers, who risk becoming even more marginalized if agriculture increasingly presents alternatives that they cannot adopt. The discussion of GM crops needs to take this issue into account.

Experiences with crop protection in developing countries suggest policies and other interventions that could support crop protection strategies that do not further exclude and endanger the poor, especially women and children.

Promoting alternative to hazardous chemicals

Crops can be protected from pests in ways that preclude the use of hazardous chemicals, including integrated pest management (IPM), organic crop production, the use of less toxic chemical products, and the promotion of GM crops (although the risks, costs, and benefits of this last option are still imperfectly understood in many settings).

Integrated pest management. IPM (box 12.16) has been implemented successfully across a wide range of crops and agroclimatic zones. Many aid and development agencies have adopted IPM as the model for the agricultural development they support, and the OECD Development Assistance Committee encourages its member states to support IPM. IPM should go hand in hand with appropriate pesticide management to allow for pesticide regulation and control, including trade, and for the safe handling and disposal of pesticides, particularly those that are toxic and persistent. Cumulative evidence shows that farmers trained

Box 12.16 Integrated Pest Management Defined

The Systemwide Program on Integrated Pest Management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research offers a concise synthesis of IPM principles: Integrated Pest Management is an approach to enhancing crop and livestock production, based on an understanding of ecological principles, that empowers farmers to promote the health of crops and animals within a well-balanced agro-ecosystem, making full use of available technologies, especially host resistance, biological control and cultural control methods. Chemical pesticides are used only when the above measures fail to keep pests below acceptable levels, and when assessment of associated risks and benefits (considering effects on human and environmental health, as well as profitability) indicates that the benefits of their use outweigh the costs.

All interventions are need-based and are applied in ways that minimize undesirable side-effects.

Source: SP-IPM In Brief, www.spipm.cgiar.org/Brief/ spIPMbrif.htm.

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in appropriate methods of pesticide use suffer lower exposure and can achieve higher net returns than those who are not trained.

IPM has shown positive results in a wide range of socioeconomic and ecological conditions (FAO 1999, 2000; FAO and World Bank 2000; Tripp, Wijeratne, and Piyadasa 2005).

An important advantage of IPM is that it builds on the knowledge of women and men farmers about crop, pest, and predator ecology to increase the use of pest-resistant varieties, beneficial insects, crop rotations, and improved soil management. It combines local knowledge with external knowledge in the search for improved management strategies. The success of IPM depends largely on how well farmers understand and combine knowledge of biological and ecological processes with their farming experience to develop and select options that reduce losses to pests, increase agricultural productivity, manage risk, and meet the demands of local and global markets. As men and women often possess different types of knowledge, applying a gender perspective to IPM is integral for understanding farmers’ perceived pest management needs.

IPM is thus knowledge intensive and builds on available human and social capital. By addressing women as well as men, IPM programs and projects can help to invest more equitably in developing human and social capital—two crucial assets for sustainable livelihoods. When women attended farmer field schools to learn about IPM, they reported that the schools helped them gain recognition of their personal skills and abilities. Mancini, van Bruggen, and Jiggins (2007) showed that the personal growth stimulated by participation in field schools was particularly relevant to women and confirmed the importance of increasing women’ access to these and other educational programs.

Because IPM is not capital intensive, it is suited to family food production systems, including the production of traditional crops and varieties. Whereas pesticides are more commonly used in commercial production systems, IPM, if developed from a gender perspective, can contribute to increased food security.

Even in these cases, the wider promotion of IPM practices must overcome a number of limitations. IPM can be a timeand labor-intensive strategy, with potential constraints for women, who often lack surplus labor to invest in such initiatives. These factors are highly context specific and must be understood thoroughly before making any decision to promote IPM. For example, in some cases women have had to walk long distances to fetch water to prepare pesticides for cotton production, and switching to IPM based on biological pest control lightened women’s labor.

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Because IPM is knowledge intensive, it requires an intensive educational approach, which is more challenging to scale up (as farmer field schools and training-the-trainer approaches have shown) as well as demanding of human and financial resources (Feder, Murgai, and Quizon 2004).

The policy environment can also constrain expansion of IPM programs. Policies inhibiting the expansion of community IPM (Fakih, Rahardjo, and Pimbert 2003) include inequitable property rights over land and other natural resources (see also Modules 4 and 10), which commonly affect women more than men.

An important lesson of IPM projects in various countries is that women have continued to be underrepresented (Fakih, Rahardjo, and Pimbert 2003). Often IPM projects rigidly impose criteria for selecting participating farmers, which include the completion of lower secondary school, some farming experience, and the ability to communicate knowledge to others. Although useful in themselves—especially where ensuring the dissemination of knowledge is concerned—these criteria, if formally and rigidly applied, restrict women’s access. Other external constraints on women’s full participation in farmer field schools and training-of-trainer courses, as well as on their ability to be active farmer trainers, include the following (Nhat Tuyen 1997): ■

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In many cultures women need permission from their husbands or fathers to attend schools and courses, especially if all or most participants are men. In some cultures it is simply unacceptable for women to participate in group activities with men who are not their husbands or close relatives.

It may be difficult to schedule activities so that they do not clash with the wide range of family support tasks for which women bear primary responsibility.

The extent to which men farmers accept having women as part of a group or as trainers must be determined.

Village leadership, including village administration and cooperative management, plays an important if not essential role in organizing IPM training courses. These leaders interpret and apply the selection criteria. If men dominate village leadership, as is often the case, this domination can easily lead to men’s bias in selection.

The trainers’ role is critical in organizing training events in ways that meet the requirements of men and women farmers. When introducing a training course to local leaders, trainers often lack information about how gender operates in the local division of labor. For this reason, they do not have the capacity to negotiate fair representation of women in field schools or other training events, and

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often trainers themselves are not convinced that equality of representation is important. The degree to which women have participated in field schools, until now, has depended on the perceptions and initiatives of individual staff and trainers.

For these newer training approaches to succeed among men and women, a shift in attitudes must occur. The customary preference for working with men farmers must not be transferred from conventional research and extension approaches to new training approaches.

These constraints should be taken into account in future interventions. The IPM farmer field school literature provides a good starting point for reviewing ways of overcoming gender bias.

Other approaches to reduce hazardous chemicals. Other approaches to reduce pesticide use are the promotion of less toxic pesticides, the promotion of organic farming (discussed in Thematic Note 1), and the development of pestand disease-resistant crops, including GM crops. Scientists, development practitioners, civil society organizations, and politicians have long debated the benefits and constraints of genetically modified crops. Recent conclusions with respect to these issues have been summarized as follows: The scientific consensus is that the use of transgenic insectresistant Bt crops is reducing the volume and frequency of insecticide use on maize, cotton and soybean (ICSU [International Council for Science]). These results have been especially significant for cotton in Australia, China, Mexico, South Africa and the United States. The environmental benefits include less contamination of water supplies and less damage to non-target insects (ICSU) . . . As a result of less chemical pesticide spraying on cotton, demonstrable health benefits for farm workers have been documented in China. . . . and South Africa. . . . Herbicide use is changing as a result of the rapid adoption of HT [herbicide-tolerant] crops (ICSU). There has been a marked shift away from more toxic herbicides to less toxic forms, but total herbicide use has increased. . . . Scientists agree that HT crops are encouraging the adoption of low-till crops with resulting benefits for soil conservation (ICSU). There may be potential benefits for biodiversity if changes in herbicide use allow weeds to emerge and remain longer in farmers’ fields, thereby providing habitats for farmland birds and other species, although these benefits are speculative and have not been strongly supported by field trials to date. . . . There is concern, however, that greater use of herbicides—even less toxic herbicides—will further erode habitats for farmland birds and other species (ICSU). . . . Scientists agree that extensive long-term use of Bt crops and glyphosate and gluphosinate, the herbicides associated with HT crops, can promote the development of resistant insect pests and weeds.

FAO (2004, Section B, Chapter 4: 68–71)

Aside from their environmental consequences, GM crops have important socioeconomic consequences. The adoption of Bt cotton can be cited as an overall success for increasing yields, improving farm incomes, and significantly reducing pesticide applications, but these effects have varied depending on the context (World Bank 2007). Some farmers in India experienced losses following the adoption of Bt cotton.

In some parts of India, Bt cotton yields less than traditional cotton varieties. The reduced yields, together with rising seed costs, increased farmers’ indebtedness.4 The distribution of benefits from commercial GM crops has been uneven, concentrated in industrial countries and a few crops. The largest share of GM crops is found in highly commercial production systems (FAO 2004), and the strong commercial interest of the private sector largely determines the kinds of GM crops and traits that are developed. A few promising initiatives aim to develop and promote GM crops with traits that are relevant for developing countries. New Rice for Africa (NERICA), a high-yielding, drought- and pest-resistant type of rice developed specifically for African conditions, is one example. IFAD has provided $2 million to WARDA to promote the use of NERICA in West Africa and is now designing a series of grants to accelerate NERICA seed multiplication activities in Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guinea (IFAD 2007). The lack of gender-disaggregated data on the adoption and benefits of GM crops makes it impossible to draw gender-specific conclusions, apart from pointing out the gender-specific constraints encountered with other interventions in crop protection and in plant breeding more generally (see Thematic Note 2 on seed systems, for example).

Improving training and information for women in agriculture

Only safe, correct management will minimize the negative consequences of pesticides for human and environmental health and foster their sustained, positive impact on crop production and farmers’ overall livelihoods. Given rural women’s generally poor access to information and extension exposure, it remains a challenge to convey messages about safe pesticide use to them. Government, the chemical industry, and NGOs have undertaken various campaigns to promote safe pesticide use, but their lasting impact on women’s knowledge and on resulting levels of pesticide poisoning is not well documented.

Some of the innovative communication strategies developed in IPM projects could help to convey this important message to rural communities, specifically to women. Aside

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from the farmer field schools and training-of-trainers initiatives described earlier, these strategies have included radio programs, audio cassettes, and local “resource centers” with exhibits and educational material, including videos of local people’s experiences with IPM, comic books, leaflets, and posters. These alternatives might be better alternatives for reaching women.

Important subjects for an awareness campaign include the following: ■

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Delineating the links between chemical exposures, the effects on human health and the environment, and gender differences in risks and impacts. In most communities, people are unaware of their routine, even daily, exposure to toxic chemicals in the workplace, at home, and in the general environment. Raising awareness of the immediate health risks of toxic chemicals used in agriculture in developing countries is an intervention that informs work at all subsequent stages of the policy process.

Explaining the different toxicity classes of pesticides and the meaning of their corresponding labels.

Describing the physiological effects of pesticide poisoning (short and long term). Interesting lessons may be learned from participatory self-assessments of pesticide poisoning among men and women farmers (box 12.17).

Providing access to information, knowledge, and technology that promote new and less hazardous methods of using pesticides is another approach that has shown benefits. Box 12.18 describes how the development of appropriate equipment for applying seed dressings helped to reduce

pesticide exposure and its ill effects among women in eastern and southern Africa.

One must emphasize that educational strategies alone cannot protect farmers from the harmful effects of pesticides. Sherwood, Cole, and Murray (2007) note that research financed by the Novartis Foundation—the single largest study ever conducted on pesticide safety concerns— concluded that it was unrealistic to expect poor people in developing countries to manage pesticides safely. Major causes of poisoning in developing countries are the improper labeling, storage, and use of chemicals. Unintentional poisonings account for an estimated 50,000 deaths of children aged 0–14 every year.5 Sherwood, Cole, and Murray (2007) report that the Novartis Foundation study concluded that “any pesticide manufacturer that cannot guarantee the safe handling and use of its products should withdraw those products from the market”—a scenario difficult to envision in countries where government and industry capacity to enforce standards is severely limited (see the next section).

Other factors, including the lack of appropriate protective gear (discussed earlier), the lack of facilities for washing, and the lack of health services, favor the continued unsafe use of pesticides (London and Bailie 2001; Mancini and others 2005).

Reducing access to hazardous chemicals through regulation and enforcement

Access to the more dangerous agrochemicals could be reduced by strengthening and enforcing laws against exposure to hazardous chemicals. Although regulation and

Box 12.17 Farmer Self-Monitoring of Pesticide Use in Cotton in India: A Tool to Create Awareness

In 2003 the Integrated Pest Management Program for Cotton in Asia (a joint effort by the European Union and Food and Agriculture Organization) designed a participatory project to assess the frequency and severity of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers in Andhra Pradesh, India. Through farmer field schools, the program educated farmers about the adverse effects of pesticides on human health and the environment and presented sustainable alternatives to pesticide use. The assessment of acute pesticide poisoning was conceived as a complementary activity to be undertaken in three Source: Mancini and others 2005.

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villages that had farmer field schools. The idea was to measure the health effects of pesticide exposures in real time (over the course of the cropping season) through direct documentation by farmers. Because previous studies focused on men farmers who applied chemical products, this effort concentrated on women as respondents (for themselves and for their men relatives). The assessment’s primary aim was to raise farmers’ awareness of the seriousness of the pesticide poisoning occurring in the villages. It also aimed to quantify the problem through direct reporting by farmers.

Box 12.18 Tanzania and Zambia: Testing a Seed Dressing to Reduce Pesticide Problems

Women in small- and medium-scale farming suffer the worst health problems from pesticide use because they spray the fields themselves, usually without safety precautions. To assist them, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has developed a new way to coat seed with a minimal amount of pesticide (“seed dressing”). Seed dressing has proved to be one of the most effective and economic forms of protection. It can control a wide variety of fungal and bacterial diseases, in addition to soil-borne insects and nematodes. The much lower amount of pesticide used also greatly reduces the environmental and human health impacts.

Seed dressing is already used in many areas, but it is usually restricted to large-scale farmers who can afford

the large, expensive, imported machines that are required. UNIDO developed a mobile seed dressing applicator to meet the needs of women in small-scale farming, initially focusing on Arusha in Tanzania and Lusaka in Zambia. Men and women were trained to use the seed dressing equipment and to handle treated seed safely. Trials of the technology were conducted from 1992 to 1994, and the groundwork was laid for commercial implementation. Farming women were very pleased with the new approach, which would not only enable them to increase their yields, food supply, and incomes, but would also dramatically reduce their exposure to pesticides and reduce pollution in the local environment.

Source: UNIDO 1995.

enforcement have no explicit gender component, men, women, and children alike would benefit if countries strengthened and enforced the pesticide regulatory framework to conform to best practice as laid out in the FAO Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (FAO 2003). The cooperation of the private sector is crucial to the success of such efforts.

Highly hazardous pesticides (Class I) are still common in many smallholder farming systems. Because patents on many of these products expired long ago, chemical companies can market them at bargain prices, which are attractive to farmers. Farmers are also reluctant to stop using them because the pesticides are often highly efficient, and farmers do not know about their serious health and environmental risks. Farmers may also believe that yields will fall if they stop using these chemicals, especially if no alternatives are introduced. Restricting access to highly hazardous pesticides appears to have no measurable negative effect on rural economies, aside from a decline in pesticide sales (Sherwood, Cole, and Murray 2007). Farmers identify alternatives, “proving that these pesticides can be substituted by switching to non-chemical pest control or less toxic pesticides. The latter are usually more expensive than highly toxics, but judicious use leads farmers to use them economically” (Sherwood, Cole, and Murray 2007: 32). Sherwood and coworkers also report that knowledge-based methodologies, including farmer field schools, successfully assisted growers

in abandoning highly hazardous chemicals without suffering reduced yields. They conclude that “despite the claims of governments and industry, the problem with eliminating highly toxics never has been a lack of alternatives, but rather the political will to place the interest of the public over those of influential private actors” (Sherwood, Cole, and Murray 2007: 33).

There is growing recognition, based on ever-more evidence, that Class I pesticides negatively affect health, especially of women and their unborn babies. The rapid physiological changes experienced by women during pregnancy, lactation, and menopause render them more vulnerable to toxins. Exposure to pesticides can cause miscarriage, premature birth, birth defects, and low birth weight (WHO 2006). A substantial portion (up to 33 percent) of a woman’s chemical burden can be passed on to an unborn child during gestation and to a baby through breastfeeding.

In light of this and other evidence, FAO encourages the early withdrawal of highly toxic pesticides (FAO 2006). Use of such pesticides is prohibited or severely restricted in OECD countries, and in line with the International Code of Conduct, FAO would like to see them banned at the earliest date in developing countries, where it is virtually impossible to guarantee their safe use. A growing number of developing countries, including China, Thailand, and Vietnam, have are already prohibited the use of methyl parathion, monocrotophos, and several other Class I pesticides.

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GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Pest control is undoubtedly essential for commercial and subsistence farming systems to meet the growing demand for food and contribute to other development goals, but evidence is mounting that the sole reliance on pesticides to achieve such objectives is unsustainable. The high environmental and human costs of pesticide use must now be taken into account, along with the considerable gender effects of pesticide use, which despite their seriousness have been largely ignored.

The strategies discussed in this Module to reduce the use of harmful pesticides can be promoted in parallel. To succeed, they will need supportive policies, and they will also need to be devised with a full understanding of women’s circumstances. Several actions must be considered: ■

■

■

■

■

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Government and institutional support: Alternatives to pesticide use must be promoted actively. Structural factors that encourage the inappropriate and unnecessary use of pesticides—including direct or indirect subsidies; pro-pesticide biases in research, extension, and training; or credit linked to pesticide use—should be removed.

Research and extension services require institutional support to conduct work with a clear gender focus.

Technical solutions: Farmers require solutions to their crop protection problems that take account of gender-specific needs. Researchers must work with farmers, recognizing gender divisions of labor, to develop appropriate solutions. This collaboration is particularly important in the promotion of genetically modified crops, because no gender-disaggregated data on risks and benefits are currently available.

Farmer participation: Participatory field schools or their equivalents are good channels for providing information on safe crop protection strategies to farmers, for strengthening many good farmer practices, and for recognizing farmers’ expertise. A focus on the gender differences in expertise for different crops and production systems is important. Farmers who use pesticides need to acquire the knowledge and confidence to use sustainable alternatives.

Explicit inclusion of women: Unless women are specifically identified and included in project planning and implementation, and encouraged to assume leadership roles, they are likely to remain invisible. Training, information, and extension to reach these women are essential, or else they will continue to bear many of the consequences of unsafe pesticide use.

Messages developed to reach women: Pest control messages have conventionally been targeted at men farmers,

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a bias that must be addressed to ensure that women benefit from information campaigns. Messages designed to improve women’s awareness, knowledge, and skills with respect to safe pesticide use must be designed to overcome the barriers that are often raised by women’s lower socioeconomic status, more limited education, and other constraints. The use of alternative communication channels should be explored.

NOTES Overview

This Overview was written by Sabine Gündel (Consultant) and reviewed by Ira Matuschke, Mary Hill Rojas, and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Regina Laub (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); Robert Tripp (ODI); Eija Pehu (World Bank); and Niels Louwaars (WUR).

1. Although there is not scope in this Module to discuss urban agriculture, recent studies document its benefits among women who are responsible for family food provision (Anosike and Fasona 2004; Ba Diao 2004). Women use urban agriculture as a primary strategy to maintain livelihoods and protect household income through subsistence production. Urban agriculture requires an investment of household resources, such as land, labor, and capital, that can motivate women to go beyond acquiring food for domestic use. Urban food enterprises represent an avenue through which unskilled and uneducated women potentially gain entry into the business milieu (Hovorka and LeeSmith 2006).

2. For a discussion of broader natural resource management issues in relation to gender, see Module 10.

3. For example, crops with greater amounts of micronutrients that promote human health, such as betacarotene, iron, and zinc.

4. Among many examples, see Adato and Meinzen-Dick (2007).

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was written by Sabine Gündel (Consultant) and reviewed by Ira Matuschke, Mary Hill Rojas, and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Regina Laub (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); Robert Tripp (ODI); Eija Pehu (World Bank); and Niels Louwaars (WUR).

Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was written by Sabine Gündel (Consultant) and reviewed by Ira Matuschke, Mary Hill Rojas, and

Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Regina Laub (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); Robert Tripp (ODI); Eija Pehu (World Bank); and Niels Louwaars (WUR).

1. See also International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, “Contributions from Seed Programs and Projects,” Seed Info: Official Newsletter of the WANA Seed Network 33, www.icarda.org.

2. Examples of such crops include self-pollinating crops (common beans, groundnuts, rice), vegetatively propagated crops (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava), and crops with limited seed demand (indigenous vegetables, forages, openpollinated maize) (Scott and others 2003).

3. Louise Sperling, “Finding the Seeds of Recovery Close to Home,” CGIAR News (March), www.cgiar.org.

4. See also ibid.

5. N. P. Louwaars, “Seed Laws: Biases and Bottlenecks,” www.grain.org/seedling_files/seed-05-07-2.pdf.

6. Niels P. Louwaars, “Seed Laws: Biases and Bottlenecks,” Grain (July): 3–7, www.grain.org/seedling_files/seed-05-072.pdf.

7. See note 3 above.

Thematic Note 3

This Thematic Note was written by Sabine Gündel (Consultant) and reviewed by Ira Matuschke, Mary Hill Rojas, and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Regina Laub (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); Robert Tripp (ODI); Eija Pehu (World Bank); and Niels Louwaars (WUR).

1. Pesticides are chemicals, including insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, that are used to control insects, weeds, and other pests and diseases.

2. “Global Occupational Health,” http://globalhealthedu. org/Pages/Default.aspx.

3. “Brief 37-2007: Executive Summary Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2007,” www.isaaa.org.

4. “Indian Cotton Farmers Betrayed,” press release, www. i-sis.org.uk.

5. World Health Organization, “What Happens When Children Live in Unhealthy Environments?” Fact Sheet 272, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs272/en.

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Thematic Note 2

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Thematic Note 3

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———. 2000. “Inter-Country Programme for Community IPM in Asia: Phase IV Mid Term Review.” FAO, Rome.

———. 2003. International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides. Rome: FAO. ———. 2004. Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the Needs of the Poor? The State of Food and Agriculture 2003–2004.

Rome: FAO. ———. 2006. “FAO Encourages Early Withdrawal of Highly Toxic Pesticides.” News release, December.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and World Health Organization (WHO). 2004. “Childhood Pesticide Poisoning: Information for Advocacy and Action.” UNEP, New York.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO). 2001. “Amount of Poor-Quality

Pesticides Sold in Developing Countries Alarmingly High.” FAO/WHO press release, February 1.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Bank.

2000. “Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems for Rural Development (AKIS/RD): Strategic Vision and Guiding Principles.” FAO, Rome.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2002. “The Rural Poor: Survival or a Better Life? The Choice between Destruction of Resources and Sustainable Development.” World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, August 26–September 4.

———. 2007. “Climate Change, Biofuel Markets, and Migration to Feature in African Green Revolution Conference.” Press release.

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 2003. “The Millennium Development Goals and Local Processes: Hitting the Target or Missing the Point?”

IIED, London.

London, Leslie, and Ross Bailie. 2001. “Challenges for Improving Surveillance for Pesticide Poisoning: Policy Implications for Developing Countries.” International Journal of Epidemiology 30 (3): 564–70.

Mancini, Francesca, Ariena van Bruggen, and Janice Jiggins.

2007. “Evaluating Cotton Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Farmer Field School Outcomes Using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in India.” Experimental Agriculture 43: 97–112.

Mancini, Francesca, Ariena van Bruggen, Janice Jiggins, Arun Ambatipudi, and Helen Murphy. 2005. “Acute Pesticide Poisoning among Female and Male Cotton Growers in India.” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11 (3): 221–32.

Nhat Tuyen, Nguyen. 1997. “Women Farmers and IPM Farmer Field Schools in Viet Nam.” ILEIA Newsletter 13 (4): 20.

Rother, Hanna Andrea. 2000. “Influences of Pesticide Risk Perception on the Health of Rural South African Women and Children.” African Newsletter on Occupational Safety and Health 2: 42–46.

Sherwood, Stephen, Donald Cole, and Douglas Murray.

2007. “It’s Time to Ban Highly Hazardous Pesticides.”

LEISA Magazine (September): 32–33.

Systemwide Program on Integrated Pest Management (SPIPM). 2006. “Biological Alternatives to Harmful Chemical Pesticides.” IPM Research Brief No. 4, SP-IPM Secretariat, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Cotonou.

Tripp, Robert, Mahinda Wijeratne, and V. Hiroshini Piyadasa. 2005. “What Should We Expect from Farmer Field Schools? A Sri Lanka Case Study.” World Development 33 (10): 1705–20.

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United Nations. 1992. “Agenda 21.” UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Rome.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). 1995. “Women, Industry, and Environment: Sample Cases.” Women in Industry Series, UNIDO, Vienna.

World Bank. 2007. World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

World Health Organization (WHO). 2006. “Gender Equality, Work and Health: A Review of the Evidence.” WHO, Geneva.

FURTHER READING Thematic Note 1

Food and Agriculture Organization. n.d. “Sustainable Land Management and Soil Productivity Improvement in Support of Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Available at www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/farmspi/spi.stm.

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Muzira, Robert N., Pamela N. Pali, Pascal C. Sanginga, and Robert J. Delve. 2007. “Farmers’ Participation in Soil Fertility Management Research Process: Dilemma in Rehabilitating Degraded Hilltops in Kabale, Uganda.” In Advances in Integrated Soil Fertility Management in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities, ed.

Andre Bationo, Boaz S. Waswa, Job Kihara, and Joseph Kimetu, 1051–59. Dordrecht: Springer.

Thematic Note 3

Chandrasekar, K., and G. T. Gujar. 2004. “Bt Cotton Benefits Short-Lived—Study.” Indian Agricultural Research Institute. Financial Express (India), February 11. van den Berg, Henk, and Janice Jiggins. 2007. “Investing in Farmers: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools in Relation to Integrated Pest Management.” World Development 35 (4): 663–86.

Wilson, Clevo, and Clem Tisdell. 2001. “Why Farmers Continue to Use Pesticides Despite Environmental, Health and Sustainability Costs.” Ecological Economics 39: 449–62.

MODULE 13

Gender in Fisheries and Aquaculture Overview

he fisheries and aquaculture sector is estimated to provide direct employment and revenue to 200 million people. The increasing demand on the sector is met by both large-scale and industrial production systems and small-scale and artisanal production systems.

Small-scale fisheries of all kinds are a major source of animal protein in many parts of the world. Facing declining fish stocks in capture fisheries, aquaculture has been the focus of development investment since the 1980s and is now the fastest-growing food sector in the world. It is expected to contribute more than 50 percent of total fish consumption by 2020. Although just over 90 percent of this production originates in Asia, and nearly 70 percent in China alone, efforts continue to expand its production into new areas, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Aquaculture is promoted as an alternative and sustainable income source to those involved in capture fisheries and agriculture, as long as environmental and disease issues are addressed (Belton and Little 2008; World Bank 2006). It is also viewed as being especially attractive to rural women because it can be carried out with minimal investment and close to homesteads and can be integrated into existing food systems.

This Module details investments that address livelihood problems arising from the ongoing changes in production systems, marketing, and technology in the fisheries and aquaculture sector and examines investments that reflect gender inequities that exist in many societies.1 These gender

T

inequities include the comparatively low value attached to work done by women, and women’s limited access to essential resources such as ponds, new technology, education, and information and skills. These inequities reflect societal norms of masculinity and femininity that determine who can and should do what and are visible in local communities, in institutions serving these communities, and in the way many national and international organizations operate. The investments include the following: ■

■

■

■

The formation at the community level of gender-responsive resource management bodies and small groups for accessing resources needed for aquaculture development (see Thematic Note 1 and Innovative Activity Profile 1) The provision of gender-responsive advisory services that address systematic bias in essential services providing information and skills if small-scale family production systems are to remain competitive and everyone is to benefit (see Thematic Note 2 and Innovative Activity Profile 2) Action to enable marginalized groups of fishers, processors, and traders to access new national and international markets and to obtain improvements in work conditions in new labor markets (processing and packaging factories at sea or on land) that are largely unregulated (see Thematic Note 3) Support to marginalized groups, including poor women, in identifying and sustaining alternative livelihoods to reduce

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reliance on their fishing activities, which put pressure on the fragile and constricted marine resources and coastal ecosystems (see Thematic Note 4).

All these investments are concerned with protecting livelihoods at risk and supporting strategic changes in gender relations that will enable everyone to gain.

GENDER ROLES, POWER, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROFITS

Fisheries and aquaculture value chains are diverse and often complex and dynamic systems, with men and women often undertaking different and changing roles depending on local norms about resource access and control and mobility, type of technology involved, the extent of commercialization, and the product involved. Table 13.1 illustrates some of this diversity for capture fisheries. As indicated in the table, many small-scale fisheries operate with the men investing in fishing vessels, nets, and other gear and doing the fishing and with the women investing in processing equipment and being responsible for fish purchasing, processing, and sales, but this pattern is not followed everywhere. In terms of boat investments, in some situations women use the proceeds from their trading to invest in boats and gear—for example, in Ghana, West Africa, described by Walker (2001), and in the Lake Victoria fisheries bordering Uganda, described by Allison (2003). These women may not enter the water to fish but may hire crews for their own boats, thus securing their incomes from fresh or processed fish. In Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Thailand and in indigenous fisheries in Latin America, women are involved in boat fishing, and in a number of other countries (Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a number of countries in Asia, including Bangladesh and India) women collect shellfish, including crabs, and produce shellfish seed. Women’s involvement in fish processing is widespread and, along with the collection activities described here, is regarded as an appropriate activity for women given their domestic tasks and responsibilities.

In small-scale systems, although it is possible to detail the divisions of labor by sex, often whole families are involved.2 Therefore, even though it is largely men who fish and women who purchase the fish, the women may include wives and other women relatives, especially those who have helped the fisher in the past, and traders who have provided credit, who may also be relatives. Jul-Larsen and others (2003) describe the multiplicity and complexity of the relationships that men fishers working on Lake Victoria have with their women

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buyers and how these relationships influence how much fish they are allowed to buy. Consequently, even if one sex faces greater business risks than the other, without detailed, context-specific intrahousehold information on roles and responsibilities, it is difficult to predict the impact on household livelihoods.

Regardless of gender-role differences, wealthier groups of women and men play dominant roles in the parts of the chains where they operate. Poor members of the chain have weak bargaining power and little control over others in the chain and prices paid for goods and services, and they are more vulnerable than wealthier groups to decreases in catch and poor services because they are unable to accumulate assets. For example, in capture fisheries not all men own boats. The majority work as crew and may never accumulate enough assets to own a boat (Allison 2003). The same is true of processors and traders. In parts of West Africa a hierarchy of traders and processors exist, with younger and poorer women working for wealthier ones and depending on them for their livelihoods. The situation of these poorer women involved in fish processing is demonstrated in the following description from the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP 2006: 6) of women fish processors in West Africa: Their activities are less profitable; they access poor quality fish and are unable to keep fish fresh thereby attracting higher prices, since they have no information on marketing or ice.

Loans from micro-finance institutions serve more as revolving funds for marketing than investment loans for fishing and processing equipment. Informal and formal credit is risky because profits are minimal. Poorer women use revolving funds to meet household expenses in periods of poor catch which reduces funds available for business. Most female-owned fishery enterprises are therefore small, and grow slowly, if at all (Benin, Niger and The Gambia in West Africa).

The distribution of power and therefore of profits is similar in aquaculture chains and can be demonstrated by looking at the shrimp value chain, which is dominated by China, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Thailand. A considerable part of this market is almost entirely in the hands of large producers, supported by external capital, and destined for the international market. In Bangladesh, which is also one of the major players in the market for shrimp, most shrimp production is in the hands of small producers, although processing is completed in factories (Gammage and others 2006).3 Figure 13.1 indicates the various stakeholders and resources involved.

As many as 1.2 million individuals are reported to be directly involved in the shrimp value chain in Bangladesh,

Table 13.1 Gender Roles in the Capture Fisheries Value Chain Scale

Region

Investment

Catch

Processing

Sales

Small

Sub-Saharan Africa

• Capital for boats and gear from processing and fish sales • Community management groups invest in landing sites and refrigeration • Women invest in processing and drying

• Boat owners: wealthy and older women and men • Crew: young men and boys • Nets: young boys • Mending nets: women of all ages • Women collect shellfish, for example, Benin and Congo

Women smoke and dry fish and cook for sale

• Fresh fish purchase by women for drying/processing and sale • Fresh fish sales depend on ice plants managed by local committees and private owners (especially fishers).

Sales are to longdistance traders and to women for local sales. Women transport fish and act as middlemen.

Small

Asia

• Savings: women • China: women and men invest

• Boat owners: wealthy and older men • Crew: adult and young men • Women and men mend nets • Women collect shellfish, for example, Cambodia and Thailand

Women smoke and dry fish

• Women and men sell in local markets, and to contractors for international and national markets • Sales are more likely to be controlled by men in “conservative” locations

Small

Latin America

Especially indigenous community fisheries

• Boat owners: women in Wayuu indigenous communities • Women and men fish in Brazil and Mexico • Crew: young men

Women and young men

• Women and young men in local sales.

Colombia: women and young men in Wayuu communities; Honduras: indigenous Garifuna fish traders.

• Supermarkets buy through contractors

Large

National/ global

International and national capital

Industrial fishing fleets dominate in some countries in Latin America but are also significant in other locations

Factories: • Women clean, resize, control quality • Men fillet and supervise

• Large local and international buyers, including supermarkets, especially in Latin America, southern Africa, and parts of Asia control marketing

Source: Personal communication with Chitra Deshpande. Analysis based on various sources.

Note: The men and women involed in small-scale production systems may be family members. In Latin America artisanal or small-scale fishers have larger boats (are semi-industrial) than in similar systems in other regions.

with a further 4.8 million household members indirectly dependent on it for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, profits generated from shrimp exports are not shared equally throughout the chain, and middlemen and exporters realize more profits than farmers and fry catchers. Fry catchers are the most vulnerable workers along the chain. They are

often locked in a cycle of debt with others higher up in the chain, although this is not to say that indebtedness does not appear elsewhere in the chain. The chain is also a highly sex-segmented labor market, with women and men receiving different wages along the chain for the work they do.

Women fry catchers and sorters earn about 64 percent of

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Figure 13.1 Flow Diagram of the Shrimp Value Chain in Bangladesh Hatcheries

Feed

Fry faria & aratdar

Fry catchers

Foreign markets

Land

Labor

Shrimp faria & aratdar

Farmers

Exporters

Processing plants

Land

Labor

Capital

Source: Gammage and others 2006.

Note: Faria are intermediaries who buy and sell products in Bangladesh. Aratdar are commission agents or intermediaries who buy and sell products in Bangladesh.

what men fry catchers and sorters earn, for example, and these differences are linked directly with women’s domestic roles. Women are also found in the most insecure nodes of the shrimp chain—working as fry catchers and laborers, and undertaking various low-paid tasks in the shrimpprocessing plants.

With increased mechanization in production and even a reported influx of newcomers into the sector as other sectors decline, the pressure on resources increases, and many of the existing actors struggle to maintain their position. Women are frequently the first to lose their role in the sector. The following quotation from Tietze and others (2007: 3) about capture fisheries in the states of Maharashtra and Orissa in India is typical of what is detailed for many countries as systems become more commercialized: “Motorization and mechanization of fishing vessels led to a concentration of fish landings at fewer harbours and landing sites and, in some cases, resulted in the takeover of fish trade by fish merchants [who were men]. This process displaced many women from the retailing of fish.”

Reports from a few locations tell of women engaging in sex-for-fish exchanges to ensure their access to fish (SFLP 2006), and others may seek employment in industrial processing factories. In Latin America these factories serve local supermarkets as well as the North American export market.

Elsewhere, processing factories are more likely to be exclu-

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sively serving the export market, although this may be changing rapidly. Both women and men are reported to be benefiting from employment in these factories even though conditions may be poor, but women are frequently reported as benefiting least. For example, women from fishing communities in Orissa State (India) become wage earners in the growing seafood export processing industry, but at a cost— they have to stay away from their homes for longer periods, which makes it more difficult for them to fulfill their domestic roles, their wages are lower than those of men doing the same work, and they experience poorer working conditions (Tietze and others 2007). In Bangladesh women are also paid less than men, and their employment is casual and temporary (Gammage and others 2006). Women find themselves in similar situations in processing factories in Kenya (Markussen 2002), Latin America (Josupeit 2004), and Sri Lanka (de Silva and Yamao 2006) (see also Module 8).

GENDER PLANNING

From this Overview of the fisheries and aquaculture sector, it is evident that asset access and control is vital for enabling those involved not only to survive but also to gain from ongoing changes in the sector. These assets include everything from financial capital and ovens to knowledge about new production systems and skills and collective organizing to

enable less-powerful actors to deal with powerful players in the value chains. Although the Sustainable Livelihoods framework points to the need for strategic investments to be made to challenge policies and social attitudes that limit the choices and options available to less powerful individuals and groups, various development programs using livelihood approaches give the sense that targeting asset provision to achieve these strategic changes is a straightforward process. However, asset provision has been shown to be easily subverted in the face of existing norms and values about what different categories of women and men can and should do under certain circumstances, including when they are in the presence of more powerful players (see Thematic Note 1).

Although many women and men have benefited from ongoing changes in this sector, in a number of programs women’s reproductive roles (their caring responsibilities for both children and adults) and their current economic roles have been used to justify limiting their role in new aquaculture systems (in northeastern Thailand and in Bangladesh, reported by Kelkar 2001 and Barman 2001, respectively). They can also be subverted by implementing organizations that argue that it is too expensive to include both women and men in training programs and that it is too difficult to justify organizationally given the interest in supporting smallscale family production systems (see Thematic Note 2 for a more detailed discussion on family approaches). The outcomes of these kinds of decisions reinforce gender inequities that already exist or even introduce inequity where it did not previously exist; women may be left in the position of helpers to others, possibly weakening their bargaining positions over the allocation of benefits produced. Alternatively, they might be placed in less-valued jobs.4 These issues of exclusion are addressed in the interventions detailed in Thematic Notes 1 and 2.

The rapidly changing marketing situation for fish products and the growth of inequalities within fisheries and marketing chains also point to the need for some kind of protection against livelihood threats.5 These are explored in gender analysis but not in livelihoods. What might be referred to as social protection investment might include directly supporting women’s entry into new markets and more profitable enterprises, working to raise the awareness of the dangers of fish-for-sex transactions, and seeking regulatory mechanisms for factories operating in the sector. Meso-level gender-responsive organizations have a particular role to play in these investments. In their role in advocating for gender-responsive regulatory mechanisms,

they will seek to secure agreements that will enhance the value of women’s labor contribution, thereby increasing women’s self-esteem and contributing to the achievement of gender equity.

Investments such as these are innovative and reflect the sense of urgency that has entered into the documentation on fisheries and aquaculture to move beyond only seeking outcomes of increased production and technical efficiency and including women in these, to addressing social relational issues that are causing major problems in this sector.

The following are central elements of any gender analysis for planning in the fisheries sector: ■

■

■

Investigate ongoing changes in livelihoods (at the community, household, and individual levels) and related gender issues.

Use an analysis that begins with gender roles, moves to gender relations, and includes local understandings about what women and men are able to be and do with their resources, rather than what resources they do or do not have.

Focus interventions on addressing changes that are increasing the vulnerability of the men and women involved and seek improvements that will address the need for strategic changes in their lives and will ensure gender equity.

BENEFITS FROM GENDER-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS

Several important benefits result from actions that are responsive to gender issues: ■

■

■

Securing the position of postharvest activities in natural resource planning processes will enhance the position of women and enable improvements in the sector as a whole.

Supporting women’s independent rights to resources will enhance their capacity to strengthen their livelihoods and cope with change.

Using an investment approach that aims to increase the capacity of women to engage in all aspects of new aquaculture systems technology and moves away from linking their involvement in aquaculture with their domestic responsibilities will help achieve women’s empowerment and social advancement and help improve the livelihoods of women, their households, and their communities.

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■

■

Protecting women’s incomes and preventing the deterioration of their status and position in a context of changing political, social, and economic circumstances are essential for achieving the objective of creating responsible fisheries and aquaculture systems. The loss of local employment affects the money flows in local communities and therefore their economic security and survival (NEF 2002). Local job losses also can potentially destroy the social fabric of the community as people maneuver to maintain their positions. Women and men in weaker bargaining positions are unlikely to gain in these processes.

A focus on enabling women and men to benefit from new (for them) markets will provide them with skills and

networks that they can use in other situations, and changes that involve women and men simply engaging in low-paid, low-status, and risky activities can lead only to increased livelihood insecurity and overall welfare losses.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Table 13.2 provides indicators that might be used when monitoring gender issues in fisheries and aquaculture.

Depending on the country or region, it may be relevant to also consider ethnicity and caste alongside gender (both as comparative indicators and when collecting data), because women of lower castes or ethnic minorities are usually in the most disadvantaged situation.

Table 13.2 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender in Fisheries and Aquaculture (continued) Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Number of women and men actively participating in established and well-functioning fishers groups, fishing boats, fish marketing and processing enterprises, or marketing cooperatives

• Committee meeting minutes • Interviews with stakeholders • Program and project records

Women or other disadvantaged groups actively participating in management committees and boards

• • • •

Number of women and men holding management or treasurer positions in natural resource management groups

• Bank account records • Committee meeting minutes

Gender differences in workload as a result of introduced practices or new technology

• Case studies • Participatory rapid appraisal • Sample surveys

New and total employment or paid labor generated in fish-processing factories for the local population, disaggregated by gender (with or without ethnicity)

• Administrative records of firms

Over a set period, an increase of x percent in household incomes from fish-based activities (such as fisheries or aquaculture or processing) among women-headed households and poor households in program areas

• Household surveys • Project management information system • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Among surveyed women in target group, x percent rate that their access to income from fish (either via fishing or aquaculture) has improved during the period covered by the program or project

• Interviews with women in target groups (for instance, a sample of women in the defined area); ideally the interviews should be conducted before and after any project and program activities

Number of women and men participating in training in new methods of fishing or fish cultivation

• Program and project records • Training records

Number of women and men starting new small enterprises in fish processing or marketing

• Household surveys • Project records • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Change in attitudes of women and men about changed roles of women in fisheries or aquaculture

• Group interviews or focus groups • Interviews, before and after

Change in attitudes of women and men about access to credit and satisfaction with repayments

• Group interviews or focus groups • Interviews, before and after

Committee meeting minutes Interviews with stakeholders Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) Program and project records

(Table continues on the following page)

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Table 13.2 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender in Fisheries and Aquaculture (continued) Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Number of women and men participating in training in alternative income-generating topics

• Program and project records • Training records

Number of women and men starting new small enterprises in alternative, nonfishing livelihoods

• Household surveys • Project records • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Community opinions (disaggregated by gender) with changes in level of conflicts over gender

• Group interviews or focus groups • Interviews, before and after

Community opinions (disaggregated by gender) with changes in level of conflicts over fisheries exploitation

• Group interviews or focus groups • Interviews, before and after

Improved health of fisheries stocks or aquatic habitats, measured by total numbers of each species and the number of different species, measured before and after program

• Fisheries Department records • Participatory monitoring by villagers • Program records

Changes over x-year period of project activities in household nutrition, health, education, vulnerability to violence, and happiness, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys, before and after • Project management information system • School records

Source: Authors, with inputs from Pamela White, author of Module 16.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Gender-Responsive Institutions for Accessing and Managing Resources

he creation of gender-responsive institutions at all levels has been recognized as necessary for achieving gender equity since the 1980s. As a gendermainstreaming process, it has been at the core of gender planning since the mid-1970s and responds to the evidence assembled during the United Nations International Women’s Decade from 1976 to 1985 from many countries (Dixon-Mueller 1989) that women are disadvantaged in relation to men in their resource access and control over decision making in a range of institutions, including the international community, the state, the marketplace and communities, families, and kinship groups. This Thematic Note is concerned with the formation of gender-responsive user groups in fisheries and aquaculture1—community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) groups and small groups of women for accessing resources where previously they had none—for achieving strategic changes in the status and position of women.

The major premise of community management is that sustainable resource management is best achieved when driven by those who rely on the resource for their survival.

Within CBNRM, the need for gender-responsive action is based on the understanding that women who may have a direct or an indirect stake in the sector are more often than not excluded from participating in the activities of these groups or have only token representation, are perceived by themselves and others as having no right to speak, and have no presence on major decision-making bodies (for fisheries, see Bennett 2005). The exclusion of women is justified on a number of grounds by local and nonlocal stakeholders: that women’s interests are taken care of by men, that benefits are shared equitably within households, and that challenging local norms that constrain women’s public action is culturally insensitive and politically unacceptable.

The problem of women’s visibility also presents itself, for even though numerous documents describe the roles of both

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men and women in fisheries and aquaculture, the “catching sector” (Bennett 2005) is the one largely dominated by men and determines policy agendas while the “processing and marketing sector” is ignored. The invisibility of production activities dominated by women in fisheries and aquaculture is linked with the domestic roles of women and associated social and cultural understandings about the value of these activities (Mowla and Kibria 2006, among others).

The formation of women’s user groups to enhance their resource access rights and for receiving targeted services is well established as good gender practice. Although both poor men and poor women have been organized into groups to access resources, it is women who are more commonly formed into small groups, and for whom this practice is regarded as ideal given their socially weaker positions and limited mobility in public spaces in many societies. The following brief examples illustrate the kinds of actions involved in both fisheries and aquaculture: The Bangladesh Meghna-Dhanagoda Command Area Development Project (Asian Development Bank Financing): Under this program, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were engaged to organize the poor (2,590 landless and marginal people, of whom 96 percent were women) into groups, provide them with access to ponds for fish farming through private lease arrangements, assist them with acquiring skills in fish farming and marketing, and provide them with microfinance services, including microcredit and savings facilities.

The Oxbow Lakes Small-Scale Fishermen’s Project (supported

by International Fund for Agricultural Development, the government of Bangladesh, Danish International Development Assistance, and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee): The primary work of this program involved providing men from villages surrounding government-owned lakes with long-term access leases and forming them into lake management groups. The groups were large and experienced problems of conflict and lack of social cohesion.

Women were not initially considered as recipients of publicly owned resources, and mixed groups in any case were not considered to be socially acceptable. When women were targeted, they were formed into small pond farming groups to access ponds on similar lease arrangements. These groups included widowed and divorced women, who were considered to be especially vulnerable and socially weak. None of the women’s groups experienced problems of social cohesion, largely because of their size and the fact that members of each group came from the same community (Nathan and Apu 2004).

The Oxbow Lakes Project, implemented in 1990, was unique in its attempt to give poor women group rights over public water bodies, and its success demonstrates how action to support women and poorer community members can easily be sabotaged. During the project, powerful men attempted to sabotage the work of the project and acquire the long-term leases for themselves, taking over selling fish and making purchases, especially of fingerlings, which are central to effective pool management. There were even reports of husbands who had earlier deserted their wives returning to seek benefits from them, as well as of husbands reducing their own contributions to meeting household requirements once wives or other women household members began to earn income from the sales of their products (Nathan and Apu 1998, 2004). Of the ten pond farming groups formed, five were retained by the women themselves, two were taken over by men, and three were leased to men by the women.

BENEFITS FROM SUPPORTING GENDERRESPONSIVE LOCAL INSTITUTIONS

Ensuring the inclusion of women in decision making over resources and enabling them to directly access resources and their benefits will lead to women’s social and economic empowerment. The Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) II program, detailed in Innovative Activity Profile 1, also demonstrates the link between these empowerment objectives and other gains—in this case, improvements in the condition of the coral reef. Reports also tell of improved solidarity and conflict resolution in natural resource management groups in which both women and men are involved (reported by Westermann, Ashby, and Pretty 2005, but not for fisheries).2 The main practical benefits expected from this action are the protection of women’s incomes and, therefore, their ability to contribute to the survival of their households, families, and communities.

Community-level action, such as within CBNRM groups, that takes into account the interests of all local stakeholders

leads to a whole-sector approach in addressing resource management problems and planning solutions. This approach will result in gains in social and economic well-being for the community as a whole (see rural community evidence reported by NEF 2002). Within communities where men migrate away to fish, the inclusion of women in these groups will increase the viability of households in which both husbands and wives must be presumed to have a joint interest.

A central understanding behind the formation of groups of women and poorer members of communities is that these members often access resources through social relationships based on dependency, relationships in which they have to trade in their autonomy for security. As shown by the Oxbow Lakes example, the women’s groups formed are expected to provide relationships based on solidarity and reciprocity and to build autonomy.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

CBNRM groups, with or without direct government involvement, have a poor record of being gender responsive. This reflects the technical agenda that inspired the formation of the groups and that is the main concern of the ministries involved in their implementation. In response to the demand, by donors and others, that these groups become gender sensitive, it is tempting for these public organizations to take administrative action by appointing individual women to fill quotas. As experience has shown from outside fisheries and aquaculture, such women are unable to speak directly, influence decision making, or use their membership to protect their livelihoods or achieve other development goals. In fisheries and aquaculture, the major policy challenge is to ensure that plans for community-level resource management take into account all linked activities in the value chains and that all stakeholder groups are able to influence decision making. The COREMAP II program (see Innovative Activity Profile 1) demonstrates the level of commitment required to making this happen.

The information from fishing communities in Benin, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and The Gambia presented in box 13.1 demonstrates the problem of attendance for women in community-level groups, as well as the issue of them having a voice in important matters.

All marginal groups experience some inequities, but the African women reporting here noted that men perceive that women’s participation and increased access to know-how and information will make them less submissive, more independent, and better able to challenge them. As a result, although women may attend meetings, they may hesitate to

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Box 13.1 Factors within Households and Communities Blocking Women’s Participation in New Institutional Arrangements Within households: ■

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Family responsibilities and tasks reduce women’s availability for meetings.

Women’s physical movement is subject to social control, so the timing and venue of meetings often limit the participation of certain categories of women.

The time required to participate is costlier for women than men, especially for poorer women, because their participation is made at the expense of carrying out other activities.

Within communities: ■

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Because women are often less literate than men, their contribution is less valued.

Women have little experience in group management and public speaking, and social and cultural norms often support men’s decision making in public gatherings.

Women have less access to media (radio and newspapers) and information in general and are therefore less aware of what is going on around them.

Source: Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme fieldwork (SFLP 2006: 4).

take on leadership positions, to follow up on decisions, and to practice newly acquired skills. Addressing these issues requires relevant strategies and budget allocations.

Mowla and Kibria (2006), among others, provide some insight into the well-known problems associated with focusing on women’s participation in user groups. They begin by noting that the purpose of the Patuakhali Barguna Aquaculture Extension Project (PBAEP) implemented between 1997 and 2004 was to strengthen the socioeconomic status of women and men and increase their participation in integrated pond farming: “Women expressed satisfaction with their ability to meet their practical needs—access to fish— and noted that they were able to do the work because of the location of the ponds close to their homesteads. Nevertheless, this was achieved at a cost—their labor burdens had increased and because they were too busy with the new activity plus their domestic work, they expressed reluctance to attend training sessions, thus disadvantaging themselves” (pp. 21 and 26; emphasis added).

The issue of labor burdens on women who are largely, if not entirely, responsible for domestic work is rarely mentioned in the documentation on fisheries and aquaculture projects. This short note on the PBAEP points to the dilemma for women. They may wish to be involved, but the gains from their participation are often costly in terms of time and in terms of their ability to access skills and information.

The women who gained most from the Oxbow Lake Project were reported to be divorcées, widows, or women household heads, and for them aquaculture had become a

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main source of cash income. Indeed, by 1998 a number of the women’s groups were already recording a range of benefits: a higher per capita income from their aquaculture investments than from their small livestock activities, increased knowledge of new production methods, interaction with traders and officials, and enhanced social and family positions (Nathan and Apu 1998). In spite of these reported positive outcomes, the reports from this project also point out that the change process is often long and will demand considerable commitment on the part of all those involved to maintain their independent right (claims) to productive resources (IFAD Oxbow Lakes documentation). Finally, action for married women is possibly more difficult to implement than for other categories of women because they must negotiate what they do with spouses, in-laws, and others.

LESSONS LEARNED AND GUIDELINES FOR PRACTITIONERS

The following three sections offer advice and practical knowledge gleaned from the experience of fisheries and aquaculture projects.

Ensuring participation

All efforts must be made to ensure that the different stakeholders attend meetings and participate in decision making.

This is especially important for postharvest stakeholder groups who in large part are women. The programs of CARE Bangladesh and PROFOUND in Vietnam (see Thematic

Note 2), COREMAP II (see Innovative Activity Profile 1), and PBAEP in Bangladesh (reported in Mowla and Kibria 2006) provide practical guidance when seeking the participation of women: ■

■

■

■

Meetings must be held at a convenient time and place because of the limits on women’s mobility and because of their domestic roles.

Women must be present in sufficient numbers within a stakeholder group if the group is to have influence.

Postharvest stakeholder groups must be acknowledged as having rights equal to those of other stakeholder groups.

Women must occupy some important decision-making positions in order to be in a position to press for action in line with their interests.

Facilitating production group formation

The formation of production groups for allocating valuable and therefore scarce resources to women and poorer groups will face significant opposition at all levels—donors, governments, and local communities—where this conflicts with customary practice. Strategies need to be identified at the outset for dealing with these. In the Bangladesh case of the Oxbow Lakes Project, where groups of unmarried, widowed, divorced, and married women were organized for receiving long-term user rights in public water bodies for aquaculture production, documentation by Nathan and Apu (1998; 2004) provides some unique information on project outcomes and useful best practices for partnership formation (highlighted in the following excerpts from various sections of the paper by Nathan and Apu 1998 and Barman 2001):3 With the support of the national government, and in collaboration with BRAC and DANIDA as gender responsive funders, collective investments in aquaculture were made in Jessore in the SW of Bangladesh where women are not commonly involved in aquaculture. Here landless women (and men) who formed themselves into Fish Farming Groups (FFGs) and Lake Fishing Teams (LFTs) obtained long-term user rights in public water bodies (20 years in the first instance), which for the purpose of this activity were treated as common pool resources with access rights restricted to the FFGs and LFTs, and some other fishing groups around the lake. The project was documented as commercial with the desired outcome predicted on the strength of the incentive derived from acquiring long-term user rights in common pool resources, of strengthening women’s participation in fish culture. To make this happen, women extension agents were provided under the equally innovative Mymensingh Aquaculture Extension Project (MAEP 1999) to deliver inputs required. (emphasis added)

Gaining control of management tasks

While meeting household needs might be interesting to women, they are unlikely to take on additional work burdens over a long period if the work does not result in sufficient cash income. To achieve this, they must also control the tasks that are essential to effective enterprise management, such as selling fish and making purchases of fingerlings, in the case of aquaculture pond management.

Using monitoring and evaluation indicators

From the various program examples referenced in this Module, it is clear that there are always at least two concerns: (1) how the group or project is functioning and (2) how group members or project participants are using their membership to serve their own interests and the interest of others for whom they are responsible. This second focus is essential, given the interest of this Sourcebook in achieving broader desirable development outcomes beyond economic growth and improved productivity.

Creating and strengthening institution and group focus

From the outset, a clear gender objective must be negotiated with local people and included in project objectives. To achieve its gender-equality objective, the SFLP conducted gender-analysis training with its local collaborators and reached agreements with them about desirable changes and how to get them. In cases like this, indicators will be developed by the groups themselves.

The creation and strengthening of local institutions represent the development of substantial resources at the group level—decision making, information flow and awareness, skill learning, and so on. All these areas address how well the group is doing in terms of its objectives. The indicators should enable everyone to answer the question, How well does the institution draw on and invest in members for the ongoing institutional development? It is useful to divide these into social, human, natural, financial, and physical resources. For example, social and human resource development enables members to act collectively to manage the defined resources.

Focusing on members

A second set of indicators is needed to answer the question, How are the management arrangements or group processes affecting members’ lives? Again, it is useful to divide these into social, human, natural, financial, and physical resources.

For example, women’s membership has affected their wider social and gender relations, their ability to access fish, their ability to negotiate with others, and so on.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Family-Based Systems for Aquaculture Development in Asia

he World Bank (2006) describes aquaculture in Asia as having taken three distinct development pathways that have sometimes merged and overlapped as social and economic conditions have changed in different countries. The first is described as a static model rather than a pathway because the system is vulnerable and lacking in growth potential. The second is described as a transition pathway, depicting the more advantaged farmer or small enterprise with access to the knowledge, markets, and capital necessary for increasing the scale of production and offering a way out of poverty for the household.

The last is referred to as a consolidation pathway, which covers both corporate and community enterprises, in which corporate enterprises operate as vertically integrated farms and community enterprises include a group of organized small farmers benefiting from economies of scale by engaging in joint activities. The World Bank (2006) argues that all three pathways have contributed to poverty reduction in the region and gives the example of the growth of catfish culture in the Mekong Delta from a subsistence family-based system through the Vietnamese integrated farming system, VAC (vuong/ao/chuong or garden/pond/animal husbandry) system, to more commercialized agribusiness.1 The focus of this Thematic Note lies in the first two models that describe small farms or family-based systems that are found to a greater or lesser extent in all the countries in the region and are critical for sustaining livelihoods in a number of countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where they are the most common type of aquaculture system. Like the VAC system found in Vietnam, they are often intensive systems that rely on the labor of family members for their success, although where they are successful, households may employ a small number of casual laborers.

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KEY GENDER ISSUES

Although both men and women are involved in small-scale aquaculture systems in Asia, the extent of the involvement of women varies considerably, even if their involvement has increased substantially over the last decade or more. Frequently, women are described as lacking in knowledge and skills that are regarded today as critical for engaging in modern aquaculture systems described by the World Bank as being knowledge based. This lack of skills and capacity on the part of women was raised as early as 1995–96 in reference to the Training of Trainers to Promote Women’s SmallScale Aquaculture Enterprises program in rural areas of northern Vietnam (Voeten and Ottens 1997)2 and was found to be a critical issue in the five-country study reported on by Brugère and others in 2001, as well as in a review paper by Nandeesha (2007) covering most countries in the region.

Although this neglect of women’s capacity-building needs is understood to be a reflection of the way service-delivery organizations operate—employing largely men staff to deliver information to the main decision makers in households who may or may not pass the information to others in the household—it is also seen to reflect the kind of society in which project implementation organizations work.

Debashish and others (2001: 149) describe the way in which training is often delivered in the promotion and improvement of small-scale aquaculture systems as follows: The successful management of aquaculture systems relies on several household members working together and yet the need for a household approach in training is often overlooked as an explicit strategy. Training sessions often target only one member of the household, either the husband or the wife. In the management of ponds, rice-fish or cage system roles are separated along gender lines. This means that there is a reliance on the trained participant to pass along all that she/he has learnt to the other family members. Even when information is transmitted

to others in the family, there is often a significant loss or transformation of the information as it passes from one person to another. In addition, the majority of extension workers are men. This has implications for the training. For example, during training sessions, the men often dominate the discussion and women’s views or needs can be dismissed or ignored. In addition, male trainers often have little empathy with the women and their specific requirements.

Debashish and others also note that organizations frequently ignore the need for women’s and men’s different learning styles. At least in Bangladesh, women’s lack of familiarity with formal learning environments and their lower level of literacy can also result in their particular learning needs and requirements being overlooked. Based on its experience in addressing these concerns in its aquaculture projects, CARE Bangladesh adopted a three-tiered approach: ■

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Having specific goals for the participation of women stated in project logical frameworks Using extension approaches and promoting interventions that facilitate increased benefits for women in agriculture and aquaculture systems Promoting changes, including staff development activities that result in a more gender-sensitive organization.

At the same time, CARE and other organizations are aware of the impact of culture on the ability of extension systems to build the capacity of both women and men to work

in aquaculture, and the need, therefore, to adapt programs to different situations. Distinctions have been made between what are described as conservative and less conservative locations (Zaman 1998); data from interviews with women and men in locations covered by the New Options for Pest Management (NOPEST) program of CARE Bangladesh suggest what these differences entail (table 13.3).

Factors supporting the ability of women to become and continue to be involved in aquaculture include geographic location, local traditions and outlook, the historical mobility of women, family support and interest, community and peer group support, the age of the women, and the effectiveness of the NGO support (Debashish and others 2001 based on the CARE Bangladesh experience).

In addition to this concern about information and skills being accessible to both women and men, women are frequently described as lacking access to other resources necessary for engaging in aquaculture and as lacking control over the benefits of improved household incomes and, therefore, as being more vulnerable than men in families. Critical for control over income is the involvement in marketing, and in this respect considerable variation exists within the region.

Women in Cambodia and China are described as undertaking a range of tasks in different aquaculture systems (more and less commercial and including the ornamental fish industry), including marketing the products. Women in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and India are described as having more limited (if growing) involvement, and only in “subsistence aquaculture”

Table 13.3 Perceptions about Women Working in Conservative and Less Conservative Areas Perceptions of men and women in conservative areas

Perceptions of men and women in less conservative areas

Men’s perceptions:

Men’s perceptions:

• Women should not work outside the homestead for social and religious reasons.

• It is superstitiously believed that having women working in the fields will result in a poor harvest.

• Women have no time to work outside the home.

• Women are unable to do all kinds of work.

• Women should stay within the homestead, as that is the way it has always been.

• • • • •

Women’s perceptions:

Women’s perceptions:

• Women sometimes want to work outside the home, but there are no opportunities.

• Women cannot get permission from their husbands to work outside the home.

• Women are unable to work outside.

• Women do not have time to work outside.

• Women do not want to work outside.

• • • • •

Women learn from working outside.

It is all right for women to work outside the home.

Men value women’s work and skills.

Both men and women are needed to manage a household.

Men appreciate women’s work.

Husbands are supportive.

Husbands appreciate women’s work.

Women can work near the home with the men.

Women want to improve family welfare.

Women want to work outside the home.

Source: Debashish and others 2001: 150.

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(Nandeesha 2007). In these three countries, in general men are more likely to be involved in marketing than women. In Indonesia, small-scale aquaculture (on farms of less than half a hectare) is largely undertaken as a family activity, but it is unclear to what extent women engage in marketing.

Men are reported to control aquaculture production in the Philippines, where small-scale systems are less widespread, whereas the opposite is true in Thailand, where marketing is dominated by women. Both cultural and practical reasons are given to account for this variation, including the more significant out-migration of men from rural areas in the case of Thailand and Vietnam.

BENEFITS FROM A FAMILY-BASED APPROACH

Bangladesh has been a focus of activities to improve the position and status of women in society since the country’s war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971 and the famine in 1972. At that time international development assistance was considered critical, and NGOs began their work. These NGOs were both international and national, and many specifically targeted women and were supported in their activities by the national government. This activity partly reflects the role that women have in allocating food within the family, but it also reflects the levels of poverty in the country and the constraints placed by customary norms on the use of public space and on women’s ability to engage in production activities outside the home. Interventions covering a wide spectrum of welfare needs such as health and familyplanning provisions, as well as resources for economic development such as microcredit and training for incomegenerating activities, have focused on women. Projects promoting integrated aquaculture systems in Bangladesh have tried to focus on women specifically. This is justified on the following grounds: ■

■

Women are often responsible for managing homestead vegetable gardens and livestock.

Although the nutritional needs of all family members are often not met in lean seasons and in times of hardship, women are likely to be especially disadvantaged by an understanding that they have a lesser claim on household resources.

Among the various options available, aquaculture is recognized as ideal for meeting the protein requirements and fish consumption needs of the population; if it is successful, it can contribute significantly to the livelihood security of rural households and the economic status of the family.

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Integrated aquaculture systems, which can be located close to homesteads, were seen as an ideal intervention for enabling women to access directly some of these benefits and thus contribute directly to improving their own welfare as well as the welfare of their families and thereby to changing their status in the home.

Programs have also sought to change customary norms that limit women’s ability to access the knowledge and skills, water, and financial resources required to participate effectively (to use aquaculture as a way out of poverty and for livelihood growth as discussed by the World Bank 2006).

Reports on the use of a gender-responsive family approach in integrated aquaculture programs suggest that women can, for example, acquire new skills in breeding common carp or culturing fish in cages, ponds, and rice paddies and that, as a consequence, their mobility increases and their status improves (Debashish and others 2001).

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Although widespread recognition exists of the benefits of adopting a family approach within integrated aquaculture systems, the donors and implementing agencies in Bangladesh, where this production system has been especially promoted, have not found this approach straightforward. Issues of cost for training both women and men in a family are often raised, and project time frames are short for achieving sustainable social and economic change in what is considered to be a conservative social environment. For more than a decade, the Agriculture and Natural Resources sector of CARE Bangladesh has piloted such a family approach in its aquaculture programs. This approach has involved taking into account the social and cultural context within which the program is being implemented from the outset and has provided both men and women, husbands and wives, with information and skills. To facilitate effective learning, and again considering the cultural context, men and women are preferably trained separately in groups, although staff working in the field indicate that forming groups of women is more difficult in conservative areas.

In terms of policy and implementation, one of the most important issues in adopting this approach is the need for organizations involved to develop a clear strategy for achieving changes in the role and position of women in families and communities. CARE Bangladesh and PROFOUND in Vietnam both adopted a gender-mainstreaming strategy that involved, in the first instance, an affirmative action policy in staff hiring and a large commitment to staff training to change their behavior, followed by the involvement of

both men and women staff in working with family members of both sexes. Implementation issues that are raised in many programs—whether to form single-sex or mixed groups, for instance, or to restrict engagement with women to women staff—gradually disappeared as a result of implementing this strategy.

LESSONS LEARNED AND GUIDELINES FOR PRACTITIONERS

To achieve the desired changes, implementing agencies must have gender-balanced field staff with interests in both technical and social issues. As the prevailing social circumstances pose many challenges to achieving a balanced staff composition, an organizational policy with a vision is essential to overcome those challenges. To accomplish this, gender sensitization of the staff or others involved in implementation is the first essential step to be taken. Voeten and Ottens (1997: 417, 424) detail the PROFOUND approach to implementing gender-responsive training in the training of trainers program in Vietnam in which they were involved: Trainers who were trained to pass information and skills to others included members of the 4 communities in which the programme was being piloted, and representatives from the Vietnamese Women’s Union (VWU), trained 120 women, from 120 households in the 4 communities. The training was organized to fit into the women’s existing time schedule and took place within the communities, thus enabling women [to] attend with minimum disruption to their regular work. Both the trainers and the women trained received practical skill-based information and were made aware of a central gender question that the project was asking: Does an increase in fish production mean an improvement in the economic and social position of women? The two key organizations involved in this project, VWU and PROFOUND, saw raising women’s consciousness on this issue as the first step in moving from increased production to increased income and higher social position, a shift that was considered to be essential for ensuring women’s active participation in their own development . . . . The starting point for the on-farm research undertaken in this project addressed the invisibility of women’s contribution to VAC. . . . Detailed data on time use, access and control over resources involved, cost/benefit analyses and decision-making on management were all collected and discussed. Men in local power structures and husbands of women in training, participated.

In the programs of CARE Bangladesh and PROFOUND in Vietnam, the involvement of both men and women in the activities was found to have a great impact on the sustainability of changes. In the case of CARE Bangladesh, studies have shown that in areas where the rice-fish culture activity

was sustained after the withdrawal of the project, this sustainability was attributed to the active participation of women in the program. Likewise, the education of women on aquaculture and their involvement in the activity have produced improvements in family nutrition as well as in the family economy. In the case of the PROFOUND project in Vietnam—which was, among other things, designed to make women’s contribution visible—after the training, women’s position improved, they valued the technical knowledge acquired, and men considered their training to be a valuable investment. No gender conflicts were reported, and some husbands started to assist their wives with domestic work.

The use of gender analysis tools is mentioned in most programs in fisheries and aquaculture that adopt a genderresponsive approach. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/Sustainable Fisheries Livelihood Programme (SFLP) started all its community interventions by undertaking gender and poverty analysis/profiling with community members. PROFOUND introduced what it refers to as gender mapping,3 and all programs are very clear about the need to make community members, especially those directly involved in the program, aware of possible gender issues.

PROFOUND points to the significance of gender mapping for challenging established views about equality, for instance, and what this mapping might mean for individuals and their families.

Instead of aiming to transfer technology from laboratory to farmers, organizers’ efforts to educate farmers on the basic principles of the new technology and encouraging them to innovate further and adapt the technology to their farm conditions based on their capacity will contribute to increasing productivity immensely. However, here again, it is critical to involve both men and women and allow them to discuss and decide on the strategy to be evolved in such an adaptation process to suit their family economy and farm environment.

Paddy cultivation and pest management processes were not taught to women in the early stages of the CARE project. However, practical sessions that dealt with pesticides and their impact on health and environment, sessions that involved both women and men, had a dramatic effect on pesticide use. Such practical aspects of the programs of CARE and PROFOUND have made these projects attractive to local authorities because they help the local economy. In the case of CARE, this resulted in local authorities providing physical infrastructure and logistical support. In the case of PROFOUND, the rural women’s union was supportive because its own prestige was increased as a result of the training activities.

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MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

Broad examples of indicators to measure improvements at the household and community levels include the following: ■

■ ■

■

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Benefit distribution from the improved VAC system— by sex Improved health and nutrition of women and children Positive attitude of husbands and other men toward women’s training More involvement of women in decision making in aquaculture management, especially stocking density, which is critical for farm productivity.

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CARE emphasizes the need for a participatory approach to monitoring and evaluation, with families involved in the program determining indicators of change of value to them.

As is clear from the activities detailed in this Thematic Note, participation is costly in terms of time, and although an incentive is always present to provide positive reports, the pressure on time, especially that of women, needs to be monitored. Voeten and Ottens (1997) note that knowing more and being more involved in decision making result in more time being spent in management. Although they report that this was not regarded as a problem by the women involved in the PROFOUND pilot project, the authors argue that it must be monitored because it can lead to costs in welfare.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

Associations for Protecting the Livelihoods of Fishers, Processors, and Traders

any examples exist of locations where the livelihoods of small-scale local fishers, processors, and traders are threatened by ongoing changes in the fisheries and aquaculture sector. These changes reflect both the impact of the globalization of markets for fish and fish products, as well as economic shifts at the national and local levels.

The massive growth in the international demand for fish and aquaculture products since the 1980s has led to a situation in which powerful international and local firms now play significant roles in this sector, at times competing with local fishermen for the same species but with more sophisticated equipment and at other times purchasing directly from small-scale fishermen and excluding local traders and processors. Shifts to industrial processing and packaging, either on fishing vessels or on land, have meant that local postharvest workers, a large proportion of whom are women, have been bypassed. Some of the small-scale local players have found employment in the new factories, and although this employment has provided income-earning possibilities for men and women, the conditions of work for many are poor, the hours are long, and work is frequently casual and low paying in many parts of the world. Shifts in local economies in some locations have resulted in better returns to fishing and aquaculture, compared with alternatives such as food crop production. This has resulted in more people entering the sector and competing for fish and other products with small-scale operators.

Fish stocks are also reported to be declining and the natural resource base is deteriorating. Comanagement strategies to achieve more responsible fisheries, sustain local livelihoods, and protect the resource base have been introduced and can be effective (see Innovative Activity Profile 1) but may also lead to a higher-quality catch suitable for more distant and remunerative markets and exclude local processors and traders. As competition for fish increases at local levels,

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some local fish buyers, frequently men, may gain direct access to fish by becoming licensed fishing operators, possibly even purchasing fish directly from vessels before the fish is landed and excluding other local members of the value chain. Reports also tell of increases in the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, which have been linked with local women buyers engaging in risky fish-for-sex relations with fishers, who are largely men, to maintain their access to the fish that they depend on for their livelihoods.

This Thematic Note is mainly concerned with interventions to protect threatened livelihoods in the sector by enabling those already involved to enter new markets with new or value-added products. This action is linked with others that seek to provide alternative income sources for those engaged in fish-for-sex transactions, as described by WorldFish in Malawi (2007), and that seek to prevent any further spread of disease, provide care services for those in high-risk situations (such as migrant fishers), and provide mitigation for families and communities already affected (as detailed in SFLP 2005). It is also concerned with seeking protection for workers in processing factories, making this a more valuable alternative income source that can serve for livelihood building as well as for food security.

ACCESSING NEW MARKETS

The challenge in successfully creating access to new markets for small-scale fishers, processors, and traders is enormous, regardless of the sex of the sellers. This is a risky venture, and few examples exist in the fisheries and aquaculture sector where this has been attempted. In general, these suppliers are less organized and have fewer business and negotiating skills than buyers such as wholesalers, contractors acting on behalf of supermarkets, and exporters, who are regarded as the more powerful players in the marketing chain. This, along with the small-scale suppliers’ minimal access to capital, input

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supplies, and advisory services, constrains their ability to establish and maintain a reliable supply of high-quality products that meet all health and safety regulations. Specific action that is required includes organizing groups of smallscale fishers, processors, and traders; providing these groups with training in business, management, and negotiating skills and training in improved product development practices that meet the international and national standards as well as the standards of individual buyers; ensuring their access to credit, which takes into consideration the level of risk involved in meeting the delivery conditions of large buyers; and ensuring they have horizontal links with associations, federations, and cooperatives that are in a position to support smaller groups and that have links with vertical institutions.1 PROTECTING WORKERS IN PROCESSING FACTORIES

Reports of poor working conditions in fish-processing and packaging factories are now available for every continent.

However, despite the growing emphasis among some donors, governments, and private sector business on the need to adopt socially responsible practices, the link between pervasive social injustice and the food system has not generally been made. When it has, although exceptions exist, the dominant picture is one of women occupying most, if not all, of the posts regarded as requiring minimum skills, working in exceptionally poor conditions with no health or safety protection, and working on a casual basis with no job security or benefits (De Silva and Yamao 2006; Gammage and others 2006; Josupeit 2004; Markussen 2002; Swanrangsi 2003; Tiesze and others 2007). At the same time, women continue to shoulder virtually all the domestic work in their homes. Little information is available about precisely who these women are. For parts of India, Sharma (2003) describes them as being mostly younger, educated women who have been drawn into paid work for the first time and who may be subject to sexual harassment. Where factories are close to large towns or cities, the workforce may be drawn from the cities rather than from communities directly affected by changes in the sector. Gammage and others (2006) provide a little more information beyond work conditions and note that very few of the women employed at any level in factories in Bangladesh are key decision makers or active in trade unions.

Reports from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia suggest that women’s livelihoods often become more vulnerable when they take on work in these new processing factories; their employment simply serves to maintain their poor economic circumstances and that of their dependents.

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Addressing this problem will involve engaging in advocacy and drawing on existing international and national legislation to support the demands for change. Although successful initiatives to change this situation have not been reported in this sector, organizations such as INFOPESCA operating in Latin America and the Caribbean have undertaken work to expose poor work practices (Josupeit 2004). At least one company, Aqua Fish in Honduras, has, on its own initiative, chosen to follow socially responsible practices.

BENEFITS FROM ADDRESSING LIVELIHOOD THREATS

Highlighting the threats to those involved in the sector is an issue addressed in the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Protecting livelihoods is a major issue for all small-scale fishers, processors, and traders as well as for the welfare of their communities because income loss from increased competition and changes in the distribution of benefits in the marketing chains affect everyone involved.

Nevertheless, it is women who play the most significant role in the postharvest sector and who are often reported to be the first to be displaced by ongoing changes but who at the same time lack the resources (social, economic, and political) to enter easily into alternative income-earning activities.

In many locations women are confined to low-status activities already rejected by others and are unsupported by services. Furthermore, incomes supporting livelihoods beyond simple survival are gained by these women only through a significant increase in work burdens or, as in the reported cases of their engagement in fish-for-sex activities, at significant risk to themselves and their dependents. The weak bargaining position of women is pinpointed in studies of the spread of HIV and AIDS in fishing communities in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, studies that also show how women’s comparative lack of knowledge and skills (apart from their reported interests in meeting household food security needs) is used, for example, to justify their exclusion from new commercial activities in aquaculture (Kusabe and Kelkar 2001; Nandeesha 2007). In the case of factory workers, although all involved workers may be considered to be in a weak bargaining position in the sense that few alternative sources of employment may be available, sufficient evidence exists to demonstrate that women are most likely to be placed at the bottom of the workforce, working under conditions that make it difficult for them to combine this work with their domestic labor. Addressing women’s specific needs means seeking enforcement of codes of conduct that will lead to gender equality.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

To enable access to new markets (or existing markets not yet reached) with new or improved existing products, both suppliers and buyers need to be sure that their work is supported by appropriate economic policies. Public bodies must provide a policy environment that promotes mutually beneficial partnerships between buyers such as supermarkets and small producers and that promotes a legal framework that protects all partners involved and ensures the maintenance of good business practices.

The central issues to be addressed at the implementation level are the constraints on women and men entering these marketing chains. Although women and men may share the same disadvantages of illiteracy and lack of collateral for taking a large loan, women are frequently more disadvantaged by their gender-specific constraints—such as in social settings where their physical movement is restricted, including their meeting in groups—and ideologies about men breadwinners and the lower value attached to women’s work (Kabeer and Subrahmanian 1996). Given these genderspecific disadvantages, care must be taken to resist adopting assumptions about women’s lack of interest in engaging in commercial activities and about the appropriateness of microcredit programs to meet their practical needs, which might include small enterprise development.

Growing international concerns about labor exploitation are placing pressure on governments to set standards and systems for enforcing these standards. Even though evidence from individual company reports suggests that the companies themselves can introduce changes, it is not clear that the sector can bring pressure to bear on its members.

A useful tool for clarifying what might be regarded as the ideal outcomes of any interventions in the practice of private firms involved in processing and packaging in this sector is the “gender pyramid” conceptualized by Barrientos (2001) and Barrientos, Dolan, and Tallontire (2003). This tool consists of three interlinked segments that cover the key issues relating to conditions of employment. Segment A covers issues of employment regulation relating to formal employment (predominantly the International Labour Organization conventions and national legislation). Segment B refers to employment-related issues that facilitate women’s employment (meeting practical gender needs such as child care provision, maternity and paternity leave, transport, and housing). These issues are particularly relevant to gender equality because they address the factors that enable women to combine paid productive employment with their reproductive tasks. Segment C encompasses the socioeconomic

circumstances that affect women’s ability to access particular types of employment. These circumstances are shaped by cultural norms, education, reproductive work, and gender relations. Reporting on their study, Barrientos, Dolan, and Tallontire (2003) note that none of the codes of conduct they reviewed cover segment C of the pyramid, even though precisely these issues maintain women’s subordinate and exploited position. They argue that because the wider social circumstances are what maintain women’s subordinate and secondary status in society and underpin the gender division of labor within paid employment, codes can have only a very limited impact in addressing women’s labor exploitation if they fail to address segments B and C of the pyramid fully.

The codes serve a dual purpose: (1) to provide a clear objective or target that civil society organizations and governments, for example, can use to monitor performance and (2) to inform different categories of workers, including women, of their rights. The codes can help them understand the meaning of their rights and serve to engage them in discussions of the issues that need to be addressed. This is essential if programs are supporting the associations of suppliers to bargain collectively for their rights because the success of this action will depend on all stakeholders being involved.

Although addressing these threats to lives and livelihoods is not the core business of most implementing institutions in fisheries and aquaculture, all programs must have some commitment to the creation of greater social and economic equality in addition to their main objectives of increasing production while protecting the resource base. This commitment will involve working with organizations with expertise in these areas; working with fishers, processors, and traders who need support for their continued involvement in the sector; and working with their associations, who need to be able to act on their behalf beyond the life of individual programs.

Civil society organizations of various kinds are essential for achieving the strategic changes being sought in this action because the transformation of existing norms is not an individual matter, even though at the individual and household levels changes may be sought and achieved (Kelkar, Nathan, and Rownok 2003). However, civil society organizations, including women’s organizations, are facing financial difficulties, although the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has recently introduced changes to cover the financing of these organizations specifically (OECD/DAC 2006). As in the case of the producer groups discussed in Thematic Note 1 (which covers the creation of gender-responsive local institutions), if these organizations are well structured, they are the means by

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which members will be able to exercise collective agency, support weaker members or members in need, advocate for policy support, and challenge norms of behavior that limit their capacity to participate in alternative livelihood-building activities. Changing the position of donors on funding for these civil society organizations is one of the expected benefits from these interventions.

LESSONS LEARNED AND GUIDELINES FOR PRACTITIONERS

Recent examples of good practice within fisheries and aquaculture on any or all of the actions covered in this Thematic Note are difficult to find. An early report refers to a shrimp farmers association in Tamil Nadu, India, that successfully used World Bank support (the India Shrimp and Fish Culture Project, 1992–2000) to introduce a voluntary code of conduct among its members, control the quality of inputs, monitor ponds, and use collectivebargaining skills to market their product (Kumaran and others 2003). One of the most recent and comprehensive programs to address a range of social issues is the SFLP, supported by FAO and the Department for International Development (DFID) in small-scale artisanal fisheries in West and Central Africa. Although program achievements are still in the process of being documented, the program has integrated gender analysis along with poverty profiling at the community level for intervention planning, has taken on the challenge of working with associations of suppliers to enter new markets (see the FAO Web site for SFLP documentation: www.sflp.org), and has assisted in the creation of a policy environment conducive to guaranteeing investments on action to address HIV and AIDS in fishing communities in the countries covered by the program. The donors for this program have been especially concerned with influencing policy on all the issues covered in this Thematic Note, and the SFLP policy briefs are examples of good practice in this regard.

Although it is common in reporting on good practice to focus on technical outcomes such as incomes, the good practice interventions noted in the next two sections all focus on social and economic empowerment. Together they demonstrate that enabling groups of disadvantaged suppliers to access new markets is a long process that must be supported by other action if the threats to their lives and livelihoods in existing markets are to be addressed. In addition, processes that are put in place to secure their social and economic empowerment will need to be monitored to ensure that the interests of the most vulnerable members are protected.

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In many locations both young women and adult women are especially vulnerable.

Lake Chad pilot project

The following note reports briefly on a pilot project to improve local fish supplies from Lake Chad and the Chari River by working with groups of fishers, processors, and traders: Strengthening the national capacity for fish health inspection and improvements in the quality of fisheries products from Lake Chad and the Chari River: Pilot project 3 of the DFID/SFLP (Period: April 2005–October 2006; Budget: $300,000).

The objectives of this project were to build local capacity in fish safety and the responsible handling of fish and fishery products in order to improve food security and increase incomes of fishing communities along Lake Chad and the River Chari.

The project had two components: to improve national fish inspection services, and to support training in the use of technology designed to improve fish preservation and processing, as well as in accessing marketing niches in small-scale fishing communities within the project area.

The benefits/impact and lessons learnt: The groups set up and strengthened in gender-sensitive organizational development by the SFLP were trained in the use of improved postharvest equipment made available in what are referred to in the documentation as “community technological platforms” and at the same time were made gender aware. Economic returns from the fish products increased by 30–50 percent, and women were not marginalized in the use of the equipment provided.

Nevertheless, problems arose with the competition for access to the platforms by wealthy processors, and by the end of the project in October 2006, the extension officers were asked by FAO to work with the beneficiaries to set up a rotation for use by different groups in the community, and to periodically monitor the process. The national government has been involved in the program from the outset and acknowledged both the technical effectiveness of the platforms as well as the ability of the poverty profiling process, along with the strengthening of socioprofessional groups, to enable access to these facilities by poorer community members. A national strategy was formulated at the end of the project to allow up-scaling of this approach.

Communication with Yvette Diei Ouadi (FAO and SFLP)

In a separate note from the same source, it is made clear that although poor men and women were more vulnerable, women processors and traders also faced competition from men in accessing fresh fish. Although the men are described as being engaged only in fishing, when the technology was made available, they began to compete with the women for

access to the fish preservation and processing facility. They were able to access the fish directly or to meet other fishermen on the lake itself, which the women were not able to do.

In addition, the women were more constrained in accessing remote and more lucrative markets. The group focus of this activity made it easier for the women to address these constraints, even though the groups often had both men and women members.

Ethical fish processing in Honduras

Although factory managers may be reluctant to provide the data needed for improving poor working conditions, the large increase in the number of codes of conduct developed since the 1990s suggests considerable incentives now encourage companies to adopt good practices—to increase sales and profits from ethical trade, for example—and therefore to respond to pressure that they demonstrate corporate social responsibility. The case of Aqua Finca’s operations is the best-known example in fisheries and aquaculture of a company that has been motivated to adopt ethical operational principles, including principles around working conditions and labor contracts. Some of its environmental ethical practices are covered in the following short communication from Helga Josupeit (FAO GLOBEFISH): Aqua Finca has the largest tilapia farm in Honduras, with 30 tons of daily fresh fillet exports mainly to the United States. In 2006 Aqua Finca Saint Peter Fish opened a brand new fish meal plant and a biodiesel plant based on tilapia oil. Total investment totaled $20 million, which included fish meal, biodiesel, processing, and production. All the vehicles and the machines of the farm are running on biodiesel. The company is now venturing into organic aquaculture and has just received the organic seal of

approval by Naturland and the Bio Swiss. Aqua Finca just started to transport fresh fillets using a technology called OceanChill to its overseas market in the United States by boat, which reduces both the energy spent for transport as well as operating costs.

Aqua Finca also has a huge interest in supporting social infrastructure activities in communities where it operates (reforestation, education, health centers, community-owned fish cages), which are entitled by the company owner to receive 10 percent of company production capacity, and this enables the communities to produce alongside Aqua Finca.

Some of the first studies of company practices in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors were undertaken by the Centre for Marketing Information and Advisory Services for Fishery Products in Latin America and the Caribbean (INFOPESCA) and are reported in Josupeit (2004).

MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

In large part the focus of monitoring and therefore of the evaluation of marketing programs already initiated in this sector has centered on the returns on the fish and fish products marketed. However, the main benefit sought through the actions covered in this Thematic Note is the social and economic empowerment of those involved, and especially of women, who have been identified in many locations as especially disadvantaged by ongoing changes. Indicators are needed that will demonstrate changes in empowerment—changes that may result from improved economic circumstances of the women and men involved as well as their households, but may also result from the processes of capacity building and other factors that are essential to enabling these women and men to engage in the new marketing chains.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 4

Gender and Alternative Livelihoods for Fishing Communities

eople in rural fishing communities depend heavily on aquatic resources as a source of protein and livelihoods. The open-access nature of marine resources and coastal ecosystems drives a large number of people to fish as an occupation of last resort when other sectors, such as agriculture, decline. Groups of fishers often have limited alternative livelihood options, and this makes them particularly vulnerable to changes in the condition of and access to the aquatic resources on which they depend. Environmental degradation, habitat destruction, and overfishing have led to the point at which many fishers find it progressively harder to make a living from traditional fishing practices.

In general, livelihood diversification activities available for fisheries communities can be grouped into two categories: (1) fishing and fishing-related activities (such as fish trading, marketing, and processing) and (2) activities unrelated to fishing, including aquaculture. In several contexts, migration and mobility are also parts of the diversification practices in fishing communities. The latter group of nonfishing-related activities is referred to as alternative livelihoods (ALs) in this Thematic Note (see the comprehensive list and specific examples in Brugère and Allison, in preparation, and FAO 2007).

The term alternative refers to the diversification of sources of household income rather than the dependence on a single economic activity that is heavily based on scarce natural resources. In the context of fragile and constricted marine resources and coastal ecosystems, assisting fishing communities in identifying and achieving sustainable AL to their fishing activities bears much importance.

Including AL components in projects related to conservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources is an integral approach in project planning. For instance, the policy of limiting fishing efforts in marine protected areas or the closure of traditional fishing grounds will have an impact on the fishing community, so steps need to be considered to provide fishers with ALs. Moreover, without effective

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development assistance and intervention, the increasing competition, natural resource restrictions, and other rapid changes in the sector have forced many poor women to work as agricultural laborers and construction workers and to take on other types of unskilled employment in addition to their already heavy workload. Although AL activities and components can serve as special entry points for including gender dimensions in projects, AL activities also have the potential to reinforce and worsen gender inequalities.

KEY GENDER ISSUES AND BENEFITS OF GENDER-INTEGRATED FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

Fishing has been understood to be predominantly men’s work, but awareness is growing that women play critical roles in the fisheries sector in developing countries, particularly on the postharvest level (see Overview and Thematic Note 3). In coastal villages in West African countries, the main activity of women is the processing and marketing of fishery products (FAO 1997), whereas in Manipur, India, fisheries activities are largely dominated by women—they are involved in capture fisheries, aquaculture, fish processing, fish marketing, and fish transporting (Gurumayum, Devi, and Nandeesha 2004).

In the Pacific Island countries, near-shore fishing activities, such as harvesting of fish, shellfish, crabs, and seaweeds for family consumption, is frequently the work of women and children, whereas men traditionally concentrate on fishing in deeper waters (FAO 1996).

Gender division of labor in the fisheries sector varies largely among region and country, but women typically have a different social and economic role in the community than men and hold different kinds of information about aquatic resources. However, because the involvement of women in the fisheries sector often tends to be at the smallscale, artisanal level,1 activities by women such as the

harvesting of fish and shellfish for household consumption were not construed as fishing in some traditional cultures.

As a result, women’s contribution to the sector has often been overlooked, and this has affected the way the fisheries sector has been supported.

Although project developments that focus on the improvement on governance of fisheries management have been emphasized in recent years, the author’s review of the World Bank’s fisheries and aquaculture portfolio indicates that less attention has been paid to the gender aspect in the fisheries sector than in the agricultural sector.2 Development activities affect men and women differently, and specific steps are often needed to make sure that vulnerable groups such as women and youth are included.

Moreover, fisheries conservation measures such as banning of certain types of gear may have unforeseen gender impacts, because some types of fishing gear may be used by only one of the sexes.

ALs as an entry point to address gender issues

Identifying and developing sustainable ALs can be an entry point for investments to address the above gender inequalities in the sector. Many examples can be identified of the promotion of ALs for fishing communities and small-scale fishers with different policy objectives. In many cases ALs provide an opportunity to empower women groups through increased income. Despite offering an entry point or special opportunity to address gender issues, AL activity may not automatically be gender sensitive. As such, explicit efforts to integrate gender issues in projects and programs that promote ALs are warranted.

Examples of ALs

Various forms of aquaculture have been promoted as part of livelihood diversification in several tropical countries, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Tanzania (see Thematic Note 2). In the Pacific Islands, the search for ALs was initiated by coastal communities with support from international NGOs to complement the recovery and rehabilitation of resources taking place in their locally managed marine areas.3 The AL activities include the opening of a women’s souvenir shop in the Solomon Islands, and the setting up of a mat-buying venture and the establishment of a honey-making venture by women and youth in Fiji. In Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, sponge culture was identified as a potential income-generating activity for women that does not conflict with traditional roles.4

Studies in Orissa and Maharashtra in India have identified possible livelihood opportunities for women in coastal fishing communities: coastal horticulture and forestry (such as cultivation of coconuts and cashew nuts); production of shellcraft items; weaving of fishing nets; production of palm leaf and bamboo products; retail activities; smallscale collection of wild sea bass, mullet fry, and prawn seed to be sold to fish farmers; livestock production and processing; crop production and processing; and agrotourism (FAO 2007).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

AL options for fishing communities are diverse, and no single approach or organizational structure is suitable for all situations. Therefore, it must be kept in mind that good practices and lessons learned must be adopted and applied to reflect local needs.

AL covers a wide range of sources of household income, and so most of the discussion and recommendations in other modules in this Sourcebook (particularly Crops, Labor, Livestock, Markets, Rural Finance, and Rural Infrastructure) are applicable to this Thematic Note. For instance, key elements of sustainable AL development include “capability building of fisherfolk organizations such as cooperatives and associations to implement livelihood projects, the preparation of feasibility studies and business plans, technical skills development, sound financial management practices, development of innovative and high quality products, access to new markets including urban and regional markets and the full participation of fisherfolk in the identification of livelihood activities and micro-enterprises” (FAO 2006: v).

This section presents concrete examples and more relevant types of development support in the fisheries sector.

Community-based initiatives backed up by technical and credit assistance

Applicable to both aquaculture and other AL activities, technical assistance is an important tool to help fishing community organizations identify suitable livelihood activities. In many cases, credit assistance is needed as starting sources of funds for the community. In the coastal communities of Zanzibar Island in Tanzania, where most women had no major source of income, the introduction of seaweed farming has generated income for women and enabled them to take a greater part in the decision making at home because they were now making a significant financial contribution

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Box 13.2 Tanzania: Strengthening Technical and Marketing Assistance

Seaweed farming in Tanzania has been practiced almost exclusively by women. Seaweed farming was introduced in Tanzania in the early 1980s, and seaweed culture on a commercial scale was started in Zanzibar in 1989 by two private seaweed farming companies on the east coast of the island. Soon commercial seaweed farming flourished there, and many coastal villagers, particularly women, have benefited from this practice, but seaweed farmers are now facing challenges. Currently two Eucheuma species are cultured in Tanzania: E. spinosum and E. cottoni. The traded price for E. cottoni is significantly higher than that of E. spinosum, but because E. cottoni is more difficult to grow, a need exists for technical support. Farmers are depending on their buyer company for the supply of seed, stakes, and ropes, so they have no negotiating power on price. The

World Bank’s Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project (MACEMP) in Tanzania has paid special attention to the gender aspects in the fisheries sector, particularly through assistance for ALs for women. In the planning phase, the project has identified a variety of AL opportunities (for example, crop farming, seaweed farming, solar salt ponds, aquaculture, and crafts), but women are often restricted by the availability of capital, training, or market access. For example, gender roles exist in marine resource use activities (for example, women collect shellfish, fish, octopus, and farm seaweed), and this may restrict the feasibility of certain AL activities. MACEMP is providing seaweed farmers technical assistance and exploring the possibility of developing value-added seaweed products to improve market access.

Source: FAO 1991, MACEMP Project Appraisal Document.

to the household (box 13.2). A similar success story of community initiative based on seaweed farming can be found in Kojadoi Village of Eastern Indonesia. The COREMAP team provided a range of assistance that included information, training, organizational expertise, and funding (see also Innovative Activity Profile 1).

A mariculture project in the state of Kerala in India also gives an example of how community-based initiatives could be supported by the government and financial institutions with credit assistance. The project was initiated in 1994 as a pilot field test of the culture of oysters and mussels under the guidance of Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute scientists. The pilot initiative has grown into a lucrative business activity and AL for over 250 families in about 15 villages of the northern Malabar coast of Kerala (FAO 2003).

With an initial production of a few kilograms involving a few women, mariculture production increased to 1,300 metric tons involving more than 1,000 women and 250 men in 2002. The demonstration effect of this activity turned commercial venture has now spread to the neighboring states of Goa, Karnataka, and Maharashtra (FAO 2003).

The major gender impacts are the contribution of women to household income and the freedom in economic decision making at the household level, which have given them a measure of economic independence. Moreover, women gained more self-confidence and self-esteem, more important than

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their economic gains from the project. The experience of working in groups and shouldering collective responsibilities has enhanced women’s skills in interpersonal relationships as well as in microenterprise management (FAO 2003).

The Kerala initiative has provided some valuable lessons related to technology development and transfer to end users.

For instance, the gap between technology development and adoption could be bridged more successfully through participatory action plans where all stakeholders form part of the decision-making process. The initiative also illustrated the importance of providing a package of services and interventions to assist women’s self-help groups (SHGs) that includes technological assistance, credit, capability building, stakeholder participation, and support for community organization. The follow-up studies on livelihood opportunities and microfinance support for women in coastal fishing communities in the states of Orissa and Maharashtra5 found that although many women SHGs and cooperatives have been formed and training had been provided through NGOs, government agencies, and banks themselves, only a few women have received bank loans (FAO 2007). To link SHGs with financial institutions, bank staff must be sensitized as to the concept of SHGs and familiarized with operational guidelines on lending to SHGs. A need for sensitizing women fish workers was also identified because many are presently not aware of the SHG movement.

Critical aspects of the success of the Kerala project include the following:

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The initiative started out as a pilot activity to assess the feasibility and potential of the ALs venture.

The technology for the culture of the bivalves was simple and user friendly.

A close partnership existed between the women’s group and the men’s group in pilot farming activities: for mussel farming, the women’s SHGs procured the seed and prepared the seed ropes while men were hired to erect poles in the estuary. Women saw to the routine upkeep of the seeded ropes. For oyster farming, women took charge of the upkeep and marketing activities while men constructed racks and harvested the oysters.

The project incorporated all key players, such as village elders, interested village people, bank officials, village extension workers, and district administrators into the interactive sessions to promote technology.

Constant technical support was provided to community organizations, such as help setting up demonstration farms and detailed training and interactive sessions to promote the technology.

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The initiatives supported by community groups were backed up by credit assistance from financial institutions and local government.

Information campaigns and awareness building programs were carried out.

Empowering fisherwomen through a multisectoral approach

The following example shows how multisectoral ALs (outside of the fisheries sector) can empower poor rural fishing communities.6 Coastal communities in Bangladesh, where the primary livelihood activity is artisanal fishing, are home to the country’s poorest inhabitants. These communities face a number of challenges, including declining fish stocks due to overfishing. The Empowerment of Coastal Fishing Communities for Sustainable Livelihoods Project (box 13.3) emphasized empowering highly disadvantaged groups of rural poor, primarily in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and on creating and sustaining livelihood security.7 The project considered a holistic view of development and attempted to assist the target communities through a gender-sensitive development approach.

Box 13.3 Bangladesh: Empowerment through Multisectoral Alternative Livelihoods

The Empowerment of Coastal Fishing Communities for Sustainable Livelihoods Project (Government of Bangladesh/UNDP/FAO: 2000–06) was designed to facilitate the empowerment of poor rural Bangladesh fishing communities. The project had seven components (themes): mobilization, health, education, income generation, disaster preparedness, legal assistance, and coastal fisheries resource management.

Emphasis was placed on gender for the development of alternative income-generating activities.

Within the first two years of project implementation, need-based community-level skill training was provided.

The project also conducted a series of field-level result demonstrations for the target beneficiaries, and 1,753 community members (both men and women) were trained during the second year of project implementation.

Based on the participatory rapid appraisals conducted to identify and prioritize resources and

income-generating opportunities in 37 villages, poultry rearing was considered a top priority area for community members, especially for women and for improving nutrition and income. In the second year 167 women community members were trained in livestock and poultry rearing. Selected women members were also trained to vaccinate poultry. Additionally, training in homestead vegetable farming was conducted, and 196 women in 11 village organizations benefited from this training and adopted the recommended vegetable farming. The project took a participatory process involving communities, government personnel, and NGOs and helped communities to orient and understand the project objectives. As a followup to the participatory rapid appraisals, need-based training was organized for the communities, which led them to undertake appropriate income-generating activities.

Source: DiPasquale 2005.

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The project evaluation report indicated that the movement of women has increased through participation in village organization meetings, parents’ meetings in schools, government offices, NGO offices, and other marketplaces.

Social bonding has also increased, as has participation of women in various income and nonincome activities other than household work. Income-generating activities have shifted from shrimp-catching activities to other activities largely related to livestock rearing, kitchen gardening, and fish drying. Additionally, and perhaps most important, the project generated a considerable level of economic freedom among women members of the community.

Critical for success are (1) village-organization-based participatory exercises, such as participatory rapid appraisals, which enabled communities to identify and plan for potential nontraditional income-generating activities, both farm and nonfarm based, and prioritize activities based on the analysis of attributes, including their limitations, and (2) taking a multisectoral approach to ALs, which enabled communities to move away from destructive fishing practices.

Linking marine conservation and ALs

Environmental NGOs and development agencies have attempted more often to provide ALs as a means of reducing pressure on degraded marine resources and coastal ecosystems. However, the effectiveness of such interventions was found to be very mixed (Perera 2002).

A study that reviewed different interventions to generate ALs for people dependent on mangrove and coral reef ecosystems in Sri Lanka found that initiatives aiming at the promotion of alternatives have suffered from several common failings.8 In particular, conflicts arose between the desire to reduce the exploitation of natural resources and the needs and priorities of the poor themselves (Perera 2002). The study also found that community-based organizations should be identified and strengthened before an AL program is introduced.

The experiences from the Fourth Fisheries Project in Bangladesh (2000–07)9 provided valuable lessons about the problems caused by (1) the lack of support to strengthen both men and women groups and their consultation before the introduction of AL program and (2) the lack of government’s willingness to provide ALs with gender-specific focus.

Coastal migration and mobility

Mobility and migration are also an important part of the livelihood diversification strategies used by poor coastal

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communities to reduce vulnerability and as an alternative to their fishing activity. These activities take several forms: traditional seasonal migrations, temporary mobility to find employment opportunities and business ventures elsewhere, and permanent or long-term migration. Although mobility and migration usually offer an important opportunity for greater gender equalities, they often involve some increased vulnerability for those who left and those left behind, and particularly for poor women and men.10 The old, disabled, and single women heads of households and poor women often find it more costly and more risky to migrate. These people generally have disproportionately less access to information, rural infrastructure, and favorable labor markets and thus are at higher risk to migrate. IMM (n.d.) points to potential pressures on family structure caused by migration: ■

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Women who themselves migrate in search of work are particularly susceptible to exploitation and insecurity.

Those able to migrate permanently face considerable risk because they lose contact with the networks of social support, patronage, and kinship that are often so important in their livelihoods.

High transaction costs and the risk or cost of loss of social safety nets and decision-making power are higher for women because of related cultural and structural factors perpetuating gender inequalities.

Limited studies exist on gender dimensions of migration and mobility, especially in the context of fishing communities. More studies could be devoted to better understanding the impact of migration and mobility on the livelihoods of migrants and those left behind and on gender inequalities.

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

Projects that promote alternative livelihoods and facilitate migration and mobility have the potential to reduce gender inequalities, but they also have the potential to reinforce or worsen gender inequalities. Projects must make explicit provisions to include gender dimensions in these strategies to ensure positive equity impacts.

The examples in this Thematic Note and other studies suggest that a participatory approach in decision making throughout all project phases is crucial to the long-term success of AL projects. If the AL options are identified and discussed among all stakeholders, it is more likely that the activities for women will be supported by the entire community. Several studies suggest that a close link between ALs

and traditional fishing occupations can make it easier for the activities to be accepted by communities and avoid conflicts with traditional gender roles.

Community organizations, such as fishers’ organizations and women’s groups, play vital roles in decision making and voicing their particular interests to obtain support from the project. Thus, it is important to identify and strengthen community organizations before introducing alternative income-generating activities. Targeting women as special beneficiaries could be counterproductive or at least insufficient to improve their contributions to as well as benefits from development. It is important to take overall structural factors into consideration, including the rules and practices of households and community, market behavior, and the particular characteristics of the relationship between men and women in each society.

As highlighted in the Sri Lanka review study, the AL projects driven by the desire to reduce the exploitation of natural resources tend to overlook the needs and priorities of poor people. As a result, they often fail to gain community interest and support. In designing AL programs for

conservation purposes, task team leaders need to pay special attention to the local needs and division of labor between men and women.

Finally, feasibility studies and capacity building through training and basic education are important. These are necessary not only for beneficiary groups but also for implementing agencies, such as fisheries departments, in order to raise gender awareness and so that agencies can provide the continuous support required by fishing communities.

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Human resource capacity built by the project Community organizations identified and strengthened Improved involvement of stakeholders in decision making Conflicts over gender roles minimized or resolved Improved living conditions in coastal communities (evidence of socioeconomic benefits) Participation of women and youth in both non-incomeand income-generating activities Improved health of fisheries stocks or aquatic habitats.

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I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Indonesia: Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program

PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION

he Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program, Phase II (COREMAP II), aims to increase family welfare from fisheries and aquaculture in 250 coastal villages located in seven districts spread across eastern Indonesia (Biak, Buton, Pangkep, Raja Ampat, Selayar, Sikka, and Wakatobi). Districts included in the project have significant coral resources, totaling 3,300 square kilometers.

Village residents are poor with an average per capita monthly income of $25 and depend on reef fish to supply about 90 percent of their protein intake. Like other coral reefs throughout the nation, the condition of these reefs has deteriorated, with only about 30 percent now in good health.

About 60 percent of the Indonesian population lives within 120 kilometers of the coast, and 80 percent of these people engage in activities that depend on marine activities, including fishing and mariculture. Coral reefs are able to meet the needs of the local population for marine food, but the reefs have deteriorated as a result of unhealthy practices such as overfishing, destructive fishing using bombs and poisons, and coral mining. Economic problems are one of the main reasons behind these negative practices.

The deterioration of this resource base has had a major impact on fisher households. Fishers, who are largely men, are faced with a declining catch, and women find difficulties taking care of the family, because they commonly control

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What’s innovative? COREMAP II seeks to transform women’s economic and social status and foster change in household and community welfare and coral reef management. Women have also been encouraged to work through community groups and to take up leadership roles in the administration and management of COREMAP.

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the household budget. Women also engage directly in fisheries and aquaculture activities, although their specific roles vary in accordance with local customs. In Papua, Raja Ampat District, for example, many women work full time in fisheries, whereas women in other districts, such as Sikka, cultivate seaweed. In Matiro Kanja village in Pangkep District, South Sulawesi, women engage in processing and in producing fish cakes and shredded meat, among other products. In other COREMAP areas, women often collect fish and sell it in the marketplace. In general, women in COREMAP villages fill a wide range of roles, from catching and collecting fish and aquaculture products to processing and marketing.

Field analysis undertaken by COREMAP II determined that women who work in fisheries and aquaculture face various constraints on their ability to contribute to household livelihoods and community development. These constraints include low educational status, poor economic status of the family, undervaluation of their lives, and the expectation that they will stay home to care for children and the house.

GENDER APPROACH

COREMAP II specifically aims to improve coastal and fisher women’s capacity to engage in coral reef management and community development. The project seeks to (1) increase the total number of women managing and implementing the program and (2) increase women’s economic and social empowerment. If these objectives are achieved, women will play a more significant role in improving the welfare of their households and communities.

This will thereby change fishing practices linked with the deterioration of coral reefs.

COREMAP II has highlighted gender throughout the planning, design, policy development, implementation,

and monitoring and evaluation processes. After thorough discussions, the government was convinced of its value, and minimum gender participation percentages were incorporated into the project’s legal documents. With clear guidelines set, the project has worked hard to meet, and even exceed, the goals. Gender issues are reflected at every level of implementation, from the national to village levels.

These goals are constantly monitored by both the government through internal meetings and the Bank at the time of its missions. For example, the 2006 World Bank Second Supervision Mission made detailed recommendations as to the numbers of women to be included in the project management units (PMUs) and on the community-based management teams. It was recommended that all PMUs should prioritize recruitment of women senior extension and training officers and community facilitators to reach a 30 percent target by 2007; and all PMUs were required to recruit equal numbers of men and women village motivators. In addition, the project has established community groups (Kelompok Masyarakat, or POKMAS [self-help group]) consisting of three subgroups, one of which focuses on gender concerns (POKMAS Gender). The remaining two groups focus on production and conservation issues.

COREMAP II is innovative in its gender approach in a number of ways. First, at a time when most programs subsume gender issues under poverty objectives and when gender objectives commonly focus on meeting practical gender needs, COREMAP II explicitly seeks to foster strategic shifts in women’s economic and social positions within the project. Second, the project is clear in its understanding that such a transformation in women’s status and position will lead to changes in household and community welfare and ultimately to improvements in the condition of the coral reefs. Third, the project has demonstrated practical ways of achieving these structural changes.

Women’s community groups have been given key roles in promoting messages on the core program objective of protecting the coral reefs through community-based management, and in addition, women are managing village and district funds.

Although the program has yet to demonstrate clear longrange outcome impacts, it has demonstrated good practice by (1) adopting specific targets to be achieved within a specific timeframe, (2) ensuring that sufficient numbers of women are involved in the project to make their presence visible, (3) ensuring that women occupy a number of key positions to demonstrate the value of their work, and (4) engaging women directly in the main program activities and providing them with technical as well as gender training.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

Progress to date is significant. At the central level, the national coordination unit (NCU) coordinates national planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

By 2007 women’s participation at this level reached 16 percent at the NCU, 43 percent at the national project implementation unit (NPIU) of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengatauan Indonesia), and 13 percent at the NPIU of the Ministry of Forestry’s Forest Protection and Conservation Section (Perlindungan Hutan dan Konservasi Alam). The regional coordination units (RCUs) participate in implementation at the provincial level and coordinate, monitor, and evaluate progress with gender objectives at the district level. Total women’s participation at the provincial level has varied from a low of 18 percent to a high of 27 percent; at the district level, women’s participation varied from 11 percent to 33 percent.

The 50 percent target for village motivators was fully met by 2007. Efforts continue to boost the numbers of women at the project’s operating units.

An additional, and perhaps more telling, indication of impact, is that women hold positions of major significance, especially at the national and provincial levels. Examples include the project’s Senior Contracts Officer, the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Feedback Coordinator, the assistant director of the PHKA program, primary budgeting staff, and key consultants.

At the village level, women play a leading role in implementing the planned activities by becoming members of the POKMAS for gender, production, and conservation.

Women’s membership in the gender POKMAS has reached 87 percent of the target. Women’s membership in the production and conservation POKMAS, although existent, is as yet limited.

Training offered to members of women’s community groups (such as prayer and social groups) has enabled them to become the primary communicators of key messages on coral reef management and community participation to family members and others in their community. Among the women working in the RCUs and PMUs, 167 have been trained on gender and a range of technical issues relating to the project (table 13.4).

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

COREMAP II, although still in the midst of implementation, has already demonstrated some useful lessons learned.

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Table 13.4 Training Related to Gender Issues in COREMAP II’s Regional and Project Management Units Time and place

Attendees (Total = 167)

Participating Units

Type of training

Aims of training

RCU South Sulawesi

Capacity building for coastal and fisheries women

To increase women’s capacity in fisheries entrepreneurship

Hotel Cokelat Makassar, July 25–28, 2007

30

RCU Nusa Tenggara Timar (NTT)

Fisheries women training

To increase women’s capacity in fisheries

Kupang, December 4–6, 2007

30

PMU Pangkep

Gender training

To transfer gender knowledge to participants; to increase participation in public campaigns to ensure coral reef sustainability; to increase skills in regard to family economic development

Gedung APTISI Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan Kotamadya Makassar, South Sulawesi Province, December 11–12, 2006

47

PMU Wakatobi

Gender training

To increase women’s participation in COREMAP II publicity activities

Gedung Dharmawanita, Wangi-Wangi Kab. Wakatobi, October 15–16, 2006

30

PMU Biak

Gender training

To train communities, especially POKMAS gender groups, in using fisheries resource to increase family incomes

Hotel Mapia Biak, 24–28 November 2006

30

Sources: PMU 2007; RCU 2007.

Four steps, which can be taken in different contexts, are central to achieving gender objectives in COREMAP II: ■ ■

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Set clear, defined gender targets.

Socialize the targets so that all stakeholders are aware of the program’s gender objectives. COREMAP II seeks to create a sense of program ownership among women.

When women understand that they have abilities and

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■

■

opportunities equal to those of men, they can develop their skills themselves and contribute to their own welfare and that of their communities.

Develop the understanding of the contribution that everyone makes to development. This process of understanding is achieved through individuals and organizations and by examining their value systems.

Give women the opportunity to develop themselves.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 2

CARE Bangladesh: Family Approaches in Integrated Aquaculture

he Agriculture and Natural Resources sector of CARE Bangladesh operates five major projects that centered on improving livelihoods and promoting integrated aquaculture and agriculture over the last 15 years.

Two projects—Integrated Rice and Fish and New Options for Pest Management—aim to reduce or eliminate pesticides in paddy cultivation and to promote rice-fish culture wherever possible. Other objectives are to raise paddy yields through efficient use of inputs and increase farmers’ income by using dike space in paddy fields to grow vegetables.

The Greater Options for Local Development through Aquaculture (GOLDA) project in southwestern Bangladesh was operated to improve prawn production practices and reduce the risk to poor farmers in producing this high-value but high-risk activity.

The Cage Aquaculture for Greater Economic Security (CAGES) project introduced new technology for the poor and poorest farmers with limited or no access to ponds and land.

The technology consists of small cages of one to two cubic meters for the culture of fish in ponds or open water bodies.

The Locally Intensified Farming Enterprises (LIFE) project has relied on farmer participatory research to increase the productivity of farm families by improving farming practices; rice-fish culture and fish culture in ponds formed the major aquaculture component.

T

What’s innovative? This program is almost unique among fisheries and aquaculture programs in successfully implementing a gender-mainstreaming strategy to achieve its gender objectives. The mainstreaming strategy—which helped women and men engage in aquaculture development for the benefit of their families as well as themselves—challenges orthodox perceptions of the financial value of family approaches.

All five projects operated for three to five years through farmer groups, except for CAGES, which worked largely through partner NGOs. Their success attracted additional funds—mainly from DFID and the European Union—for exploring new ideas through new projects or in new areas.

The projects, which operated in different parts of Bangladesh, employed more than 700 staff. Each project had a central technical team that provided support to field-based staff, all of whom had bicycles to enable easy movement. Field staff organized several thousands of men and women into groups, and the projects’ strategic interventions helped to improve livelihoods, as well as the local environment in which the projects operated. The projects offered no material support. They shared knowledge and skills and guided participants to appropriate credit organizations whenever they needed such support.

GENDER OBJECTIVES AND INNOVATIVE FEATURES OF CARE’S PROGRAM

CARE Bangladesh has explored ways to (1) enhance women’s participation in integrated aquaculture and (2) empower women through aquaculture programs. Family approaches, which have involved including women and men in extension activities, farmer field schools, participatory monitoring and evaluation, and action research, have been found to be effective in achieving these objectives in a sustainable way.

This program successfully implemented a gendermainstreaming strategy to achieve its gender objectives, and this success is almost unique in fisheries and aquaculture programs. The main component of the gender-mainstreaming strategy (to hire, train, and use men and women staff to address social as well as technical issues) was essential for working in Bangladesh. This strategy provided an enabling environment for women and men, especially husbands and

591

wives, to engage in aquaculture development to benefit themselves and their families. The success of this approach challenges orthodox beliefs about its value in financial terms.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

This CARE approach reflects the understanding within gender analysis that existing norms and behavior within communities and development organizations may need to be challenged directly to transform gender relations and achieve sustainable gender-equitable outcomes. These are the kinds of benefits and impacts sought in all programs but are frequently not achieved because of program time frames and the priority placed on production outcomes over the distribution of benefits.

Gender-balanced teams

CARE evolved its own organizational gender policy, which guided the organization in undertaking gender-sensitive activities. In recruiting staff for the projects described earlier, efforts were made to hire gender-balanced teams, particularly for field operations. In all of the projects, women constituted 30–50 percent of the teams. In some projects, such as GOLDA, the ratio was almost 1:1. The recruitment process had an electrifying effect, contributing to many positive developments while presenting new challenges to a conservative society resisting change. Although women staff initially experienced many difficulties in working in the field, constant support from the organization and continuous interaction with the community created an environment in which the staff could contribute productively.

Staff participated in practical technical and social training. Social training covered issues such as organizing farmer groups, raising gender awareness, and building community networks to sustain activities after the projects ended. The GOLDA project placed the staff in farm families for a week so that they could witness the conditions in which the families lived, learn how to address issues in fish and prawn culture as they arose, and focus on meeting practical needs.

Gender-responsive participatory processes

CARE targeted both men and women family members in all of its agricultural projects out of a conviction that the empowerment of women should begin with building their knowledge about the technology and providing skills to undertake activities that would bring economic benefits to the family. If either the husband or wife could not take part

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in program activities, they were replaced by other family members. Although efforts were made to form mixed-sex groups, separate groups of 20–30 men or women were formed. Participants preferred the single-sex groups, even though they were sometimes difficult to form. In forming groups of women, special care had to be taken, and greater flexibility was needed until the community understood the project interventions.

Management of gender-based farmer groups

Though in the beginning men trainers managed the men’s group and the women trainers focused on women, once the community recognized the commitment of the trainers, the gender of the trainer became irrelevant. Trainers trained groups but also provided follow-up support to each of the farm families involved in carrying out the activities on their own farms.

Economic, social, and environmental impacts

With the addition of women’s labor to the workforce, the area under rice-fish production in different areas increased by one-third, but the biggest benefit by far was the dramatic reduction in pesticide use. Productivity increased by 20 to 40 percent. The prawn farming lessons had impressive positive effects that helped to increase incomes by almost 50 percent. Using small cages of one cubic meter, women demonstrated the possibility of growing 20–30 kilograms of fish in six months. A woman managing three to four cages could earn enough to sustain herself and improve the nutrition of her children as well.

Empowered men and women not only improved their livelihoods from aquaculture and agriculture but also made progress in breaking gender and social barriers more generally. Aside from field days, which increased participants’ experience and confidence, Farmer Science Congresses were organized to share results. Women dominated the presentations.

Days were also devoted to discussing gender issues and setting goals and a timeframe for meeting them. Gender issues confronting each area were identified, and short learning sessions developed. Field trainers were trained to discuss the issues with men’s and women’s groups. Discussions on children’s education focused on girls. Adequate food provision was emphasized as essential for both boys and girls. Issues of dowry, work distribution patterns, work sharing, and family decision-making processes all provided

material for learning sessions. The discussion and learning days were very well received and appreciated as a step in the right direction to bring change.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR THE WIDER APPLICABILITY OF FAMILY APPROACHES

The family approach is highly effective but expensive.

Funding agencies are often more interested in increasing the number of families covered by the program than in ensuring that everyone in a family receives the necessary information. For this reason it is essential to convince donors that both the husband and wife must be trained if the lives of all household members are to improve and if they are all to achieve higher productivity.

Development projects should allocate resources to invest in building knowledge and skills through adequate numbers of gender-balanced field staff. Building a genderbalanced staff of sufficient strength is a task that can be accomplished only when there is an organizational policy that will ensure gender-balanced staff recruitment and that sets out definite strategies to attain this balance within a given time. Once a balanced team is built, the impact on project outcomes is far reaching.

NOTES Overview

The Overview was prepared by Christine Okali (Consultant), with inputs from M. C. Nandeesha (Central Agricultural University, Tripura); Chitra Deshpande (Consultant); and Katrien Holvoet, Helga Josupeit, and Melba Reantaso (FAO); and was reviewed by Eriko Hoshino, Catherine Ragasa, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Yvette Diei Ouadi, Ib Kollavick-Jensen, Rebecca Metzner, Susana Siar, Ilaria Sisto, and Rohana Subasinghe (FAO); Maria Hartl and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Kieran Kelleher and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. Considerable variation exists in the position and status of women in society. In China and Southeast Asian countries (for example, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand, and Vietnam), for instance, women are often able to play more independent economic roles and have at least some, if not total, control over benefits, whereas in South Asian countries (for example, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan) women are more constrained, especially in their ability to market produce that is viewed as central to achieving control over income. (However, for India see Busby 1999 and Prahdan and Flaherty 2008.)

2. Gammage and others (2006) stated in their part of the Bangladesh shrimp production report to USAID that women who are self-employed are likely to be accompanied by dependent children and that this accounts for some of the reports of child labor being used in small-scale fisheries.

3. Shrimp production was selected as the example for aquaculture because there is more information available on the social implications of shrimp production and because it is largely the boom in shrimp production that has driven the global market in aquaculture products. Other species have led to or preceded the boom in aquaculture in more regional or local products (for example, catfish, tilapia, grouper, scallops, or lobster culture).

4. These are the intangible elements of knowledge and skills in the sense that what is seen to be required can vary depending on who is being trained or who is applying for employment. Training programs always contain tangible and intangible elements.

5. More recent thinking on social protection includes the use of interventions that are transformative in purpose (see Devereux 2001; Devereux and Sebates-Wheeler 2004).

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was written by Christine Okali (Consultant) and was reviewed by Eriko Hoshino, Catherine Ragasa, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Yvette Diei Ouadi, Ib Kollavick-Jensen, Rebecca Metzner, Susana Siar, Ilaria Sisto, and Rohana Subasinghe (FAO); Maria Hartl and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Kieran Kelleher and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. The term gender-responsive user groups is used here in preference to the term self-help groups, which describes groups that are not making claims on government or have no expectations of service delivery but rather rely on bottom-up processes for their development. Rubinoff (1999) refers to them as small cooperative groups.

2. This study analyzed data from 46 rural programs in 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

3. Examples of the different possible roles that can be expected to be performed by different partners are given in SFLP (2006).

Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was written by M. C. Nandeesha (Central Agricultural University, Tripura) and Christine Okali (Consultant), with inputs from Melba Reantaso (FAO), and was reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Eriko Hoshino, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Susana Siar, Ilaria Sisto,

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and Rohana Subasinghe (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Kieran Kelleher (World Bank).

1. The Vietnam VAC system is a system with a mix of annual and perennial crops, including fruits and vegetables, small livestock and poultry, and several species of Chinese and Indian carps grown in ponds. Since 1989 the Vietnamese government has distributed land to farmers and encouraged the development of the family economy through such diversified farming systems. The system is labor intensive and protects the environment.

2. This was a pilot project involving the Vietnamese Women’s Union plus PROFOUND, a Dutch development organization, in consultation with the Asia Institute of Technology and the Vietnamese Research Institute for Aquaculture. The project was funded by the Commission of the European Communities. For ease of reference in this document, the project is referred to as PROFOUND. 3. PROFOUND uses this gender tool to make women’s position in the household and society visible. It involves mapping resources and institutions in the community, adding male and female signs for access to and control over these, and decision making.

Thematic Note 3

This Thematic Note was written by Christine Okali (Consultant) and Katrien Holvoet, Helga Josupeit, and Yvette Diei Ouadi (FAO), and was reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Eriko Hoshino, Catherine Ragasa, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Susana Siar and Ilaria Sisto (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Kieran Kelleher (World Bank).

1. These horizontal links include associations such as the Latin American Network of Women in Fisheries, or Red Mujer, the South Indian Federation of Fishermen, and the Fisherfolk Association in Gabon.

Thematic Note 4

This Thematic Note was prepared by Eriko Hoshino (Consultant), with inputs from Catherine Ragasa (Consultant), and reviewed by Christine Okali and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Katrien Holvoet, Rebecca Metzner, and Susana Siar (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Kieran Kelleher and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. Artisanal fisheries are traditional fisheries involving fishing households (as opposed to commercial companies), using relatively small amounts of capital and energy, relatively small fishing vessels (if any), making short fishing trips, close to shore, mainly for local consumption (definition based on FAO fisheries glossary).

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2. Implementation completion reports for 26 completed Bank projects and project appraisal documents for 15 ongoing projects (in 2007) that had at least one component related to fisheries, aquatic resource management, or aquaculture were reviewed to extract examples of positive or negative impacts on gender.

3. Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin (March 16), www.spc.int.

4. “An Assessment of the Role of Women in Fisheries in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia,” www.spc.int.

5. The studies were carried out as a follow-up to the national workshop on best practices in microfinance programs for women in coastal fishing communities in India, held in 2003.

6. This discussion was mainly taken from the various project documents available at www.livelihoods.org.

7. See also Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme, “Gender Credit Study in Tanji and Albreda Fishing Communities,” www.sflp.org.

8. This refers to the South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP) review of different interventions to generate alternative livelihoods for people dependent on mangrove and coral reef ecosystems in Sri Lanka. The project was initiated in April 2002 at the inaugural session of the Sri Lanka Coral Reef Forum, a joint venture of SACEP, CORDIO (Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean) and GCRMN (Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network), at which more than 40 stakeholders gave their initial inputs.

9. This section was drawn heavily from project documents.

10. Integrated Marine Management, “The Sustainable Coastal Livelihoods,” www.ex.ac.uk/imm.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Dian Fiana (COREMAP II Consultant), with inputs from Charles Greenwald (COREMAP II), and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Christine Okali, Catherina Ragasa, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Melba Reantaso, Susana Siar, Ilaria Sisto, and Rohana Subasinghe (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Pawan Patil (World Bank). This Profile was largely drawn from the author’s own experiences from being involved in the program. Other references used were Fiana (2007); NCU (2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b); PMU (2007); RCU (2007); and World Bank (2006).

Innovative Activity Profile 2

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by M. C. Nandeesha (Central Agricultural University, Tripura) and Christine Okali (Consultant); and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Catherine Ragasa, and Mary Hill Rojas (Consultants); Melba

Reantaso, Susana Siar, Ilaria Sisto, and Rohana Subasinghe (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Pawan Patil (World Bank). This Profile is based in large part on Debashish and others (2001).

REFERENCES Overview

Allison, Edward H. 2003. “Linking National Fisheries Policy to Livelihoods on the Shores of Lake Kyoga, Uganda.”

LADDER Working Paper No. 9, Overseas Development Group, University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Barman, Benoy K. 2001. “Women in Small-Scale Aquaculture in North-West Bangladesh.” Gender and Technology Development 5 (2): 267–87.

Belton, Ben, and David Little. 2008. “The Development of Aquaculture in Central Thailand: Domestic versus Export-Led Production.” Journal of Agrarian Change 8 (1): 123–43.

Busby, Cecilia. 1999. “Agency, Power and Personhood: Discourses on Gender and Violence in a Fishing Community in South India.” Critique of Anthropology 19 (3): 227–48.

De Silva, D. A. M., and Masahiro Yamao. 2006. “The Involvement of Female Labour in Seafood Processing in Sri Lanka: The Impact of Organizational Fairness and Supervisor Evaluation on Employee Commitment.” In Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries: Seventh Asian Fisheries Forum, 2004, ed. Poh-Sze Choo, Stephen J. Hall, and Meryl J. Williams, 103–14. Penang, Malaysia: World Fish Center.

Devereux, Stephen. 2001. “Livelihood Insecurity and Social Protection: A Re-Emerging Issue in Rural Development.”

Development Policy Review 19 (4): 507–19.

Devereux, Stephen, and Rachel Sebates-Wheeler. 2004.

“Transformative Social Protection.” IDS Working Paper 232, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, U.K. Gammage, Sarah, Kenneth Swanberg, Mubina Khandkar, Md. Zahidul Hassan, Md. Zobair, and Abureza M. Muzareba. 2006. A Pro-Poor Analysis of the Shrimp Sector in Bangladesh. Report prepared for the Office of Women in Development of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Josupeit, Helga. 2004. “Women in the Fisheries Sector of Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil.” FAO Fisheries Circular, No. 992, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Jul-Larsen, Eyolf, Jeppe Kolding, Ragnhild Overå, Jesper R. Nielsen, and Paul van Zwieten, eds. 2003. “Management, Co-management or No Management? Major Dilemmas in Southern African Freshwater Fisheries.” FAO Fisheries

Technical Paper 426/1 and 2, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Kelkar, Govind. 2001. “Gender Concerns in Aquaculture: Women’s Roles and Capabilities.” In Gender Concerns in Aquaculture in Southeast Asia, Gender Studies, Monograph 12, ed. K. Kusakabe and G. Kelkar, 1–10.

Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology.

Markussen, Marith. 2002. “Women in the Informal Fish Processing and Marketing Sectors of Lake Victoria.”

Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research Working Paper 115, Oslo.

New Economics Foundation (NEF). 2002. “Plugging the Leaks: Making the Most of Every Pound That Enters Your Local Economy.” NEF, London.

Pradhan, Dolagobinda, and Mark Flaherty. 2008. “National Initiatives, Local Effects: Trade Liberalization, Shrimp Aquaculture, and Coastal Communities in Orissa, India.”

Society & Natural Resources 21: 63–76.

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP).

2006. “Gender Policies for Responsible Fisheries— Policies to Support Gender Equity and Livelihoods in Small-Scale Fisheries.” New Directions in Fisheries—A Series of Policy Briefs on Development Issues. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Tietze, U., Susana Siar, Suchitra M. Upare, and Maroti A. Upare. 2007. “Livelihood and Micro-Enterprise Development Opportunities for Women in Coastal Fishing Communities in India: Case Studies of Orissa and Maharashtra.” FAO Fisheries Circular No. 1021, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Walker, Barbara Louise Endemaño. 2001. “Sisterhood and Seine-Nets: Engendering Development and Conservation in Ghana’s Marine Fishery.” Professional Geographer 53 (2): 160–77.

World Bank. 2006. Aquaculture Review: Changing the Face of the Waters. Meeting the Promise and Challenge of Sustainable Aquaculture. Report 36622-GLB. Washington, DC: IBRD/World Bank.

Thematic Note 1

Barman, Benoy K. 2001. “Women in Small-Scale Aquaculture in North-West Bangladesh.” Gender and Technology Development 5 (2): 267–87.

Bennett, Elizabeth. 2005. “Gender, Fisheries and Development.” Marine Policy 29: 451–59.

Dixon-Mueller, Ruth. 1989. Women’s Work in Third World Agriculture. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Mowla, Runia, and Md. Ghulam Kibria. 2006. “An Integrated Approach on Gender Issues in Coastal Fisheries.”

In Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries: Seventh

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Asian Fisheries Forum, 2004, ed. Poh-Sze Choo, Stephen J. Hall, and Meryl J. Williams, 21–28. Penang, Malaysia: World Fish Center.

Mymensingh Aquaculture Extension Project. 1999. “Female Involvement in Different Activities of Women in Mymensingh Aquaculture Extension Project.” Paper presented at Workshop on Women’s Involvement in Fisheries, NFEP, Parbatipur, Dinajpur, Bangladesh, July.

Nathan, Dev, and Niaz Ahmed Apu. 1998. “Women’s Independent Access to Productive Resources: Fish Ponds in the Oxbow Lakes Project, Bangladesh.” Gender Technology and Development 2 (3): 397–413.

———. 2004. “Case Study of the Oxbow Lakes Small-Scale Fishermen’s Project (OLSSFP) IFAD Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative, Bangladesh—1990–1997.” Draft document submitted to International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome.

New Economics Foundation (NEF). 2002. Plugging the Leaks: Making the Most of Every Pound That Enters Your Local Economy. London: NEF. Rubinoff, Janet Ahner. 1999. “Fishing for Status: Impact of Development on Goa’s Fisherwomen.” Women Studies International Forum 22 (6): 631–44.

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP).

2006. “Gender Policies for Responsible Fisheries— Policies to Support Gender Equity and Livelihoods in Small-Scale Fisheries.” FAO Policy Brief on New Directions in Fisheries No. 6, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Westermann, Olaf, Jacqueline Ashby, and Jules Pretty. 2005.

“Gender and Social Capital: The Importance of Gender Differences for the Maturity and Effectiveness of Natural Resource Management Groups.” World Development 33 (11): 1783–99.

Thematic Note 2

Brugère, Cecile, Malene Felsing, Kyoko Kusabe, and Govind Kelkar. 2001. ”Women in Aquaculture.” Final Report, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Project, FWG 03/99, Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand and Institute of Aquaculture, Stirling, U.K. Commission of European Communities (CEC). 1993.

Women and Development, Cooperation with Latin America, Asian and Mediterranean Countries, Management of the Project Cycle. Brussels: CEC. Debashish, K. S., M. Shirin, F. Zaman, M. Ireland, G. Chapman, and M. C. Nandeesha. 2001. “Strategies for Addressing Gender Issues through Aquaculture Programs: Approaches by CARE Bangladesh.” In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Women in Asian

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Fisheries, ICLARM Contribution No. 1587, ed. M. J. Williams, M. C. Nandeesha, V. P. Corral, E.Tech, and P. S. Choo, 147–56. Penang, Malaysia.

Nandeesha, M. C. 2007. “Asian Experience on Farmer’s Innovation in Freshwater Fish Seed Production and Nursing and the Role of Women.” In “Assessment of Freshwater Fish Seed Resources for Sustainable Aquaculture,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 501, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Voeten, Jaap, and Bert-Jan Ottens. 1997. “Gender Training in Aquaculture in Northern Vietnam: A Report.” Gender, Technology and Development 1: 413–32.

World Bank. 2006. “Aquaculture Review: Changing the Face of the Waters. Meeting the Promise and Challenge of Sustainable Aquaculture.” GLB Report No. 36622, IBRD/World Bank, Washington, DC. Zaman, F. 1998. Dissemination of NOPEST Activities Study and Sustainability Study. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh.

Thematic Note 3

Barrientos, Stephanie. 2001. “Gender Flexibility and Global Value Chains.” IDS Bulletin 32 (3): 83–93.

Barrientos, Stephanie, Catherine Dolan, and Anne Tallontire. 2003. “Gendered Value Chain Approach to Codes of Conduct in African Horticulture.” World Development 31 (9): 1511–26.

De Silva, D. A. M., and Masahiro Yamao. 2006. “The Involvement of Female Labour in Seafood Processing in Sri Lanka: The Impact of Organizational Fairness and Supervisor Evaluation on Employee Commitment.” In Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries: Seventh Asian Fisheries Forum, 2004, ed. Poh-Sze Choo, Stephen J. Hall, and Meryl J. Williams, 103–14. Penang, Malaysia: World Fish Center.

Gammage, Sarah, Kenneth Swanberg, Mubina Khandkar, Md. Zahidul Hassan, Md. Zobair, and Abureza M. Muzareba. 2006. “A Pro-Poor Analysis of the Shrimp Sector in Bangladesh.” Report prepared for the Office of Women in Development of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Josupeit, Helga. 2004. “Women in the Fisheries Sector of Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil.” FAO Fisheries Circular No. 992, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Kabeer, Naila, and Ramya Subrahmanian. 1996. “Institutions, Relations and Outcomes: Framework and Tools for Gender-Aware Planning.” Discussion Paper 357, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, U.K. Kelkar, Govind, Dev A. Nathan, and Jahan I. Rownok. 2003.

“We Were in Fire, Now We Are in Water: Micro-Credit and

Gender Relations in Rural Bangladesh.” Consultant report, International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome.

Kumaran, M., N. Kalaimani, K. Ponnusamy, V. S. Chandrasekaran, and D. Deboral Vimala. 2003. “A Case of Informal Shrimp Farmers Association and Its Role in Sustainable Shrimp Farming in Tamil Nadu, India.”

Aquaculture Asia 8 (2): 10–12.

Kusakabe, Kyoko, and Govind Kelkar, eds. 2001. Gender Concerns in Aquaculture in Southeast Asia. Gender Studies Monograph 12, Gender and Development Studies. Bangkok: School of Environment Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology.

Markussen, Marith. 2002. “Women in the Informal Fish Processing and Marketing Sectors of Lake Victoria.”

Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research Working Paper 115, Oslo.

Nandeesha, M. C. 2007. “Asian Experience on Farmer’s Innovation in Freshwater Fish Seed Production and Nursing and the Role of Women.” In “Assessment of Freshwater Fish Seed Resources for Sustainable Aquaculture,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 501, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC).

2006. “Summary Record of the Fourth Meeting of the DAC Network on Gender Equality, Paris 5–7 July 2006,” Paris, September.

Sharma, Chandrika. 2003. “The Impact of Fisheries Development and Globalization Processes on Women of Fishing Communities in the Asian Region.” Asia-Pacific Resource Network Journal 8: 1–12.

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP).

2005. “Impact of HIV/AIDS on Fishing Communities: Policies to Support Livelihoods, Rural Development and Public Health.” In New Directions in Fisheries—A Series of Policy Briefs on Development Issues. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Swanrangsi, Sirlak. 2003. “Technological Changes and Their Implications for Women in Fisheries.” Fish Inspection and Quality Control Division, Department of Fisheries, Bangkok.

Tietze, Uwe, Susana Siar, Suchitra M. Upare, and Maroti A. Upare. 2007. “Livelihood and Micro-Enterprise Development Opportunities for Women in Coastal Fishing Communities in India: Case Studies of Orissa and Maharashtra.” FAO Fisheries Circular No. 1021, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

WorldFish. 2007. “Innovative Fish Farming Project for HIV-Affected African Families Doubles Incomes and Boosts Household Nutrition in Malawi.” Press release, August.

Thematic Note 4

Brugère, Cecile, and Edward Allison. Forthcoming. “Livelihood Diversification in Coastal and Inland Fishing Communities: Misconceptions, Evidence and Implications for Fisheries Management.” Working Paper, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

DiPasquale Brandi M. 2005. “Empowerment of Coastal Fishing Communities for Livelihood Security Literature Synthesis Report.” UNDP, FAO, and government of Bangladesh. Available at: www.livelihoods.org.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1991. “Seaweed Collection and Culture in Tanzania.” Aquaculture for Local Community Development Programme.

GCP/INT/436/SWE.14. Rome: FAO. Also available at www.fao.org.

———. 1996. Vanuatu—Technical Report: “An Assessment of the Role of Women in Fisheries in Vanuatu.” Mechanical Report, FAO, Rome.

———. 1997. “Workshop on Gender Roles and Issues in Artisanal Fisheries in West Africa. Lomé, Togo, 11–13 December 1996.” Technical Report 97, January, ed.

Benoit W. Horemans and Alhaji M. Jallow. Rome: FAO. Also available at www.fao.org.

———. 2003. “Report of the National Workshop on Best Practices in Microfinace Programmes for Women in Coastal Fishing Communities in India. Panaji, Goa, India, 1–4 July 2003.” FAO Fisheries Report No. 724, FAO, Rome. Also available at www.fao.org.

———. 2006. “Report of the National Workshop on MicroEnterprise Development in Coastal Communities in the Philippines: Sharing of Experiences and Lessons Learned.”

FAO Fisheries Report No. 850, FAO, Rome. Also available at www.fao.org.

———. 2007. “Livelihood and Micro-Enterprise Development Opportunities for Women in Coastal Fishing Communities in India—Case Studies of Orissa and Maharashtra.” FAO Fisheries Circular 1021, FAO, Rome.

Also available at www.fao.org.

Gurumayum S. D., G. A. Devi, and M. C. Nandeesha. 2004.

“Women’s Participation in Fisheries Activities in Manipur Valley in India with Traditional Fish-Based Beliefs and Customs.” In Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries: Seventh Asian Fisheries Forum. Penang, Malaysia: World Fish Center.

Integrated Marine Management (IMM). n.d. “The Sustainable Coastal Livelihoods.” Available at www.ex.ac.uk/ imm.

Lyn, L. 2000. “An Assessment of the Role of Women in Fisheries in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.” Available at www.spc.int.

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Perera, Nishanthi. 2002. “Alternative Livelihood through Income Diversification: As Management Options for Sustainable Coral Reef and Associated Ecosystem Management in Sri Lanka.” South Asia Co-Operative Environment Programme (58), Colombo, Sri Lanka. Summary available at www.icriforum.org.

Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC). 2007. “Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin.” Issue of March 16.

Available at www.spc.int.

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP). 2004.

“Gender Credit Study in Tanji and Albreda Fishing Communities.” Available at www.sflp.org.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

Fiana, D. 2007. “COREMAP II and Gender Dimensions: Recent Progress and Challenges.” Report submitted to the Executive Secretary and Project Management Advisor of the World Bank, World Bank, Washington, DC. National Coordination Unit (NCU). 2005. “World Bank 1st Supervision Mission Aide Memoire Action Items.”

Unpublished Project Report.

———. 2006. “World Bank 2nd Supervision Mission Aide Memoire Action Items.” Unpublished Project Report.

———. 2007a. “Project Quarterly and Annual Reports, 2005–2007.” Unpublished Project Report.

———. 2007b. “Progress Review Action Items.” Unpublished Project Report.

Project Management Unit (PMU). 2007. “Project Quarterly and Annual Reports, 2005–2007.” Unpublished Project Report.

Regional Coordination Unit (RCU). 2007. “Project Quarterly and Annual Reports, 2005–2007.” Unpublished Project Report.

World Bank. 2006. “Final Aide Memoire on COREMAP II: Second Supervision Mission.” World Bank, Washington, DC.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

Debashish, K. S., M. Shirin, F. Zaman, M. Ireland, G. Chapman, and M. C. Nandeesha. 2001. “Strategies for Addressing Gender Issues through Aquaculture Programs: Approaches by CARE Bangladesh.” In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Women in Asian Fisheries, ICLARM Contribution No. 1587, ed. M. J. Williams, M. C. Nandeesha, V. P. Corral, E.Tech, and P. S. Choo, 147–56.

Penang, Malaysia.

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FURTHER READING Overview

Allison, Edward, and Janet Seeley. 2004. “HIV and AIDS among Fisherfolks: A Threat to ‘Responsible Fisheries’?”

Fish and Fisheries 5: 215–34.

Bennett, Elizabeth. 2005. “Gender, Fisheries and Development.” Marine Policy 29: 451–59.

Brugère, Cecile, Malene Felsing, Kyoko Kusakabe, and Govind Kelkar. 2001. ”Women in Aquaculture.” Final Report, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Project, FWG 03/99. Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand, and Institute of Aquaculture, Stirling U.K. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “Increasing the Contribution of Small-Scale Fisheries to Poverty Alleviation and Food Security.” Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries No. 10, FAO, Rome.

Harrison, Elizabeth. 1997. “Fish, Feminists and the FAO: Translating ‘Gender’ through Different Institutions in the Development Process.” In Getting Institutions Right for Women in Development, ed. Anne Marie Goetz, 61–74.

London: Zed Books.

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme. 2005.

“Impact of HIV/AIDS on Fishing Communities: Policies to Support Livelihoods, Rural Development and Public Health.” New Directions in Fisheries—A Series of Policy Briefs on Development Issues. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Thematic Note 1

Allison, Edward, and Frank Ellis. 2001. “The Livelihoods Approach and Management of Small-Scale Fisheries.”

Marine Policy 25: 377–88.

Ferrer, Elmer, Lenore de la Cruz, and Marife Domingo, eds.

1996. Seeds of Hope: A Collection of Case Studies on Community-Based Coastal Resources Management in the Philippines. Manila, Philippines: CBCRM Resource Center.

Kusakabe, Kyoko. 2003. “Women’s Involvement in SmallScale Aquaculture in Northeast Thailand.” Development in Practice 13 (4): 333–45.

Kusakabe, Kyoko, and Govind Kelkar, eds. 2001. Gender Concerns in Aquaculture in Southeast Asia. Gender Studies Monograph 12, Gender and Development Studies, School of Environment Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok.

Leach, Melissa, Robin Mearns, and Ian Scoones. 1997.

“Environmental Entitlements: A Framework for Understanding the Institutional Dynamics of Environmental

Change.” IDS Discussion Paper 359, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, Brighton, U.K. Locke, Catherine. 1999. “Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in India.” Development and Change 30: 265–85.

Nandeesha, M. C. 2007. “Asian Experience on Farmer’s Innovation in Freshwater Fish Seed Production and Nursing and the Role of Women.” In “Assessment of Freshwater Fish Seed Resources for Sustainable Aquaculture,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 501, Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sullivan, L. 2006. “The Impacts of Aquaculture Development in Relation to Gender in Northeastern Thailand.”

In Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries: Seventh Asian Fisheries Forum, 2004, ed. Poh-Sze Choo, Stephen J. Hall, and Meryl J. Williams, 29–42. Penang, Malaysia: World Fish Center.

Thematic Note 4

Assisting Coastal Communities in the Pacific Islands with Alternative Sources of Livelihood and Income: www.spc.int.

Environment and Development in Coastal Regions and in Small Islands: Developing Alternative Livelihoods: www.unesco.org.

JFPR Grant to Develop Alternative Livelihoods for Poor Fishers in Indonesia’s Coastal Communities: www.adb.org.

Livelihood and Micro-Enterprise Development Opportunities for Women in Coastal Fishing Communities in India: Case Studies of Orissa and Maharashtra: www.fao.org.

Seaweed Farming: An Alternative Livelihood for Small-Scale Fishers?: www.crc.uri.edu.

Semporna Islands Darwin Project—Alternative Livelihoods: www.sempornaislandsproject.com.

Trends in Poverty and Livelihoods in Coastal Fishing Communities of Orissa State, India: www.fao.org.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

Cesar, Herman. 1996. “Economic Analysis of Indonesian Coral Reefs.” Working Paper Series “Work in Progress,” World Bank, Washington, DC. Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. 2007. “Quarterly Progress Report: Implementation Status of COREMAP II. Period April–June 2007.” Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program II, Directorate General of Marine, Coastal, and Small Islands, Indonesia.

World Bank. 2004. “Technical Appraisal.” In “Project Appraisal Document for the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project (Phase II), Indonesia,” World Bank, Washington, DC.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

Nandeesha, M. C. 1994. “Aquaculture in Cambodia.” Infofish International 2: 42–48.

———. 2007. “Asian Experience on Farmer’s Innovation in Freshwater Fish Seed Production and Nursing and the Role of Women.” In “Assessment of Freshwater Fish Seed Resources for Sustainable Aquaculture,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 501, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

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MODULE 14

Gender and Livestock Overview

emands for meat and milk are growing because of population increases, economic growth, and consumer preference. The projected demand for meat alone is expected to increase by 6 to 23 kilograms per person worldwide by 2050.1 This draws attention to the potential benefits that can be gained from livestock production. Livestock provides income generation, employment creation, and improved food and nutrition security across different production systems (table 14.1) and along different value chains (such as meat, dairy, live animals, hides, and eggs).2 In some countries, livestock now accounts for up to 80 percent of the agricultural gross domestic product (World Bank 2007). A number of challenges face the livestock sector, including ensuring food, resource, and livelihood security for poor smallholder producers and processors. The challenges demand innovative and sustainable approaches, particularly given that more than 200 million smallholder farmers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America rely on livestock as the main source of income (FAO 2006b). Applying a “gender lens” to identify and address women’s and men’s different needs and constraints related to relevant livestock production systems and value chains is important for determining the most optimal outcomes as well as the most effective use of resources.

This Module is intended to support efforts to strengthen the design and implementation of livestock initiatives. It applies a Gender in Sustainable Livelihoods approach to livestock sector programming (see also Sourcebook Overview). In so doing, it highlights a range of gender issues

D

to consider—from intrahousehold roles and relations to institutional supports and barriers and beyond to policy considerations. As the range of issues is broad, the Module suggests a number of references that can provide the reader with more in-depth coverage on particular issues.

OVERVIEW OF THE SECTOR

The livestock sector continues to grow globally. On the one hand, extensive rangeland systems face potentially dramatic changes to grazing lands, feed, and water availability. On the other, a rapidly industrializing sector based on more intensive systems depends on high-performing livestock breeds,3 greater inputs, waste management, and food safety and biosecurity measures. As such, the livestock sector faces numerous challenges and poses challenges to other sectors, including finance and trade, water and land, education, and health. Furthermore, current concerns around the social, economic, and health-related impacts of transboundary animal diseases, such as avian influenza, highlight a number of other issues facing the livestock sector (FAO 2006a), including the following: ■ ■

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Ensuring safe trade in livestock and animal products Safeguarding environmental sustainability and biodiversity, which is paramount to the sector Finding effective prevention and control of major animal diseases to safeguard animal and public health.

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Table 14.1 General Characteristics of Different Livestock Production Systems Production system

Characteristics

Landless industrialized systems

• Industrial, market-driven production systems • Detached from their original land base, commercially oriented, and specialize in specific products • Generally associated with large-scale enterprises • Small-scale urban-based production units also important in developing countries Potential areas for gender concern: labor conditions, mobility, control over production, decision-making power

Small-scale landless systems

• Small-scale landless livestock keepers typically not owning croplands or with access to large communal grazing areas • Typically found in urban and periurban areas and in rural areas of high population density Potential areas for gender concern: access to water, fodder, decision-making control, control over benefits, access to information on disease prevention, control

Grassland-based or grazing systems

• Typical of areas unsuitable or marginal for growing crops • Most often found in arid and semiarid areas • Adaptive management practices needed for challenging environmental conditions Potential areas for gender concern (depends on scale): large-scale ranches: labor conditions, living conditions such as accommodation, control over decision making; small-scale: intrahousehold decision making, control over benefits, decision making, local knowledge, and gendered roles in animal husbandry, disease prevention, and control

Mixed farming systems

• Most of the world’s ruminants kept within crop-livestock systems • Characterized by relatively low levels of external inputs • Products of one part of the system used as inputs for the other Potential areas for gender concern: access to and control of inputs (land, water, credit); intrahousehold decision making; access to extension, veterinary services; capacities for scaling up

Sources: FAO 1997, 2007.

Most notable, perhaps, is the increasing demand by the sector for natural capital (land, water, fodder, fuelwood), physical capital (transport, abattoirs, market and home refrigeration) (based on FAO 2006a, 2006b; World Bank 2005b), and human capital (labor, knowledge, public-private partnerships in research and extension).

KEY GENDER ISSUES

A number of gender issues are central to discussions of agricultural livelihoods. These include, but are not limited to, access to and control of assets and gendered divisions of labor (IFAD 2004). Within the Sustainable Livelihoods framework, gender issues must also be considered in the wider political, economic, institutional, environmental, social, cultural, and demographic context. This means considering related factors, such as age, vulnerability, and socioeconomic status. The following sections discuss some of the key gender issues currently facing the livestock sector.

to prevent property and asset confiscation, yet it is still common practice for a husband’s family to take livestock and other assets from a widow and her children upon the husband’s death. This has immediate impacts on a woman and her children in terms of loss of food security insurance, potential income, draft power, and fertilizer.4 Moreover, land tenure is often required to establish access to other inputs such as credit, an often essential ingredient for improving livestock productivity and food security and livelihood improvement.5 Because of a number of factors that relate particularly to a lack of human capital (for example, knowledge, capacity, political commitment) and financial capital (for example, lack of funds, decentralization constraints), many countries still face challenges in translating legislation related to women’s access to and control of resources into action at the community and household levels (IFAD 2004). This impacts women’s capacity to control and benefit from livestock. Poultry pose an almost universal exception; around the world, women tend to have more control over the poultry they produce and market.

Access to and control of livestock and other assets

Controlling assets such as land, water, livestock, and agricultural implements has a direct impact on whether men, women, boys, and girls can forge life-enhancing livelihood strategies. For example, Namibia has implemented legislation

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Roles, responsibilities, and decision making

In general, women, men, boys, and girls provide labor for different livestock-related tasks. However, gendered roles are not set in stone and are open to change for different social,

economic, environmental, and health-related reasons. For instance, in a case from Tanzania, the pastoralist groups of Morogoro and Tanga showed a clear division in gender roles. Yet in times of labor shortages, women could and did perform “men’s” tasks, such as herding and watering animals. On the other hand, men seldom performed “women’s” tasks, except in cases where there was potential to gain control over assets (Hill 2003).

Although differences, of course, exist within and between different livestock production systems and across regions, women are almost universally recognized for their role as the main actors in poultry, small ruminant, and microlivestock production as well as dairying, including the processing and marketing of milk and milk products.6 Increasingly, experience shows (Bravo-Baumann 2000; Niamir-Fuller 1994) that women’s labor and responsibilities in animal production remain underrecognized and underappreciated by those designing and implementing livestock policies and plans (IFAD 2004). Further, women and girls may or may not control, or be part of, household decision-making processes, especially in relation to the disposal of animals and animal products.7 In the agropastoral systems of Iringa, Mara, and Mwanza in Tanzania, women could not sell or slaughter their animals without consulting their husbands, but they could decide to use their money from the sale of surplus food crops to buy livestock. They could also sell or exchange their poultry without seeking their husband’s permission. In the intensive systems of Kilimanjaro, milk, which was once under women’s control, came under women’s and men’s control as it became a key source of household income (Hill 2003).

Women and men as custodians of local knowledge and domestic animal diversity

As keepers of local knowledge, women and men contribute to the enhancement of gene flow and domestic animal diversity (FAO 2002). They also hold knowledge useful in the prevention and treatment of livestock illness. Men, women, boys, and girls will often have differing livestock knowledge and skills depending on their roles and responsibilities in animal husbandry. Women who process wool may have far different criteria for breed selection than men. Men herding cattle may have different knowledge of fodder and disease prevention than others in their household. Men’s and women’s reasons for keeping livestock may differ, as shown in a study conducted in Bolivia, India, and Kenya (Heffernan, Nielsen and Misturelli 2001 in IFAD 2004). In Kenya women thought of livestock as primarily contributing to food

security, whereas men saw livestock as a way to meet needs such as school fees, food, and a way to invest.

Livestock services and a restructuring sector

Gendered asymmetries in access to and delivery of livestock and veterinary services not only do a great disservice to women and men livestock producers and processors, but they also stifle the potential for more sustainable and effective actions along a given livestock value chain. With a restructuring of the livestock sector has come the restructuring of services. As services are increasingly privatized, women face disproportionate challenges compared to men in accessing livestock services and information for reasons mentioned above and in other sources. Women’s poor access to markets, services, technologies, information, and credit decreases their ability to improve productivity and benefit from a growing livestock sector (for more on different constraints faced by poor smallholders in general, see FAO 2006a).

WHY MAINSTREAM GENDER?

Mainstreaming gender can benefit both beneficiaries and project implementers and other stakeholders. Some of the key benefits that can be gained from mainstreaming gender in livestock initiatives follow.

Key benefits: beneficiaries

Improve individual and household well-being. Understanding men’s and women’s different decision-making powers and negotiating strategies can inform livestock initiatives of the dynamics within and between households that need to be addressed in developing more viable livestock options and, in turn, improving the livelihoods and overall wellbeing of all household members. Addressing gender in livestock projects means identifying, understanding the relevance of, and addressing the different livelihood needs, priorities, interests, and constraints of men and women along lines of age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and ability (among others). It means maximizing the available social capital through engaging all household members as agents of poverty reduction. Women and men are far more likely to participate in efforts to improve their livestock initiatives if they can see that the benefits (for example, improved productivity, food security, income generation, less disease) outweigh the costs (for example, time, labor, social commitment).

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Address women’s and men’s needs and interests. Mainstreaming gender in livestock initiatives means addressing the perceived needs and interests of women, men, boys, and girls involved in livestock production. Women may have very different interests and criteria for selecting livestock, as shown in the example from the study from Bolivia, India, and Kenya noted above. Addressing gender issues in livestock production can contribute to women’s and men’s economic and social empowerment, particularly for those who are vulnerable or living in marginalized areas. This empowerment can contribute significantly to meeting commitments agreed upon in international conventions (such as the Committee on the Elimination of the Discrimination against Women, Article 14; World Food Summit) as well as the Millennium Development Goals, particularly Goal 1 (Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger) and Goal 3 (Promoting gender equality and empowering women).

Improve social protection. Addressing gender in livestock programs and projects is important as a social protection measure. Doing so builds assets at the individual, household, and community levels through reducing vulnerability and increasing the opportunities of men, women, boys, and girls. Women in many areas around the world use income generated from poultry and dairy production—for instance, to pay for social goods such as children’s school fees, medical fees—and other assets to provide for their families. This is particularly relevant to protect those in vulnerable situations from being forced to take risks to secure food, income, shelter, clothing, and other necessities. In subSaharan Africa, preventing confiscation of livestock upon the death of a husband is an important social protection mechanism. Heifer Zambia, an NGO, recognized the constraints women faced in owning and inheriting property, including livestock. Heifer worked with households and communities to establish joint ownership of livestock by the husband and the wife. A signed contract also allowed for a woman to inherit the livestock if her spouse died,8 which provided a form of social protection.

Key benefits: program implementers

Use programming resources effectively and ensure more optimal outcomes. Understanding women’s and men’s livelihoodrelated roles and responsibilities can lead to more effective design and implementation of livestock programs. An approach that considers the gender and equity dimensions from within the household as well as across the spectrum of relevant livestock value chains works best. An example of a project from Nepal highlights the consequences of ignoring

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gender in project design and the subsequent suboptimal outcome. The project sought to transform buffalo milk production from subsistence to integration into the cash economy. The strategy focused on supporting the production of buffalo milk for the Kathmandu market. Although many households benefited from improved income to cash and food security, benefits were distorted along gender lines.

Women and girls’ labor grew because of the increased needs for fodder and fuelwood collection, stall cleaning, feed preparation, milking, and buffalo bathing. Women and girls faced restricted mobility and decreased leisure time, and, furthermore, girls also dropped out of school. Even though women were the primary buffalo caretakers, none of them seemed to gain any extra income or other personal assets.

On the other hand, men were more concerned with the investment in, rather than the management of, the buffalo (Thomas-Slayter and Bhatt 1994).

Monitor changes in livestock-related livestock strategies and overall well-being more effectively. National- and projectlevel agricultural and livestock surveys may collect age and sex of head-of-household data, yet the researchers rarely use these data to analyze and interpret what is really happening with people’s agricultural livelihoods. However, experience shows that collecting data along these lines can greatly inform livestock program initiatives, improve implementation (working with the most appropriate beneficiaries), and lead to a more effective monitoring and evaluation process (for example, defining gender-sensitive indicators to assess who is benefiting or not benefiting, how, and why).9 Promote better livestock technology development and adoption. Involving adult men and women—and where appropriate, boys and girls or elder women and men10—in livestock technology development is more likely to lead to more relevant technologies and greater adoption rates. As discussed, different household members typically hold different livestock responsibilities; they also may have different livestock priorities and constraints. Over time, extension services in Chiapas, Mexico, tried to improve wool production through cross-breeding Chiapas sheep with exotic breeds. However, the animals they introduced either died or produced little. This was in great part because of the difficult environment in the mountains. Then the Institute of Indigenous Studies at the University of Chiapas began to work with women Tzotzil shepherds to select breeding animals based on the women’s own criteria, which included evaluating fleece quality. The selection program showed results through significant increases in the quality and quantity of wool. The Tzotzil women showed high acceptance of the “improved Chiapas sheep,” to a great extent

because of their involvement throughout all project phases as well as the animals’ quick adaptation to local conditions (GRAIN n.d.). The project showed that women will be reluctant to adopt an improved breed if it means they must allocate an unreasonable amount of time and labor because the costs to them will far outweigh any benefits that might be gained. Similarly, they may value certain breeds far differently than men based on their priorities and interests.

Women benefit most when they have decision-making authority over the animals they manage, even if they do not hold the legal ownership (Miller 2001).

The next section provides an overview of the SL framework as it pertains to livestock production. The framework can be used to help assess the gender issues facing different production systems and inform subsequent planning and implementation of livestock-related initiatives.

THE SL FRAMEWORK AND LIVESTOCK

Understanding the significance of mainstreaming gender is an important step in redressing the lack of attention to women’s and men’s different roles, responsibilities, needs, interests, and constraints in the planning of livestock initiatives. However, translating this understanding into action poses the greatest challenge to livestock officers, planners, and implementers at all levels and across regions. This section provides an overview of the SL framework in the context of the livestock sector. The framework and the issues therein can be adapted to different production strategies, livestock value chains, and situations.

SL framework: elements

The key defining elements of the SL framework as they pertain to the livestock sector are described in the following paragraphs. Box 14.1 provides a SL checklist for livestock initiatives to help guide the mainstreaming of gender in livestock programs.

Assets. Livestock acts as a financial, social, and natural asset, contributing to smallholder livelihood portfolios of an estimated 70 percent of the world’s rural poor women and men. For many of these women and men, livestock acts as a primary form of savings, as well as insurance against accidents, illness, and death. Few other resources can match livestock as a means of investment. Livestock acts as collateral for accessing other inputs, such as agricultural credit— usually with large animals (Dorward and others 2005). In a comparative study of poor livestock keepers in Bolivia, India, and Kenya, Heffernan, Nielsen, and Misturelli (2001)

asked households to rank the best form of investment. In all three countries, livestock outranked business and housing (IFAD 2004). Women and men who raise livestock may gain income quickly by selling animals during times of need: for example, when women need medicine for their children or sick relatives. Regular income from the sale of milk, eggs, manure, livestock transport, or breeding sires can provide money for other household goods and services (for example, school fees, implements, livestock services) or for “trading up” (for example, acquiring larger or greater numbers of livestock). Finally, livestock may also act as a social asset. As such, livestock may confer status on its owners and build social capital through the exchange of animals or their use in ceremonies (de Haan 2001). Thematic Note 3 highlights the importance of livestock as women’s and men’s assets in relation to livestock technology development.

Markets. Trade can improve food security and wellbeing for poor, vulnerable women and men. Specifically, trade can support women’s and men’s rise out of poverty and provide income for food and other goods. However, women and men face gender biases in livestock-marketing systems and infrastructure (Baden 1998). For example, women typically face more constraints in accessing livestock markets than do men for various reasons, including gendered asymmetries in intrahousehold decision-making powers and access to transport (for example, access to money for transport, control over household transport, safety while traveling, and lack of mobility though limited impositions on overnight stays). Examples from Nepal and Tanzania provided in this Module suggest that when livestock are produced to generate income, men often take over the decision-making matters related to the sale of animals or products and the distribution of income benefits within the household.

As the livestock sector restructures, women as well as men increasingly find themselves working in situations in which they have less control over production and processing (such as industrial factory operations). Moreover, poor livestock producers, particularly women, typically face disproportionate barriers in meeting a growing number of regulations (for example, phytosanitary standards) required by more structured markets. They also find it more difficult to compete when barriers such as tariffs are in place.

Women, more than men, may also face an increased risk of harassment and abuse as they move into working situations in which they do not control their own labor, as is found in industrial livestock systems.

Finally, market “shocks” may affect women and men in different ways, particularly in terms of their access to

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Box 14.1 Sustainable Livelihoods Checklist for Livestock Initiatives

The following checklist draws on the SL framework and provides a number of issues that may be relevant to the design and implementation of livestock initiatives. Note that differences may exist based on region, production system, and locally specific concerns. The framework and checklist can be used to guide initial assessments or to reflect on implementation midway through a project.

They are also useful for informing a monitoring and evaluation framework and developing appropriate gendersensitive indicators to measure impact and results.

Livelihoods development context: Livestock policies and institutions

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may have different livestock knowledge, needs, interests, and priorities. Avoid “elite capture,” where resources are deflected into the hands of dominant community groups or other stakeholders.

Identify and build on women’s and men’s different livestock interests, priorities, and needs (such as food security, income generation, and status).

Consider the costs and benefits to women and men from proposed livestock interventions (for example, labor inputs and diversion from other activities, time, income generated, food security, and social impacts).

Markets ■

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Examine the different policies and regulations that guide the livestock sector. Consider how the policies might support or constrain women producers and processors as compared to men. Consider sanitary measures and tariffs.

Consider how relevant institutions address gender in their organizational and programming efforts.

Look for a guiding gender policy, strategy, or plan.

Look at how policies translate into action in communities and with women producers and processors as compared to men.

Consider that relevant institutions may have genderdifferential implications for the livestock sector; these include line ministries of agriculture, district veterinary and livestock extension offices, community customs and institutions, livestock research offices, and, on a more regional and global scale, the World Trade Organization and similar bodies and district and community customs and institutions.

Assets ■

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Examine the differences in women’s and men’s property rights around livestock, land, and water.

Consider how these might impact women’s and men’s capacity to improve their livestock-related activities and livelihoods.

See women and men as important custodians of local knowledge for domestic animal diversity, disease prevention and control, processing, and so on.

Explore with them their roles and responsibilities, and build on their custodianship.

Consider livestock-related roles and responsibilities along gender, age, caste, and ethnicity lines as different age groups as well as different castes or classes

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Consider how and to what extent women and men participate in and have decision-making power in – Land designation mechanisms and markets – Livestock and livestock product markets (such as dairy, hides, and live animals) – Finance markets that support livestock production.

Look at how these differences might impact women as compared to men in initiatives to strengthen livestock-related livelihood strategies. Explore whether other factors come into play, such as age, ethnicity, caste, and socioeconomic class.

If relevant (that is, beyond subsistence production), consider the distribution of risks and gains for women and men along a particular livestock value chain (such as dairy, poultry, and eggs) as ■

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Producers (for example, in terms of income generated and food security gained from livestock) Processors (for example, in access to processing technologies and information) Marketers (for example, access to transport, safe overnight accommodation, potential abuse and harassment from others at markets—women may expect demands for sexual transaction in exchange for buying a product) Economies of scale (for example, bringing women together to improve marketing position).

Risk and vulnerability Different communities and the women and men therein may face different risks associated with livestock. Consider the following points and think about which may be relevant to the particular situation. Look

Box 14.1 SL Checklist for Livestock Initiatives (continued)

at women’s and men’s different experiences in and capacities for responding to the following: ■

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Livestock sector trends (for example, policy biases and changes, supermarketization, lengthening livestock value chains, and vertical integration) Regional shocks affecting livestock (for example, climate and ecosystem change, drought, flooding, political upheaval, conflict, animal disease, demographic shifts) Household shocks (for example, illness or death of family member, “distress sales” of livestock to pay for medical treatment, and livestock confiscation upon the death of a husband).

Information and organization Where relevant, consider women’s and men’s access to, participation in, decision making in, and contributions to the following:

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Livestock extension and veterinary information and services and artificial insemination services Participating in developing livestock programs and policies (for example, vaccination, culling, compensation, and restocking programs) Developing livestock and related technologies (for example, fodder, breeding, disease prevention, biosecurity, livelihood decision-making tools) Training and engagement as community animal health workers/paraveterinarians.

Consider how these differences might impact women as compared to men in initiatives to strengthen livestock-related livelihood strategies. Explore whether other factors come into play such as age, ethnicity, caste, socioeconomic class, and so on.

Source: Author; Questions adapted from SL Framework, Sourcebook Overview.

compensation and restocking schemes (for example, market shocks and responses around avian influenza). Thematic Note 2 addresses the relationships between gender and different aspects of livestock markets and proposes areas for action.

Information and organization. Addressing the challenges faced by the livestock sector depends increasingly on an effective and efficient flow of information. This is crucial to addressing the production, economic, environmental, and health aspects, among others, of the sector. Whether on a small or a large scale, women and men producers and processors depend on information related to markets, consumer demands, and disease patterns to help them plan their enterprises. For example, it is crucial that all involved along a poultry value chain (from producers to consumers) have upto-date access to information on the status of avian influenza in their area so that they can take effective (farmer and other) biosecurity or biocontainment measures and respond to any market shocks (through, for example, diversification, compensation, and restocking). Women and men leverage social capital and collective action (such as women’s groups and neighbors) around livestock activities to strengthen their livelihoods and resilience against possible shocks (for example, market, environmental, and health).

Along with traditional veterinary and extension services, women’s networks and groups have been proven to be useful “organizational” pathways for passing information on livestock to women. A study on Heifer Project International’s efforts to disseminate improved goat breeds through a village group process in Tanzania showed that social capital influenced people’s ability to access a goat. Their ability to access and manage information was also crucial (de Haan 2001).

This study showed that women’s groups help women access other resources they may not otherwise be able to access.

It is equally important for information to be passed from women and men producers and processors to those regulating the livestock sector, developing improved breeds and other technologies, and monitoring livestock diseases.

Innovative Activity Profile 2 in this Module discusses the importance of recognizing local gender and age-based knowledge in prioritizing breeding criteria in two different regions of Tanzania.

Risk and vulnerability. Women and men keep livestock, in part, as a means of livelihood diversification and important capital in savings, insurance, and the management of risk, and the livestock can be disposed of in times of need or emergency (FAO 2006a; SDC 2007; Upton 2004). At the

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same time, these aspects of their livelihood are vulnerable to animal disease (see Thematic Note 1), market trends and shocks, overall restructuring of the livestock sector, and environmental factors, including climate change.

Women often have less access to information on sanitary measures in more intensive, industrial systems, potentially putting them at greater risk. In part because of a lack of information and other resources, women in Vietnam face risks to their own health where they are often on the frontlines with poultry and are at most risk of becoming exposed to avian influenza.

Similarly, because women are not seen as “owners” and their roles and responsibilities are often neglected by decision makers and planners, they risk being left out in vaccination, compensation, and restocking schemes. On the other hand, livestock also provide a certain degree of resilience to those owning or benefiting from them because they can be sold in times of distress (such as for medicines or funerals). This is not ideal, but selling their livestock is often the only way that women can access money to pay for treatment for a family member or themselves. Genderdifferentiated knowledge is important to risk aversion, particularly in transhumant pastoralist systems. Thematic Note 1 looks at some of the key gender and livelihood issues related to livestock disease control and biosecurity and provides examples of good practices and lessons learned.

Policies and institutions. Effective policies and programs are required to respond effectively to the many challenges faced by the livestock sector, particularly in the face of global warming and economic globalization. Improving livestock productivity depends on the maintenance of the primary natural capital of livestock development: domestic animal genetic resources. Examples from Mexico and Tanzania outlined in Innovative Activity Profiles 1 and 2 point to the importance of human and social capital in this process because smallholder women’s and men’s custodianship of local husbandry knowledge and skills maintains and improves domestic animal diversity and productivity. Yet institutional mechanisms and policy frameworks across regions tend to favor large-scale production of fewer breeds over small-scale production based on a diversity of breeds.

At the household level, the claims that women can make in relation to land access have eroded, which undermines their capacity to provide for the family and invest in their own assets including livestock (Diarra and Monimart 2006 in Trench and others 2007). Clearly, policies and institutions impact the processes that affect livelihood outcomes; they impact markets, information, risk and vulnerability, and assets. Because of policies intended to ensure safe animal

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products for the consumer and an increase in returns to the producer, small-scale livestock producers and processors, particularly women, face great challenges entering wider markets because of different sanitary restrictions, tariffs, and concentrated distribution channels imposed under different political and legal frameworks (FAO 2006a; SDC 2007). Innovative Activity Profile 1 looks at the social, economic, scientific, and other benefits of collaboration between formal and informal researchers on improving local sheep in Chiapas, Mexico.

MEASURING CHANGE: GENDER-SENSITIVE MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

It is important to be able to measure the impact that livestock initiatives have on men and women beneficiaries, their families, and communities. The SL framework is useful for identifying areas in which change should be measured and for developing gender-sensitive indicators to assess change.

Because the livestock sector covers many issues and includes several levels, it is not possible or advisable to prescribe gendersensitive indicators across the board. Ideally, such indicators are best developed with the participation of those concerned— for example, men and women smallholder livestock keepers, abattoir workers, marketers, and consumers (see table 14.2 for examples of indicators). Beneficiaries are best placed to identify their livestock and livelihood priorities. The following areas are examples of issues to consider at different levels: ■

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Establish a baseline. What is the situation like now? How do livestock planners see the situation? How do men and women producers, processors, and laborers view the situation?

Establish a target or different targets. Women and men may have different priorities, needs, and concerns depending on their gendered roles and relations, their livelihood strategies, and their roles with different livestock. It is important to consider not only the economic factors in identifying targets (and indeed baselines), but also the targets in relation to human and social capital.

How are the targets entwined with information and market needs and constraints? What vulnerabilities face women as compared to men, youth as compared to adults and elders? What different risks do women potentially face as compared to men?

Define target results. After identifying a baseline and targets, women and men, livestock planners, and others can then define “success” or “benefits” from meeting those targets. This will help identify and develop effective

Table 14.2 Examples of Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Livestock Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Change in sales by x percent per month of livestock products (such as milk, eggs, meat, and fiber)

• Participatory monitoring by producer or herder groups • Project records

Over a set period, an increase of x percent in household incomes from livestock-based activities among women-headed households and poor households in program areas

• Household surveys • Project management information system • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Changes over x-year period of project activities in household nutrition, health, education, vulnerability to violence, and happiness, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys, before and after • Project management information system • School records

Change in amount of milk and animal protein consumed by household family members

• Child health records • Household surveys • Rapid nutrition surveys

Change in nutritional status of children under five years old, before and after program activities

• Child health records • Household surveys • Rapid nutrition surveys

Changes in soil and pasture condition in farmland, before and after program activities (such as nutrient levels and percentage of ground cover)

• Department of Agriculture surveys • Farm records • Participatory monitoring by villagers and herders

Number of women and men participating in training in new methods or types of livestock raising per quarter

• Program and project records • Training records

Level of satisfaction among women and men with veterinary and training services

• Interviews of farmers • Sample surveys

Adoption of recommended practices and technologies among men and women farmers, before and after program activity

• Case studies • Interviews of farmers • Sample surveys

Percentage of women and men farmers practicing proper use and management of veterinary chemicals

• Farm records • Interviews of farmers

Number of women and men who have accessed credit and training from the project and are engaged in livestock production

• Case studies • Project management information system or administrative records • Sample surveys

Percentage of women community animal health workers, livestock extension agents, and paravets

• Department of agriculture records • Project records

Access to extension services (animal production, artificial insemination, marketing, and health): number of contacts, disaggregated by gender

• Department of agriculture records • Project records

Percentage of men and women farmers who have access to high-quality, locally adapted livestock

• Agricultural extension records • Interviews with stakeholders

Morbidity and mortality of livestock per quarter, disaggregated by gender of owner

• Household surveys • Project management information system • Veterinary department records

Women or other disadvantaged groups actively participating in management committees and boards of producer groups and cooperatives

• • • •

Number of women and men holding management or treasurer positions in natural resource management groups

• Bank account records • Committee meeting minutes

Gender differences in workload as a result of introduced practices or new technology for livestock production

• • • •

New and total employment or paid labor generated in livestock population for the local population, disaggregated by gender (with and without ethnicity)

• Administrative records of enterprises

Number of women and men starting new small enterprises in animal product processing or marketing (such as milk, eggs, meat, or fiber products)

• Household surveys • Project records • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Committee meeting minutes Interviews with stakeholders Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) Program and project records

Case studies Gender analysis Participatory rapid appraisal Sample surveys

Source: Authors, with inputs from Pamela White, author of Module 16.

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gender-responsive indicators to monitor change. Quantitative and qualitative indicators are both important and need to be measured in different ways. Participatory approaches are useful for looking at different stakeholders’ perceptions and views.

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Depending on the country or region, it may be relevant to also consider ethnicity and caste alongside gender (both as comparative indicators and when collecting data), as women of lower castes or ethnic minorities are usually in the most disadvantaged situation.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Livestock Disease Control and Biosecurity

ivestock acts as natural and economic capital, contributing to women’s and men’s diets and livelihoods through income generation and home consumption, acting as live banks, imparting social status, and providing draft, transport, and fertilizer, especially for resource-poor men and women farmers. Yet an estimated 30 percent of livestock production in developing countries is lost because of disease (Upton 2004). Animal diseases, particularly transboundary animal diseases,1 including zoonoses (diseases that can be spread from animals to humans), are an ongoing threat to women and men livestock producers and processors as well as to markets and consumers (Otte, Nugent, and McLeod 2004). The impact of livestock disease on the livelihoods and food security of poor livestock producers and processors, particularly women, is of great concern because they are less resilient to disease-related shocks such as market loss, loss of animals, and domestic animal diversity, and because they have less access to compensation and restocking programs (World Bank 2005).

Zoonotic diseases have captured global concern because of their potentially far-reaching impact on both human health and markets, livelihoods, and food security. The economic losses alone due to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) are estimated to be at least $1 billion worldwide (World Bank 2005). In a study conducted in Vietnam, all of the communities surveyed had suffered losses due to avian influenza outbreaks; 96 percent of those surveyed were poultry producers, and 78 percent of them (smallholders) had not received compensation.2 This Thematic Note addresses some of the key gender and livelihoods issues related to livestock disease control and biosecurity and provides examples of good practices and lessons learned as well as suggestions for ways to move forward.

L

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Engaging women and men producers, processors, traders, researchers, and service providers in livestock disease prevention and control can promote more sustainable livelihoods along livestock value chains (from farmer to market) and beyond. The following paragraphs discuss some of the key gender issues associated with this subsector.

“By knowing who does what, one can discover who is in the best position to observe clinical signs signalling animal health problems” (Curry and others 1996). Knowing this can also help expose possible biosecurity risks along livestock value chains—for example, movement of hatching eggs, birds, and poultry products before retail (Lucas 2007 in Otte and others 2007). Adult and older women and men as well as younger boys and girls may all hold different human capital associated with their livestock health and production roles (for example, women’s groups, grazing groups, knowledgeable elders, and healers). In a study conducted in India (Geerlings, Mathias, and Köhler-Rollefson 2002), researchers found that, for the most part, women mentioned different plants than men in terms of their ethnoveterinary applications. Women and men may also access social capital that supports their livelihoods and livestockrelated activities, as in the case of exchanging goats in Tanzania (de Haan 2001). In Uasin Gishu, Kenya, both adult women and older men and adult men had daily responsibilities caring for the cattle. Both men and women respondents knew nearly half of the 65 unique syndromes. Women volunteered only about one-quarter of these, as did men.

Except for rinderpest, which was not present in the district at the time of the study, women respondents were familiar with the terms that described diseases across categories.

Women’s knowledge of local disease terms was comparable to that of men. The study showed that veterinary extension activities also need to be geared toward adult women and

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older men to improve diagnostic capabilities on farms (Curry and others 1996). Elsewhere, in a study conducted by Anthra in India, out of 316 traditional healers interviewed, 293, or 93 percent, were men, and only 23, or 7 percent, were women (Ghotge and Ramdas 2002). Researchers found the low number of women surprising; they suggested that it could be due to a highly gendered flow of information from fathers or grandfathers to sons.

Women, as well as men, may be well placed to identify disease, yet they may not have direct access to veterinary or epidemiological services for various reasons. All too often, those working formally on livestock disease prevention and control perceive adult men to be the ones raising livestock.3 Yet adult women, girls and boys, and often elder men and women, may be responsible for diverse production and health activities. Men often have greater access to physical capital (such as transport) than women to travel to disease prevention and control offices or training. They likely hold better access to financial assets to pay for services and information. In Vietnam women have less access to important human capital than men, and they are less informed than men about poultry production issues, particularly in terms of HPAI prevention and control. Women who lack access to information are also the ones at greater risk of being exposed to HPAI because of the roles they play in poultry production (FAO/MARD/ACI 2007).

Furthermore, finding ways of preventing and responding effectively to animal disease requires a certain type of social capital—the active involvement and participation of men and women—at the household, community, and national levels. Yet at the household level, disease prevention or control measures may actually add to women’s workloads, reducing their capacity to participate in community meetings related to animal health.

Gendered asymmetries in capacity development affect livestock disease prevention and control. Women are increasingly entering into, and practicing in, fields related to livestock disease prevention and control, including veterinary medicine, epidemiology, lab technology, and research. Elsewhere, however, it is estimated that only 15 percent of the world’s agricultural extension agents are women.4 At the community level, women are still less present in general in the roles of formally trained community animal health workers or paraveterinaries. In many areas, cultural or religious factors bar men from meeting or talking to women to whom they are not related. In these areas women need to be trained and supported in other ways (such as adequate and safe housing and transport) to work with other women producers and processors.

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BENEFITS FROM GENDER-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS

The following benefits may be gained from gender-responsive actions: ■

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Working with local women and men (including elders and ethnoveterinary practitioners) and sharing their knowledge can be helpful in identifying disease patterns and identifying more technically effective and cost-effective ways to prevent outbreaks or transmission. Finding out who does what (for example, milking, raising chicks, grazing cattle), who controls what (income, draft implements, donkey transport, grazing lands), who knows what (disease patterns, availability and quality of water, grazing lands, market trends), and who is affected by what helps health care officers design more effective processes of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of livestock disease.

Knowing who has decision-making power over livestock in the household and community can enable animal health practitioners to identify ways of building on valuable human capital (for example, men may make the decisions, but women may have specific knowledge).

Women and men may be active in a number of roles (production, slaughtering, marketing, consuming) along livestock value chains (such as poultry and dairying). In Vietnam women control their poultry in operations in which there are only a few chickens, but men tend to control larger poultry operations even though women provide the labor.

Gender-responsive remedial action can provide more cost-effective and technically effective responses to disease fallouts such as those experienced from market shocks such as those witnessed in a number of countries affected by avian influenza.

Health care officers can help improve the livelihoods of rural men, women, and children by ensuring that improved veterinary technology and knowledge are provided directly to those members of the household responsible for livestock health care and production. A more proactive and interactive system of working with clients, including interaction with adult women and younger boys and girls, can facilitate the improvement of overall livelihoods through more effective disease diagnosis and overall health maintenance (Curry and others 1996).

Some of the preceding issues were addressed in an initiative undertaken in India. The gendered livestock roles in India are changing rapidly for many reasons: an urbanizing

environment, migration of men for jobs, industrialization of agriculture and postharvest activities, and the impact of HIV and AIDS on rural households and labor. Despite women’s involvement in day-to-day care, livestock management is still considered a man’s role by livestock planners and decision makers because the work that women do is seldom recognized. Women are also kept out of decisionmaking processes. Anthra, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO), found that although women in different communities were knowledgeable about local remedies, cures, and medicines for treating small ruminants, they had, for the most part, been kept out of professional healing.

Women expressed a desire to gain this knowledge, and they wanted to learn how to recognize conditions that were not treatable with local remedies. To rectify this, Anthra ensured that 75 percent of all new animal health workers were women. Apart from focusing on animal health issues, training also focused on women’s health and gender in sustainable development and natural resource use. The project encouraged the animal health workers to work closely with other women in the village to share their knowledge with them (Ghotge and Ramdas 2002).

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

To address livestock disease control and biosecurity measures, action is required at all levels and across different livestock value chains (from producers to markets to consumers). Increasingly, initiatives to prevent or stop the spread of livestock disease recognize the importance of considering the different socioeconomic and gender factors involved—for example, malignant catarrhal fever in Kenya, trypanosomiasis in Uganda (Mugisha 2004), and HPAI in Vietnam (Kariuki 2003). Yet addressing the challenges of transboundary diseases becomes more complex in a global environment increasingly contextualized in longer market chains and wider geographical sourcing of products (FAO 2005). The global strategy for the progressive control of HPAI (FAO/OIE/WHO 2005) points to several key policy and implementation issues in which gender is relevant in livestock disease control and biosecurity, including the following: Controlling livestock disease, particularly transboundary animal disease, is a public good requiring both public and private intervention in prevention, diagnosis, and response.

Rapid response to disease outbreaks calls for increases of biosecurity, containment, culling of infected animals, and disinfection and the use of vaccination when appropriate (Brushke, Thiermann, and Vallat 2007). Key actors in

disease intelligence and biosecurity strategies include women and men from the household level to the global level. Yet women’s involvement as livestock managers, producers, processors, researchers, and policy makers comes into question. Women have difficulty accessing resources and information essential to meeting government-regulated standards.5 A lack of effective incentives (such as welldesigned compensation packages that benefit women and men producers and processors) also hinders disease intelligence and reporting. Further, preventive vaccination campaigns that do not consider women’s and men’s abilities to pay, or that do not include training for those involved in the actual production responsibilities, are unlikely to succeed.

The provision of infrastructure and services to prevent and combat livestock diseases is a public good, which is more efficiently offered by governments rather than by communities of farmers in many cases (Otte, Nugent, and McLeod 2004).

However, it has been well established that women have less access to public and private livestock services than men. It is important that governments must address cost-effective incentives to participate in control efforts (for example, for women, men producers and processors; Otte, Nugent, and McLeod 2004). This cost effectiveness needs to be addressed in terms of economic and social costs (for example, labor reduction, time reduction, improved income generation, food security, lower cost inputs) to women and men livestock producers and processors.

Effective prevention and progressive control of major animal diseases depend on strong capacity across a number of levels. Involving men and women in both formal and informal capacity building is an effective and cost-efficient way of capitalizing on what can be costly training. Men and women who are trained in disease prevention and control and the design and application of effective biosecurity measures can have a better chance at ensuring wider outreach to women and men raising and processing livestock.

Useful policy changes affecting tertiary education include promoting the strengthening of curricula to include gendersensitive participatory methods in disease diagnosis, treatment, and biocontainment.

In southern Sudan, Vétérinaires sans Frontières— Belgium’s community-based animal health program— aimed at increasing household food security in pastoralist communities through improving the supply of milk, blood, meat, and livestock for sale and barter. Women were not involved in the community dialogue in developing the animal health program, and the program implementers realized that very few women were seizing the opportunity to be

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trained as community animal health workers. The program managers conducted an assessment to look at the program’s expected impact on women as opposed to men.

They assessed the extent to which the program responded to the specific needs and interests of women and identified opportunities for women’s involvement. They believed that understanding the roles that different household members play as animal health care providers is essential to the program. Many observers had assumed that men alone care for the animals. Yet women play very important roles in animal care, roles that are not acknowledged because the women do not own animals; these roles include cleaning, collecting cow dung, releasing and bringing in the cattle, milking, observing ill health in animals and reporting this to men, and caring for calves, goats, and chickens (Amuguni 2000).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Over the last 15 years or so, women and men have received growing attention as custodians of animal health and managers of livestock in their own right. Yet, for the most part, national plans and strategies to develop biosecurity measures and prevent and control livestock disease have not recognized and employed this knowledge to the fullest extent. The following discussion presents a number of examples and lessons learned regarding the improvement of disease prevention, control, and response strategies.

Recent studies on malignant catarrhal fever in Kenya (Kariuki 2003), Newcastle disease in southern Africa (Alders and others 2005), and vector-borne diseases in Uganda (Mugisha and others n.d.) confirm the importance to animal health planning of recognizing and understanding the linkages between gender and animal health across production systems and in different areas.

Addressing gender in tertiary curricula supports animal health practices in communities. For years, men, more than women, have been viewed as the “livestock raiser” by animal health workers and others. This is changing slowly, however, as lessons emerge from the practices of tertiary education institutes such as Makerere University in Uganda. In the early 2000s, the university’s veterinary faculty sought to change its curriculum in ways that would address gender concerns. Currently there is a course unit of veterinary sociology (with a large focus on gender) in the veterinary curriculum. Other programs including gender issues are the Bachelor’s in Animal Production Technology and Management program and the Master of Sciences in Livestock Development Planning and Management program.6 Such

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emerging practices have the capacity to improve and better support animal health practices in general.

Studies on avian influenza from Vietnam and Egypt have shown that initiatives to mitigate impacts related to animal disease, such as compensation mechanisms (Geerlings 2007), need to identify gendered needs, interests, and constraints and respond accordingly. Vouchers for school fees or medical costs may be more appropriate for women in cases where they do not control household income.

Involving women in developing communication messages and interventions is important in effectively controlling animal disease and/or developing rehabilitation strategies, as lessons emerging from Egypt indicate.7 Because they are often on the front line of disease diagnosis, women are important conduits for information on the prevention, control, and responses to livestock disease, as demonstrated in the case of avian influenza in Vietnam. To this end, the Southern Africa Newcastle Disease Programme worked with women as community vaccinators and as income providers. Controlling Newcastle disease also allowed the women’s groups to further develop their village poultry enterprises (AusVet 2006).

Lessons from Egypt suggest that in cases where restocking is not feasible (for example, because of ongoing outbreaks), it is important to develop alternative income-generating activities (Geerlings 2007). As part of this, it is important to consider women’s constraints, particularly those of women who are illiterate or who face restricted mobility.

Although it is often promoted as a way of averting risk, livestock microinsurance may pose several gender-based questions that need to be answered before engaging in widespread promotion. Women, more so than men, and particularly those in marginal populations (poor and vulnerable) and areas (arid and semiarid) likely face particular difficulties in investing in livestock microinsurance; they must divert scarce resources (perhaps from school fees or other foodstuffs) for such insurance. There is no guarantee that they can continue to pay the premiums should a serious difficulty arise, such as an ill or dying household member or lost income.8 Moreover, because women are often more likely to be illiterate than men in communities, they may face difficulties in reading and understanding policies. Finally, “the whole thrust behind [promoting] micro-finance has been the search for a self-help strategy for poverty reduction which has limited costs for donors and avoids difficult questions about wealth redistribution and basic service provision. Microinsurance, like micro-finance in general, is only useful as part of a broader programme to address the underlying causes of risk and vulnerability facing poor women and men.”

Strategic research that builds on women’s and men’s knowledge and experience in disease diagnosis, prevention, and local biosecurity measures is useful for informing strategies to address animal disease and adapting practices elsewhere. For example, experiences such as those of working with the Vietnam Women’s Union on HPAI can be useful for informing strategic prevention and response interventions elsewhere in the region.

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

The following recommendations apply to practitioners at the three levels.

Macro- (policy/strategy) level

Evaluate proposed solutions for transboundary disease and control/biosecurity using gender-sensitive criteria.9 Improve the evaluation of proposed technical solutions and costs of transboundary animal diseases and various control efforts and biosecurity to address socioeconomic, gender, age, and livelihoods concerns (for example, impact on women’s and men’s labor, time, livestock management roles, men’s and women’s different capacities to pay for preventive vaccinations).

Consider women’s and men’s differential abilities to benefit from insurance (including microinsurance) programs.

When considering the cost effectiveness of insurance as opposed to the control of transboundary animal disease directly, it is important to consider women’s and men’s differential abilities to contribute to, and benefit from, insurance programs. In many cases, group rather than individual programs may be more appropriate and enable more women to leverage assets collectively to benefit. Consider the potentially different impacts of insurance programs on men and women beneficiaries.

Ensure terms of reference call for addressing gender and livelihoods concerns and identifying gender-sensitive indicators in collective agreements, funding, and management of global, regional, and national responses. This should consider gender-sensitive compensation packages.

In establishing intelligence-gathering strategies for disease, ensure that incentives for reporting benefit both women and men producers and processors. Incentives might include compensation, capacity strengthening, improved access to information, and strengthening social networks.

Enhance countries’ capacities to undertake national action that considers gender-responsive participation in efforts

toward livestock disease control and biosecurity. This may include promoting women, as well as men, in relevant fields at the tertiary education level and providing incentives for pursuing relevant career paths.

Intermediate (institutional) level

Ensure women and men are provided with the opportunities to train as community animal health workers. Training for women, and perhaps some men, may need to be broader in terms of confidence building, literacy, numeracy, advocacy, and other factors. Provide gender support to communitybased institutions, such as those supporting the training and support of community animal health workers. Engage men in dialogue (both animal health workers and community members) to support women community animal health workers.

Schedule vaccination campaigns, training, and information campaigns for times and places that meet women’s and men’s needs, such as at women’s group meetings, at mobile clinics in the fields with the women, and in households.

Promote the understanding of animal health and other staff in this field of the socioeconomic, gender, and agebased linkages to disease prevention and control. Campaign for staff to work on animal health and biosecurity issues more closely with women, as well as with men in livestockkeeping households.

Collect and use data disaggregated by gender and age to support animal health policy and planning. As shown, women and men are often responsible for different aspects of livestock production and animal health. Moreover, younger boys or girls may hold specific knowledge useful for informing animal health policy and planning because of their specific roles (such as grazing and dairying).

Local level

Plan for disease prevention, control, and response issues, needs, and constraints along gender, age, and socioeconomic lines.10 As noted above, it is important to identify adult men and women, elder men and women, and boys’ and girls’ roles in, and knowledge of, different aspects of animal husbandry and livestock production. Understanding women’s and men’s different use of labor and time can be important to ensuring sustainability and success of any animal health initiative.

Consider the social and economic costs and benefits of biosecurity measures (including farmer biosecurity) to women and men. Ensure local (household) social and economic cost effectiveness of bioexclusion and biocontainment measures in terms of (1) financial costs—poor rural women

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raising livestock typically lack access to money or credit (financial assets) in many areas—and (2) costs to human and social capital—women’s use of time differs from that of men and also differs along lines of age.

Ensure that women, as well as men, are involved in information sharing in outreach related to disease control, biosecurity, and animal health in general.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

Indicators to monitor changes in numbers of livestock lost, culled, or restocked and general economic impacts of

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livestock disease and biosecurity measures should be developed in a way that considers gender- and age-differentiated impacts. Such indicators should be developed with women and men in a participatory manner to look at the impact of proposed or ongoing initiatives on women’s and men’s livelihood strategies, their income, labor, and differentiated access to knowledge and training. Indicators should consider both the economic and social impacts on women’s and men’s livelihoods and well-being, including the impacts on their social networks, local knowledge and skills, and means of exchanging information.11 See examples in table 14.2.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Livestock Marketing, Market Integration, and Value Chains

he livestock sector supports the livelihoods of an estimated 600 million rural poor people around the world. The volume of livestock production in developing countries has steadily increased since the 1980s, in terms of both internal consumption and regional and international exports (World Bank 2005).1 Improved access to livestock markets can play a significant role in increasing women’s and men’s income and livelihoods. However, with the restructuring of the livestock sector and subsequent lengthening of value chains to meet the growing demands of a globalizing economy, poor producers and processors, particularly women, face numerous challenges in benefiting from these changes. One challenge is dealing with the effects of trade agreements and regulations that favor large producers and processors, because women tend to be more actively engaged in the smallholder sector. Another challenge is finding effective means of averting risk and responding to extreme events and market shocks (such as flooding, drought, and avian influenza). Women also face a lack of access to market information, education (numeracy and literacy), and enterprise training that would provide them with a solid foundation for commercializing their livestock activities.

This Thematic Note addresses the relationships between gender and livestock marketing, market integration, and value chains from a gender and livelihoods perspective.

Module 5 in this volume addresses the issues of gender and markets in greater detail, focusing on the challenges facing the sector (see also Module 1, which covers food security and value chains).

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KEY GENDER ISSUES

A number of gender differential impacts arise from the restructuring of the livestock sector and are present at different

points along different value chains. Trade agreements and related mechanisms tend to favor large producers and processors over small ones, many of whom are women (such as meeting sanitary regulations). The restructuring of the sector brings opportunities for generating income, but it also brings the risks of unregulated and gender-insensitive employment (sexual harassment, insecure contracts, dependence upon suppliers). Following structural changes, women may face different challenges than men in working with (1) different kinds of livestock (such as changes in labor, skills, and information); (2) different livestock management systems (such as time and information); (3) new technology for housing, health, and processing (such as information, skills, and education); (4) changes in transport arrangements (such as infrastructure); and (5) changes in institutional arrangements to enable vertical integration in the market (Okali 2004). A study in Kenya in the 1990s showed how the economic changes eroded women’s positions in negotiations with their husbands over cattle “ownership” (Oboler 1996).

For the Nandi people in Kenya, cattle have been part of traditional household property. Men traditionally inherited and controlled livestock. Women accessed livestock products through being food providers and household managers. A woman had cattle assigned to her house to provide milk for her family when she married. Men and boys received the morning milk, and women and girls the evening milk. As dairy production become increasingly commercialized, cross-bred cattle began to replace the Zebu cattle. Husbands usually bought these cross-breeds and considered them their property. As a result, women’s rights to milk from specific cattle have been disappearing.

Because morning milk is being sold more often, the evening milk must now be shared among the entire household (Huss-Ashmore 1996 in IFAD 2004).

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Figure 14.1 Kenya: Dairy Market Chains, 2004 Dairy market chains, Kenya 2004 42%

Dairy farmers

17% 24%

15%

23% Mobile traders

Dairy farmer groups

Consumers

Milk bar, shops, kiosks

15%

17% Processors

2% Source: FAO 2006.

The Kenyan market chain in figure 14.1 (FAO 2006) highlights key points at which gender issues can be addressed, including the following: ■ ■

■ ■ ■ ■

Access to, control of, and use of resources Access to production, market, and veterinary information and services Participation in decision making Change in labor and time use Mobility and access to markets Benefits and costs (social, economic, environmental).

Women and men have different access to markets, infrastructures, and related services. Expanding supermarketization in developing countries since the 1990s has meant the rise of wholesalers, large-format stores, national and multinational chains, and the consolidation of national chains (FAO 2005). For the most part, women producers, more than men, face greater constraints in accessing different points along these chains, as well as the related technologies, infrastructures, and information about livestock markets. A study undertaken by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Ethiopia showed that an increase of 10 kilometers in the distance from the rural village to the closest market town reduces the likelihood of sales of livestock and livestock products and decreases the likelihood that women engage in and sell processed foods (Dercon and Hoddinott 2005). Women who lack the financial capital also have a more difficult time accessing privatized veterinary and extension services that are often essential in helping producers meet phytosanitary standards. One example of how this could happen comes from a study in Orissa, India

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(IFAD 2004). Although the dairy cooperatives were established in the wives’ names, a committee of men actually managed the group. By extension, it is assumed they could more easily access information and services as they made the decisions.

Market shocks can affect women and men differently.

There are different types of shocks to livestock markets— from natural disasters (drought, flooding) to humaninduced shocks (conflict, policy, media and consumer reactions to disease) to disease-related shocks (animal deaths, culling). The impacts of, as well as the responses to, market shocks can differ along gender, age, and socioeconomic lines. Droughts in arid parts of Africa can polarize the wealth in pastoralist communities, such as when smallholders sell their livestock to large herd owners (White 1990). In Egypt women raising ducks were left out of the campaign to raise awareness about HPAI because the focus was on chickens.2 BENEFITS FROM GENDER-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS

Gender-responsive actions in livestock market and value chain initiatives can convey a number of benefits to both women and men beneficiaries as well as other stakeholders.

The following are a few of these benefits (see also box 14.2): ■

Opportunities to narrow gender-based gaps and transform women’s and men’s livelihoods and overall wellbeing. In India the NGO Anthra trained village women as community animal health workers. Not only did they gain the skills to deal more effectively with their animals,

Box 14.2 China: Credit, Pigs, and Livelihoods: Improving Women’s Access to Resources

“Cui, a 40-year-old woman, has been married for 16 years and is the family breadwinner. The family has been facing hard times because of poor production from their land. When she heard about the project, she decided to apply for credit to raise pigs. She was able to raise and sell a sufficient number of pigs to repay the loan in one year. Having started with one pig, today she has 12. The piglets are sold for CNY 150 when they are two months old. She is pleased with this new income and has used the extra cash to open a shop that stocks items for daily use. She earns on average CNY

200–300 per month from the shop and plans to expand the business. Her two sons go to school. ‘We were very poor and when my sons were in primary school we found it hard to keep them in school as there was no money to buy food. Now it is different.’ She laughs and adds, ‘Now there is no shortage of food and I can also say there is no shortage of money. Today I have the same standard of living as people who are better off in this area.’ The neighbours admire her and would like to follow her example. She is in fact known as the star of the village.”

Source: IFAD 2002: 24.

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but they gained the confidence to become more involved in community decision making and conflict resolution (Ghotge and Ramdas 2002).

Improved identification of relevant responses to potential or real market shocks. A recent initiative in Vietnam set out to ensure that women, as well as men, were compensated after the culling of their poultry.

More effective restructuring of subsectors when women and men are included in decision making. When women were left out in efforts to transform the buffalo dairy sector from subsistence to commercial enterprises in Nepal, their labor inputs increased, yet they gained no visible financial or social benefits.

Greater participation of women when they can see the benefits and assess the costs.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Various policy and implementation issues that must be addressed are discussed in this section.

Women and men smallholders are often neglected in livestock and trade policies. In recent years trade liberalization strategies have emphasized the need for an export-driven economy. To this end a number of developing countries have responded by developing domestic agricultural policies in line with this thinking. Yet many developing countries have become net importers, rather than exporters, of agricultural produce. Milk is the most imported item by weight, and imports of poultry and pigs are growing fast (Upton 2004).

A gap clearly exists in meeting the need of domestic markets for livestock products. With trade liberalization geared toward increased production of export-oriented produce

and goods, women smallholders keeping livestock and growing crops are often neglected or merely given lip-service (Garcia and others 2006) in the development of agriculture, livestock, and general trade-related policies. Yet, as shown in this Module, women play active roles in livestock production across production systems, across regions, and along value chains.

Policies increasingly promote intensification to landless systems, creating greater gaps in women’s access to, and control over, livestock-related resources. As the urban demand for livestock products grows, policies increasingly promote intensification to landless systems, creating ever-widening gaps in terms of women’s access to and control of the natural, social, and human capital around them and affecting their capacity to make decisions about their livestock. With the intensification of livestock production systems, poor women stand to face even greater challenges in terms of being able to access guaranteed favorable employment conditions that pay and treat them fairly without discrimination or abuse.

Policies promoting intensified landless production may force employment migration, affecting women’s and men’s livestock roles, relations, control, and income. In cases in which greater control of intensified landless production is assumed closer to the urban market, women and men may increasingly be forced to migrate away for employment.

This leads to their suspending or abandoning their role as custodians of local production systems and knowledge of local breeding and animal husbandry practices, as well as methods of disease surveillance, prevention, and control.

These are all crucial to the sustenance of domestic (local) animal diversity and, ironically, to the livestock sector in

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general. Moreover, jobs such as those in big livestock sheds or in large-scale processing may not always result in improved living conditions for women or their families.

Implications can be drawn from across sectors in terms of increased demand for women’s labor. When men migrate, women are often left behind to take up the agricultural labor shortage. Women may also migrate away for labor, working in abattoirs, dairies, meat-packing facilities, and other placed. This “heightened demand for female labour is not usually associated with higher wages, but is associated with an increase in flexibility of the labour market. This generally goes hand in hand with low wages, a lack of social protection, and poor contractual conditions such as very short-term contracts with reduced benefits, long working hours, and no rights of association, all of which exacerbate the exploitation of women and child labour” (Garcia and others 2006: 39).

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Lessons learned from previous projects as well as good practices are addressed in this section.

Building women’s, as well as men’s, assets in other areas such as credit and information is likely to promote more sustainable outcomes around livestock initiatives for all. The Asian Development Bank funded the Second Participatory Livestock Development Program 2003 in Bangladesh. The program sought to raise women’s employment and incomes by addressing gender in all components; increasing women’s involvement at all stages of project planning and implementation; building women’s assets through increased access to and control over assets like credit, information, training, and livestock support services; and increasing women’s employment in livestock rearing and in marketing livestock products, such as feed. An IFAD-funded initiative in Bangladesh identified the need to consider different aspects of women’s poultry production, from microcredit to the appropriate development and use of hatchery technology, to the use of income generated.3 In Dukana, Kenya, women lacked collateral security as compared to men because they rarely owned livestock or owned or controlled other tangible assets. Microfinance for women was limited. FARM (Food and Agriculture Research Management) Africa considered these concerns and initiated a program that provided credit to women without collateral (assets). FARM Africa began a savings and credit system based on the Grameen Bank system and worked with 23 women to form a pilot group. The women were mostly single mothers or widows and women who

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were already engaged in a small business. They were able to expand their businesses, which included processing and selling hides and skins, running butcheries and kiosks, and trading livestock. The women benefited financially and gained confidence. With greater assets, they began to borrow from other lending institutions. The project realized its effectiveness and expanded to other groups and districts (FARM Africa 2002).

USAID-funded research was carried out under the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program (http://glcrsp.ucdavis.edu). In particular, the work of the “Improving Pastoral Risk Management on East African Rangelands” (PARIMA) project in Kenya and Ethiopia and of the “Enhancing Child Nutrition through Animal Source Food Management” (ENAM) project in Ghana has had a thematic focus on gender issues. The PARIMA project studied collective action by women’s groups and identified their efforts to combat the effects of drought by successfully and sustainably managing cooperative microfinance efforts, range management, and destocking. These Ethiopian women’s groups were also involved in cross-border exchanges with Kenyan women’s groups, and the activities of both sets of groups were enhanced through the process.

The ENAM project, still under way, is also building strong women’s groups and providing them with microfinance and nutrition education to promote the establishment of enterprises that provide income to be used for the purchase of animal source foods to improve children’s nutrition. These efforts link household-level improvements to expanding enterprises with benefits to the wider community.4 Livestock market initiatives are more likely to be successful when they are developed in a participatory, gender-responsive manner. Lessons from a number of experiences in different countries show that failing to consider women’s and men’s needs, priorities, and constraints can have disastrous consequences. For example, the government of India developed a goat distribution project for women living in poverty in Maharashtra. The project failed because the women beneficiaries, most of whom had never raised goats, were not consulted or trained before the goats were distributed. Within six months, most of the animals had died (Ghotge and Ramdas 2002). Lessons point to the importance of the need to also assess employment protection specifically for women working in the informal and formal livestock sectors (Okali 2004).

Continual monitoring at points along a livestock value chain using sex- and age-disaggregated data helps highlight areas of success or concern. This allows for midcourse corrections to promote equitable benefits. As shown by projects that did not consider gender in the design or implementation

stage, the cost of not establishing a baseline along gender (and age, socioeconomic, and ethnicity) lines means higher costs and potential failure over time. For example, in Nepal the Asian Development Bank supported the Department of Livestock Services’ (DLS) reorientation of its approach to the livestock sector and to developing the capacity of rural communities to plan and manage livestock development with improved access to inputs, markets, and services provided by NGOs and the private sector. Although Nepali women are responsible for 70 percent of the livestockrelated work, the project had neglected women in terms of their participation and access to benefits. The lack of women technical assistants and a lack of men project staffs’ awareness of the gender-differentiated roles led to limited outreach to women farmers. A series of midproject corrections were identified and put in place:

women on management boards or generally in the management structure. Lessons pointed to the need to work with women and men, particularly in the need for changing perceptions of roles and decision making as well as related behaviors.5 Another IFAD project in Vietnam also points to the need for livestock projects to engage with men, particularly husbands, to support the goals of women’s empowerment and gender equity.6

Developing a gender action plan to promote meaningful participation of men and women farmers Conducting an assessment of women’s roles, constraints, and opportunities in livestock development Conducting a two-day regional gender training program for DLS management, field staff, men and women farmers, district women in development offices, and NGOs Focusing on gender-differentiated roles in the livestock subsector and women’s constraints to access training, credit, and participation in mixed farmers’ groups Focusing on constraints and opportunities in processing and marketing livestock and livestock products.

Address, in a gender-responsive manner, the constraints to smallholder livestock raisers and producers along livestock value chains. Consider potential impacts on women’s and men’s livelihoods as they are forced to migrate away from rural areas because of unfavorable policies. What employment policies are in place? Do they support or discriminate against women in the labor force?

Look at the different and interlinked livelihood issues related to livestock production systems in developing and implementing livestock policies.7 Consider the opportunities and constraints that men and women producers, laborers, and processors face in accessing other important assets, such as information, labor, land, water, infrastructure, and transport.

Identify the different constraints that smallholder women and men livestock producers may have to meet in terms of required government regulations and phytosanitary standards to compete in the market. Facilitate processes and capacity building for women and men producers and processors to meet these standards and provide necessary capital to help them integrate.

Consider the different needs of men and women producers and processors in accessing and benefiting from the design and implementation of infrastructure related to livestock markets (such as abattoirs, transport, and market routes).

Plan proactively to identify and avert potentially different risks for smallholder women and men producers. Understanding the roles that women and men play in the particular livelihood strategy and livestock production system is crucial to identifying and developing appropriate compensation and restocking schemes or finding other appropriate means of responding to market shocks.

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As the Third Livestock Development Project came to a close in 2003, project staff agreed that the gender action plan had significant impacts, including women’s increased capacity to access credit without collateral and an increase in share of agroprocessing activities. The gender-mainstreaming approach was incorporated into the Community Livestock Development Project in Nepal in 2003.

Building women’s and men’s capacities around production, processing, and marketing is key to promoting successful transitions to market economies. In an IFAD-funded project intended to empower women dairy producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, training included topics characteristic of livestock activities carried out by women, including cattle breeding and milk production. Training also included a focus on the new European Union standards for the milk sector and guidance on how to apply these. However, capacity at another level was shown to be needed. Men, who were typically in the decision-making bodies of the producers’ associations, felt threatened and were not ready to accept

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

The following recommendations apply to practitioners at the three levels.

Macro- (policy/strategy) level

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Intermediate (institutional) level

Seek ways to facilitate more equitable access by women and men to services. Women, as well as men, need access to marketing services and information. In some cases, for religious or cultural reasons, this may mean training more women on service delivery and information (government regulations, marketing information, changes in prices, livelihood risk diversification, marketing rules, and others) so that they can reach women in rural areas.

Find innovative ways to make capital more accessible to women, as well as men, producing, processing, or marketing livestock. In most areas women still face more constraints than men in accessing credit, particularly those living in remote or marginal areas and lacking other collateral. Often women’s groups are more effective at leveraging loans than individual women. Credit facilities need to be made more accessible to women also so that they can benefit from emerging livestock markets.

Local level

Support women livestock entrepreneurs through strengthening their capacity in numeracy, literacy, negotiation, and business management. Without such skills, it is difficult for women to benefit from a rapidly restructuring livestock sector. Support is also effective when provided to groups of women so that they can work collectively to improve their livelihoods and identify and benefit from appropriate markets.

Support women’s, as well as men’s, diversification into feasible livestock enterprises. Local women can benefit from diversifying their livelihoods to include adding value to their products. In some places drying, smoking, or canning meat may be appropriate to ensure a longer life of the product. This may best be done through a women’s processing collective or another context-specific and appropriate way.

Promote women’s participation in agricultural fairs and farmers’ days. Local women may benefit from participating in local agricultural fairs or farmers’ days to “advertise” their livestock or livestock goods. They can use these opportunities to market their livestock services (such as a hatchery or breeding ram).

Promote women’s, as well as men’s, involvement in producers’ decision-making bodies. Efforts should be made to work with both men and women on effective ways of changing their perceptions and behaviors to encourage and support the active involvement of men and women in decisionmaking bodies.

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GENDER-SENSITIVE VALUE CHAINS ANALYSIS FOR IMPROVING LIVESTOCK MARKETING

The first step of conducting gender analysis is identifying appropriate interventions for different aspects related to livestock markets and value chains. A “recipe-book” approach to prescribing interventions has little effect in a complex subsector, contextualized in a rapidly globalizing economy (see Mayoux 2005). A useful model to adapt to the livestock sector for such an analysis is that developed by the International Labour Organization’s gender-sensitive value chains analysis: 1. Identify the main questions facing the livestock value chain.

2. Conduct a stakeholder analysis to identify the different actors and their interests and roles along the livestock value chain (such as farmers, abattoirs, markets, and consumers). (Remember to consider adult men, women, elder men, women, and boys and girls in this analysis because different considerations may exist, particularly in areas that are affected by conflict, migration, or HIV and AIDS, for example.)

3. Map the following: ■

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Supply, production, marketing, or consumption chains related to the particular livestock subsector Main types of products and markets (for example, milk, meat, live animals, hides, or manure) and different types of activity (herding, collecting milk, value addition, marketing, consumption) Productive units and geographical locations.

4. Look at the relative distribution of “values” to different stakeholders at different points of the chain (poor men and women smallholders, women and men marketing live animals or livestock products). Consider the numbers of women and men involved and the different proportions of “value” going to them. Remember: “Values” may be attributed for the following reasons: economic, social—for example, the status gained, the relationships built through livestock—and natural—capacity for offspring or manure for women’s and men’s crops. Men and women may attribute different values to livestock all along the value chain, including marketing and consumption, and factors such as taste and cooking quality.

5. Investigate the following: ■

The barriers to women’s and men’s entry into the livestock value chain (for example, women’s lack of collateral to obtain inputs, poor men’s and women’s lack of

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access to transport and markets, and lack of market information) Women’s and men’s different interests and power relations in the value chain (for example, socioeconomic conditions influence ability to engage in the value chain, and men may have greater decision-making power along particular value chains, such as those related to the meat and live cattle trade) The contextual factors explaining inequalities (based on gender, socioeconomic status, caste, and others) and inefficiencies and blockages in the livestock value chain.

marketization of poultry in Thailand. The preceding value chains analysis can be used to consider what kinds of gender issues might be present and how they can be addressed.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

The process of developing a livestock marketing initiative should include the development of a monitoring framework that addresses who and what is to be measured, as well as why, where, and when. Ideally, gender-sensitive indicators should be developed in participation with the men and women producers, processors, laborers, and traders at different points along the livestock market chains. This may include extension workers, health care practitioners, those developing livestock market infrastructures, and these promoting livestock market integration. Increasingly, particularly in cases in which there is vertical integration, the livestock producer may also be the processor and trader. Lessons learned show that it is important to monitor the following issues:

6. Identify potential “leverage” points for upgrading the chain as a whole and redistributing values in ways that benefit both men and women, particularly poorer smallholders based on the preceding analysis. (For example, consider things such as income and employment generation and spin-offs to promote empowerment of women in community decision making.)

The chain for commercial chicken production and supply shown in figure 14.2 highlights the increasing super-

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Whether men and women are benefiting along the particular livestock value chain

Figure 14.2 Thailand: Commercial Chicken Production and Supply Chain, 2003 Commercial chicken production and supply chain in Thailand in 2003 Breeding company: import grandparents, produce parents & day-old chicks <20% of chicks Day-old chicks

Farm owned by the company

Individual farmer

Contract farmer

Finished chickens

Small-scale public and illegal slaughtering

Slaughterhouse owned by the company 45% Exportation 25% processed 75% fresh

55%

Processing company

Supermarket may be owned by the breeding company

Wholesaler

Local retailer-wet marker

Source: FAO 2006.

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How men and women are benefiting, or not (note that this should consider age as well because adult men may benefit more than young men or boys and adult women) along the value chain The reasons why women and men are benefiting, or not.

It may be important to develop indicators that also consider factors such as age and socioeconomic class, particularly in rural areas experiencing fast-changing demographics

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due to the HIV and AIDS epidemic, out-migration, or emergency situations, such as conflict or environmental disaster. It is important to develop qualitative, gendersensitive indicators that capture women’s and men’s different perceptions of priorities, constraints, and benefits. Focus groups, interviews, participant observation, and the use of other participatory learning approaches are all useful methods for collecting such qualitative information. See examples in table 14.2.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

The Development and Use of Livestock Technologies to Improve Agricultural Livelihoods

ivestock technology development applies to a wide range of activities across livestock production systems and value chains, including feed and fodder development, breed improvement, dairy mechanization, disease prevention and control, and draft power and transport. If livestock technologies are developed in ways that consider the needs, interests, and concerns of poor women and men, they can reduce women’s and men’s workloads, increase productivity and improve food security, provide important information to producers and markets, and contribute to the generation of income. Yet the development and delivery of livestock technologies have often been biased toward larger, better-off producers and intensive industrial (landless) systems, areas in which men have tended to benefit more than women. Women tend to have more presence in the smallholder sector, a segment of the population that tends to benefit less from technology development.1 This Thematic Note addresses the relationships between gender and the development and use of different livestock technologies to improve agricultural livelihoods.

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KEY GENDER ISSUES

Many gender issues are specific to discrete factors in the subsector, such as production system, livelihood strategy, socioeconomic class, caste, ethnicity, and environmental constraints. However, some gender issues cut across regions and production systems. These issues are outlined in the following paragraphs and are summarized in a hypothetical example in table 14.3.

Men and women have different needs, interests, and constraints related to livestock technology development and delivery. Many examples may be pointed to of new technologies that have not been adopted because the technology did not suit women’s sociocultural, physical, or economic needs, interests, or constraints (FAO n.d.). A study in Kenya

showed that the majority of women viewed livestock primarily as a means of ensuring food security for the family, whereas men perceived livestock as a means of meeting present needs, such as food and school fees and as a form of investment. In Bolivia both men and women considered livestock a source of income and a guarantee of future food security. In India both men and women highlighted the role of livestock in income generation and food security (IFAD 2004). Women and men living in arid areas may need breeds that are adaptable under extreme climatic conditions. They may also have other criteria specific to their own needs (for example, in terms of meat or milk production). Younger women and increasingly older women and men (as in cases in which grandparents take in orphaned grandchildren) who may have to pay school fees on an ongoing basis or who require protein for sick household members may need fast-producing poultry that provide a continuous source of income and nutrition security through egg production. Finally, women, more than men, may be constrained by a lack of access to other productive resources, such as land and water, and other inputs, such as credit.

Men and women are custodians of livestock knowledge and skills that are important in strengthening technology development and adoption. Women and men have different knowledge and skills about different livestock breeds and animal husbandry practices. This can form a solid foundation for informing the development or strengthening of livestock production or disease prevention and control (IFAD n.d. [b]). In part because of their role in milking cows, Maasai women have an intimate knowledge of the character and qualities of their cattle. They also hold knowledge on their animals’ bloodlines (FAO 2007).

Women know whether or not a cow is docile, fertile, a good milk producer, or a good mother. This information is critical because it is believed that these kinds of traits are passed

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Table 14.3 Key Gender Issues in Livestock Technology Development Points to consider for a hypothetical community

Issues related to technology, interests, and needs

Issues related to technology knowledge and skills

Issues related to access to and participation in technology development

Women: consider, for example, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status

• Food security • Income generation for school fees or cooking utensils • Mobility • Improved poultry production

• All aspects of poultry production • Egg marketing • Prevention of disease in larger stock (goats and cattle) • Dairying (goats)

• Mobility to local market • Access to extension and veterinary services • Women have shown that they work well in groups

Men: consider, for example, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status

• Food security • Income generation for farming implements or larger stock • Status

• Little involvement in poultry production • Younger men and boys graze cattle • Adult men market cattle

• Control cattle and goats • Land tenure in men’s name • Mobility provides access to extension and veterinary services through use of bikes or road transport (trucks or buses)

Source: Author.

on in the women’s line. In selecting a breeding bull, the Maasai also look at the performance of its dam. Women, with their extensive knowledge in this area, are crucial in this process.

Women and men may have different access to technology development and extension. Experiences from Afghanistan show the importance of training women in technology research and development. Village women play important roles in cattle management yet cannot be approached by men extension workers or technology developers. In a German-supported dairy project in the Kabul, Kunduz, and Mazar regions, women extension staff are employed and used for fieldwork.2 A case from Senegal shows the importance of working with both women and men to inform technology development. Doing so can also expose cultural biases that can affect the use of draft technologies, for example. The case shows that “even where taboos [against women working with cattle] do not exist, men tend to monopolize animal traction when they are present in the community, because, traditionally it is a man’s technology. The same applies to animal traction with horses in Senegal, where men justify the prohibition against women by saying that the implements are too heavy and that the women have not been suitably trained. In point of fact, however, the implements for inter-row work are much lighter in Senegal than in other parts of Africa and even small boys use them. It seems, therefore, that the men’s arguments are unfounded” (IFAD/FAO 1998: 7–8).

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BENEFITS FROM GENDER-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS

Some observers have suggested that women tend to adopt technologies earlier than men and are therefore well placed to act as catalysts for technology change (IFAD 2004). Other benefits from engaging in gender-responsive actions in the development and delivery of livestock technologies include the following: ■

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More effective use of financial, human, social, physical, and natural assets, at both the household and institutional levels Better, more relevant technology design in line with men and women’s priorities, interests, and needs Improved chances of technology adaptation and sustainability by those responsible for particular aspects of livestock production and processing Improved livelihoods and overall well-being of women, men, boys, and girls Better use of women’s and men’s labor and time.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Women and men depend on other resources for livestock production. Livestock production depends on other productive resources, including land and water. The development of different livestock technologies such as those related to improving fodders, zero grazing, and dairying are therefore

strongly linked to women’s and men’s capacity to access and use other productive resources. Any livestock technology development—such as the development and introduction of improved breeds and poultry intensification—must therefore consider possible gender-based constraints to these resources.

Curricular changes are required at the tertiary level of agricultural education. A need exists to broaden the focus of agricultural education at the tertiary level to include a focus on the development context in which livestock technologies are designed and introduced. In the early 2000s, Makerere University worked to engender the veterinary curriculum in Uganda through engaging in research, developing materials, and changing course requirements and course material.

Local breeds of livestock are often more adaptable to contextspecific environmental and weather changes, food availability and quality, and desired characteristics. Women often place great value in local breeds because they are often more likely to help them divert risk and ensure greater food and income security. As Geerlings, Mathias, and Köhler-Rollefson (2002: 1) point out, “The development of high-performing livestock and poultry breeds has no doubt greatly contributed to the increase of food production, especially in temperate climates. But their indiscriminate export into tropical countries has often ended in failure, as the animals cannot stand the heat, need optimal inputs, and readily succumb to disease.”

Using a gender-in-livelihoods focus in the research and development of livestock technology can be useful for identifying environmentally sustainable practices for use by women and men producers and processors—for example, in waste management and fodder improvement. Understanding how women’s and men’s production strategies differ, the types of resources they use, and the management of products such as manure, skins, and feathers is important for determining sustainable environmental practices.

Diverse perspectives are important for effective livestock technology development. Men’s and women’s different perspectives as producers and as more formal researchers and practitioners are important in technology development.

Governments need to look at ways to attract women in livestock sciences and related fields (such as water and land management) and develop incentives to ensure they remain in these fields. This also means supporting girls in primary and secondary education to develop the skills necessary for furthering their studies in the area of livestock technology development.

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED

A number of goals must be linked to identify opportunities in developing technological innovations intended to benefit poor rural women (Kaaria and Ashby 2001). These also can be applied to the livestock sector and include the following: ■

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Increasing returns to women’s labor and their independent income through the integration of women’s production and processing activities related to livestock through developing or adapting labor-saving technologies (for example, improvement of local breeds, donkey transport), particularly for low-return activities where women do not control the products.

Considering the linkages between technology development, intensification, and women’s capacity to rehabilitate the natural resource base on which this intensification depends (such as scaling up of cashmere goat production in China).

Considering both production and processing activities because the opportunities and constraints to technology development and adoption need to be seen along the livestock market chain (for example, women may be involved in production but not in the marketing or obtaining the benefits from a particular technology).

Technology research and adoption need to evolve with local women and men over a period of time to encourage adoption and “carry” consensus affecting changes to traditional practices (IFAD n.d. [a]). Innovative Activity Profile 1, which focuses on Chiapas, Mexico, highlights the importance of long-term technology innovation strategies.

Comprehensive approaches are needed for developing livestock technology, including linking feed, disease prevention, water points, shelter, and waste management. In Ethiopia a study on urban livestock production showed that women are involved in feeding large animals, cleaning barns, milking dairy cattle, processing milk, and marketing livestock products. It also noted the role of women in managing confined animals and their critical role in managing manure, which is often made into cakes for sale or fuel. Involving women in livestock technology development within the urban environment is crucial because they have a major role in minimizing environmental pollution and public health problems (Tegegne 2004). See box 14.3 for a good-practice example in Jordan.

Livestock technology development has typically been biased toward the promotion of exotic breeds and cross-breeding rather than the improvement of local breeds. Such efforts have often neglected poor or marginal households and women

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Box 14.3 Jordan: Engendering Livestock Technology Research, Development, and Extension—The Badia Livestock Extension Project The DFID-funded Badia Livestock Extension Project grew out of a livestock research project with Bedouins in an area difficult to access by vehicle. Political (borders), environmental (declining oases and increased piped water), economic and market (grain subsidies), and social (schooling) factors have all played a part in the Bedouins’ increasing move to establishing permanent settlements and migrating only seasonally. The project forged links to the Ministry of Agriculture and made progress on improving livestock extension by addressing the needs and interests of both women and men in a difficult institutional context that assumed most clients were mobile and largely men. Their strategy included the following: ■

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Recruiting a local woman with experience in gender and participation to work closely with expatriate men livestock specialists.

Providing gender awareness training for two of the men extension staff.

Including the need to conduct gender training in the terms of reference of short-term consultants.

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Applying participatory rural appraisal tools to analyze gender differences in livestock production. The project worked with women and men farmers in a range of communities, and women from local NGOs and the Ministry of Agriculture worked with men in the project.

Developing an impact assessment framework and gender-sensitive framework that helped them identify livestock interventions that would have the most impact for women and men.

Forming women’s farmers groups. Once the woman extension specialist was in place, the team was able to form women’s farmers groups, and attendance of women was high. Notably, the women’s groups stated they also wanted to address women’s strategic interests, such as literacy as well as livestock production.

Recruiting a woman veterinarian and a local woman extension specialist. This helped the project influence the institutional acceptance of women as “technical specialists” and highlighted the benefits of hiring women.

Source: “Rural Livelihoods: Gender Issues in Livestock,” case studies, June 1999, www.siyanda.org/docs_gem/index_sectors/ natural/ nr_case9.htm.

and have often led to the disappearance of local breeds that are important for minimizing farmers’ risks and strengthening livelihoods (Gura and League for Pastoralist Peoples 2003).

Training women in specific livestock technologies is not enough. A study of the Integrated Livestock Development Program in Orissa, India (IFAD 2004), showed that training women in specific technologies is not enough. Women were trained as Community Link Workers on particular veterinary livestock technologies (poultry vaccination, deworming of sheep and goats, and castration of bucks and rams). Yet the women had little education, and their role as Community Link Workers broke with tradition.

The experience suggests that women also need related training and confidence-building measures to function effectively as technology users and providers and help them challenge traditional norms. Working with the rest of the community or community leaders to raise their awareness of the need for women to work in new roles related to livestock is also helpful.

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Information and communication technologies offer possibilities for helping poor men and women livestock keepers.

Recently, the field of information and communication technologies has shown promising developments to help poor livestock keepers. Notably, the University of Reading’s Livestock Development Group has developed software called the Livestock Guru to help farmers diagnose, present, and, where possible, treat specific livestock diseases. Even farmers unable to read can use the touch-sensitive computer screen to help them with their livestock health questions.

Insurance programs are helpful for mitigating women’s risks, or perceived risks, in adopting technologies. One interesting proposal for mitigating women’s risks, or perceived risks, in adopting technologies is the use of insurance schemes for livestock purchases (IFAD n.d. [a]). For example, in India women opted to buy cows and goats on the basis of repaying the loans from milk yields, but inadequate fodder proved to be available for the cross-bred cows, which led to low milk yields (IFAD n.d. [a]).

GUIDELINES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

The following recommendations apply to practitioners at the three levels.

ment of livestock technologies must be built on the lives and livelihoods of women and men. Although some research must necessarily take place in laboratories or similar places, much research is best done in the communities, particularly with the men and women involved in working with livestock.

Macro- (policy/strategy) level Local level

Engage men and women in civil society in identifying and defining livestock technology research policies. Include those whose livelihoods are dependent, in part or in whole, on livestock and consider the needs and constraints of those living in marginal or remote rural areas. This may identify areas of concern that were not previously considered (for example, issues of rural smallholders as opposed to larger producers) or identify local technologies that can be strengthened (such as Chiapas sheep). Give higher priority to women’s and men’s knowledge systems related to livestock (husbandry practices, breeding management, and ethnoveterinary knowledge) and protect these through regimes such as farmers’ rights or similar appropriate mechanisms in use or under proposal under different international agreements.

Link women’s and men’s smallholder technologies with consumer demands. In defining livestock technology research, consumer preferences should be identified and ways found for smallholder women and men to look at their livestock production to identify possible technology needs.

Link gender-responsive approaches to developing livestock technology to other pressing concerns and related sectors to respond better to issues such as global warming, as well as smallholder risk aversion in cases of drought, flooding, food shortages, and disease outbreaks.

Promote women’s property rights through translating international and national commitments into tangible action at the local level. Women have more chances to be involved in the process of technology definition and development when they can leverage capital (including, above all, land, water, livestock) to influence technology decisions.

Intermediate (institutional) level

Keep women and men beneficiaries in mind when defining livestock technology research and development agendas. Experience shows that it is important to include technology users in the research and development of new technologies.

Women and men (as well as boys and girls) may all be useful in developing different livestock technologies, as experiences from Bangladesh, Mexico, and Tanzania demonstrate.

Recognize men’s and women’s different spaces and schedules when developing livestock research. The research and develop-

Link technology development and use to women’s and men’s different assets.3 Look at who uses the different assets related to livestock production and who has access to and controls the different assets (assets including knowledge and information, grazing lands and other land, water, money). What implications does this have for promoting sustainable livestock production and improving the livelihoods and overall well-being of all household members?

Consider technology-related gendered roles and responsibilities. In researching and developing livestock technologies, look at who is responsible for different aspects of animal husbandry and how these relate to other aspects of the livelihood strategy. Consider, where relevant, selection and breeding, care, cleaning, fodder, water collection, disease diagnosis, treatment, prevention, herding, marketing, and value addition. Think about adult women, adult men, boys, girls, elder men, and elder women. Consider how the introduction of the proposed technology may change the existing division of labor. Whom will it affect? How? What sorts of impacts will this have on other parts of their livelihood strategy? How will it affect their well-being?

Understand and build on women’s and men’s existing livestock and related technologies. Work with local women and men to understand the livestock and related technologies they currently use and get their inputs on how these can be improved. This may lead to better adoption and more sustainable application over the long run.

Identify potential gendered technology benefits and costs.

Working with those involved with the particular livestock technology will help identify potential benefits or negative impacts. It is important to consider how women and men measure these benefits. This may be in terms of income generated, social networks formed or strengthened, knowledge gained, local practices validated, and confidence strengthened.

It may also open up women’s options in other ways or raise their status. On the other hand, the opposite may happen, in which case mitigation strategies must be identified.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

Although adoption rates of technologies are important to the technology developers, it is equally important to monitor

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the perceptions of women and men around technologies.

Whether monitoring initiatives focused on improving breeds, waste management, fodder, or information and communication technologies, it is important to avoid using the general categories “women” and “men.” Rather, it is useful to identify specific groups of women and men to monitor technology adoption and use as well as elite capture.4 It is also important to monitor whether the ownership, control, use, and benefits move from one group to another. For example, there may be a move from poor women to poor men or to better-off women or men depending on the technology introduced and the sociocultural, political, and economic context in which it is introduced. Livestock technologies may have adverse effects; gender and age-based labor and timeuse patterns may actually increase with a new technology, which should be monitored.

The first step in developing gender-sensitive indicators should be to work with the women and men (this may also include elder and younger women and men) in the identification of technology priorities related to their livestock and livelihoods:

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One useful way of developing gender-sensitive indicators is to ask participants to draw a picture to describe the current status of their livestock and related livelihood activities.

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This helps establish a baseline. For example, women might draw a sick cow, three chickens, and little feed.

From there, asking participants to draw how they would like the situation to be in the future helps establish a target or different targets. This should be done separately with women and men to compare priorities, needs, and constraints. Here, women might draw two healthy cows, chickens and eggs, and increased access to feed for their animals.

From there, participants can be asked to think about how they would define success or benefits from meeting those targets. This can help identify gender-responsive indicators to monitor change. Quantitative indicators may arise, such as “increase in number of eggs sold by participating women” or “women’s income generated by eggs sold increased by x percent.” Qualitative indicators might also be noted, such as “women’s sense of well-being increased.” These types of qualitative indicators are best measured using participatory approaches to discuss women’s perceptions and views (for example, focus groups or participatory learning approaches).

Although these examples all focus on men, the indicators should look at the situation in comparison to men in the household and community. See examples in table 14.2.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Chiapas, Mexico: Indigenous Women in Sheep Improvement Research

n the early 1990s, the Institute of Indigenous Studies at the University of Chiapas in Chiapas, Mexico, set out to improve sheep by involving those responsible for sheep husbandry: the women Tzotzil shepherds. The process continues today and shows the value of long-term collaboration and of approaches that value women’s local experience, expertise, knowledge, and interests.

Animal extension approaches that introduced crossbreeding intervention and exotic genes for sheep improvement have failed in the past because of high-performance breeds’ lack of ability to adapt to local conditions. Government programs in Mexico had tried to introduce exotic breeds such as Rambouillet and Merino to Chiapas to increase wool production in the area. These breeds were known to produce several kilograms of wool every year, compared to the local sheep that barely produced 1 kilogram of wool during the same amount of time. However, several problems presented themselves: the sheep did not adapt to the climate, could not thrive on the poor forage, and could not fight parasitic illnesses without depending on supplements of commercial foods (Gomez, Castro, and Perezgrovas 2001).

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Indigenous Studies began to collaborate with Tzotzil women on a sheep-improvement plan. The institute worked to improve sheep based on the women’s own needs, as well as their criteria for fleece quality. The local women’s direct participation in sheep husbandry and weaving is considered a key factor in the success of this program (Castro-Gámez and others n.d.).

The initiative focused on breeding improvement, animal health, and management. The institute used an ethnoveterinary approach to look deeper into the local indigenous knowledge to understand the possibilities for learning about animal management and health (box 14.4). They learned to “listen carefully and respectfully to those who, educated or not, know better” (Perezgrovas, Peralta, and Pedraza 2002: 1).

The project is also one of the only initiatives that has recognized and respected (at least partly) local women’s and men’s property rights. The project helped maintain property rights by ■

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INNOVATIVE FEATURES

About 36 percent of the income of the Tzotzil ethnic group comes from sheep husbandry and weaving. Past government efforts tried to substitute local wool sheep with highproducing breeds but had no success. Then the Institute of

What’s innovative? By involving Tzotzil women in the decisions about which traits should be improved in the sheep, the initiative helped the women bring about demonstrable gains in the sheep characteristics that they had deemed desirable.

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Developing the flock from the local population and managing it in a way that agreed with local traditions and customs Working with the breeding and culling decisions of the Tzotzil women who worked with the sheep Ensuring that local (Tzotzil) communities got first choice of the progeny of the nucleus flock (Anderson and Centonze 2006).

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

The list of benefits and impacts over the many years of collaboration between researchers and shepherds is extensive: ■

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A demonstrated genetic gain was seen in those traits selected by the local women.

A high demand exists for and by the Tzotzil communities for the breeding rams produced by the programs (Anderson and Centonze 2006).

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Researchers gained a clear picture of the sheep management Box 14.4 Mexico: Researchers Listen to system (Perezgrovas, Pedraza 2002).

WomenPeralta, Tzotzil and Shepherds Women couldn’t process the wool of the new, exotic animals, which they considered to be of poor quality. It was too short and too thin and broke easily during the hand-weaving processes.

The short, thin, white wool, much appreciated by industrial standards, is exactly the opposite of what the Tzotzil women want or need. They prefer coarse, long locks of wool of different colors to process by hand instead of by machines. Over the life of the project, researchers used a number of approaches to working with the women, including the following: ■

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Talking individually to many shepherdesses from different villages Walking with women as the flocks grazed Helping them build wooden shelters Helping them gather plants and herbs for sick animals Chatting with some of the women Transforming wool fiber into woolen garments Sharing scarce food during bad weather.

Source: Perezgrovas, Peralta, and Pedraza 2002.

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Researchers underwent a change in attitude (they became the learners, and the shepherds became the teachers) and learned to observe carefully and respect opinions.

Improved rams from the nucleus flock have been introduced within community flocks, and their offspring have inherited superior fleece-quality traits.

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Direct participation in the program by local experts in sheep husbandry and weaving has been a key factor in the success of the research approach.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, poor people need animal genetic diversity that is suitable to their needs and livelihoods, particularly because they often face a number of production challenges posed by difficult environmental, climatic, and economic conditions. Breeds used for intensive production systems have been found to be inappropriate for livelihoods of many smallholder livestock producers, particularly those living in remote or marginal areas (Anderson 2004). This was shown to be the case in Chiapas.

The original approach employed by government staff failed, mainly because they did not have close contact with the women shepherds, who were the key users and beneficiaries. Their recommendations were not only out of context, but were also at cross-purposes with the culture of the Tzotzil people, for whom sheep are “sacred animals” that are named, cared for, and respected as integral members of the family (Perezgrovas, Peralta, and Pedraza 2002).

“Improved” traditional management systems stand a better chance of being adopted by local communities when they build on the communities’ existing systems and are designed within the cultural context of the people.

TIME FRAME

The work with the Tzotzil women has been proceeding for more than a decade. The experience shows the value of long-term commitment to working with women and men raising livestock.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 2

Maasai Men’s and Women’s Knowledge in Cattle Breeding

nder the LinKS (“gender, biodiversity, and local knowledge systems for food security”) project, many key researchers, scientists, policy makers, and extension experts from different institutions were invited to work together on a field study among women and men Maasai livestock keepers in two areas of Tanzania. The study focused on women’s and men’s management of livestock genetic resources. Designing and conducting the study brought the researchers into direct contact with local women and men and their knowledge and technologies. The study used informal, participatory research methods to enhance the exchange of information and mutual learning.

Initially, the project objectives were to enhance knowledge and increase awareness among policy makers, researchers, and extension agents on the role of women’s and men’s local knowledge in the sustainable use and management of animal genetic resources. Later the objectives were amended to focus on improving the capacity of agricultural sector institutions to work efficiently at the village level. It was felt that a better understanding of women’s and men’s knowledge among representatives of such institutions would contribute significantly to achieving this objective. To

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this end, the project aimed to enhance insights into the relationship between local knowledge, biodiversity, gender roles, and sustainable agricultural production. It also intended to strengthen agricultural and rural development in southern and eastern Africa.

The study specifically focused on Maasai women’s and men’s local knowledge of breeding and selecting cattle and, to a lesser extent, sheep and goats. It also focused on the relationship of their knowledge and practices in relation to the goals of food security and herd survival. The study was carried out in three phases: ■

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Phase 1 was conducted in Simanjiro in northern Tanzania, a presumed area of origin of Maasai livestock keepers.

Phase 2 was carried out in Mbarali in southern Tanzania, an area to which Maasai livestock keepers have migrated over the last 50 years.

Phase 3 included an exchange visit organized for northern Maasai people to visit the southern study area, and for southern Maasai to visit the northern study area.

INNOVATIVE FEATURES

What’s innovative?

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The project drew on the expertise of researchers from many disciplines related to livestock and relied on the collaboration of multiple institutions.

The study associated with the project used gender-sensitive informal research methods to yield a more accurate picture of the situation.

The project organized exchange visits between two groups of Maasai people who lived 1,200 kilometers apart.

There were at least three innovative aspects to the project.

Although not all of these were planned to address gender specifically, all were relevant to addressing research in ways that took into account a gender (and broader livelihoods) perspective.

Multidisciplinary, interinstitutional collaboration. The research team was composed of people from different institutions: the central government, an extension field service, and two different universities. The team was not interdisciplinary per se, because all team members had livestock-related backgrounds (for example, veterinary medicine, animal production, animal nutrition, animal husbandry, range management, farming systems research),

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but it was clear that this kind of interinstitutional collaboration was a novelty. Team members received fairly general training on the principles of gender analysis at the beginning of the study. The training was not specifically on Maasai women or on the role of women in livestock. This helped to some extent in strengthening the understanding of those involved of the importance of gender concerns in the research.

Use of informal research methods. The study used informal gender-sensitive research methods. Such methods were new to the researchers because they came from a thoroughly formal and technical background. At the inception of LinKS, team members received training in informal and participatory research methods. This included training on some of the basic principles of gender. However, this was far from providing a sufficient basis on which to conduct a proper informal and gender-sensitive field study. It has been suggested that the quality of the study suffered because of the disdain that some researchers felt for the “unscientific” research methods. Some of the team members worked hard to apply the informal research methods, while others kept opposing them throughout the process.

Inclusion of a farmer exchange visit. The most innovative element was the (unplanned and rather accidental) decision to dedicate Phase 3 to a farmer exchange visit. Four women were included in each of the two groups of 12 Maasai who participated in the exchange. The researchers had to be persuaded to agree to the idea because in the original plans, Phase 3 was meant to be a conventional sort of seminar to “present the research results” to the usual stakeholders, including relevant authorities, heads of services, politicians, university scientists, and some farmers’ representatives. The exchange visit turned out to be a much more useful activity.

It was extremely interesting for the 24 Maasai who took part in the exchange visit to see how other Maasai 1,200 kilometers away managed their livestock and dealt with different constraints. Even more interesting was to see that despite different circumstances, the constraints faced by women and men in both groups were so similar and that the two distant communities shared a common base of local knowledge on the management of animal genetic resources.

BENEFITS AND IMPACTS

It is not yet clear to what extent the Maasai women or men benefited from the study. Clearly, participating in the exchange provided the women and men with an opportunity to explore other experiences, skills, and knowledge. Still, differing perceptions exist about the impact of the study on

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scientists, policy makers, and extension officers. Without further investigation, it is not clear to what extent their views of the Maasai have changed as a result of this activity.

In Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai are still discriminated against and are seen as “backward” or “primitive.” Much work is still needed to change the attitudes of researchers, extension workers, and politicians and their attitudes toward Maasai women and men in terms of their views that they should “give up their traditional ways of life and start being serious [sic] about livestock-keeping. ‘Serious’ in this respect means using ‘improved’ breeds, stall-feeding the animals, selling more animals . . . to pay for modern veterinary drugs.”1 Researchers have been trained in “formal” institutes that value, above all, “modern” technology. In most cases, their training leaves them with a lack of respect for or understanding of the value of women’s and men’s local knowledge and ways.

Compared to conventional methods, gender-sensitive participatory research methods are meant to be less extractive, less top-down, and more egalitarian. To have positive effects all around, it is essential for those involved to have adequate training in gender and participatory research methods. An extended process of strengthening capacity is needed; such a process should provide participants the opportunity to question their own formal training and to explore the value of women’s and men’s local knowledge and skills. A participatory study is supposed to have positive effects on the studied population, such as active involvement in the research process, the analysis and interpretation of the results, ownership, awareness, and emancipation. In this particular case, mainly because of lack of experience with this (still seemingly innovative) research method, these effects have been minimal.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

Informal research methods, like formal methods, provide serious ways of exploring livestock technology development and other issues. Over the past 20 years, they have been increasingly recognized by many disciplines. To make the best use of informal research methods, researchers working on livestock-related issues should do the following: ■

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Prepare thoroughly for research and become familiar and conversant with the methodology.

Collect relevant information about the area to be studied before going to the field—for example, demographics,

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livestock population, prevailing livestock and agricultural production system, livelihood strategies, and socioeconomic aspects. “Relevant” information should be of a certain scientific level and quality and not simply agricultural statistics. It is important to leave behind preconceived ideas about, for example, livelihood strategies and women’s and men’s knowledge and skills.

Prepare guiding gender- and age-sensitive questions and checklists with care.

Conduct interviews with men and women (including elders and youth where relevant) in a serious and respectful way.

Document gender- and age-disaggregated data meticulously.

More important, participatory learning or informal research methods are not to be taken lightly. It takes time and practice to be comfortable and conversant with them.

Gender in livelihoods analysis should be central to the development of a research framework and the design and application of an informal livestock research methodology.

Research leadership in understanding gender and livelihoods approaches. It is important to have someone guiding and supporting livestock technology research who is conversant in gender and livelihoods approaches and who respects and understands the need for looking at livestock technology issues in terms of whole livelihood strategies and systems. This includes contextualizing research within the gender, age, and other sociocultural structures and relations, as well as understanding technology development and selection criteria in the wider environmental, social, and economic context.

Collection and use of gender and age-disaggregated data.

Before going to the field to conduct informal gendersensitive research into livestock and agricultural livelihoods, it is important to have a clear understanding of the concepts and linkages between gender, local knowledge systems, and broader livelihood. Some of the research team should have extensive experience in the design and collection of genderand age-disaggregated data. It is important to collect information from men and women on their different gendered livelihood roles, responsibilities, and their criteria for technology development. Moreover, it is important to recognize that gendered livelihood roles and relations are dynamic, adapting or responding to changing situations caused by things such as disease outbreaks, trade and environment policies, and changes in livestock markets.

NOTES Overview

This Module was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank).

1. Ian Scoones, “The Growing Demand for Livestock.”

ID21 Insights 72, February, Brighton, Institute of Development Studies, www.id21.org.

2. For more on typologies of livestock production systems, see FAO (2006c, 2007).

3. This is also leading to a trend in diversity-reducing gene flow, according to FAO (2007).

4. Ida-Eline Engh, Libor Stloukal, and Jacques du Guerny, “HIV/AIDS in Namibia: The Impact on the Livestock Sector,” www.fao.org.

5. Women’s rights to land and other property are enshrined in international agreements, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. Articles 14, 15, and 16 in particular contain provisions relating to equal access to land, equal inheritance and succession rights, and equal legal capacity.

6. World Bank, personal communication in comments on the outline for this paper.

7. In many areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, numbers of child-headed households engaged in agricultural livelihoods are increasing because of the loss of one or both parents through HIV and AIDS. 8. Suzanne Kindervatter, “Institutionalizing Gender Equality as a Force for Global Development,” www.interaction. org.

9. The author’s experience is that FAO has conducted capacity building on gender-disaggregated data and supported national agricultural processes. These initiatives showed the value of collecting data disaggregated by sex and age.

10. In many areas affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic, elder- or child-headed households face different needs and constraints than those typically addressed by those working on livestock technology or extension.

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice);

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Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank).

Biosecurity combines bioexclusion (measures for preventing a pathogen from being introduced to a herd or flock) and biocontainment, which addresses the ability of a pathogen to spread among animal groups within a farm and the possibility of it being released from the farm (Otte and others 2007).

1. Transboundary animal diseases are “those of significant economic, trade and/or food security importance for a considerable number of countries; which can easily spread to other countries and reach epidemic proportions; and where control/management, including exclusion, requires cooperation between several countries” (Otte, Nugent, and McLeod 2004: 6).

2. PowerPoint presentation by Cao Thi Hong Van, “AIERP—Poultry Restocking Impacts for Smallholders,” Workshop on the Future of Poultry Farmers in Vietnam after Highly Pathogenic [Avian] Influenza, March 2007.

3. Ellen Geerlings contextualizes this phenomenon in her 2001 thesis “Sheep Husbandry and Ethnoveterinary Knowledge of Raika Sheep Pastoralists in Rajasthan, India,” submitted for partial fulfillment of the M.Sc. degree in environmental sciences, Wageningen University.

4. See FAO’s Education, Extension, and Communication (www.fao.org).

5. Regulation is an essential tool in preventing the spread of disease and avoiding market shocks. In fact, regulation is the instrument of choice in most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and other highdensity livestock countries.

6. Anthony Mugisha, personal communication, October 24, 2007.

7. “Livelihoods at Stake in Rural Egypt,” policy brief provided through personal communication with Ellen Geerlings, October 2007.

8. This discussion is based on Linda Mayoux, “Gender Dimensions of Micro-Insurance: Questioning the New Bootstraps,” draft paper, www.genfinance.info/Documents/ Microinsurance.pdf.

9. This section is adapted from Otte, Nugent, and McLeod (2004) and Otte and others (2007).

10. This section is adapted from ILRI, “African Women Make Their World Go Round,” www.ilri.org.

11. For more on developing indicators using participatory approaches, see Dorward and others, “Guide to Indicators and Methods for Assessing the Contribution of Livestock Keeping to Livelihoods of the Poor,” Department of Agricultural Sciences Imperial College London, n.d. The framework and approaches can be adapted for use in a Gender in Livelihoods approach and analysis.

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Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank).

1. Livestock also provides over half of the value of global agricultural output and one-third in developing countries.

See also Upton (2004).

2. Katinka de Balogh, personal communication, October 2005.

3. IFAD, Micro-Finance and Technical Support Project (MFTSP) update, 2007.

4. Personal communication with Doborah Rubin, Director, Cultural Practice.

5. IFAD, “Empowerment of Women Producers Association Project,” Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, signed in May 2005.

6. “Rural Income Diversification Project in Tuyen Quang Province, Vietnam,” Supervision Report, September 6–18, 2006.

7. The SL framework outlines a number of these interlinked issues.

Thematic Note 3

This Thematic Note was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank). See Module 7 for more on this subject.

1. ILRI, “African Women Make Their World Go Round,” www.ilri.org.

2. FAO project, Development of Integrated Dairy Schemes in Afghanistan (GCP/AFG/040/GER), 2005-08.

3. This section is adapted from ITDG (1996) and Amuguni (2000).

4. Elite capture refers to situations where those with power and status in a community influence development processes based on their own priorities and potential gains. See World Bank (2008), CDD and Elite Capture: Reframing the Conversation, Social Development How to Series, February.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and

Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank).

This Profile draws heavily on Anderson (2004); Anderson and Centonze (2006); Castro-Gámez and others (n.d.); Gomez, Castro, and Perezgrovas (2001); Perezgrovas, Peralta, and Pedraza (2002).

Innovative Activity Profile 2

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Catherine L. M. Hill (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Daniela Battaglia, John Curry, Yianna Lambrou, and Anni McLeod (FAO); Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Maria Hartl, and Antonio Rota (IFAD); and Jimmy Smith (World Bank). This Profile was prepared based on the extensive inputs provided by Marie-Louise Beerling from her experience as a consultant on the LinKS project, as well as documentation from the LinKS project’s and elsewhere. It was edited by the lead module author, who takes responsibility for any mistakes or misrepresentations. The Profile was also based on FAO (2007) and UNDESA (2007).

1. Marie-Louise Beerling, personal communication.

REFERENCES Overview

Baden, Sally. 1998. “Gender Issues in Agricultural Liberalisation.” Topic paper prepared for Directorate General for Development of the European Commission, Report No. 41, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, U.K. Bravo-Baumann, Heidi. 2000. “Gender and Livestock: Capitalisation of Experiences on Livestock Projects and Gender.”

Working document, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Bern. de Haan, Nicoline. 2001. “Of Goats and Groups: a Study of Social Capital in Development Projects.” Agriculture and Human Values 18: 71–84.

Diarra, Marthe, and Marie Monimart. 2006. “Landless Women, Hopeless Women?” Issues Paper 143, International Institute for Environment and Development, London.

Dorward, Andrew, Simon Anderson, Yolanda Nava, James Pattison, Rodrigo Paz, Jonathan Rushton, and Ernesto Sanchez Vera. 2005. “Guide to Indicators & Methods for Assessing the Contribution of Livestock Keeping to Livelihoods of the Poor.” Department of Agricultural Sciences, Imperial College, London.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1997. “Management of Livestock Resources.” Committee on Agriculture (COAG), 14th Session, COAG/97/4, Rome, April 7–11.

———. 2002. “Rural Women: Crucial Partners in the Fight against Hunger and Poverty: Side Event Report.” FAO, Rome.

———. 2006a. “Livestock Report 2006.” FAO, Rome.

———. 2006b. “Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options.” FAO, Rome.

———. 2006c. “State of Food and Agriculture.” FAO, Rome.

———. 2007. “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.” FAO, Rome.

Ghotge, Nitya, and Sagari Ramdas. 2002. “Women and Livestock: Creating Space and Opportunities.” LEISA Magazine 18 (4), (December): 16–17. Also available at www.leisa.info.

GRAIN. n.d. “Participatory Breed Improvement of the Chiapas Sheep.” In “Sustaining Agricultural Biodiversity and the Integrity and Freeflow of Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.” Paper prepared for the Forum for Food Sovereignty. Barcelona: GRAIN; Winnipeg: ETC; Rugby: TDG. Heffernan, Claire, Louise Nielsen, and Federica Misturelli.

2001. Restocking Pastoralists: A Manual. Livestock Production Programme. London: Department for International Development.

Hill, Catherine. 2003. “Livestock and Gender: The Tanzanian Experience in Different Livestock Production Systems. A Glance at LinKS: LinKS Project Case Study No. 3.” FAO, Rome.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2004. “Livestock Services and the Poor: A Global Initiative. Collecting, Coordinating and Sharing Experiences.”

IFAD, Rome.

Miller, Beth. 2001. “Rights to Livestock.” In 2020 Focus No. 06, Brief 04, August, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. Niamir-Fuller, Maryam. 1994. “Women Livestock Managers in the Third World: A Focus on Technical Issues Related to Gender Roles in Livestock Production.”

IFAD, Rome.

Otte, Joachim, David Roland-Holst, Dirk Pfeiffer, Ricardo Soares-Magalhaes, Jonathan Rushton, Jay Graham, and Ellen Silbergeld. 2007. “Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks.” Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative Research Report, June.

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

2007. “The Livestock Revolution: An Opportunity for Poor Farmers?” Inforesources Focus No. 1/07, SDC, Bern.

Thomas-Slayter, Barbara, and Nina Bhatt. 1994. “Land, Livestock and Livelihoods: Changing Dynamics of Gender, Caste and Ethnicity in a Nepalese Village.” Human Ecology 22 (4): 467–94.

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Trench, Pippa, John Rowley, Marthe Diarra, Fernand Sano, and Boubacar Keita. 2007. “Beyond Any Drought: Root Causes of Chronic Vulnerability in the Sahel.” Sahel Working Group, International Institute for Environment and Development, London.

Upton, Martin. 2004. “The Role of Livestock in Economic Development and Poverty Reduction.” Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative Working Paper 10, FAO, Rome.

World Bank. 2005a. “Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation in Rural Development: A Toolkit.” Internal report, June, World Bank, Washington, DC. ———. 2005b. “Managing the Livestock Revolution: Policy and Technology to Address the Negative Impacts of a Fast-Growing Sector. Report No. 32725-GLB, World Bank, Washington, DC. ———. 2007. “World Development Indicators.” Report, World Bank, Washington, DC. Thematic Note 1

Alders, R., B. Bagnol, M. Harun, H. Msami, L. Sprowles, and M. Young. 2005. “The Impact of Newcastle Disease Control in Village Chickens Using I-2 Thermotolerant Vaccine in Rural Areas of Dodoma and Mtwara Regions, Tanzania.”

Paper presented at the DFID Livestock Production Programme International Workshop on Improving the WellBeing of Resource-Poor Communities: The Contribution of Small Livestock, Howick, South Africa, September 12–15.

Amuguni, Helen. 2000. “Assessing the Gender Impact of the Community Based Animal Health Programme in Southern Sudan: A Gender Assessment Study in Mading Area, Latjor State, Upper Nile.” April, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières–Belgium, Brussels.

AusVet. 2006. “Southern Africa Newcastle Disease Control Project SANDCP July 2002–October 2005 Independent Completion Report.” June 26.

Bruschke, Christianne, Alex Thiermann, and Bernard Vallat.

2007. “Implementing Appropriate OIE/FAO Prevention Measures in Different Country Contexts.” In Proceedings of Technical Meeting on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Human H5N1Infection, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), June 27–29, 2007, Rome, Italy. Background Paper No. 3.2a.i. Available at www.fao.org/docs/ eims/upload//229371/ah656e.pdf.

Curry, John, Rebecca Huss-Ashmore, Brian Perry, and Adrian Mukhebi. 1996. “A Framework for the Analysis of Gender, Intra-Household Dynamics and Livestock Disease Control with Examples from Uasin Gishu District, Kenya.” Human Ecology 24 (2): 161–89. de Haan, Nicoline. 2001. “Of Goats and Groups: A Study on Social Capital in Development Projects.” Agriculture and Human Values 18 (1): 71–84.

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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “The Globalizing Livestock Sector: Impact of Changing Market.” Committee on Agriculture, 19th Session, Rome, April 13–16.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD)/Agrifood consulting International (ACI) 2007. “Gender Analysis in Poultry Production in ChúcSontown, Chuong M˜y District, HàTây Province and ChàLâ Commune, DuongMinhChàu District, TãyNinh Province.” PowerPoint presentation at the workshop The Future of Poultry Farmers in Vietnam after Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, Hanoi, Vietnam, March 8–9.

FAO/OIE/WHO. 2005. “The Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).”

Draft Report. Rome: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization); Paris: OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health); Geneva: WHO (World Health Organization.)

Geerlings, Ellen. 2007. “Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: A Rapid Assessment of the Socio-Economic Impact on Vulnerable Households in Egypt.” Food and Agriculture Organization/World Food Programme Joint Project Report, July, Rome.

Geerlings, Ellen, Evelyn Mathias, and Ilse Köhler-Rollefson.

2002. “Securing Tomorrow’s Food: Promoting the Sustainable Use of Farm Animal Genetic Resources: Information for Action.” League for Pastoral Peoples, OberRamstadt, Germany. Also available at www.pastoral peoples.org.

Ghotge, Nitya, and Sagari Ramdas. 2002. “Women and Livestock: Creating Space and Opportunities.” LEISA Magazine 18, no. 4 (December): 16–17. Also available at www. leisa.info.

Kariuki, G. 2003. “Gender, Environmental and Traditional Knowledge in Managing Malignant Catarrhal Fever in Maasai Herds.” Draft, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, November 5.

Lucas, Caroline. 2007. “Bird Flu’s Link with the Crazy Trade in Poultry.” Financial Times, February 26.

Mugisha, Anthony. 2004. “Socio-Economic and Gender Aspects of Control of Vectorborne Diseases: A Study of Intra-Household Dynamics and Decision-Making in the Pastoralist System of Southwestern Uganda.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading School of Agriculture, Policy and Development.

Mugisha, Anthony, Anni McLeod, Rachel Percy, and Elizabeth Kyewalabye. 2008. "Socio-economic Factors Influencing Control of Vector-borne Diseases in the Pastoralist System of South Western Uganda.” Tropical Animal Health and Production 40(4): 287–97.

Otte, Joachim, David Roland-Holst, Dirk Pfeiffer, Ricardo Soares-Magalhaes, Jonathan Rushton, Joay Graham, and Ellen Silbergeld. 2007. “Industrial Livestock Production

and Global Health Risks.” Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative (PPLPI) Research Report, June.

Otte, Joachim, Rachel Nugent, and Anni McLeod. 2004.

“Transboundary Animal Diseases: Assessment of SocioEconomic Impacts and Institutional Responses.” FAO Livestock Policy Discussion Paper No. 9, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Upton, Martin. 2004. “The Role of Livestock in Economic Development and Poverty Reduction.” Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative (PPLPI) Working Paper 10, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

World Bank. 2005. “Managing the Livestock Revolution: Policy and Technology to Address the Negative Impacts of a Fast-Growing Sector.” June, World Bank, Washington, DC.

Thematic Note 2

Dercon, Stephan, and John Hoddinott. 2005. “Livelihoods, Growth, and Links to Market Towns in 15 Ethiopian Villages.” FCND Discussion Paper 194, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. FARM (Food and Agriculture Research Management) Africa.

2002. “Microenterprise Development Best Practices from FARM-Africa’s Pastoralist Development Project in Kenya.”

Booklet, Food and Agriculture Organization, Nairobi. Also available at www.fao.org.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “The Globalizing Livestock Sector: Impact of Changing Market.” Committee on Agriculture, 19th Session, Rome, April 13–16.

———. 2006. “Livestock Report 2006.” FAO, Rome.

Garcia, Zoraida, with contributions from Jennifer Nyberg and Shayma Owaise Saadat. 2006. “Agriculture, Trade Negotiations and Gender.” Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Ghotge, Nitya, and Sagari. Ramdas. 2002. “Women and Livestock: Creating Space and Opportunities.” LEISA Magazine 18 (4) (December): 16–17. Also available at www.leisa.info.

Huss-Ashmore, Rebecca. 1996. “Livestock, Nutrition, and Intra-Household Resource Control in Uasin Gishu District, Kenya.” Human Ecology 24 (2): 191–213.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2002. “IFAD in China: The Rural Poor Speak.” IFAD, Rome.

———. 2004. “Livestock Services and the Poor: A Global Initiative. Collecting, Coordinating and Sharing Experiences. IFAD, Rome.

Mayoux, Linda. 2005. “‘Gender Lens’ in Value Chains Analysis for Decent Work, A Practical Guide.” Draft for International Labour Organization, Geneva, November.

Oboler, Regina. 1996. “Whose Cows Are They, Anyway?: Ideology and Behaviour in Nandi Cattle ‘Ownership’ and Control.” Human Ecology 24 (2): 255–72.

Okali, Christine. 2004. “Gender Issues in Changing Domestic Markets for Livestock Production in Developing Countries.” Paper for the expert consultation, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, June 22–24.

Upton, Martin. 2004. “The Role of Livestock in Economic Development and Poverty Reduction.” Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative Working Paper 10, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

White, Cynthia. 1990. “Changing Animal Ownership and Access to Land among the Wodaabe (Fulani) of Central Niger.” In Property, Poverty and People: Changing Rights in Property and Problems of Pastoral Development, ed.

P. Baxter and R. Hogg, 240–54. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University.

World Bank. 2005. “Policy and Technology to Address the Negative Impacts of a Fast-Growing Sector.” World Bank, Washington, DC, June.

Thematic Note 3

Amuguni, Helen. 2000. “Assessing the Gender Impact of the Community Based Animal Health Programme in Southern Sudan: A Gender Assessment Study in Mading Area, Latjor State, Upper Nile.” Vétérinaires sans Frontières– Belgium, Brussels, April.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2007. “Maasai Men and Women’s Local Knowledge in Breeding Cattle.”

In Breeding for a Purpose: Maasai Men and Women’s Local Knowledge in Breeding Cattle. CD-ROM. FAO, Rome.

———. n.d. “Planning Livestock Interventions with a Gender and HIV/AIDS Lens: Why a Gender and HIV/AIDS Focus?” Fact sheet, FAO, Rome.

Geerlings, Ellen, Evelyn Mathias, and Ilse Köhler-Rollefson.

2002. “Securing Tomorrow’s Food: Promoting the Sustainable Use of Farm Animal Genetic Resources: Information for Action. League for Pastoral Peoples.” Ober-Romstadt, Germany. Also available at www.pastoralpeoples.org.

Gura, Susanne, and League for Pastoralist Peoples. 2003. “Losing Livestock, Losing Livelihoods.” Seedling (January): 8–12.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2004. “Livestock Services and the Poor: A Global Initiative. Collecting, Coordinating, and Sharing Experiences.”

IFAD, Rome. Evaluations are available at www.ifad.org.

———. n.d. (a). “Changing Traditional Practices in Animal Husbandry,” IFAD, Rome.

———. n.d. (b). “Lessons from Processing and Marketing.”

IFAD, Rome.

MODULE 14: REFERENCES

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International Fund for Agricultural Development/Food and Agriculture Organization. 1998. “Agricultural Implements Used by Women Farmers in Africa.” September, IFAD, Rome.

ITDG (now Practical Action). 1996. “Discovering Technologists: Women’s and Men’s Work at Village Level.” ITDG, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Kaaria, Susan, and Jacqueline Ashby. 2001. “An Approach to Technological Innovation That Benefits Rural Women: The Resource-to-Consumption System.” Working document No. 13, CGIAR System-Wide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, Cali.

Tegegne, Azage. 2004. “Urban Livestock Production and Gender in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.” Urban Agriculture 12: 29–31.

World Bank. 2008. “CDD and Elite Capture: Reframing the Conversation.” Social Development How to Series, February, World Bank, Washington, DC. Innovative Activity Profile 1

Anderson, Simon. 2004. “Environmental Effects on Animal Genetic Resources: A Review.” Commissioned by AGAP, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Anderson, Simon, and Roberta Centonze. 2006. “Property Rights and the Management of Animal Genetic Resources.”

CAPRi (CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights), Working Paper No. 48, February, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. Castro-Gámez, Hilda, Gabriel Campos, Reyes López, Raúl Perezgrovas, and Héctor Castillo-Juárez. n.d. “Heritability and Permanent Environmental Effect for Fleece Quality Assessed by an Ancient Tzotzil Indigenous Evaluation System.” Unpublished report.

Gomez, Tona, Hilda Castro, and Raul Perezgrovas. 2001. “The Real Sheep of the Tzotzil.” Compass (December): 29–31.

Perezgrovas, Raul, Marisela Peralta, and Pastor Pedraza.

2002. “Sheep Husbandry among Tzotzil Indians: Who Learns from Whom?” PLA Notes. CD-ROM 1988–2001.

Also available at www.iied.org/NR/agbioliv/pla_notes/ documents/plan_02007.pdf.

(FAO).” In Indigenous Women and the United Nations System: Good Practices and Lessons Learned, 3–8. New York: United Nations. Also available at www.un.org.

FURTHER READING Overview

Asian Development Bank (ADB). n.d. “Gender Issues in Livestock.” In “Gender Checklist: Agriculture.” Available at www.adb.org/Documents/Manuals/Gender_Check lists/Agriculture/agri0508.asp?p=genchck.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “SEAGA Livestock Guide: Planning with a Gender and HIV/AIDS Lens.” June. Available at www.fao.org/sd/dim_pe1/docs/ pe1_050901d1_en.pdf.

———. 2006. “Planning Livestock Interventions with a Gender and HIV/AIDS Lens.” Fact Sheet. Available at www.fao.org/ag/AGAinfo/subjects/documents/livestock aids0606.pdf.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

1999. “Memory Checks for Programme and Project Design: Household Food Security and Gender: Livestock.”

Available at www.ifad.org/pub/memory/e/insert2. pdf.

Sere, Carlos, and Henning Steinfeld. 1996. “World Livestock Production Systems: Current Status, Issues and Trends.”

Animal Production and Health Paper 127, FAO, Rome.

World Bank. 2007. “Gender and the Millennium Development Goals.” World Bank, Washington, DC.

Thematic Note 1

Bruschke, Christianne, Alex Thiermann, and Bernard Vallat.

2007. “Implementing Appropriate OIE/FAO Prevention Measures in Different Country Contexts.” Background paper, Technical Meeting on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Human H5N1 Infection, Rome, June 27–29.

McLeod, Anni. n.d. “Socio-Economics of HPAI Control in Viet Nam: the Past and the Future.” PowerPoint presentation at the workshop The Future of Poultry Farmers in Vietnam after Highly Pathogenic Influenza, Hanoi, Vietnam, March 8–9.

Innovative Activity Profile 2

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2007. “Breeding for a Purpose: Maasai Men and Women’s Local Knowledge in Breeding Cattle.” Study developed under the LinKS project, FAO, Rome.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). 2007. “Indigenous Women and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

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Thematic Note 2

Bennett, Anthony, Frederic Lhoste, Jay Crook, and Joe Phelan. 2006. “The Future of Small Scale Dairying.” In FAO Livestock Report 2006. Rome: FAO. Costales, Achilles, Pierre Gerber, and Henning Steinfeld.

2006. “Underneath the Livestock Revolution.” In FAO Livestock Report 2006. Rome: FAO.

Joss, Stefan, Hans Schaltenbrand, and Peter Schmidt. 2004.

“Clients First: A Rapid Market Appraisal Tool Kit.” Theoretical Background and Experiences from Various RMA Events, Helvetas, 2004. Note: Although this is not “gender sensitive,” it does propose a participatory methodology for appraising markets. The framework and tools can be “gendered” and adapted to livestock markets.

Van Houten, Helen. 2002. Microenterprise Development: Best Practices from FARM-Africa’s Pastoralist Development Project in Kenya. Nairobi: FARM (Food and Agriculture Research Management) Africa.

Proceedings of the 4th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture and the 31st Annual Meeting of the Tanzania Society for Animal Production, Arusha, Tanzania, September 20–24.

Nuffic (Netherlands organization for international cooperation in higher eduction). n.d. “Collaborative Application of Empirical Criteria for Selecting High-Quality Fleeces: Tzotzil Shepherdesses and Sheep Scientists Work Together to Develop Tools for Genetic Improvement.” Available at www. unesco.org.

Innovative Activity Profile 1 Thematic Note 3

Heffernan, Claire. 2005. “Demand-Led Research, Biotechnology and the Poor: Issues from the Livestock Sector.”

In The Role of Biotechnology in Animal Agriculture to Address Poverty in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges,

Geerlings, Ellen, Evelyn Mathias, and Ilse Köhler-Rollefson.

2002. “Securing Tomorrow’s Food: Promoting the Sustainable Use of Farm Animal Genetic Resources.” League for Pastoral Peoples, Ober-Romstadt, Germany. Available at www.pastoralpeoples.org.

MODULE 14: FURTHER READING

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MODULE 15

Gender and Forestry Overview

FORESTRY AND LIVELIHOODS: CHANGES AND TRENDS

orests cover just under 4 billion hectares—30 percent of the earth’s land surface (FAO 2005a). They fulfill major economic functions, help maintain the fertility of agricultural land, protect water resources, and reduce the risk of natural disasters such as landslides and flooding. The world’s forests are home to at least 80 percent of remaining terrestrial biodiversity and are a major carbon sink that mitigates climate change (World Bank 2002).

More than 1.6 billion people depend to varying degrees on forests for their livelihoods. About 60 million indigenous people are almost wholly dependent on forests. Some 350 million people who live within or adjacent to dense forests depend on them for subsistence and income. In developing countries, about 1.2 billion people rely on agroforestry farming systems that help to sustain agricultural productivity and generate income. Worldwide, forest industries provide employment for 60 million people. Some 1 billion people depend on pharmaceuticals derived from forest plants for their medicinal needs.

Mounting evidence suggests that poverty—and poverty in rural areas in particular—can be reduced only by sustainably managing the natural resources that both generate income and provide environmental services. The forests of the world, which are among the most important of these natural resources, provide support to nearly half of the 2.8 billion people who live on $2 or less a day (World Bank

F

2002). Thus, forests can and must assume a more prominent role in meeting the United Nations’ 2000 Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.

“What happens to forests” will be largely determined by “what happens outside forests” (FAO 2007a: 79) One reason that deforestation and forest degradation will continue in most developing regions is the expansion in agricultural land use for both subsistence and commercial cultivation.

Deforestation continues at an alarming rate—about 13 million hectares per year (FAO 2005a). A reversal of the situation would depend on structural shifts in economies to reduce direct and indirect dependence on land. The World Bank’s forest strategy Sustaining Forests (World Bank 2002) recognizes that forests are always a part of larger economic, environmental, and governance systems that must work together if the goals of poverty reduction, sustainable economic development, and environmental protection are to be met. Total forest area continues to decrease, but the results of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) Global Forest Resource Assessment (FAO 2005a) indicate the rate of net loss is slowing. Forest planting, landscape restoration, and natural expansion of forests have significantly reduced the net loss of forest area (FAO 2005a).

Concern about climate change has already focused increased attention on the role of forests in carbon sequestration, reducing carbon emissions and substituting for fossil fuels. Climate change may also affect forests themselves, altering forest ecosystems and increasing the incidence and

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severity of forest fires as well as pest and disease infestation.

At the same time forests will be increasingly valued for the environmental services they provide, which includes their role in conserving biodiversity and in arresting desertification and land degradation. In industrial and rapidly developing countries, recreational use of forests is receiving more attention, requiring changes in forest management.

Geographical shifts in the production and consumption of wood and nonwood forest products are likely to intensify, especially as a result of the rapid growth of the emerging economies in Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific. This will be countered by slow growth of demand in many industrial countries, due to demographic changes and lower income growth rates. Technological changes, including biotechnology and material technology in wood-consuming industries, will improve productivity and reduce raw material requirements.

For many developing countries, wood will remain the most important source of energy. The rising price of oil and increasing concern for climate change will result in increased use of wood as fuel in both developed and developing countries.

An understanding of how society-forest relationships are likely to evolve is important in preparing the sector to address emerging challenges and opportunities (FAO 2007a). Practitioners and others must not consider natural forests solely in terms of the economic value of timber.

Drawing on local knowledge can reveal the full range of social, economic, and ecological functions of these resources and how different groups use and benefit from them. Analyzing the complex interactions between local people and the forests can reveal the impact of forest interventions on livelihoods. By facilitating negotiation between stakeholders, practitioners may support the development of collaborative and adaptive strategies to manage forest resources (FAO 2006a). Successful improvements in forest management quite often resemble and build upon traditional activities already practiced in the area. If innovators do not understand local practices and know which local groups rely on which forest and agroforestry products, they risk introducing innovations that are technically feasible but that result in negative socioeconomic effects.

This Module revisits the gender and forestry analysis and experiences of rural and community forestry themes that were profiled in the 1990s (Rojas 1993)1 and reexamines gender-related issues in the forest sector in light of recent developments and ongoing trends in the sector (FAO 2007a; World Bank 2002). Drawing on documented evidence, it aims to provide practitioners with a commentary on practical experiences of gender in forestry projects and programs.

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MODULE 15: GENDER AND FORESTRY

The Module is presented under a series of pertinent themes, with lessons learned and best practices.

However thoroughly one recognizes the importance of forests to livelihoods, poverty, sustainability, and conservation, the full potential of forests may never be grasped without an understanding of how women and men use forest resources differently. If decision making in forestry programs and policies follows a “gender-neutral” pathway, the implementation of those programs will not garner the knowledge and skills, nor address the needs, of half of the rural population. Gender- and wealth-disaggregated data on the resource management practices of forest- and agroforestry-dependent communities needs to be consistently and regularly gathered. The Module uses the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework to capture the full scope of gender-related issues as they relate to livelihoods.

The need for gender-disaggregated data on the forestry workforce was recently reinforced by a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe–FAO study on women in forestry in Europe: Ideas of specific masculine or feminine qualities are connected to certain roles, positions, tasks and professions in individuals. The perception of what is “appropriate” for men and women forms the basis for the distribution of work, the design and evaluation of different tasks, and the criteria for promotions. Forestry is not an exception to this since it has been generally regarded as an arena mainly for men’s work, business and governance. Within organizations, from households to companies and authorities, a gendered organizational logic is at work, which not only reproduces a structure of gender division but also, paradoxically, at the same time, makes gender invisible. Gender invisibility takes many forms. . . . In many countries, reliable statistics on the demographics of the forestry workforce are difficult to obtain, and when it concerns women’s participation, data are virtually non-existent. (FAO 2006b: 1) International agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature are influential in the forest sector and maintain a variety of gender strategies, guidelines, and resources. The World Bank forest strategy, for example, clearly states that “the sustainable use of forests requires the participation of all rural populations, including women” (World Bank 2002: 22). The strategy also states, however, that although women’s needs often differ from those of men, many programs continue to overlook women’s specific needs regarding forestry. This lack of

gender awareness constrains the sustainable use and management of forests and forest ecosystems throughout the world. The World Bank forest strategy also points to a lack of adequate data, information, and methodologies to address this concern. It acknowledges that “gender analysis will be an important tool to provide simple information on resource use, responsibility, perspectives and needs, and serves a critical role in the quality of forest investment design” (World Bank 2002: 22).

A number of concerns regarding forestry and the livelihoods of rural women and men warrant prominent treatment: ■

■

■

Depletion of forest resources often severely increases women’s labor, especially with regard to the time required to gather fuelwood and the cost of purchasing it. Without adequate fuelwood for cooking, household nutrition may be negatively impacted. Conservation measures that bar entrance into forests also increase women’s labor.

Access rights to trees and forests by men and women are often limited by confusion, or lack of clarity between formal and local customary rights. Access to particular nonwood forest products, such as honey and fodder, is often guided by traditional and cultural norms, regardless of whether they are collected for subsistence or for market.

Both women’s and men’s knowledge of trees and other forest products should be incorporated in forest management and conservation plans. Including and applying this often heavily gendered traditional and indigenous knowledge can be critical to the success of a project.

Protected areas are specific and unique natural habitats where human encroachment is restricted to preserve biodiversity. In many protected areas around the world, however, people with legitimate or historical land ownership rights live within the established boundaries. Women’s and men’s relationships with the environment in the protected areas and their buffer zones, in the context of their respective gender roles, are crucial for the very survival of these natural habitats (IUCN 2003). The Innovative Activity Profile on gender, protected areas, and tourism presents an FAO World Heritage national park small enterprise development project that developed and applied an innovative gender strategy.

Although many cases of women successfully managing community groups in participatory forestry and agroforestry field projects can be identified, women continue to be nominal stakeholders in the decision making and planning of decentralized and local forestry programs. The

successful project experiences cited in this Module demonstrate how to overcome this barrier.

Women are the principal practitioners of traditional agroforestry in production systems such as home gardens in Kerala State in India and Sri Lanka (Kumar and Nair 2004).

They are also often innovators who develop or adapt new agroforestry technologies, such as dairy fodder and the domestication of indigenous fruits (World Agroforestry Centre 2008).Yet their presence in policy, decision making, and the science of agroforestry remains proportionally minimal.

Women are engaged in many roles in the forest industry in the developing world, often in the most menial jobs in sawmills or plantation nurseries. Women also gain employment in catering and prostitution in forest logging camps.

However, an overall lack of data exists with regard to women’s employment in large-scale forest enterprises. This lack of visibility of women’s employment in forest industry data suggests the likelihood of poorer working conditions and lower remuneration. If women’s working conditions and employment opportunities are to improve, gender disaggregated data are required in the forest industries sector. This Module focuses on women’s role in small and medium forest enterprises, and more notably the nonwood forest product (NWFP) sector, for which a large body of literature and project experience can be consulted. The entrepreneurship of local people, especially women, in forestry activities and enterprises, may be constrained by centralized ownership, cultural norms, and poor access to extension, training, credit, and markets.

The 2005 Human Development Report identified HIV and AIDS as the factor inflicting the single greatest reversal in the history of human development (UNDP 2005). HIV and AIDS are undermining progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the third MDG on gender equity. Women in sub-Saharan Africa are infected more often and earlier in their lives than men. By virtue of the gender inequality that is embedded in many cultural traditions, the domestic burden of HIV and AIDS care falls especially heavily on women (UNAIDS 2006). Additional domestic responsibilities to care for the sick translate into a differential use of time in the allocation of other domestic and productive duties, including a differential use of forest products. In high-prevalence areas, women who become caregivers of ill members of the household have less time for agricultural activities on their own plots. As a result, in, for example, miombo woodland areas, the household becomes more reliant on forest foods and income from fuelwood that is often gathered by children (FAO 2005b). Pandemics such as HIV and AIDS increase poverty and affect the use of forest resources (Shackleton and others 2006).

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Emergencies, such as conflicts and natural disasters, in which populations are massively displaced often lead to additional reliance on forest products for subsistence products. The local forest cover often becomes depleted as people who live in camps, mainly women and children, gather fuelwood in the area. As wood resources are depleted, women and children are obliged to travel longer distances to collect wood, making them vulnerable to gender-based violence (SAFE2). Research recommends investing heavily in forested areas during postconflict periods to prevent renewed fighting and help protect the forest itself (Kaimowitz 2005).

Two recently published reports on gender and forestry in Europe (FAO 2006b) and Africa (FAO 2007b) consider the employment and positions of women in forestry services (officers and rangers), forestry education, and the technical and administrative staff of forest ministries. Even the European report recognizes that “quantitative data [are] known to be patchy and insufficient to determine, with confidence, the number of women working in the forest industry, or their roles and employment levels” (FAO 2006b: 11). However, the report also notes that “examples of good practice, have been emerging, which proves that concerted and sustained commitment and planning at senior organizational level can result in quantifiable improvements in the number of professional women foresters employed and the level of seniority they can attain” (FAO 2006b: 11). The Africa report is extremely critical of the status quo, which it characterizes as having a near total absence of data on gender in the forest sector, combined in some cases with a complete lack of motivation by policy and decision makers to address gender issues in the sector.3 The report emphasizes the need for gender-disaggregated data to better appreciate the gender disparities in forest education, employment, and career opportunities in the formal sector, as well as to appreciate the different roles of rural women and men with livelihoods based on forest-related activities. Such information would also enable the development of more gender-conscious forest sector programs and policies.

Organizational and institutional support to women’s groups is required if rural and disadvantaged women are to access resources, credit, technical and entrepreneurial training, and guidance. Having women employed as frontline extension staff, project managers, policy makers, and forest enterprise employees and managers would be advantageous in securing this support. An acknowledged requirement is for more and improved training for women in all cadres of the forest professions, as well as improved facilities to enable women and men to be trained and to accumulate work experience (FAO 2007b).

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BENEFITS AND CONSTRAINTS OF GENDERRESPONSIVE POLICY

Created by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 2000, the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) provides a platform for high-level policy discussions and global cooperation to promote improved management, conservation, and sustainable development of forests.

Women are represented at UNFF, as one of the nine Agenda 21 major groups. The other major forest stakeholder groups include indigenous peoples, business and industry, small forest landowners, youth and children, NGOs, local authorities, unions, and representatives of the scientific and technological community (www.un.org/esa/forests).

In some forested countries, the directors of forest departments or ministries of environment and forests are women.

This has been shown to enhance the profile of women’s role in the forest sector, particularly with regard to smallholder forestry, forest associations, and livelihoods-related issues. In most countries, however, women’s role and representation in decision making that pertains to the forest sector are very limited. Considerable efforts can be made through training and job placement in both public and private sectors to enable more women to gain employment in the public sector and be effective forest managers and entrepreneurs, as well as to enhance their advocacy and representational skills (FAO 2006b).

Although an outspoken political commitment exists on nearly all levels to integrate gender considerations into policy development, reality lags behind. Most policy decisions are still taking a gender-neutral approach, ignoring the complementary capacities of women and men in implementing these policies.

Many people working in the forestry sector are familiar with the operationally focused gender materials produced by the Forest Trees and People Program at FAO in the mid1990s. In recent years, however, mainstream publications pertaining to forests, livelihoods, and poverty became gender neutral, referring, for example, to “rural people,” “farmers,” and “households.” Women per se and recognition of women’s specific challenges and acknowledgment of their specific achievements had largely disappeared (FAO 2006a, 2007a). The recent release of PROFOR’s Forests and Poverty Linkages Toolkit explicitly includes gender in its tools for analysis of livelihoods. Interim results from midterm reports piloting the toolkit in Cameroon, Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda demonstrate clearly the significance of collecting and analyzing gender- and wealth-disaggregated data.4 In Madagascar results from one

community found that poor women rely significantly more on the forest resource for their livelihoods than do poor men—37 percent of women’s income came from the forest compared to 22 percent of men’s income. Wealthier men, on the other hand, gained more of their income from the forest than wealthier women.

These kinds of results clearly indicate the contrasting uses and perceptions of forest resources and its products by different members of society. The data also emphasize the vulnerability of poor women and their families, and the likely impacts on the most marginalized segments of a community if they are excluded from decision making about the forest resource base, the products of which often provide one-third of their income (see Technical Note 1 for more details). The data collected in piloting this toolkit could also be indicative of how differential forest product use and access develop between men and women as households move out of poverty.

It is obvious that sustainable development, particularly in forestry, can be achieved only if decision and policy makers continuously connect gender awareness from local to national and global levels. A prerequisite is the continued collection of gender-disaggregated data and the use and application of gender-conscious language and tools in policy texts and field manuals.

INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO OVERCOME GENDER BARRIERS

The SL conceptual framework for analyzing the agricultural livelihoods of women and men, girls and boys, is an adaptation of the sustainable livelihoods concept and considers assets, risks and vulnerability, information and organization, markets, policies, and institutions. In the forestry context, many of these barriers are probably higher and more intractable than in other rural sectors. Much has to do with traditional management regimes and decision making, but much also relates to the potential wealth of the sector and the dominance of large-scale concessions.

At the local level, groups of women have improved their access to decision making in the management of forest resources through organization and advocacy. Time and again the material presented in this Module will demonstrate that through enhanced organization and representation, they have improved their incomes and the well-being of their households, as well as the educational opportunities of their children.

Women and children are often the most vulnerable in forest conflicts and the most reliant on forest resources

during conflicts and periods of economic hardship. Strong examples of support in advocacy and home visits provide hope that innovative programming will overcome some of the difficulties and alleviate the horrors faced by these families. However, larger initiatives to support the most marginalized families directly have yet to be implemented.

Although training in organizational and representational skills is very important, training in business and negotiation skills for small-scale enterprises is fundamental to the success of identified women’s enterprises. For an enterprise to be independently sustainable, training and credit support needs to be provided for at least five years. Projects should not consider engaging for periods less than this.

The gendered nature of resource use, access, control, and responsibility with respect to trees and forests is highly complex (Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997). Women’s rights to particular areas of cropping land, trees, and tree products, as well as to “in between spaces” in agricultural landscapes, are often based in negotiable customary law and are often substantial. These rights, however, may be marginalized or not recognized, sometimes regarded as well-meaning efforts to create statutory laws and administrative procedures (Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997). Women’s rights are often negotiated and may subsequently not be best served by formal titling of land, which often vests ownership in a single head of household. Agroforestry and forestry projects and programs can better protect women’s access rights by allowing for multiple uses of specific spaces and resources by multiple users, and by prioritizing renewable uses, such as the gathering of fruits or harvesting of fallen wood, prunings, coppiced wood, and leaf fodder, which do not preclude most other uses (Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997).

Designers of agroforestry projects and programs are advised to disaggregate gendered knowledge, access, and control further, so as to also include tree products, such as timber, fuelwood, fruits, and fodder. In many cases, although women have substantial labor and management responsibilities for a particular resource, men control the disposal or marketing of the products of that resource, as well as the distribution of its benefits. Reporting gender-disaggregated data on agroforestry practices should also be encouraged. It has long been recognized that women are the principal holders of knowledge and managers of traditional home gardens (FAO 1999), and 60 percent of the practitioners of innovative agroforestry practices such as domestication of indigenous fruit trees and production of dairy fodder are women (see Thematic Note 2). These particular practices are easily adaptable to women’s niches on farms.

However, the gender aspects of innovative agroforestry

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practices such as these are perhaps not afforded the profile that they warrant in program reports and scientific publications. Using and applying gender-disaggregated data will raise the profile of women agroforestry practitioners and thereby enable their greater access to technical information, credit, and related extension support.

Gender-related considerations have been integrated in almost all relevant forest policy commitments and related fields, such as climate change. However, a gap still exists in translating these policy commitments into implementation.

True change and gender-responsive action can be achieved only if policy and decision makers face their responsibility to ensure an inclusive implementation of their genderrelevant commitments at project and program levels.

The Innovative Activity Profiles demonstrate that gender awareness in implementation needs a strong backup from the policy level to achieve the change of traditional and sometimes obsolete attitudes on the roles of men and women in forest management. Demographic developments and changing family patterns require that women be involved in decision making on all levels to sustain their

livelihood and the security of their families. This requires in particular a rethinking of traditional gender-biased land tenure and property rights; greater gender equity in land tenure and rights to forest resources would be building blocks for the sustainable and long-term-oriented development of livelihoods based on forest resources. Policy and decision makers are encouraged to use the potential of gender equity in working toward the Millennium Development Goals on all levels by ensuring universal access to education and training and building entrepreneurial capacity in sustainably managing forest resources.

MEASURING CHANGE: GENDER-SENSITIVE MONITORING AND EVALUATION INDICATORS

Being able to measure the impact that forest policy, training, and management initiatives have on men and women beneficiaries, their families, and communities is important.

Table 15.1 gives some ideas for indicators and sources of verification, though clearly modifications are required for each program.

Table 15.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Forestry (continued) Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Over a set period, an increase of x percent in household incomes from forest-based activities among women-headed households and poor households in program areas

• Household surveys • Project management information system • Socioeconomic data from statistics office

Changes over x-year period of project activities in household nutrition, health, education, vulnerability to violence, and happiness, disaggregated by gender

• Household surveys, before and after • Project management information system • School records

Proportion of annual household income (or consumption) derived from upland farming, agroforestry, or forest activities

• Household surveys

Percentage of women and men actively participating in natural resource management committees (including bank account signatory roles)

• • • • •

Number of women and men actively involved in management (that is, protection or conservation or production) of protected areas or reserves based on a management framework or plan

• Community monitoring committees • Forest management plans

Capacity-building support provided for community-based resource management, forest enterprises, and others

• Project records • Training records

Change in perceptions of men and women regarding importance of forest protection and management, measured before and after activity

• Focus groups • Stakeholder interviews

Percentage of women and men community extension workers and professional forestry extensionists

• Forest Department records • Project records

Bank records Committee meeting minutes Interviews with stakeholders Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) Program and project records

(Table continues on the following page)

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Table 15.1 Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators for Gender and Forestry (continued) Indicator

Sources of verification and tools

Level of satisfaction among women and men with access to and quality of extension and training services

• Sample surveys • Stakeholder interviews

Percentage of representations and mentions of women and men in training and awareness-raising materials

• Survey of training and information materials

Number of women and men actively involved in participatory research and innovations in agroforestry or forestry, before and after project activities

• • • •

Forestry extension records Interviews with stakeholders Observation Participatory monitoring

Number of women and men involved in seed collection, propagation, and tree nursery techniques in district, before and after project activities

• • • •

Forestry department records Participatory forest management group records Project records Stakeholder interviews

Changes to access rights by women- and men-headed households to common property resources (timber and nontimber) in forests

• Case studies • Interviews of local authorities and community leaders • Participatory rapid appraisal

Changes in time taken to collect firewood daily, before and after project activities

• Participatory monitoring • Project records

Number of conflicts over natural resources access or land ownership per year

• Interviews with stakeholders (from all relevant groups in conflicts) • Local traditional authorities (such as a chief or local council) • Program and project records

Number of women and men from district employed in forest enterprises, annually

• Administrative records

Incidence of occupational health and safety problems among workers in plantations and processing plants, disaggregated by gender

• Administrative records • Review of procedures against local and national regulations

Spread of HIV and AIDS, prostitution, alcoholism, and other problems from in-migrant workers, compared with baseline

• Community health surveillance • Health records • Local authority reports

Community satisfaction (disaggregated by gender) with changes in forest access and forest resources dispute treatment

• Group interviews or focus groups • Interviews, before and after

Source: Authors, with inputs from Pamela White, author of Module 16.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Forests as Safety Nets: Gender, Strengthening Rights, and Reducing Vulnerability

orests have a significant role in reducing vulnerability and providing safety nets and subsistence (food, fuelwood, and incomes) for the rural poor who depend on forests for their livelihoods. Livelihoods vulnerability may arise from natural disasters, human conflict, human and animal disease epidemics, food insecurity, agroecological factors such as water variability, and market and price risks. Poor households are more exposed to these risks and less resilient in coping with them. They tend to have weaker political representation and to experience greater difficulty in securing their rights to land, other resources, and support in times of crisis (see also Module 11). Women are typically the principal agents of food security within a household and tend to suffer the most in terms of increased workload when livelihood shocks occur.

F

KEY GENDER ISSUES

Several key gender issues face women in regard to forestry issues.

Experiences in community and participatory forest management

One step forward in linking sustainable livelihoods and forests has been approached through community forestry.

Too often, however, the community has been viewed as a homogeneous unit in terms of status, influence, wealth, gender, and access to resources (Muckarjee, Jayaswal, and Parihari 2006; Wollenberg and others 2001). Even when these differences have been recognized and participatory processes have been employed, issues of power and the capacity of groups to negotiate solutions have not always been adequately considered. As a result, many womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concerns regarding forest use and access have been neglected in the consultations undertaken in the participatory design

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and implementation of projects. Community forestry, however, remains a popular approach to forest management, and the demand for support in carrying out community forestry projects among communities remains high.

Nonwood forest products

Poor households in particular depend on NWFPs, which provide essential food and nutrition, medicine, fodder, fuel, thatch and construction materials, and nonfarm income.1 NWFPs are particularly important in relieving â&#x20AC;&#x153;hunger periodsâ&#x20AC;? in the agricultural cycle; they provide seasonal employment and a buffer against risk and household emergencies. The poor, moreover, tend to have more access to the forest than other natural capital and few land rights elsewhere. Within poor households, gender asymmetry in ownership and access to productive resources such as land causes women to rely disproportionately on NWFPs for income and nutrition (FAO 1995). In many communities women are responsible for the household activities that involve forest-based foods and firewood.

Generally the poor and more marginal households engage in the local trade of nontimber forest products (NTFPs), and this is a particularly important activity for women (Kaimowitz 2003). In a series of studies in Brazil, Cameroon, and South Africa, 40 to 50 percent of those active in this trade were women who headed their own households (Shackelton, Shanley, and Ndoye 2007). In Cameroon the trade in four popular edible NTFPs was dominated by women, who were responsible for most of the harvest and who formed 94 percent of the traders (Ndoye, Ruiz-Perez, and Eyebe 1997). Wholesalers were often men.

In eastern Amazonia both poor men and women collect and sell a number of forest fruit species, whereas in the city most fruit wholesalers were men, and most fruit processing was undertaken by poor urban women (Shanley, Luz, and

Swingland 2002). Local trade in many nontimber products is an area in which women are free to earn income with little interference or threat of expropriation by men (Schreckenberg, Marshall, and Te Velde 2006). Where the opportunity cost of women’s labor is relatively low, the participation of women can make NTFPs commercially viable.

Global markets for NTFPs often overshadow local trade in traditionally important products. Yet neglect of local trade can lead to further marginalization of low-income groups whose livelihoods depend on that trade (Shackleton, Shanley, and Ndoye 2007). Many households require flexible local income-earning opportunities that allow space for responsibilities such as child care, nursing the ill, maintaining homes, and crop production. The production of NTFPs for local markets can provide part-time, seasonal, occasional, or full-time year-round employment, depending on the product, location, and individual household. This flexibility makes NTFP-related activities particularly appealing to women, enabling them to combine collection and trade of these products with their other domestic duties and responsibilities (Shackleton, Shanley, and Ndoye 2007).

HIV and AIDS and communicable diseases

The most important actions in dealing with the medical and health emergencies created by the HIV and AIDS pandemic are public awareness programs aimed at preventing further spread of the disease. Although this aspect of HIV and AIDS mitigation is generally outside the mandates of agriculture and forestry departments, all sectors of society have a role to play in alleviating the impacts of the disease, both in the immediate and in the long terms. The forest sector can help to mitigate the impacts of AIDS in a number of ways (FAO 2002): ■ ■ ■

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By enhancing short-term agricultural productivity By enhancing long-term agricultural productivity By developing education and human resource development strategies in extension and services (forestry training and education) By transferring skills from one generation to the next.

One example of the implementation of an HIV and AIDS response within this mandate came as a result of a request of the government of Malawi to support field studies that address the interactions between miombo woodlands and the morbidity and mortality caused by communicable diseases, especially HIV and AIDS.2 The results demonstrated the crucial role of the woodlands in supporting the livelihoods

of affected households and documented adjustments in use and access to woodland resources by women and children of households with sick adults, as well as households in which an adult had recently died (box 15.1).

Forests, natural disasters, and conflicts

Natural disasters and civil strife affect large numbers of displaced people who rely on forests for shelter, fuelwood, fodder, and nutrition. Large concentrations of displaced populations in camps place excessive pressure on already degraded natural resources. This can endanger food security and livelihoods in nearby communities and foster resentment within the host population (FAO Forest Department brief prepared for SAFE, 2007). Charcoal and wood are needed for fuel, and branches and timber for shelter constructions and women are typically responsible for collecting them. Many who leave camp to collect forest materials are subject to gender-based violence (Miguel Trossero, personal communication 2007; SAFE 2007).

Alternative fuel, energy saving, and reforestation initiatives undertaken in the vicinity of displaced persons camps may help to reduce women’s vulnerability. These can include establishing fast-growing woodlots immediately adjacent to refugee camps, promoting the use of “fireless” cookers, energy-saving mud stoves, and cooking techniques such as soaking beans before cooking them and covering lids while cooking.

Forested areas have been the stage for wars in some two dozen countries that are home to over 40 percent of the world’s tropical forests during the last 20 years (box 15.2).

Various reasons have been given for this. Forested regions tend to be inaccessible and easy for armies to hide in. Armies have been able to fund their activities by extorting money from petroleum, mining, and logging companies; drug dealers; and farmers in these areas. Some militias carry out mining, logging, and drug trafficking operations themselves.

Soldiers often survive by hunting and fishing and preying on isolated farmers in remote forested areas. Many people living in these areas deeply resent the fact that they have been neglected or mistreated by national governments, particularly if they perceive outsiders as benefiting from the local natural resources. The influx of migrants of other ethnic groups often stirs conflicts with local people (box 15.3). Armed groups of various types and inclinations frequently earn a certain degree of local support or acceptance by filling the vacuum left by a national government with weak presence locally (Kaimowitz 2005).

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Box 15.1 Firewood, Food, and Medicine: Gender, Forests, Vulnerability, and Rural Responses to HIV and AIDS

The Malawi country study (Kayambazintu and others 2005) found that because of the gender differentiation in woodland activities within households, the impacts of morbidity and mortality will depend on who in the household is ill or deceased.

Women household members predominantly carry out subsistence woodland activities; they also have the role of primary caregiver when a member of the household is sick. Their labor is therefore typically reallocated for care giving, decreasing subsistence collection of forest products.

In all cases, it was found that less laborious commercial activities remain a viable option for income generation during illness. These include products for which value can be added through home-based work and are less gender differentiated, such as reed mats, baskets, and food processing. The value of such commercial activities

to cope with expenses and productivity losses related to illness is supported by evidence from the case studies.

Commonly, firewood collection duties changed from the adult women to girls and boys when an adult family member was ill. In polygamous households the effect of adult illness on subsistence woodland activities such as firewood collection was less pronounced than in households with only one woman head. Households in which children are old enough to engage in woodland activities also offset the labor reduction caused by adult illness.

In those households for which the importance of woodland activities increased following adult mortality, children were often involved in the collection and sale of forest products. The types of forest products that households reported selling are also products that are typically collected by children and women.

Sources: Kayambazintu and others 2005; UNAIDS 2006.

Box 15.2 Some Tropical Countries with Armed Conflicts in Forested Regions in the Past 20 Years Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sudan, Surinam, and Uganda.

Box 15.3 Rape: The Ultimate Weapon in a Decade-Long Conflict Immaculate Birhaheka, head of the women’s rights group Paif, in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, spoke of what happened in villages on the road south from Goma toward Bukavu: “The women who come from there tell us that every woman in every village has been raped over the years. Some were captured and taken into the forest for months, even two years. When they are released some are in such bad condition that they die.”

Source: Kaimowitz 2005.

Source: Guardian Weekly, November 16, 2007.

GENDER IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POVERTY-FOCUSED FORESTRY PROGRAMS

In 1995 the Forest, Trees and People program at FAO published a series of publications that set out practical methods for gender analysis in the planning and implementation of community-based forest projects and programs. Yet there is little or no indication that gender analysis is systematically

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applied in projects and programs at the local level.3 The design and implementation of gender-equitable interventions that seek to strengthen rights and reduce vulnerability among forest-dependent communitie remain a challenge (box 15.4).

(Programs involving wood energy, fuelwood saving, and alternative fuels provide an important exception and do focus on women, although it is evident that women’s roles in forestry are far more expansive than these programs’ coverage.)

Box 15.4 Gender Analysis in Forestry Programs: Where Is It? Any rural livelihoods-focused forestry program must analyze the activities and resources available to both men and women as men and women have different experiences, resulting from intergenerational knowledge transfer and years of experimentation in forest product harvesting, processing. and domestication. A few of the questions to be considered are as follows: What forest-related tasks are undertaken by men, women, boys, and girls? Who has access and the power to decide whether and how resources are to be used, and how they are to be allocated? How is knowledge of the forest and its resources gendered? Who has control over the output or product? Market access for harvested and processed forest products is not gender neutral: Who has access to which markets and why? What are the gendered barriers to adding product value and market access? In addition to the gender analysis, an inclusion analysis would shed light on many of the above issues in the initial phases of a forest and livelihoods program: How are men and women included in each aspect of decision making with regard to forest resources, and products for use by the community and by individual households?

Source: Author’s adaptation from Feldstein and Poats 1990.

A number of factors contribute to gender blindness, both at the national policy level and in field project design. Field projects and forest offices are predominantly staffed by men forestry officers, who are therefore the majority of those responsible for running participatory rural appraisals and other types of participatory consultation in the villages. In many rural societies, village women are culturally restrained from speaking in public. In many instances it is not considered appropriate for men from outside the community to encourage women to participate in meetings or to suggest separate meetings with women participants. Combined with the common lack of frontline women forestry officers, these cultural proscriptions mitigate against women’s perspectives being aired during village discussions and data generation exercises. Although women are ordinarily responsible for the nutrition and food security of their families, the products that women harvest and market to feed their families are generally not included in conventional forest inventories or data collection exercises.

POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Three examples illustrate a selection of the key issues facing policy making and the design and management of interventions that effectively capture gender.

Gender and wood energy in Asia

During the Regional Expert Consultation on Gender and Wood Energy in Asia in 1995, discussions raised a number of observations that would be endorsed by the participants.

The burden of providing traditional energy supplies for domestic use is commonly the responsibility of women.

Rising woodfuel prices, lower woodfuel quality, and reduced access to woodfuels increase this burden. Interventions in the energy sector, such as land use and fuel price reform, often have disproportionately negative implications for women, especially those from lower-income groups. In many Asian countries, the concerns of women are underrepresented in shaping wood energy policies and strategies.

Wood energy plays an important part in women’s reproductive tasks. Access to inexpensive, less time-consuming, and sustainable sources of wood energy and to efficient cooking and heating devices will directly benefit women.

Women also have increasing energy needs in their productive roles as bread winners. Many self-employed women depend on wood or other biomass energy for commercial activities such as food preparation for sale or are employed in establishments that rely on woodfuel. Others are economically dependent on trading in fuelwood and charcoal, and some have escaped poverty through this trade. The need to understand and to relate to women’s needs in regard to these matters is thus of central importance in wood energy planning at all levels.

Forest law, nonwood forest products, and income-earning opportunities for women in Lao PDR

In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, policy makers recognize the importance of NWFPs in alleviating poverty and supporting national economic development. The lack of clear legal guidelines, enforcement mechanisms, support services, and institutional capacity has been recognized as a major constraint to realizing the products’ potential in these roles. The government has strengthened a number of institutions and was encouraged in introducing new policies and a legal framework to promote NWFPs. The FAO assisted the government and other involved stakeholders by creating a model for the development of marketing systems for NWFPs

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using the Market Analysis and Development approach.4 At the provincial level, stakeholder meetings were held involving local communities, the private sector, and local stakeholders.

Between 30 and 50 percent of the membership of the local start-up NWFP enterprises and community groups are women. National-level task forces were established to develop a framework for market information systems. These are the first step in reducing bottlenecks in legislative procedures and access to market information that have thus far restrained the development and application of women’s entrepreneurial skills and their access to credit.

HIV and AIDS and national-level policy in the forest sector

The Department of Forestry in Malawi is a pioneer in developing and implemented a Forestry Sector HIV and AIDS Strategy.

The government recently launched this strategy covering 2007 to 2011. The major goals of the strategy are as follows: ■

■

To prevent the further spread and transmission of HIV and AIDS among workers, communities, households, and individuals that are dependent on forestry To improve sustainably the livelihoods and quality of life of those who are living with and affected by HIV and AIDS.

In line with the National HIV and AIDS Policy and the National Action Framework, the strategy focuses on both

the workplace and core mandate functions of the sector.

The document presents the principles that guide the implementation of the strategy, including those that promote gender equality and greater involvement of men, women, and children living with HIV and AIDS, transparency, accountability, and evidence-based programming. The objective is to reduce the further spread of HIV and AIDS and mitigate its impact and to foster the sustainable management and development of forest resources (see also Government of Malawi 2007).

LESSONS LEARNED AND GUIDELINES FOR PRACTITIONERS

The key actions identified in a group of successful projects reviewed as part of the preparation of this thematic note were the empowerment and visibility of women in locallevel decision making pertaining to forest resources.

Women’s self-help groups facilitated better access to and management of resources in all the successful projects. Selfhelp groups also enabled the women to better represent their views in community decision making and to receive technical and skills training. The North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for upland areas in India provides an example of the types of activities undertaken by self-help groups in forest programs (box 15.5).

Along with income, the most highly valued components of

Box 15.5 India: The North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas

Along with natural resource management groups, selfhelp groups (SHGs) make up the bulk of the activities within the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas. In Nonglang village in the West Khasi Hills district, poor women have seen the benefit of forming SHGs and working together.

Microcredit has been the focus, but women’s organization into SHGs has brought other social benefits too.

Women members meet once a week and pool group resources for saving and lending purposes. These savings have been used for income-earning purposes as well as for health and education needs. Over time groups have recognized value in loans for the benefit of the village apart from those for individual members.

Source: Deseng and Yirmeila 2005.

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SHG members see value in meeting every week to discuss common problems. While meeting to save and lend, women have the opportunity to discuss collectively other needs, such as health and education. Literacy has become one of the goals of the SHG. With the encouragement of the project, the group has organized a school for young children who previously either did not attend classes or did so only in the morning.

According to a survey conducted to assess the impact of SHGs, the most important aspects noted by the group members themselves were “empowerment,” “increase in income,” and “awareness,” in that order.

They also appreciated improved consumption patterns and skill development.

project support through the women’s groups were empowerment and awareness.

A review of project experiences led to the following recommended sequencing of support to community-based organizations (CBOs):5 1. Identify existing women’s groups (CBOs) in the proposed project area, their objectives, activities, successes, and constraints.

2. Provide demand-driven support and training to those groups that already exist following an analysis of problems and opportunities in forest access and resource use.

3. If there are no community-level organizations or associations in which women play an active role, assist local authorities in the creation of self-help groups and village-level development associations in which women can play a more active role.

4. Build capacity and provide management training based on the goals of the groups.

The Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Program in India applied these steps to empower women and develop their technical skills (box 15.6).

When village-level groups have formed around a common purpose and are active, they are more effective in strengthening their rights and reducing the overall vulnerability of their members. They may come together in associations or more formally in federations (box 15.7).

SHGs do not function in isolation from other forestrelated stakeholders, nor are all SHGs women’s groups.

Depending on the objectives of the group, CBOs and SHGs may have men, women, and youth members. Once a CBO is organized and embarks on an activity such as marketing NTFPs or lobbying for forest resource access, the group is likely to encounter constraints imposed by other forest stakeholders, as well as by forest policy and law beyond the immediate boundaries of the village. Conflicts may occur between the village associations and these stakeholders.

Some CBOs have been set up in response to existing conflicts. CBOs often require the additional support of third parties to enhance their negotiation and marketing skills: for instance, when they set out to gain greater access to NTFP value chains. Many documented cases exist of this type of support.6 However, other types of conflicts that occur, for example, in the context of illegal logging, mining, or illicit crops, may be violent. CBOs benefit from advocacy by

Box 15.6 India: The Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Program

The program focuses on tribal people in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, two of the three Indian states with the highest proportion of tribal people. Tribal peoples are among the poorest in India. The program targets marginal households, women, landless people, hill cultivators, and tribal people. The goal is to empower tribal people to participate in their own development through local self-government. In the Chhattisgarh area, women’s productive work consists of agriculture, gathering forest products, and wage labor. Women’s workdays are typically 16–18 hours of often physically demanding labor. Women generally go to the forest as a group to collect forest products. Tribal people depend on the forest for their livelihoods, including for nontimber or “minor” forest products. From these they obtain foods such as fruit and oil, as well as needed items for the home, such as bidi, brooms, baskets, mats, rope, home-made toothbrushes, leaf plates, and

medicines. Some forest products are also sold for a small cash income.

The program has two principal subcomponents: ■

■

Grassroots empowerment and technical capacity building Livelihood systems enhancement.

The former component provides training to the tribal population, especially women and other marginal groups, on broad-based awareness of tribal rights, gender, and equity issues, as well as legal and managerial strengthening training. The latter component focuses more on technical aspects, such as establishment of nurseries and support for processing and marketing of NTFPs. It works with the village groups in a livelihoods context. A legal defense fund is planned to assist the tribal population in defending its rights.

Sources: IFAD 2006; see also http://cjtdp.nic.in.

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Box 15.7 China: Household Forestry and Farmers’ Self-Help Organizations

Historically, Huoshan County in China’s eastern province of Anhui has been one of the country’s poorest areas.

The county has abundant natural resources, such as bamboo, tea, mulberry, and medicinal plants. The area is best suited for forestry development because the mountainous topography is generally unsuitable for agriculture. It is not surprising that 75 percent of farmers’ income is currently derived from forests.

The Sino-Dutch Forestry Program focuses on household forestry, farmers’ self-help organizations, demonstration households, and training in participatory concepts and forestry techniques. It has three basic principles: participatory approaches, gender consciousness, and environmental protection awareness.

Groups created at the village level are subsequently federated into larger networks of groups according to their primary purpose: “farmers’ professional associations,” “community development fund management organizations,” and “forest products processing associations.” The primary aim of the farmers’ self-help organizations is to improve the

economic and social environment for farmers and their families. By empowering farmers to manage their farms according to their own livelihood preferences, their dependence on the government will hopefully be reduced. Women and men farmers are free to join or drop out of any organization they choose. Each self-help organization has its own rules and regulations, and the farmers themselves elect the management committee.

Xu Jiaqi, a community development specialist for the project, explained that “everyone is involved in project activities. Each person is allowed to share his or her ideas during meetings and discussions. A decision is made by the group by the end of the day. Women are given importance in all activities. In fact, in some groups such as the Bamboo Farmers’ Association, most of the members are women (70 percent) are women.”

More than 16,000 households have participated in the forestry activities. As a result, the forest cover of the county increased from 59 percent in 1989 to 70 percent in 2002.

Source: Chunguian 2005.

third parties such as NGOs, which may, for instance, publicize their situation and concerns to a wider audience.

Successful community-based organizations have been shown to be those that have taken the lead themselves, as they best know the complexities and nuances of the conflict situation and the strengths and weaknesses and history of the various stakeholders involved. The El Balcón, Mexico, case presented in box 15.8 illustrates the significance of different players and the complexities of developing a governable situation around communal forests. Yet it demonstrates how negotiation over confrontation, knowledge and employment over exclusion, and quality leadership, and transparency have reduced conflict and secured livelihoods.

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Support for and creation of women’s CBOs or subgroups in community-based organizations are not panaceas to mainstreaming gender in livelihood-oriented forestry programs.

Women’s groups themselves often have many problems in management, corruption, and elite capture such that poor women are marginalized by wealthier, more articulate, and more educated women in the community. Poor women often have less time, further distances to travel, and fewer resources with which to engage in group activities (see also Thematic Note 4, Module 2). However, if women are not organized into entities that represent their needs and rights in forest resource access and use, their voices will not be heard. Local organization is the first step to strengthening rights and reducing vulnerabilities of marginalized women.

Box 15.8 El Balcón, Mexico: Building Peace and Governability around Communal Forests

The Ejido el Balcón is located in the highlands of the sierra, close to the Pacific Ocean in the region called Costa Grande in the Mexican state of Guerrero. The Ejido el Balcón was formed in 1966 when the Mexican government granted collective property rights to 136 family heads of over 2,400 hectares. In 1974 another 19,150 hectares of forestland were given to the ejido (Bray and Merino 2003). This was a time of permanent confrontations over the land. In the initial days of the ejido, nearly 20 percent of El Balcón’s community members were widows under 30.

Within the context of Guerrero and rural Mexico, the case of El Balcón is remarkable for several reasons. The ejido has built a forest enterprise that uses modern technology to produce certified timber for export. The enterprise employs all ejido members who want to work for it. Profits have largely been invested in the social welfare of the nearly 600 people living in the ejido (health care, education, and public infrastructure).

From satellite images or by simply traveling through high parts of the sierra, one can readily observe the deterioration of the forests, which constantly suffer from fires and illegal logging. El Balcón is the exception. Its lands are covered with well-preserved forests, and its forest management was certified under the Forest Stewardship Council in 2003.

The most important achievement of El Balcón is the climate of agreement, governability, and peace that it has built amid a region that has fallen victim to illegal logging and drug trafficking. A number of factors may be attributable for the extraordinary institutional development of El Balcón: the quality of its leaders, their preference for negotiation over confrontation in dealing with internal problems as well as with neighboring ejidos, their insistence on the importance of issues such as regulated forest management, transparency of the ejido’s business, and association with other forest ejidos of the region.

Source: Merino 2005.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Agroforestry Landscapes: Gendered Space, Knowledge, and Practice

rees play a crucial role in almost all farming systems and terrestrial ecosystems; they provide a range of essential products and services and play a particularly pivotal role wherever people depend on fragile ecosystems for survival and sustenance. Integrating trees into agricultural landscapes provides a number of environmental services, some of which are essential. Trees maintain soil health and regenerate land that has been cleared of natural vegetation. They provide nutritious foods for human consumption and fodder for livestock, as well as timber, fuelwood, gums, resins, latex, and medicinal substances.

Agroforestry is a system of natural resources management that integrates trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape to diversify and sustain production. Farmers throughout the world have practiced agroforestry for millennia. By World Bank estimates, over 1.2 billion people derive their livelihoods from agroforestry systems. Owing to its capacity to enhance multiple functions in agriculture, agroforestry will become increasingly important in land-use practices around the world (World Agroforestry Centre 2008).

Women’s knowledge of trees and of tree genetic diversity is extensive, and their roles as both suppliers and users of tree germplasm and genetic resources make them critical agents in scaling up agroforestry practices to improve livelihoods. This is knowledge that is all too often neglected.

Women are important to agroforestry, but agroforestry is also very important to them. Farm niches such as dairy fodder and domesticated indigenous fruit trees in home compounds are typically managed by women, and their engagement in these agroforestry activities provides them with access to the products of these activities.

T

GENDERED TREE TENURE AND ACCESS TO AND DISPOSAL OF AGROFORESTRY TREE PRODUCTS

In 1997 Rocheleau and Edmunds analyzed the gendered nature of resource use, access, control, and responsibility with

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respect to trees and forests. What emerged from their analysis was a picture of highly complex, often negotiable resource tenure regimes. Women’s rights remained substantial, although frequently tenuous and under pressure from a variety of changes in land use, family composition, and household structure (box 15.9). In some cases, evolving customary practices served to maintain women’s access to resources and warranted protecting, enhancing, or reconfiguring customary law into more robust, equitable statutory law and administrative procedures. Resource tenure was also clarified when researchers realized that even within seemingly unitary blocks of private household property, complex structures and processes governed how resources were divided and shared by gender. These complex, gendered systems of tree use, access, responsibility, and control require the attention of field workers, planners, and policy makers.

Interventions in community forestry management, farm forestry, and agroforestry frequently invest all access rights in a single “owner,” in part for the sake of project implementation simplicity and efficiency, in part on the assumption that such “owners” need exclusive rights to manage their land effectively. This is an erroneous assumption. The nested rights to trees and tree products within tenure domains need to be considered (box 15.10). Agroforestry and forestry projects and programs can better protect women’s access rights by allowing for multiple uses of specific spaces and resources by multiple users. These projects and programs can also prioritize renewable uses, such as the gathering of fruits and harvesting of fallen wood, prunings, coppiced wood, and leaf fodder, which do not preclude most other uses (Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997) Women’s rights are often negotiated and may, therefore, not be best served by formal titling of land, which often vests ownership in a single head of household.

Designers of agroforestry interventions should be prepared to disaggregate agroforestry products that are controlled by

Box 15.9 Ethiopia and Niger: Nested Rights to Trees and Tree Products in Gendered Tenure Regimes

Ethiopia: Gender Impacts of No-Free-Grazing Trial in Tigray

Niger: Gender and Customary Tenure in Agroforestry Parklands in Maradi

In the late 1990s a university department undertook an initiative to reduce soil erosion on arable land and to create vegetated soil conservation structures through controlled village-wide trials, which would require the animals that normally grazed on open land near villagersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; homesteads to be moved to the low hills surrounding the village. The impact on some of the households was unexpected. One widow had previously used dung from the animals she kept close to her house for cooking and repairing the walls of her compound.

Now she had to use the same dung as payment to a wealthier household near the hills where her cattle grazed at night. She was now also obliged to walk six kilometers a day to collect fuelwood from those hills.

No complete gender and wealth analysis of space, tenure, agricultural, and forest product access and use had been undertaken before the trial.

The village head allocates land to households periodically, and the allocations may change every 5 to 20 years or so. Changes depend on the needs of the village residents and on the number of households requesting to farm on land belonging to the village or village chief.

From the allocation, the head of household (usually men) then allocates a portion of that land, usually nearer the homestead, to his wife for the production of domestic food crops and other portions of land to the production of his crops. The wife has a right to plant trees on her portion of land, but then only the right to gather the fruits, leaves, and firewood as by-products, not to harvest the whole tree. She has no right to plant trees on her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land. She may, however, have access to certain tree products such as fuelwood or fruits from his land. If, during her married life, she has planted a fruit-bearing tree in the family compound or on her land, she has the right to harvest the fruits from those trees, even after divorce.

Source: Author.

men and by women. Attention to customary practices can also inform analysis of how men and women benefit from the products of the resources they use. Men often control and benefit from the products that women are responsible for producing. This is sometimes the case when women are involved in community reforestation projects, caring for nurseries and transplanting seedlings of trees that men ultimately use for poles. Project and policy interventions can make explicit reference to who disposes of tree products and can help women avoid situations in which their labor is exploited largely for the benefit of others.

GENDERED KNOWLEDGE AND HOME GARDENS IN THE SUBHUMID TROPICS OF SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Home gardening is a time-tested example of sustainable, multispecies, agroforestry land use practiced as a subset of farming systems, predominantly in lowland humid tropics.

Home gardens contain a vast number of plants, with which the members of the household constantly interact, conserving

biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and providing valuable public and private goods. With their ecological similarities to natural forest ecosystems, they provide insurance against pest and diseases outbreaks. They also provide a variety of goods and services that people may otherwise rely on forests for and thus serve as a buffer against pressures on natural forests.

Home gardens are a prominent form of land use in traditionally matrilineal societies such as Kerala, central Java, and west Sumatra. They have remained engines of growth over long periods in these highly populated lowlands. Their productivity is modest compared to intensive monocultures, but they are a far more diversified source of production and income. Planting and maintaining home gardens also reflect the culture and status of the household, and especially women, in local society. In many places women play a vital role in the design and management of these land-use systems.

Growing and harvesting vegetables, fruits, nuts, medicinal plants, and fuel, and rearing animals are often the domain of women, especially in smaller gardens. The possibility of gender equality for participating in garden management and sharing of benefits is perhaps one of the major stimuli for

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Box 15.10 Frequency of Trees on Women’s Fields in Agroforestry Parklands Trees located on women’s fields generally belong to the men who lend them the piece of land but who may, however, concede women the right of access to them. In central Mali women have the right to trim branches and gather fruit and deadwood without permission from the landowner. Women are also usually responsible for the processing and commercialization of parkland products. Tree protection is as common in women’s fields as it is in men’s.

In Thiogou in southern Burkino Faso, the density of naturally regenerating trees was found to be significantly higher in women’s fields, at 35 trees per hectare, than in the fields of men household heads, at 24 trees per hectare. Women in the area had long-term land loans. Various vegetables and spices as well as some cereals are grown in women’s fields, whereas family fields are more exclusively oriented toward staple cereal production. With fields of similar species richness but about onethird the size of fields managed by family heads, the number of tree species per unit was twice as high in women’s fields.

Source: FAO 1999.

continued household security enjoyed by home gardeners for generations. Nutritional security and income generation are other factors (Kumar and Nair 2004).

In Sri Lanka women played a key role in diversifying the food and nutritional base by using their knowledge of forestbased resources. Women’s home gardens are best described as “genetic gardens.” Women have made a significant contribution to the genetic improvement of crop plants and other economically important plants by a continuous selection process. They have also been responsible for domesticating food and medicinal plants that are now found in every home garden (FAO 1999).

However, with the transition of Sri Lankan agriculture from one based on home needs to one catering to markets, women have increasingly been relegated to unskilled work.

This is particularly true in the plantation crop sector.

Species losses from home gardens are said to be occurring at an unprecedented rate. In Kerala many local varieties of mango and jackfruit and other traditional horticultural crops that were once abundant in home gardens have now become extinct. In West Java 27 varieties of mango have

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been reported lost during a 60-year period. Although precise data are not available, the forest diversity of home gardens in most parts of the world appears to have declined.

The challenge is now to tie in conversion of the genetic wealth with the formation of economic wealth. The feminization of poverty will continue unabated if the role of women as managers of biological resources is ignored.

Women’s knowledge in, and conservation of, genetic material could assist in identifying and promoting species adaptability and domestication to face the challenges posed by the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

Trees act as reservoirs and potential sources of carbon. The role of tropical forest ecosystems in carbon storage and release is quantified in the global context and recognized in the regulation of atmospheric carbon. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon fixation from forest regeneration, intensified planting and agroforestry, and reduced deforestation could equal 12–15 percent of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels from 1995 to 2050. Unruh, Houghton, and Lefebvre (1993) estimated the amount of stored carbon in aboveground and underground biomass in 21 different agroforestry systems in subSahelian regions. They concluded that the environmental role of agroforestry in terms of retaining organic matter in the soil and reducing deforestation (and thereby reducing CO2 emissions) is more important than its straightforward effect of carbon sequestration (FAO 2002).

GENDER, AGROFORESTRY TECHNOLOGY ADAPTATION, AND ADOPTION

Studies are regularly made on the adoption, adaptation, and impact of introduced agroforestry practices. This section gives results of studies that have considered gender aspects to the adoption of agroforestry practices that have been designed and tested to address soil fertility (box 15.11).

Improved fallows and biomass transfer in Kenya and Zambia

In 1999 Franzel and others (2001) surveyed 108 farmers in Kenya and Zambia who had first planted improved fallows in 1994 and 1995 to assess their experiences in managing the technology. Over time, the farmers had managed to increase the land area devoted to fallows from an average of 0.04 to 0.07 hectare between first and third plantings. Neither tree planting nor cutting seemed to be a problem, and the improved fallow system as a whole required 11 percent less labor than a continuous unfertilized maize alternative.

Box 15.11 Agroforestry Technologies Developed to Enhance Soil Fertility

Throughout eastern and southern Africa, farmers cite soil fertility as an important constraint. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and its partners responded by undertaking research into agroforestryrelated options for soil fertility. Many agroforestry systems were tested, and the more promising systems have been tested in farmer-managed conditions.

Improved fallows are the enrichment of natural fallows with trees. In Kenya most farmers plant improved fallow trees into an existing crop, whereas in Zambia most farmers establish them in an uncultivated field. The dominant crop for which fallows are used is maize in Zambia and maize and beans in Kenya. In western Kenya farmers direct-seed or broadcast at high density one or more of several species; Crotalaria grahamiana and Tephrosia vogelii are the most

popular. In eastern Zambia, Sesbania, the preferred species, is established in a raised bed nursery and then transplanted to the target field. In both countries the tree fallows are cut and the leaves incorporated into the soil during land preparation.

Biomass transfer systems in Kenya involve the growing of trees or shrubs alongside boundaries or contours on farms—or the collection of the same from off-farm niches, such as roadsides—and applying the leaves on the field at planting time and sometimes later in the season. In western Kenya, Tithonia diversifolia became the farmers’ preferred species. This has been tested on maize, kale, French beans, and tomatoes. Given the small size of farms in Kenya, farmers generally utilize the green manure on smaller plots, often preferring those plots producing higher-value vegetables.

Source: Place and others 2002.

Cutting the fallows generally took less time than planting, could be done by women, and took place during a slack labor period. Analysis of the effects of the gender of household heads on household wealth in four pilot villages found little difference in the use of fallows between men and women; the percentages were 32 and 24 percent, respectively.

The use of fallows was higher among wealthier households, who appeared to lead the process of trial and adaptation.

Fifty-three percent of the wealthier farmers examined used improved fallows, compared to just 16 percent of the very poor households (Place and others 2002).

Two studies investigated the household characteristics associated with the use of biomass transfer among 747 farmers in the villages of Siaya and Vihiga in western Kenya. In Vihiga, 43 percent of the men-headed households examined continued to use the technology following extension services compared to just 14 percent of households in which the principal decision maker was a woman. Farming households that used biomass transfer were more likely to have a larger number of family members. The frequency of farmers’ contact with extension agents was also revealed to be a significant relationship, whereas age, education, and reliance on nonfarm activities were not related (Place and others 2002).

Improved fallows and biomass transfer have been available to farmers for only a few years. Place and his colleagues (2002) found improved fallow and biomass transfer systems

to be feasible and acceptable to farmers, at least at the modest levels at which they are initially used. Economic analysis also found the systems to be profitable to farmers in terms of return to land and labor. Unlike other soil fertility options, improved fallows and biomass transfer appear to be used by large numbers of women farmers. They are also used by poor households more than other agroforestry and soil fertility practices.

Agroforestry practices particularly adapted to farm niches managed by women

Some innovative agroforestry practices are adapted by women and customized to fit the farm niches and products over which they tend to have greater control. In the two examples in box 15.12, an estimated 60 percent of farmers using the technologies are women.

Gender and agroforestry germplasm supply

Improvement of livelihoods for smallholder farmers involves bringing more trees onto farms and into the agricultural landscape. This will require that efficient seed and seedling production and distribution systems reach larger numbers of scattered and relatively isolated small-scale farmers. A well-functioning seed system is one that combines

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Box 15.12 Women Are 60 Percent of Farmers Piloting Innovative Agroforestry Technologies

Gender and tree fodder production for small-scale zero grazing. The low quality and quantity of feed resources are major constraints to dairy farming in central Kenya, parts of Tanzania, and Uganda. In highland areas of Kenya, farm sizes average one or two hectares, and about 80 percent of households own one or two dairy cows. Most farmers grow Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) as fodder (cut and fed to the cows). Milk yields are low because Napier grass is low in protein.

Commercial dairy meal is available, but farmers consider it expensive and most do not use it. In the early 1990s the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) collaborated with the Kenya Forestry Research Institute and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute to test a number of fodder shrubs near the town of Embu. Most of the trials were farmer designed and managed. Calliandra calothyrsus emerged as the best-performing fodder shrub and the one most preferred by farmers. Farmers tested the feasibility of growing Calliandra in a range of â&#x20AC;&#x153;neglected nichesâ&#x20AC;? on their farms. They found the shrub could be successfully planted in hedges along internal and external boundaries, around the homestead, along contours for controlling soil erosion, or intercropped with Napier grass (Franzel and others 2004). Subsequent to additional project support, it was estimated that 86,450 farmers were planting fodder shrubs in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania (Franzel, 2005). About 60 percent of these farmers are women. In Kenya most dairy-related activities are undertaken by women, and studies suggest that they have some control over income derived from these activities. Cash income from a zero grazing enterprise was found to contribute to improved household economies, including payment of school fees and purchase of food and clothing. However, the control of increased income associated with this technology might change hands from women to men. Women will benefit more from commercial dairying under zero grazing if they are better educated and if they have more access to land for planting forages and fodder.

Access to credit will enable women to purchase improved dairy breeds and the feed supplements needed for a profitable dairy enterprise (Lauwo and

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others 2001). Other benefits of fodder trees and shrubs are the provision of bee forage, fuelwood, stakes and poles, fencing, and shade.

Gender and the domestication of indigenous fruits.

Many rural households rely on indigenous fruit trees as sources of cash and subsistence in the Southern African Development Community.

Using participatory research to examine domestication, product development, and commercialization, the ICRAF identified a number of priority tree species in each country, including Uapaca kirkiana, Strychnos cocculoides, Parinari curatellifolia, and Sclerocarya birrea.

The goal of domesticating these trees is to increase their quantity, availability, and productivity and to create opportunities for marketing their products. An impact analysis indicated that a robust domestication program will create incentives for farmer-led investment in the cultivation of indigenous fruit trees as an alternative to collecting wild fruit. In Zimbabwe the returns to labor by women and children in collecting wild fruits are two to three times greater than other farming activities. In a survey of roadside market vendors of the indigenous fruit Uapaca kirkiana in Dedze, Malawi, the majority of respondents were women or children under 19 years old, and all of them had harvested the fruits from forests and communal lands in areas outside their homesteads and fields (Kadzere and others 2006).

Fruits enable women and children to contribute to household income and to assist the household during seasonal periods of food insecurity. In the scaling-up component of this program, 60 percent of the 13,000 farmers reached were women. They were trained in domesticating and propagating trees, establishing nurseries, and managing farms. Indigenous fruit tree seedlings have been tested by farmers in four countries.

Akinnifesi and colleagues (2006) found that 86 percent of the planting sites in Malawi and 98 percent in Zambia were located on homesteads. Women were the principal managers of these sites and were likely to benefit the most from production. Women were the principal recipients of training in the local production of fruit concentrates, jam, juice, and other products in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (Ham and others 2008).

formal and informal, market and nonmarket channels to stimulate and efficiently meet farmers’ evolving demand for quality seeds. The Improved Seed Systems for Agroforestry in African Countries project in Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Uganda was introduced to facilitate access to tree germplasm by men and women farmers.1 The project entailed considerable analysis of the constraints and opportunities people experience in getting access to germplasm supply for agroforestry. A number of practical lessons from the project experience are discussed by Brandi-Hansen and others (2007): ■

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Centralized seed supply systems have not provided rural communities with agroforestry tree seed or with messages regarding the importance of seed quality or procedures for collecting quality seed.

NGOs may be providing agroforestry tree seed, but tree growing is often one among many activities undertaken by an NGO, and their provision of seeds tends to lack the rigor required to ensure quality and adequate returns to the farmers they supply. The majority of large NGOs do not provide accurate and precise information with regard to seed collection and handling. The focus tends to be on volume of seed handled, rather than on quality and site matching. NGOs would appear to have limited connections to most grassroots CBOs. NGOs tend to serve their own clientele, especially “their own” CBOs, and seldom engage with or build on the capacities and networks of existing CBOs. A few specialized and highly focused NGOs are providing lessons in quality seed procurement.

The great majority of persons surveyed who deal in tree seed are women, and members of CBOs that collect tree seed locally, growing trees for their own use.2 These women and their CBOs are not reached by any of the NGOs. Large multipurpose projects or NGOs are therefore not the most appropriate targets of information disseminated about quality seeds. Improved germplasm and information on how to use it should be disseminated directly to women’s CBOs, which lie at the heart of the sustainable tree seed supply network. Rural women should be placed at the center of any agroforestry tree seed supply system.

Establishing associations and networks of small-scale entrepreneurs is also recommended (Graudal and Lillesø 2007). Yet most such entrepreneurs are men, and focusing on them would likely lead to women being excluded from training opportunities. Youth, who often lack other

employment opportunities, also have a role to play in the seed supply system. However, the greatest leverage in terms of quality seed supply and the quality of trees planted on farmland will be in finding mechanisms to train and mobilize the efforts of CBOs, particularly women’s groups. These local grassroots institutions already exist.

LESSONS LEARNED AND GUIDELINES FOR PRACTITIONERS

The division of landscapes, farm niches, and products between men and women makes the issue of germplasm access and preference a deeply gendered one. Under the misconception that men are the principal, or only, decision makers with regard to tree planting, management, and use, the basis of women’s differentiated decision making is often not recognized in farmers’ trials and scaling-up activities.

Women require specific targeted information and training as well as access to credit and other services, adjusted to their particular landscape niches and agroforestry product needs. Gender analysis should therefore be considered as nothing less than an essential element of designing and planning agroforestry interventions and should be required periodically throughout the life of an intervention. Women’s roles in traditional complex agroforestry systems are acknowledged. Yet their knowledge and experience are not being adequately garnered by policies that will guide the future of traditional agroforestry systems. With the growing influence of the market economy, and the consequent focus on a narrow range of home garden species, a real risk exists that this gendered knowledge, and even certain plant species, will not be passed onto future generations. With regard to the development of innovative agroforestry practices, far greater efforts in considering the gender implications of these developments are required. Recruiting women farmers to participatory agroforestry practice groups, farmer-managed trials, and farmer field schools warrants strong priority. Numbers and categories of individual women and women’s CBOs who practice innovative agroforestry should be carefully documented, along with the adaptations they develop.

Agroforestry parklands are widespread throughout much of semiarid Africa. The variety of different types of agroforestry parklands reflects the dynamic nature of these systems and the ability of farmers to adapt them to changes in the natural and socioeconomic environment (FAO 1999). The importance of these parklands as a livelihood buffer and as a pool of forest genetic diversity has brought them to the attention of the policy makers and

THEMATIC NOTE 2: AGROFORESTRY LANDSCAPES: GENDERED SPACE, KNOWLEDGE, AND PRACTICE

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researchers in recent years. Research into biophysical interactions upon which parkland productivity is based can build on indigenous knowledge to provide management prescriptions more precisely attuned to the needs of different environments. Parkland agroforestry projects could focus on promoting practices and technologies that require minimal labor and capital investments to produce rapid returns, and on increasing opportunities involving parkland tree products (FAO 1999). The promotion of markets and improved processing for parkland products will encourage farmers to invest in the further development of their parkland systems. However, it has been reported that when products such as Vitellaria nuts have increased value as a cash crop, men have reduced women’s access to the resource. A similar trend resulting from the introduction of domesticated materials or improved processing technologies might develop to the detriment of women. Changes in tree tenure, therefore, need to be monitored and consequences anticipated (FAO 1999).

Finally, although formal credit may be a necessary step for women to adopt efficient forest-related technologies, insecurity of access to land resources currently limits availability to credit collateral. Building the capacity of existing social organizations such as women’s groups may be a way

of increasing women’s access to land resources (including agroforestry tree germplasm and products), making credit more affordable, improving access to markets, and making labor more efficient by task sharing within the groups.

This Note focuses on women practitioners of agroforestry, although the importance of women’s representation among professionals who engage in decision and policy making that relates to agroforestry at local, regional, and national levels should not be underestimated. Currently few women agroforestry field workers, scientists, and policy makers are available. Strategies to enhance gender-conscious implementation of agroforestry may be achieved through the following steps: ■

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Support to existing women’s groups active in agroforestry, including tree nursery groups, zero grazing and dairy fodder groups, indigenous fruits marketing groups, and horticulture associations Posting of more women frontline staff by the relevant ministries and partner NGOs More consciously gender-oriented research, outreach, and scaling-up strategies Greater educational opportunities for women in land law and agricultural and forest sciences (box 15.13).

Box 15.13 Examples of Gender Initiatives from Research and Education Institutions

In science and research: Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Gender and Diversity Program exists to help the CGIAR Centers leverage their rich staff diversity to increase research and management excellence. The program also has a mentoring and sponsorship program (including a Women’s Post Doctoral Fellowship program at the World Agroforestry Centre) and is promoting the education and career of women agricultural scientists.

In education and institutional capacity building: Crucial among the strategies of the Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Enseñanza’s (CATIE’s) gender policy are the following:

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■

■

■

■

■

■

Integrating gender aspects in the design and implementation of research proposals Including women farmers in all phases of the outreach strategy Steadily increasing the number of women professionals Promoting and facilitating the participation of women in graduate education Advancing the understanding of gender among students (graduates and courses) Developing understanding and implementation of gender focus by CATIE’s staff Improving CATIE’s role in the exchange of knowledge, experience, and expertise.

Sources: Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Enseñanza, “Gender Policy,” www.catie.ac.cr; World Agroforestry Centre 2008: 45.

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I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park Enterprise Development Project: Protected Areas and Ecotourism

“

rotected areas (PAs) are specific and unique natural habitats, where human encroachment is restricted in order to preserve biodiversity for present and future generations. In many protected areas around the world, however, people with legitimate or historical land ownership rights live within the established boundaries.

Women’s and men’s relationships with the environment in the protected areas and their buffer zones, in the context of their respective gender roles, are crucial for the very survival of these natural habitats. . . . Women and men have very different approaches to managing the environment: addressing these concrete differences will make people’s relationship with the environment more sustainable” (IUCN 2003b: 1).

The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) covers 32,092 hectares in southwest Uganda. Its rare afromontane vegetation provides one of the richest habitats for birds, butterflies, trees, and mammals in East Africa. Its mammal populations include chimpanzees and more than half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas—more than 300 individuals. Sections of BNIP have been protected since 1932, and the national park itself was established in 1991. Because of BINP’s rare and wide biodiversity, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization accorded it the status of World Heritage Site in 1994.

P

What’s innovative? The project collected genderdisaggregated baseline data, which were incorporated in its design, monitoring, and evaluation.

Gender analysis and gender-sensitive framework and criteria were adopted in its microenterprise development component to ensure that priorities of women and other disadvantaged groups were properly taken into account. Women field staff and women entrepreneurs were hired as mentors to encourage more effective women’s participation in the project.

Next to the protected area of the BINP are multiple-use zones in 13 of the 21 parishes (some 18 percent of the park area). However, less than 10 percent of the population of these parishes holds licenses to harvest honey, weaving materials, and medical products from the multiple-use zones. Based on the existing harvesting quotas of natural resources, multipleuse zones have limited scope for enterprise development, even among current license holders.

Community-Based Enterprises for the Conservation of Biodiversity at Bwindi World Heritage Site in Uganda was a project carried out by the Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust Fund from 2001 to 2004. The project was funded by the United Nations Foundation and FAO. It was intended to demonstrate that community-based tree and forest product enterprises can contribute to both poverty alleviation and the conservation of biodiversity.

The project included gender disaggregation of baseline data. During the participatory appraisal, particular attention was devoted to identifying women-headed households and to reviewing educational levels and household livelihood strategies. This included sampling women’s and men’s daily time profiles. Focus group discussion examined differentials in education, access to training and employment, and access to information and communication. The project also examined management of savings and credit funds by women’s groups and identified women entrepreneurs, who were purposefully included in project activities.

FAO’S MARKETING ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

The project employed the Market Analysis and Development approach developed by FAO.1 This is a step-by-step iterative process that provides forest community members with the capacity to identify and develop viable and successful tree and forest product enterprises and to manage them independently.

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The initial idea of the project was to use Market Analysis and Development to improve local livelihoods through the development of income-generating tree and forest enterprises, while protecting those resources. This idea proved to have limitations from the outset of the project because participating communities enjoyed only very restricted access to the park. The project, therefore, had to shift its focus away from “giving value to the forest—and thus protecting it—by using its resources” and toward finding options for reducing pressure on the park (FAO 2006a: 29). These included using products that depend on the biodiversity in the park but that do not come out of the park itself.

During the first two years of the project various products and services were identified, including community-based tourism, support to a local campground, handicrafts, beekeeping, and enterprises dealing with passion fruit, avocados, and mushrooms. Through these enterprises a significant proportion of the local community was able to participate in enterprises that were linked to the conservation of natural resources within the park.

Box 15.14 Other Features of the Project’s Gender Strategy ■

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■

■

■

GENDER STRATEGY

During the participatory appraisal undertaken in preparation for the project, particular attention was devoted to identifying women-headed households and the livelihood strategies they employed. Planners reviewed education levels and used focus group discussions to examine differentials in education, and access to training, employment, and information and communication. They also examined the management of savings and credit funds by women’s groups. Women entrepreneurs were identified and included in project activities.

A gender strategy was developed to ensure that benefits are equitably shared and that those people with the least access to education, training, and information were provided with opportunities to participate in the project. Hiring women as field staff was deemed crucial to maintaining balanced gender participation. Planners developed a framework and criteria for microenterprise development to ensure that the priorities of women and other disadvantaged groups were properly taken into account, and they applied during the life of the project.

Planners promoted the sustainability of the income from enterprises by building individuals’ entrepreneurial capacity through a process that involved the local population in action research and participatory data gathering and analysis. Business literacy and enterprise development stressed negotiating skills. Results of the initial phase of the project indicated that the success of business endeavors undertaken

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Gender disaggregation of project background and baseline data.

Special attention in the participatory appraisal to identify women-headed households and to review educational levels and household livelihood strategies, including sampling of women’s and men’s daily time profiles.

Focus group discussion examining education differentials, access to training and employment, access to information and communication, and the structure of women’s groups’ management of savings and credit funds.

Recording of numbers of women’s enterprises, women-headed households, women’s saving and credit groups, and women’s forest user societies, and development of indicators for monitoring and evaluating the participation of women and disadvantaged groups.

Identification and inclusion of women entrepreneurs in project activities (for example, as mentors to women’s enterprises and making presentations to encourage role modeling).

Source: FAO 2006a.

by women entrepreneurs depended on the support of the entire household. The project strived for gender balance rather than focusing exclusively on women or men and took steps to ensure that women and disadvantaged groups were not excluded from extension, marketing, credit, and other activities (box 15.14).

Gender analysis was used as a tool during the initial survey of potential economic opportunities. Both men and women developed criteria; they then decided which enterprise to adopt. When community members were assessing enterprises, the gender strategy ensured that the poorest groups and women participated in the final selection. It was also necessary, however, to involve more educated and experienced community members to promote trade linkages and ensure the proper accounting of finances.

THE BUHOMA VILLAGE WALK: COMMUNITY-BASED ECOTOURISM

The Buhoma village walk was one of the initial community enterprises identified as a result of applying FAO’s Market

Analysis and Development approach and the project’s gender strategy. In total the enterprise development project worked with 304 entrepreneurs in a range of start-up businesses; 179 of these entrepreneurs were women, and 125 were men.

The Buhoma village walk starts and ends at the Buhoma Community Rest Camp located at the entrance of BNIP. It passes through a typical African village with traditional rural homesteads. The sites along the walk include a local women’s handicraft center for a 15-minute craft-making demonstration, a waterfall, tea plantations, a local traditional medicine healer, a school, bird watching in a community woodlot, Batwa (pygmy) music and performance, and brewing facilities for banana beer and a local gin called waragi. The walk lasts approximately three hours. The enterprise is made up of eight guides from the local community and a representative for each of the households that manage sites along the route. It is registered under the Buhoma Community Rest Camp Association (BCRCA) of Mukono parish, Kanungu district. The Culture and Tourism Development Committee of the BCRCA supervises its activities.

The income earned is shared according to a breakdown that was agreed among all the stakeholders (FAO 2006b).

The aim was to attract an average of five tourist a day (half the people who visit the park), who would pay $7.50 each.

The monthly sales target was $750. Promotional strategies included developing a brochure about the walk, listing the walk as one of Bwindi’s tourist activities in the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) brochure, and marketing the walk by guides at local tourist lodges. The enterprise received 2,295 visitors between January 2003 and August 2005. In 2004 the village walk generated an extra $27 per month for each guide, $17 per month for each site owner, and $74 per month for the 11 Batwa households (45 households) that managed the sites.

This represents significant earnings for people who did not have any access to cash income before, such as the Batwa.

Each site owner contributed $1.70 for trail maintenance every month, which was carried out by Batwa community members. All the site owners inspected the trail every fifth day of the month, when there is a general meeting. Site owners have formed a small committee to oversee maintenance of the walk. The village walk guides attend regular training and briefings with UWA rangers. A good working relationship exists among UWA, the community, and the guides.

LESSONS LEARNED AND ISSUES FOR WIDER APPLICABILITY

The project resulted in the establishment of 13 enterprise groups. For each enterprise group, a business plan was

developed, technical and entrepreneur capacities were improved, and pilot enterprise activities are up and running.

The Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust Fund is committed to continue giving support to these enterprises, together with a number of local service providers linked with the specific enterprise groups. Some of the enterprises and value-adding technologies that emerged during product selection were of particular interest to women. Yet the support and involvement of the men in their households were found to be critical by the project staff. The design and timing of the training workshops took into account the availability of both men and women.

Gender balance was actively sought in market study tours and other enterprise-related activities. All monitoring information was disaggregated by gender so that the impacts of the project for both men and women could be evaluated.

The project gave clear indications of the types of strategies necessary to ensure the full participation of women and men (FAO 2006a). There was a common consensus among the stakeholders in the project area that focusing on women yielded better results. The overall attendance and participation of women in workshops was at least 40 percent.

A gender-equitable perspective in the sustained management of protected areas enables practitioners to recognize the following (see also box 15.15): ■

Communities are not homogeneous—consultation with a variety of stakeholders is necessary.

Box 15.15 Maximizing Conservation in Protected Areas: Guidelines for Gender Conservation Conflicts between community interests and conservation interventions in protected areas are common but not inevitable. Research shows that access to education and training can reduce such conflicts. A gender-equitable perspective additionally asks if both women and men are in a position to participate actively. The poor, who are often women, need education to develop their capacity to manage the environmental resources of protected areas in ways that are sustainable for them and the environment. To invest in the environment is to invest in people.

Source: IUCN 2003b.

INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY PROFILE 1: BWINDI IMPENETRABLE NATIONAL PARK ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

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■

■

Men and women use and manage different natural resources in protected areas differently.

The different interests, knowledge, and behavior of women, men, and children have important ramifications for conservation initiatives.

Strategies to include and facilitate women in extension, entrepreneurial, managerial, and decision-making roles will enhance the sustainability of protected area management initiatives.

NOTES Overview

This Overview was written by Christine Holding Anyonge and Natalie Hufnagl (Consultants), with inputs from Sophie Grouwels, Simmone Rose, and Dieter Schoene (FAO) and Katuscia Fara (IFAD); and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); Deborah Rubin (Cultural Practice); Dan Rugabira (FAO); Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Diji Chandrasekharan Behr and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. See also Food and Agriculture Organization, “Gender Analysis and Forestry Training Package,” www.fao.org/ forestry/foris/pdf/gender/tr-e01/tr-e01.0.pdf.

2. SAFE: The Interagency Standing Committee Task Force on Safe Access to Firewood and Alternative Energy in Humanitarian Settings, Coordinated by the UN Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.

3. This contrasts with the European report, which states that “the relatively low level of female representation—both in terms of critical mass and levels of seniority/professional roles—is in stark contrast to the feedback from responding countries that gender/equality is perceived as an important issue in society, [and furthermore] an ‘issue’ within the forest industries of the respective reporting countries” (FAO 2006b: 11–12).

4. Program on Forests, “Poverty and Forestry Linkages: A Synthesis of Six Case Studies,” www.profor.info.

Thematic Note 1

This Thematic Note was written by Christine Holding Anyonge (Consultant), with inputs from Chitra Deshpande and Alessandro Spairani (Consultants), Maria Hartl (IFAD), and Sophie Grouwels and Miguel Trossero (FAO); and reviewed by Catherine Ragasa and Deborah Rubin (Consultants); Simmone Rose and Dan Rugabira (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Ilaria Firmian, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Diji Chandrasekharan Behr and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

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1. NWFPs consist of goods of biological origin other than wood, as well as services derived from forests and allied land uses (FAO 1995). NTFPs are nontimber forest products (including wood not sold as timber, such as fuel wood/ wood energy and wood-carving materials).

2. The miombo woodlands, recognized for their floristic richness and widespread occurrence of the genera Brachystegia, Julbernadia, Isoberlinia, and their associates (Malaisse 1978), form the dominant natural woodland type in southern Africa. They extend across about 2.7 million square kilometers of the African subhumid tropical zone from Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo in the north, through Zambia, Malawi, and eastern Angola, to Mozambique and Zimbabwe. It is estimated that over 75 million people live within the miombo biome and that the woodlands directly support the livelihood of over 40 million people in this African region (Bradley and McNamara 1993; Dewees 1994).

3. FAO, “Regional Wood Energy Development Programme in Asia,” Expert consultation in Gender and Wood Energy, http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/energy/HC270799/RWEDP/rm 22.html.

4. FAO (2006).

5. Thematic Note 4 on Gender, Self-Help Groups, and Farmers’ Organisations (Module 2) refers to six types and functions of women’s groups in the agricultural sector: producers’ associations and cooperatives, self-help groups, rotating savings and credit associations, women’s subgroups in village development associations, women’s groups in watershed management associations, agricultural extension field schools, or farmer research groups. Terms used in other texts are “farmer’s professional associations,” “community development fund management organizations,” “forest products processing associations,” and “agroforestry nursery entrepreneurs.” In the context of this Note, the natures of the women’s groups to which we are referring are those focused on collective action in relation to their livelihoods and forest resources and may therefore be a range of these alternatives, including self-help groups and village development associations.

For the purposes of this Note, we will use the collective term community-based organizations.

6. FAO marketing analysis and development methodology, IFAD program support to Phytotrade, and INBAR bamboo and rattan field projects. See Elsie Yang and Yangjing Sucuiwei, “A Gender Assessment Study on Bamboo-Based Rural Development and Utilization Activities—A Case Study in Yunnan, China,” Working Paper 53, International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, www.inbar. int/publication/txt/ INBAR_Working_Paper_No53.htm.

Thematic Note 2

This Thematic Note was written by Christine Holding Anyonge (Consultant), with inputs from Festus Akinnifesi,

Aichi Kitalyi, and Jens-Peter Barkenow Lilleso (ICRAF); and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Catherine Ragasa, and Deborah Rubin (Consultants); Michelle Gauthier, Sophie Grouwels, and Simmone Rose (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Diji Chandrasekharan Behr and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. This is a collaboration between DANIDA Forest Seed Centre (now part of Forest and Landscape Denmark) and ICRAF, World Agroforestry Centre, and National Tree Seed Organisations in Burkino Faso, Malawi, and Uganda.

2. In the Uganda study, 602 CBOs were identified, of which most were women’s groups, with an average number of 30 members. Some had a small number of men as members. In other words, this survey recorded in two districts of Uganda about 18,000 women as being active in tree seed systems.

Most CBOs (82 percent) had no direct affiliation with any organizations, such as NGOs, but nevertheless demonstrated a remarkable level of activity (Brandi-Hansen and others 2007).

Innovative Activity Profile 1

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Christine Holding Anyonge, with inputs from Sophie Grouwels (FAO); and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande, Catherine Ragasa, and Deborah Rubin (Consultants); Simmone Rose and Dan Rugabira (FAO); Katuscia Fara, Ilaria Firmian, Maria Hartl, and Sheila Mwanundu (IFAD); and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. FAO’s Market Analysis and Development approach: www.fao.org/forestry/site/enterprises/en.

REFERENCES

———. 2007b. “Mainstreaming Gender in Forestry in Africa.” Regional report, FAO, Rome.

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Shackleton, Sheona, Sarah Kaschula, Wayne Twine, Lori Hunter, Christine Holding Anyonge, and Lisa Petheram.

2006. “Forests as Safety Nets for Mitigating the Impacts of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.” Forests and Livelihoods Brief No. 4, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.

United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

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Human Development Report 2005. New York: UNDP. World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). 2008. Transforming Lives and Landscapes: The World Agroforestry Centre Strategy, 2008–2015. Nairobi: ICRAF. World Bank. 2002. Sustaining Forests: A Development Strategy.

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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1999. “Sri Lankan Women and Men as Bioresource Managers.” RAP Publication 1999/45, Gender and Bioresources research team of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Sri Lanka.

———. 2005a. Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2005. Rome: FAO. ______. 2005b. “Miombo Woodlands and HIV/AIDS Interactions: Malawi Country Report.” Forest Policy and Institutions Working Paper No. 6, FAO, Rome.

———. 2006a. Better Forestry, Less Poverty: A Practitioner’s Guide. FAO Forestry Paper 149. Rome: FAO. ———. 2006b. “Time for Action: Changing the Gender Situation in Forestry.” Report of the UNECE/FAO team of specialists on Gender and Forestry, FAO, Rome.

———. 2007a. State of the World’s Forests (SOFO). Rome: FAO.

Thematic Note 1

Bradley, P. N., and K. McNamara, eds. 1993. "Living with Trees: Policies for Forest Management in Zimbabwe."

World Bank Technical Paper No. 210, World Bank, Washington, DC. Chunquian, Jiang. 2005. “Forests of Huoshan County: A Path towards Poverty Alleviation.” In In Search of Excellence.

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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1995. “NonWood Forest Products for Rural Income and Sustainable Forestry.” Non-Wood Forest Products publication series No. 7, FAO, Rome.

———. 2002. “HIV/AIDS and the Forest Sector.” Extension Information Leaflet, FAO, Forest Department, Rome.

———. 2006. “Non-Wood Forest Product CommunityBased Enterprise Development: A Way for Livelihood Improvement in Lao People’s Democratic Republic.”

Forestry Policy and Institutions Working Paper Series No. 16, FAO, Rome.

———. 2007. “Mainstreaming Gender in Forestry in Africa.” Regional report, FAO, Rome.

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———. 2005. “Forests and Armed Conflict.” Editorial in ETFRN News 43/44: Forests and Conflicts, 5–6. Wageningen: ETFRN. Also available at www.etfrn.org.

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Malaisse, F. 1978. "The Miombo Ecosystem." In "Tropical Forest Ecosystems." United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization/United Nations Environment Programme/Food and Agriculture Organization Report, Paris.

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Poor. A Field Study of 15 Forest Villages in India.” Proceedings of REFOFTC 2007, Poverty Reduction and Forests: Tenure, Markets and Policy Reforms, Bangkok, September 3–7, http://recoftc.org/site/index.php?id=445.

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Thematic Note 2

Akinnifesi, Festus K., Freddie Kwesiga, Jarret Mhango, Thomson Chilanga, Alfred Mkonda, Caroline A. C. Kadu, Irene Kadzere, Dagmar Mithofer, John D. K. Saka, Gudeta Sileshi, Tunu Ramadhani, and Patient Dhliwayo.

2006. “Towards the Development of Miombo Fruit Trees as Commercial Tree Crops in Southern Africa.” Forests, Trees and Livelihoods 16: 103–21.

Brandi-Hansen, E., Jens-Peter Barnekow Lillesø, S. Moestrup, and J. K. Kisera. 2007. “Do Organisations Provide Quality Seed to Smallholders? A Study on Tree Planting in Uganda, by NGOs and CBOs.” Development

and Environment No. 8-2007, Forest and Landscape Denmark, Copenhagen.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1999. “Agroforestry Parklands in Sub-Saharan Africa.” FAO Conservation Guide No. 34, FAO, Rome.

———. 2002. “Trees outside Forests—Towards Better Awareness.” FAO Conservation Guide No. 35, FAO, Rome.

Franzel, Steven. 2005. “The Adoption and Impact of Fodder Shrubs in East Africa. 3rd External Programme and Management Review.” World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya.

Franzel, Steven, Glenn L. Denning, Jens-Peter Barnekow Lillesø, and Agustin. R Mercado, Jr. 2004. “Scaling Up the Impact of Agroforestry: Lessons from Three Sites in Africa and Asia.” Agroforestry Systems 61: 329–44.

Franzel, Steven, S. J. Scherr, R. Coe, P. Cooper, and Frank Place. 2001. “Assessing the Adoption Potential of Agroforestry Practices: ICRAF’s Experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Agricultural Systems 69 (1–2): 37–62.

Graudal, Lars, and Jens-Peter Barnekow Lillesø. 2007.

“Experiences and Future Prospects for Tree Seed Supply in Agricultural Development Support-Based on Lessons Learnt in DANIDA Supported Programmes 1965–2005.”

Working Paper, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Copenhagen.

Ham, Cori, Festus K. Akinnifesi, Steven Franzel, D. du P. S. Jordaan, Chris Hansmann, and Caroline de Kock.

2008. “Opportunities for Commercialization and Enterprise Development of Indigenous Fruits in Southern Africa.” In Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization, ed. Festus K. Akinnifesi, Roger R. B. Leakey, Oluyede Ajayi, Gudeta Sileshi, Zac Tchoundjeu, Patrick Matakala, and Freddie R. Kwesiga, 254–72. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre; Wallingford, U.K.: CAB International Publishing.

Kadzere, Irene, Christopher B. Watkins, Ian A. Merwin, Festus K. Akinnifesi, John D. K. Daka, and Jarret Mhango.

2006. “Harvesting and Post-Harvesting Handling Practices and Characteristics of Uapaca kirkiana (Muell. Agr.) Fruits: A Survey of Roadside Markets in Malawi.” Agroforestry Systems 68 (2): 133–42.

Kumar, B. Mohan, and P. K. Ramachandran Nair. 2004. “The Enigma of Tropical Home Gardens.” Agroforestry Systems 61: 135–52.

Lauwo, Apsama, William Mwebembezi, Karwitha Kiugu, and Aichi Kitalyi. 2001. “Is Dairy Zero Grazing as an Enterprise in Smallholder Unit Economical? Experiences in East Africa.” RELMA (Regional Land Management Unit) working paper, Nairobi.

Place, Frank, Steven Franzel, Judith DeWolf, Ralph Rommelse, Freddie Kwesiga, Amadou Niang, and Bashir

Jama. 2002. “Agroforestry for Soil Fertility Replenishment: Evidence on Adoption Processes in Kenya and Zambia.” In Natural Resources Management in African Agriculture, ed. Christopher. B. Barrett, Frank Place, and Abdillahi. A. Aboud, chapter 12. London: CAB International.

Rocheleau, Dianne, and David Edmunds. 1997. “Women, Men and Trees: Gender, Power and Property in Forest and Agrarian Landscapes.” World Development 25 (8): 1351–71.

Unruh, Jon D., Richard A. Houghton, and Paul A. Lefebvre.

1993. “Carbon Storage in Agroforestry: An Estimate for sub-Saharan Africa.” Climate Research 3: 39–52.

World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). 2008. Transforming Lives and Landscapes, The World Agroforestry Centre Strategy, 2008–2015 Nairobi: ICRAF. Innovative Activity Profile 1

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2006a. “Community Based Enterprise Development for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Bwindi World Heritage Site, Uganda.” Forestry Policy and Institutions Working Paper No. 11, FAO, Rome.

———. 2006b. “Community Based Tourism: Income Generation and Conservation in Bwindi World Heritage Site, Uganda the Buhoma Village Walk Case Study.” Forestry Policy and Institutions Working Paper No. 12, FAO, Rome.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

2003a. Gender Matters. Multimedia video.

———. 2003b. “Maximising Conservation in Protected Areas: Guidelines for Gender Consideration.” Policy Brief, IUCN-ORMA, San José, Costa Rica.

FURTHER READING Overview

Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Enseñanza/FAO (CATIE/FAO). 2007a. “Towards an Enabling Environment for Small and Medium Forest Enterprise Development.” Policy brief. Turrialba, Costa Rica: CATIE; Rome: FAO. ———. 2007b. State of the World Forests. Rome: FAO. Available at www.fao.org/forestry/sofo/en.

Lambrou, Yianna, and Grazia Piana. 2006. “Gender: The Missing Component of the Response to Climate Change.” Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Nair, P. K. Ramchandran, M. R. Rao, and Louise E. Buck, eds.

2004. New Vistas in Agroforestry. A Compendium for the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry, 2004. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

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Swedish University of Agricultural Science. 2006. Gender and Forestry. Proceedings of a seminar on Gender and Forestry and IUFRO (Global Network for Forest Science Cooperation) 6.08.01 workshop, Umea, Sweden, June 17–21.

UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). 2006. “Background Paper for the Workshop on Reducing Emission from Deforestation in Developing Countries.” Working Paper 1 (a), August 17.

World Bank. 2007. The World Bank Forest Strategy: Review of Implementation. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Web sites FAO Forestry: www.fao.org/forestry/en.

FAO Forestry and Climate Change: www.fao.org/forestry/ site/35955/en.

FAO Gender and Development Plan of Action 2002–2007: ftp://ftp.fao.org/sd/GADPoA-Factsheet-EN-Final.doc.

FAO Gender and Food Security (Forestry): www.fao.org/ GEnder/en/fore-e.htm.

International Fund for Agricultural Development Environment and Natural Resource Management: “Rural Poverty Knowledge Base—A Learning Note”: www.ifad.org/ rural/learningnotes/pat/4.htm.

PROFOR (World Bank Programme for Forests): www.pro for.info/content/livelihood_poverty.html.

World Bank Forestry, key topics: http://web.worldbank. org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTARD/EXTFORES TS/0,,contentMDK:20628545~menuPK:1605788~ pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:985785,00.html.

World Bank Gender and Rural Development Groups Community of Practice: http://web.worldbank.org/ WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTARD/0,,contentMDK: 20445312~menuPK:336688~pagePK:148956~piPK:21 6618~theSitePK:336682,00.html.

Thematic Note 1

General Durst, Patrick B., Chris Brown, Henrylito D. Tacio, and Miyuki Ishikawa, eds. 2005. “In Search of Excellence. Exemplary Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific.” RAP Publication 2005/02, Asia Pacific Forestry Commission, Bangkok.

Feldstein, Hilary S., and Janice Jiggins, eds. 1994. Tools for the Field: Methodologies Handbook for Gender Analysis in Agriculture. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2007. State of the Worlds Forests. Rome: FAO. Forests and poverty alleviation Baumann, Pari. 2006. “Forestry-Poverty Linkages in West and Central Asia: The Outlook from a Sustainable Livelihoods

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Perspective.” FAO Livelihood Support Programme Working Paper 34, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2006. “Better Forestry, Less Poverty: A Practitioner’s Guide.” FAO Forestry Paper 149, FAO, Rome.

———. 2006. “Methodology and Case Studies on Linkages Between Poverty and Forestry: Afghanistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.” FAO Livelihoods Support Programme Working Paper 35, Access to Natural Resources Subprogramme, FAO, Rome.

PROFOR (Program on Forests). n.d. Forests-Poverty Linkages Toolkit. PROFOR www.profor.info/content/livelihood_poverty.html.

Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific. 2007. “Poverty Reduction and Forests.

Tenure, Markets and Policy Reforms.” Proceedings of Conference, Bangkok, September 3–7, http://recoftc.org/ site/index.php?id=445.

Shepherd, Gill. 2006. “A Quick New Way of Assessing the Forest Dependence of the Poor: The PROFOR Forests— Poverty Toolkit.” Developed by ODI, IUCN, CIFOR, and Winrock In Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC). 2007. “Poverty Reduction and Forests. Tenure, Markets and Policy Reforms.” Proceedings of Conference, Bangkok, September 3–7, http://recoftc.org/site/index.php?id=445.

Forests, gender, and livelihoods Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1989. “Household Food Security and Forestry: An Analysis of SocioEconomic Issues.” FAO Technical Report, FAO, Rome.

———. 1990. “The Major Significance of ‘Minor’ Forest Products: The Local Use and Value of Forests in the West African Humid Forest Zone.” Community Forestry Note 6, FAO, Rome.

Wilde, Vicki, and Arja Vaino-Mattila. 1995. Gender Analysis and Forestry. International Training Package. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Forests and HIV and AIDS Barany, Marc, Christine Holding-Anyonge, Dennis Kayambazinthu, and Almeida Sitoe. 2005. “Firewood, Food and Medicine: Interactions between Forests, Vulnerability and Rural Responses to HIV/AIDs.” In Proceedings from the IFPRI Conference: HIV/AIDS and Food and Nutrition Security, Durban, South Africa, April 14–16.

European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN).

2005. “HIV/AIDS and National Forest Programmes.”

ETFRN News 41–42 (autumn 2004): 40–42. Wageningen: ETFRN.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2005. “Miombo Woodlands and HIV/AIDS Interactions—Mozambique Country Report.” Forest Policy and Institutions Working Paper No. 2, FAO, Rome.

Forests and conflicts European Tropical Forest Research Network. 2007. “Forests and Conflicts.” ETFRN News 43/44, www.etfrn.org/ ETFRN/sdfc/background/newsletter_articles.htm.

Forests, social learning, and adaptive collaborative management Buck, Louise, Eva Wollenberg, and David Edmunds. 2001.

“Social Learning in the Collaborative Management of Community Forests: Lesson from the Field.” In Social Learning in Community Forests, ed. Eva Wollenberg, David Edmunds, Louise E. Buck, Jeff Fox, and Sonja Brodt. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Herline Hartanto, Ma, Cristina Lorenzo, Cecil Valmores, Lani Arda-Minas, Erlinda M. Burton, and Ravi Prabu. 2003.

Learning Together: Responding to Change and Complexity to Improve Community Forests in the Philippines. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR. Wollenberg, Eva, David Edmunds, Louise E. Buck, Jeff Fox, and Sonja Brodt. 2001. Social Learning in Community Forests. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR. Forests, wood energy, and poverty Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1990. “Guidelines for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating Cook Stove Programmes.” Community Forestry Field Manual 1, FAO, Rome.

———. 2005. “WISDOM—East Africa. Wood fuel Integrated Supply/Demand Overview Mapping (WISDOM) Methodology. Spatial Wood Fuel Production and Consumption Analysis of Selected African Countries.”

Consultant Report, Forestry Department, Wood Energy, FAO, Rome.

———. 2007. “Wood Energy Supply/Demand Scenarios in the Context of Poverty Mapping. A WISDOM Case Study in Southeast Asia for the Years 2000 and 2015.”

Environment and Natural Resources Working Paper No. 27, FAO, Rome.

NWFP/NTFPS, livelihoods, and poverty Neumann, Roderick P., and Eric Hirsch. 2000. “Commercialisation of Non-Timber Forest Products: Review and Analysis of Research.” Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Townson, Ian M. 2005. “Forest Products and Household Incomes. A Review and Annotated Bibliography.” Oxford

Forestry Institute. Tropical Forestry Papers 31, CIFOR and OFI, Oxford, U.K. Wollenberg, Eva, and Andrew Ingles, eds. 1999. “Incomes from the Forest: Methods for the Development and Conservation for Forest Products for Local Communities.”

Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR.

Thematic Note 2

Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Enseñanza (CATIE). n.d. “Environmental Services in Coffee in Central America, East Africa and India.” Available at www.catie.ac.cr.

Dawson, Ian, and James Were. 1997. “Collecting Germplasm from Trees—Some Guidelines.” Agroforestry Today 9 (2): 6–9.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1999. “Sri Lankan Women and Men as Bioresource Managers.” RAP Publication 1999/45, FAO, Bangkok.

Franzel, Steven, Peter Cooper, Glenn Denning, and Deborah Eade, eds. 2002. Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research. Oxford: Oxfam.

Gladwin, Christina H., Jennifer S. Peterson, Donald Phiri, Robert Uttaro, and Deirdre Williams. 2002. “Agroforestry Adoption Decisions, Structural Adjustment, and Gender in Africa.” In Natural Resource Management in African Agriculture: Understanding and Improving Current Practices, ed. Christopher B. Barrett, Frank Place, and Abdillahi A. Aboud. London: CAB International.

Kindt Roeland, Jens-Peter Barnekow Lillesø, Anne Mbora, Jonathan Muriuki, Charles Wambugu, Will Frost, Jan Beniest, Anand Aithal, Janet Awimbo, Sheila Rao, and Christine Holding-Anyonge. 2006. Tree Seeds for Farmers: a Toolkit and Reference Source. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

Kitalyi, Aichi, David M. Miano, Sandra Mwebaze, and Charles Wambugu. 2005. “More Forage, More Milk. Forage Production for Small-scale Zero Grazing Systems.”

RELMA Technical Handbook 33, Nairobi.

Mercer, D. Evan. 2004. “Adoption of Agroforestry Innovations in the Tropics: A Review.” Agroforestry Systems 61: 311–28.

Nair, P. K. Ramchandran, M. R. Rao, and Louise E. Buck, eds. 2004. New Vistas in Agroforestry. A Compendium for the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Padmanabhan, Marina Aruna. 2005. “Institutional Innovations Towards Gender Equity in Agrobiodiversity Management: Collective Action in Kerala, South India.” CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRI) Working Paper

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No. 39, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. Verchot, Louis V., Meine Van Noordwijk, Serigne Kandji, Tom Tomich, Chin Ong, Alain Albrecht, Jens Mackensen, Cynthia Bantilan, K. V. Anupama, and Cheryl Palm.

2007. “Climate Change: Linking Adaptation and Mitigation through Agroforestry.” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 12 (5): 901–18.

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Web sites Trees, Agroforestry and Climate Change in Dryland Africa (TACCDA), Hyytiala, Finland, June 30–July 4, 2003: www.etfrn.org/etfrn/workshop/degradedlands/docu ments/TACsynthol5d.pdf.

World Agroforestry Centre and Climate Change: www. worldagroforestry.org/es/climate_change.asp.

MODULE 16

Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation Overview

ommon sense tells us that if we do not consciously attempt to measure our progress in life, we will not know whether we have achieved our planned impact—in other words, “what gets measured, gets managed.” Given the enormous amounts of money invested in agricultural and rural development by national governments and international donors, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are accepted as important steps for assessing progress toward specific outcomes and for measuring impact. Although gender and social equity are commonly discussed priorities in agricultural and rural development, little progress has been made in measuring outcomes in these areas. This Module aims to address gender concerns in designing agricultural and rural development projects and to provide ideas for improving the M&E of outcomes and impacts. It addresses the question, “How will my agriculture projects improve if I track and measure gender?”

C

REASONS WE SHOULD MONITOR GENDER

Gender must be addressed in ongoing monitoring and in evaluations for the same reasons we address other issues: in assessing whether an activity is achieving its objectives, we can consider what has been accomplished and what can be learned and fed back into further efforts. Gender is a cross-cutting issue within the development policies of most international donors and national governments. If gender impacts are not evaluated, they are unlikely to be given any attention.

What role do different genders play in agriculture, rural development, and water management? Women are the key agricultural workers in some countries but are not involved at all in others. In many southern African countries, women provide most of the labor for agriculture and small livestock production, yet in many cases they receive little benefit. In Asia different tasks in the agricultural cycle are carried out by men or women. In most countries, large livestock such as cattle are managed by men, although milking may be done by women. Roles (and relative power) in production, processing, and marketing differ by gender—for example, men commonly catch fish and women process or sell them locally. Gender power relations, therefore, lie at the heart of two critical development concerns: who gains access to resources, and who benefits from projects?

When carrying out M&E, the overarching notion of “gender” must be unpacked to reveal the differences within categories of “men” and “women,” as neither men nor women form a homogeneous group. Participatory rural appraisal and gender analysis during planning should provide information on different subgroups of men and women and help design appropriate activities and indicators. For instance, in an environmental administration project in Nepal, an assessment of gender and poverty issues related to industry was done to provide a baseline and better understand the impacts of planned activities on different groups (disaggregated by ethnicity, caste, education, employment, rural or urban location, and other characteristics). M&E should provide feedback on how a program’s various activities affect different subgroups

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of men and women. Any disparities in the distribution of benefits must be known for corrective action to be taken.

Women are active in community decision making in some countries, through councils and church groups (for instance, in the Pacific), whereas elsewhere they are almost invisible to outsiders (such as in remote areas of Afghanistan or Nepal). On the other hand, women may have little time for such activities because of their concurrent involvement in household activities and their heavy agricultural work. Such commitments only add to the time constraint when planning for M&E and the inclusion of women in a given program, project, or activity. Box 16.1 lists tools for gender-sensitive monitoring, which is discussed at greater length in all of the Thematic Notes.

Box 16.1 A Selection of Methods and Tools Available for GenderSensitive Monitoring ■

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Monitoring can be based on quantitative measures, such as data issued by statistics offices or specifically collected by project staff.

Qualitative monitoring can be done through tools such as interviews, observation, and focus groups.

Participation of intended beneficiaries in monitoring is a means to ensure ownership and to ensure that an activity is truly benefiting the participants.

Participatory monitoring, on the other hand, is a means of involving stakeholders from the start in such activities as identifying activities and indicators that should be monitored, carrying out the monitoring itself, and analyzing the results for improving future processes.

External monitoring or evaluation provides independent, external feedback on progress and outcomes.

Impact evaluations determine whether a program had the desired effects and whether there were any unanticipated effects.

Gender audits are distinct from regular evaluations in that they are based on self-assessments by a project, organization, or ministry of how gender issues are addressed in program portfolios and internal organizational processes. A gender audit is not an external evaluation, but it should be used to facilitate change and develop action plans and monitoring systems.

Source: Author.

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“Monitoring” has been defined as the “continuous assessment of project implementation in relation to agreed schedules and use of inputs, infrastructure, and services by project beneficiaries,” and “evaluation” has been defined as the “periodic assessment of the relevance, performance, efficiency, and impact (expected and unexpected) of the project in relation to stated objectives” (World Bank n.d.).

M&E are broadly viewed as a function of project management that is useful for validating ex ante analysis or for influencing adjustments to project implementation.

Traditionally many donors used the logical framework (“logframe”) as the basis for designing M&E. In 2003 the World Bank began using a “results framework” (a simplified logframe) in an effort to focus more on the immediate results of programs and projects. Practitioners now need to link performance with outcomes, with rigorous and credible assessments of progress toward (and achievement of) outcomes. At the “Activity” level in the results framework, “Output Indicators” are used to monitor progress. At the level of “Project Development Objective” and “Components/ Results,” “Outcome Indicators” are developed. “Outcomes” reflect the quality of outputs produced and behavioral changes in target groups, as well as changes in institutional performance following “adoption” of project outputs. However, to look at the long-term sustainability of a program, the overall development goal should also be considered, and for this purpose the logical framework remains important.

Progress toward higher-level goals can be considered in evaluations by developing higher-level “Impact Indicators” (FAO 2001). This topic is discussed in more detail in Thematic Note 1.

INTEGRATING GENDER IN M&E: LESSONS FROM EXPERIENCE

Many donors have observed that project monitoring, evaluation, and reporting commonly focus on processes and inputs rather than outcomes and impacts, with the result that only limited learning is gained about any long-term changes a project may have occasioned in people’s lives, including any impacts on gender equity. In fact, M&E of any kind are given insufficient attention. For example, a Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Knowledge, and Institutions (SASKI) Thematic Group review of agricultural research and extension projects found that only about 25 percent had adequate M&E plans (cited in World Bank 2006b).

Gender-sensitive monitoring garners even less attention, despite efforts by many donors to promote it and train people to do it (box 16.2). In cases where gender-sensitive indicators

Box 16.2 Difficulties with Conducting Gender-Sensitive Monitoring and Evaluation Are Found Worldwide An assessment of project evaluations for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) (Peck 1998) probably still applies to most donors. Although 65 percent of the SIDA evaluations conducted during 1997–98 mentioned gender, the quality of analysis was poor. Gender was usually discussed briefly, most often with respect to implementation and not to project objectives or results. Rarely was any link made between an intervention and possible changes that may have occurred in gender relationships and the circumstances of the men and women who were the intended beneficiaries. Most projects lacked gender-disaggregated baseline and monitoring data.

A recent review of development cooperation agencies (OECD 2007) found that only 41 percent used gender-sensitive logframes and noted that agencies that had “come more recently to gender and development” had “yet to develop as full a range of monitoring and accountability mechanisms.” On the positive side, however, 70 percent of the agencies surveyed said they

used gender criteria for assessing project/program quality.

AusAID (2002) noted that the degree to which gender is monitored in AusAID-funded activities appears to be influenced by the following: ■

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The extent to which gender is specified in the design documents, logframes, or gender strategies The interest of program staff in gender principles and the extent to which they have a sound understanding of the importance of achieving gender and development outcomes The degree to which gender issues and strategies have been articulated in the program, regional, or sector strategy.

Several World Bank reports emphasize that weak gender-disaggregated M&E systems in rural projects have been a serious concern. In 2006, for instance, only a third of rural projects had gender-disaggregated M&E indicators (GENRD 2006, 2007)

Sources: Author, based on AusAID 2002; GENRD 2006, 2007; OECD 2007.

do exist, they are more commonly found at the output and outcome level and only rarely at the impact level. Consequently, any assessments tend to be subjective.

Why gender disaggregation is often missing from M&E systems

The Nordic Development Fund’s Gender Equality Study (NDF 2004) found, “The most commonly cited. . . major obstacles to women participating and benefiting from development activities include (i) the lack of participation by women in design; (ii) poorly conducted needs analyses; (iii) the lack of baseline data on key gender differences relevant to the specific project; (iv) the failure to address gender issues in project objectives; and, (v) poor monitoring efforts” (NDF 2004: 27).

Even when gender is emphasized at the project design stage, it is sometimes lost in the daily grind of project implementation. The continued collection of gender-specific data (or all monitoring data) can suffer as a result of various difficulties, mainly arising from the lack of time and funds, insufficient follow-up, and poor understanding by local staff

of the importance of monitoring. Day-to-day monitoring usually concentrates on project result areas rather than crosscutting issues such as gender, and staff may give genderspecific monitoring insufficient attention.

In summary, gender is insufficiently considered in M&E for several reasons, including the following: ■

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M&E itself is given insufficient attention, and its usefulness is little understood. Often it is regarded as a task required by the donor, so the step of gender disaggregation is considered an addition to an already burdensome task.

The leadership of agricultural and water projects and programs may be gender blind. Program managers and staff may not see gender as having any importance in achieving the program’s results or its ultimate purpose.

Field staff may view the work of M&E as gender neutral.

Women’s opinions may not be recorded, because women are often not present in meetings or are not confident to speak up (particularly if their native language is an indigenous one).

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Gender-disaggregated quantitative data are not easily available from local government sources but must often be collected separately for a program or project, which can be costly and time consuming. By the time a project is under way and attention is turned to M&E, it may be too late to conduct a project-specific baseline study, which ideally is done before the work begins.

If gender has not been considered at the program design stage, it may be forgotten during implementation. Inclusion of gender-sensitive indicators in the logical framework or results framework is vital.

Program implementers may consider that national women’s unions or other groups that advocate on behalf of women are “taking care of the women’s issues,” even at the local level, so there is no need to monitor gender.

External project supervisors and evaluators do not emphasize gender, so it is “forgotten.”

Despite this tendency for gender to remain invisible, unacknowledged, or marginalized, much evidence suggests that gender is important to outcomes, and M&E plays a vital role in demonstrating these benefits. For instance, Bamberger (2002) used gender-disaggregated data from borrowers and nonborrowers to demonstrate that the impacts of microcredit in Bangladesh differ substantially based on whether the borrower is a woman or a man and that the marginal impacts of borrowing are often greater for women than men. Such information is vital to building the case for considering gender in rural development programs.

Recent attempts to change gender M&E

A number of recent efforts increase the prospects that gender will be incorporated more explicitly in M&E. The FAO and other United Nations agencies have undertaken to improve the availability of gender-disaggregated data (FAO 2003). Through these data, a much clearer picture should emerge of the relationships between gender inequality and agriculture, rural development, and food security.

At the project and program levels, numerous training materials, toolkits, and guidelines can help in implementing gender-sensitive M&E. Most key donors have prepared guidelines for gender mainstreaming. The OECD’s guidelines “support partner efforts to formulate clear, measurable goals and expected results relating to gender equity and women’s empowerment (focusing on development impacts,

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not just the completion of activities)” (OECD 1999: 24).

The guidelines indicate that it is vital to “support partner capacity to monitor and evaluate results achievement in projects, programs, and institutions and to understand the reasons for success or failure.” SIDA’s evaluation guidelines (SIDA 2004) contain a good section on gender in evaluations, covering preparation, fieldwork, reporting, and dissemination and use. The World Bank’s short toolkit, Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Development Projects (World Bank 2005), presents excellent, simple—and unfortunately underused—guidelines. The most recent report on annual progress toward implementing the World Bank’s gender-mainstreaming strategy (World Bank 2006a) urges the Bank to “improve the monitoring and impact evaluation of gender integration into Bank policy and project lending,” by investing in gathering statistics disaggregated by gender, developing indicators to measure results and impacts with respect to gender, and ensuring that gender is included “as an independent variable in scientific evaluations of the development impact of Bank operations.”

Incentives: ensuring that it happens in practice

Ideally, sufficient training in the purpose and objectives of gender-sensitive monitoring would ensure that the time, funds, and human resources are committed to performing this task and that the results are used. Usually all stakeholders agree in planning meetings and program documents that gender is important and that the gender impacts of a given project should be monitored carefully. Experience has revealed, however, that both a carrot and stick may be needed for gender-sensitive M&E to occur in practice.

External evaluators or donor agency staff can follow up on the issue during monitoring visits: for example, perhaps even requiring compliance with a plan for monitoring gender (box 16.3). The performance evaluations of technical advisers, project staff, or departmental staff might usefully include an assessment of compliance with the gender-monitoring plan. Providing publicity or presenting an award might also offer some incentive to individuals, projects, programs, or government ministries that take very positive action to promote successful gender monitoring. Gender could also be included in the milestones or triggers for annual budget or loan tranche releases (for instance, “Government has recruited new extension staff to reach a minimum of 30 percent women agricultural extension workers in at least 80 percent of districts by March 2008”).

Box 16.3 Compliance with a Gender Action Plan Can Improve Gender-Sensitive Monitoring and Evaluation One means of ensuring that more attention is given to monitoring and evaluating a project’s gender-equity outcomes is to require compliance with a Gender Action Plan. A good example comes from a project implemented by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Cambodia: the Northwestern Rural Development Project (Hunt and Kheng 2006). When the loan was designed, a high-quality Gender Action Plan was prepared, stipulating that three requirements had to be met for tranche releases to occur: (1) equal opportunity for employing women in road construction; (2) the involvement of women in prioritizing, planning, implementing, and monitoring village-based infrastructure; and (3) women’s participation in training and communitybased organizations to reach at least 30 percent.

The plan was based on systematic gender analysis, with targets and strategies for women’s participation in each component. An assessment of the results showed

that Gender Action Plans “provided a road map for project teams to ensure that women participated and benefited from project activities.” Compared with another ADB project in Cambodia, the Northwestern Rural Development Project (with its high-quality Gender Action Plan) was shown to have positive results with respect to gender equity. However, the monitoring of participation and benefits still needed to improve, especially with regard to the collection, reporting, and analysis of gender-disaggregated data. The number of gender-sensitive indicators and strategies was not sufficient, and insufficient information was collected to analyze women’s participation, benefits, and progress toward gender equity. Although the loan covenants used in this project were useful for improving compliance with gender-sensitive monitoring requirements, greater leadership, commitment, and ownership of the Gender Action Plan were needed.

Source: Hunt and Kheng 2006.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER IN DESIGNING A GENDER-SENSITIVE M&E COMPONENT

Several questions emerge in designing a gender-sensitive M&E component for a project or program. Which levels of participants—spanning the range from donors and recipient governments to management and field implementation—are involved? Which instruments are therefore involved? Should gender be mainstreamed across the institution and all parts of the program, or should there be a specific gender component?

How much participatory involvement is appropriate, and what must be remembered when scaling up programs to the national level or moving to newer aid modalities? Is the focus on short-term outcomes or longer-term impacts? How will findings and experiences be shared?

Levels of participants that need to consider gender in project design and M&E

To make it more likely that gender is considered in project design, monitoring, and evaluation, which participants need to consider which issues or actions?

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At the management level of the donor agency, implementing ministry, program, or project, participants should be

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involved in setting the indicators at the objective level, providing access to statistical data, and dedicating the staff, budget, and tools to ensure that gender-sensitive monitoring can be done.

At various levels within the implementing organization— specifically, among the staff responsible for the horizontal and vertical coordination of operations and gender-specific and M&E components—participants should be involved in coordinating the work and setting indicators for different components, ensuring that gender is considered. The terms of reference for all staff working on different activities need to assign responsibility for achieving gender objectives, strategies, and outcomes.

At the field level, participants need to ensure that access to budget, materials, and equipment is considered, as well as timing. For example, the opinions of women and men may not be considered fully during monitoring if meetings to collect their opinions are scheduled when most women are working in the fields, when women are preparing the evening meal for their families, or when most men are out at sea fishing. Extra funds may be required to ensure that monitoring activities can take place at appropriate locations and times.

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Mainstreaming versus establishing separate gender components

Gender can be considered as a specific result area or component and monitored as such. This traditional method of treating gender has been used in many projects and is still used in some poverty reduction strategy programs (PRSPs) and other programmatic instruments. Often, however, this approach meant that gender was ignored by many project or program staff and stakeholders, as it was considered “taken care of.” As an assessment of development cooperation funded by Finland reports, “Women are sometimes still seen as a separate sector so systematic work to eliminate gender inequalities is not undertaken within other sectors . . . In projects ‘gender mainstreaming’ still usually means small and isolated components dealing with women” (MFA Finland 2003: 11).

Gender mainstreaming across all result areas and activities is now the preferred means of ensuring that gender is considered. “Gender mainstreaming” can be defined as “a commitment to ensure that women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences are integral to the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all legislation, policies, and programs so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not

perpetuated” (Derbyshire 2002: 9). The drawbacks of this approach are that the impact may be lost, outcomes are much harder to measure, and financial resource allocation by gender becomes increasingly difficult to track (box 16.4). Superficial mainstreaming—in which women are simply mentioned in every project component, or in which gender-differentiated data are collected but not analyzed for program improvements—is also unfortunately too common.

It is important to gain baseline information to ensure that project or program activities do not increase problems in target communities, such as gender-based violence.

Gender-mainstreaming activities tend to change gender roles and relations. Unless change proceeds carefully and with adequate awareness raising, domestic violence may arise or worsen as men come to perceive that women’s increased empowerment threatens their position as men and heads of the household and community.

How successful has mainstreaming been, and how can we do things differently? Assessments that look at women’s participation or benefits derived by women in isolation from the overall project context may be inadequate and misleading.

Comparisons between women and men in the target group should be made across every project activity and component,

Box 16.4 Mainstreaming Gender and the Implications for Monitoring and Evaluation

The Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development considers that gender should be integral to all development assistance analyses that are undertaken.

Steps to carry out gender mainstreaming include the following: ■

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Ensure that guides and procedural manuals incorporate gender-equity considerations into the methods to be followed by staff, with priority given to promoting gender analysis at the initial stages of the planning process.

Ensure that the gender-equity objective is reflected in the development of procedures for results-based management, including the specification of results sought, indicators for monitoring achievements, and evaluation criteria.

Ensure that gender equity and women’s empowerment measures and indicators are part of the main-

Source: Mason 2007.

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stream reporting structure and evaluation processes rather than a separate system.

Develop and maintain statistical systems and project monitoring systems that provide gender-disaggregated data.

Ensure that gender equity is addressed in all training and staff development initiatives.

Gender mainstreaming should be considered at all levels: ■

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At the project level, by designing appropriate gender-sensitive indicators for monitoring and by considering gender at all stages of the project cycle, including reporting At the program and policy levels, by carrying out gender evaluations and using the results to guide further activities, through checklists and scorecards In multilateral and bilateral development organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and government organizations, by carrying out gender audits and self-assessments of their own organizations.

and the conclusions about benefits or outcomes should be supported by data and analysis. A risk exists in external evaluations that gender is considered only as a separate chapter, unless the terms of reference explicitly state otherwise.

It is also important that mainstreaming be understood to have the goal of increasing gender equity, not simply increasing women’s involvement. Increasing women’s participation in committees or in monitoring teams is not mainstreaming if women are not actively involved in improved gender outcomes and impacts (the extra burden on rural women’s limited free time should always be considered). At every step, questions must be asked as to who will benefit from proposed activities. If “policy evaporation” occurs—that is, good policy is not followed through in practice—then gender mainstreaming may not have a real impact on gender equity. Moreover, the real impact may not seen because M&E procedures fail to document what is occurring on the ground.

Box 16.5 presents two ways of treating gender at the national level in PRSPs. One is from Mozambique (where it is compartmentalized) and the other from Vietnam (where it is mainstreamed).

The U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) has chosen to pursue a twin track in which it main-

streams gender by integrating women’s and men’s concerns in all policies and projects and supports specific activities aimed at empowering women. It may be useful to monitor a targeted output specifically concerned with activities for women, alongside overall mainstreaming (considering outputs for men and women in every activity and result area), in the hope that gender outcomes will improve. It is imperative, however, not to isolate women’s activities within one output with a very small claim on resources and no influence on the rest of the policy or project.

Using gender analysis for monitoring

Gender analysis considers women’s roles in production, reproduction, and the management of community and other activities. Changes in one aspect of women’s lives may produce beneficial or detrimental effects in others.

Gender analysis helps to (1) identify gender-based differences in access to resources to predict how different members of households, groups, and societies will participate in and be affected by planned development interventions; (2) permit planners to achieve the goals of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and empowerment through designing

Box 16.5 Compartmentalization versus Mainstreaming of Gender in Poverty Reduction Strategy Programs

Mozambique’s second Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty—known by its Portuguese acronym, PARPA—treats gender as a separate component. Unfortunately this compartmentalization seems to have led those working on the strategy to believe that they did not need to consider gender outside the gender chapter. Gender is not considered in analyzing the causes of poverty in Mozambique, nor is women’s role in economic growth mentioned. The indicators for measuring progress toward development objectives make almost no mention of gender. The causes of gender inequality are not discussed, and few policy interventions are discussed for addressing inequality. National data on school attendance and early childhood growth always include gender, but any differences between boys and girls have vanished in the hands of the government authorities and committees producing the strategy. Gender is considered in the chapter on HIV and AIDS with regard to incidence and causes

of infection, but when it comes to the targets and actions to be taken, no further mention is made of women as a key target group.

By contrast, Vietnam’s Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy 2002 includes many aspects of gender in its analysis of the causes of poverty and mainstreams gender considerations throughout the document. A general instruction is given that monitoring should employ indicators “developed in detail by regions, provinces, rural/urban areas, and genders.”

Even so, crucial omissions are present. The chapter on targets makes almost no mention of gender—only in the paragraphs specifically on gender equity—and the general economic and social targets are not disaggregated by gender. The indicators provided for monitoring the development objectives do include some gender disaggregation, however, and efforts are being made to improve them.

Source: Author’s assessment.

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policy reform and supportive program strategies; and (3) develop training packages to sensitize development staff on gender issues and training strategies for beneficiaries, such as the World Bank’s Participation Sourcebook (World Bank 1996).

Comprehensive gender studies are applied mostly in developing policy or planning programs and projects.

Aspects of gender analysis may be applied, however, for intermittent monitoring of gender implications of project activities or outcomes. Simple techniques are useful for this purpose, such as direct observation, focus groups, and time-use studies (for example, women’s typical daily routine in terms of housework, income generation, and personal time). Performed consistently as part of project M&E, gender analysis helps build a picture of women’s growth as individuals and social beings (for instance, it can assess changes in their standing in the household and in the community). Five major categories of information are required for a comprehensive gender analysis: (1) needs assessment; (2) activity profile; (3) resources, access, and control profile; (4) benefits and incentives analysis; and (5) institutional constraints and opportunities (World Bank 1996).

In monitoring and evaluating any benefits arising from a project or program, the gender considerations include developing indicators that define and measure progress in achieving benefits for men and women, ensuring that gender-disaggregated data are collected to monitor impact with respect to gender, and considering ways of involving women in M&E (ADB n.d.).

Gender-disaggregated data and parameters should be included in M&E systems for all projects and presented in all reports. Gender analysis is vital throughout all stages of the program cycle, from identification and design to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

Impact assessments

Most monitoring focuses on short-term occurrences, whereas the great challenge is to measure long-term change—the impacts that extend beyond increases in women’s participation or incomes during the life of a project or program and that indicate real changes in the lives of poor men and women over the following five or more years.

Apart from the design and attribution difficulties, the fact remains that if a project or program has already finished, no one may remain to perform the evaluation, and financing for this activity may not be found. This difficulty is discussed

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further in Innovative Activity Profile 2 (available in the online version of this Sourcebook).

Improved information sharing

Most projects and programs collect much information regularly from staff and beneficiaries, but it is not always shared effectively. Much of it is fed into the management information system, which produces consolidated data and is used to report to government and donors. However, no point exists in collecting such information unless it is used to improve the program to benefit the people from whom it was collected. Different ways may be employed to interpret and use results to make decisions, modify or improve programming, and advocate to different audiences. Examples of changes in gender equity in a practical sense should be collected regularly through monitoring and shared with a wide range of stakeholders.

Improved advocacy can have a very positive feedback effect on the project. For example, an agricultural project in South Africa focused on developing producer groups (particularly women-led groups). As part of its qualitative evaluation, the project collected stories and lessons emerging from this process. These were eventually published by a local agricultural magazine that was distributed beyond the original beneficiary groups and reached other departments of agriculture and farmers.

PARTICIPATORY TOOLS AND APPROACHES

The World Bank places considerable emphasis on participatory M&E, which is an important factor in promoting social sustainability. The Bank’s Social Analysis Sourcebook (World Bank 2003a: 49) cites participatory M&E as a “means to systematically evaluate progress and impact early in the project cycle by bringing the perspectives and insights of all stakeholders, beneficiaries as well as project implementers. All stakeholders identify issues, conduct research, analyze findings, make recommendations, and take responsibility for necessary action.” The focus is on the active engagement of primary stakeholders and their shared control of the content, process, and results of M&E. This kind of participation is particularly effective because stakeholders, if they are involved in identifying problems and solutions, develop ownership of the project and tend to be amenable if corrective actions eventually prove necessary. In other words, participation can be both a means and an end. Because they live with the results of a project, participants also have a greater

incentive to make changes in project activities and base future interventions on the lessons they have learned. Transparency is enhanced because the intended beneficiaries are involved in making decisions from the start and understand the funding issues. Participatory M&E may also highlight unexpected or unplanned changes, which may not be noticed with traditional indicators and M&E systems. In a project in Vietnam, the gender-disaggregated results of interviews with village women through Most Significant Change monitoring allowed problems with the location of a new road to be raised and dealt with by management (World Bank 2007).

The cost implications (time, money, and other resources; box 16.6) and other considerations of participatory monitoring must be taken into account. For example, it must not be assumed that all women will automatically benefit from efforts to involve some women in project design, implementation, and M&E. Men’s and women’s groups do not always have the same priorities and understanding of impacts, nor are the opinions of all women the same. In addition, if women are expected to give up their time to participate in monitoring an intervention, a clear means should be present by which their opinions can be fed back into improving future activities. Consultation and true participation in decision making are different and should not be confused.

Participatory M&E can also be a useful tool to improve gender equity, if women are able to take an active role, meet in groups, and build solidarity and confidence (a good example is quoted from Pakistan’s Community Infrastructure Project, World Bank 2003b). In many communities, only women can visit other families. Men may not be permitted to speak directly with women who are not family members, so men may not be able to gather essential information for M&E. What may be more difficult is for communities to meet in mixed-sex groups to monitor outcomes and openly discuss how to improve activities. Simple tools may be used to facilitate discussion—for instance, using different-colored voting cards for men and women or for different age or ethnic groups, and then comparing different opinions on topics—or holding separate meetings for different sexes, to prevent men from dominating.

SCALING UP INVESTMENTS

Scaling up of investments usually implies reaching a larger number of beneficiaries via increases in size, scope, and geographic spread of an activity. This has implications for the methods of financing, administering, and monitoring.

Box 16.6 The Cost Implications of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation: Three Examples

How much participation is enough, and what are the costs of participation? Three projects funded by the World Bank offer insight into these questions.

In the Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project, the participation of more than 600,000 women’s self-help groups, as well as a local nongovernmental organization, improved qualitative process monitoring and revealed unexpected outcomes, which made it possible to develop new indicators. Participatory monitoring also significantly reduced project costs: When women’s groups identified poor credit recovery rates, they halted disbursement until the rates improved. In the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan Community Infrastructure Project, participatory monitoring of subprojects reduced the number of dropouts among community organizations, produced a cost savings of 40 percent, and increased the quality of work (compared to work done by government-hired contractors). In Mongolia, on the other hand, the full benefits of participatory monitoring in the Sustainable Livelihoods Project were inhibited by the sheer distances involved and the difficulty of holding community meetings. The cost of ensuring full participation—in transport and time—would have been enormous, so the level of participation was modified.

Sources: World Bank 2007 (for Andhra Pradesh), World Bank 2003c for Pakistan, and author for Mongolia (White 2007).

Local to national, project to program

When programs are scaled up in size, either sectorally or geographically, a need exists to scale up the monitoring. The focus on quantitative indicators tends to increase with scaling up, because qualitative measurements such as interviews and focus groups are more difficult to carry out, record, and analyze on a large scale (box 16.7). One example of this problem is the selection of indicators for monitoring global progress in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Data on each indicator needed to be available from all countries and may not be too onerous to collect and compare.

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Box 16.7 Some Difficulties with Scaling Up Monitoring ■

In its first phase, the Sustainable Livelihoods Project in Mongolia developed a participatory monitoring and evaluation system. The key issue was to find a balance between information required by the World Bank and the project’s national office, and information that would be useful to the community and local project representatives. Planners also had to strike a balance between information that would be good to have and information that was essential. Clearly a risk was present of collecting too much information that would not improve participation. An additional consideration was that communication is very difficult in Mongolia because of the large distances and limited infrastructure and equipment. Although experiences with the initial monitoring and evaluation system were positive, scaling up to much greater national coverage in a later stage of the project has proven less successful and led to more direct monitoring by project staff.

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Monitoring gender in the new aid modalities

To date, little consideration has been given to gender in monitoring PRSPs, sectorwide approaches (SWAPs), and budget support. This issue is discussed further in Thematic Note 2. Although development cooperation is moving away from projects and toward new aid modalities, the following actions are still vital (OECD 1999): ■

Source: Author.

For large-scale programs, the gender disaggregation of quantitative data should be a basic requirement, even if the softer M&E tools need to be used less often. For instance, interviews and group work could take place in a few sample areas to supplement quantitative data from national monitoring. It is increasingly important for large-scale projects or programs to tie in with national census and living standards surveys rather than duplicate them.

Adapting to reduced international technical assistance inputs

As donors move toward funding larger-scale programs that rely more heavily on national systems and staff and less on specifically recruited international and national staff, local staff will need to build the capacity to incorporate gender considerations into their work. Possibilities for increasing this capacity include the following (OECD 1999): ■

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Use donor-level gender advisers to regularly support and mentor local gender focal points.

Give priority to initiatives that focus on partners’ capacity to analyze policies, programs, and institutional

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cultures and develop change strategies that contribute to gender equity.

Help partners examine the gender balance within their organizations and identify strategies to increase women’s representation at policy- and decision-making levels.

Increase the availability of gender-disaggregated data by supporting modifications in national and sectoral data collection systems.

Support research on gender equity by sectoral institutions, research organizations, and advocacy groups to increase the national resources of partners in this area.

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Strengthen links between the project and policy levels.

Improved communication of lessons from the field can act as a reality check at the national level and ensure greater coherence among gender-equity policy objectives, project-supported activities, and the resulting impacts.

Support partners’ efforts to improve project-level monitoring and impact assessment and gain a greater understanding of how projects can contribute to gender-equity objectives, how obstacles can be overcome, and how project design can be improved.

Analyze the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different interventions used in specific sectors to increase knowledge about strategies that have positive results and are cost effective.

Sample indicators for a range of agriculture and rural development investments

Although it is not possible to devise sample indicators to match every situation and intervention, sample indicators for output, outcome, and impact, as well as tools and proposed sources of verification, are provided for a range of topics in “Social and Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture and Rural Development Investments: A Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit” (Punkari and others 2007).

CONCLUSION

Several issues emerge from this overview. Despite the fact that development interventions will be improved if we track and measure their implications with respect to gender, it is clear that M&E of gender issues has been done poorly recently, in projects as well as in the newer aid modalities.

The following Thematic Notes focus on how to develop a sound M&E system and discuss other tools for supporting project or program staff, such as gender policies, terms of reference, and training (Thematic Note 1); the experience

and tools related to monitoring gender in the newer aid modalities, such as PRSPs, SWAPs, and budget support (Thematic Note 2); and issues related to setting highquality indicators and the collection and use of data (Thematic Note 3). Two Innovative Activity Profiles are also included, describing methods and practical examples of involving community members in monitoring (Innovative Activity Profile 1) and conducting impact assessments (Innovative Activity Profile 2), the latter in the online version of this Sourcebook (www.worldbank.org).

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 1

Design of Sound Gendered Monitoring and Evaluation Systems

ender-sensitive M&E helps project staff, other stakeholders, and beneficiaries themselves to understand how project activities are really changing the lives of men and women. This kind of M&E enables continuous feedback on the status of project implementation, identifying specific problems as they arise. If additional disaggregation is done, monitoring can also follow the impact on young and old, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, remote residents, and other disadvantaged groups. If the full range of stakeholders has this important information, they can use it to alter the project as needed to ensure maximum benefits and improve performance. The lessons learned by the end of the project can be used to improve project design, change legislation as needed, or change local systems.

Obviously, a well-designed M&E system is needed to carry out gender-sensitive monitoring, along with other supportive tools for staff of the project or program, such as gender policies, term of reference, and training. This Thematic Note discusses specific measures that should be used and offers practical examples of good and bad design.

G

BASIC STRUCTURES FOR MONITORING GENDER

Women are major players in agriculture and rural development. They are agricultural wage laborers as well as unpaid workers on family farms. Yet women, who form the majority of rural poor, are usually not given equal consideration when agricultural programs are planned, implemented, or monitored. If steps are taken to involve all groups, including women, in such programs, improvement will be seen both in project and program outcomes and in society as a whole.

The consideration of gender and involvement of women in M&E can empower women. Every project should meet the following basic requirements:

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Ensure that guidelines and structures are present to support good gendered monitoring at national, local, and project levels.

Ensure that the goals, purposes, or objectives of the program or project explicitly refer to gender or reflect women’s needs and priorities as well as men’s. Managers need to formulate clear, measurable objectives and indicators and link them with available annual information sources. M&E must be an integral part of project design, not added as an afterthought.

Establish M&E mechanisms that will record and track gender differences, and collect baseline data.

Measure benefits and adverse effects on men and women separately whenever possible, and check whether the needs and interests of women and men are still considered during implementation.

Insist that project staff make specific and adequately detailed references to gender in supervision forms and project completion reports. Report any gender differences even when no mention was made of gender in project objectives.

Ensure that staff members obtain the training and tools to understand gender and the reasons for monitoring.

This list applies both to the logical framework and the results framework. The results framework has the following structure: (1) a project development objective and project component statements, (2) indicators for the outcome of the project development objective and for intermediate component outcomes, and (3) an explicit statement on how to use the outcome information. The results framework focuses chiefly on managing the outcomes of project interventions and does not necessarily link into higher-level sectoral goals. However, the project document should describe how the project contributes to these higher-level objectives, including gender objectives, as well as outline project inputs, activities, outputs, and critical assumptions.

The application of a results-based framework may unduly emphasize quantitative indicators for project outcomes and outputs, thus limiting the representation of sustainability concerns in the project M&E framework. This limited representation argues for parallel use of the logical framework in project design to complement the resultsbased framework, so that the intended links between project outputs and outcomes (the project development objective) and project impacts (the development goal) can be well articulated (Punkari and others 2007).

In the logical framework, the overall objective should link gender outcomes at the project level to provincial or national priorities for a given sector to ensure that the project is not an isolated activity but part of the overall development process for the sector (box 16.8). Indicators at this level will measure change in the broad development goal to which the project contributes.

Qualitative as well as quantitative indicators and data are needed (these are discussed in more detail in Thematic Note 3). The inclusion of gender-sensitive indicators is not enough, however. It is important that there is a means to use the information gathered and to make changes if necessary to ensure that the outcomes will be equitable. Information

from lower-level indicators on inputs and outputs (such as the number of women trained) is useful but insufficient. It must be possible to analyze at the outcome level, for example, whether the training has led women to be empowered and use the training for greater agricultural production.

Critical reviews of progress and readjustment should be undertaken, based on information on local constraints— usually the annual work planning stage or midterm review are good moments.

PRINCIPLES AND GUIDELINES FOR INVESTING IN GENDER-SENSITIVE M&E

Different activities are required at national (or international), local government, and project levels to implement gender-sensitive M&E. National guidelines

Embassies, donor organization representatives, and national representatives should ensure that gender is considered at all stages of the planning, implementation, and M&E. National goals regarding the status and participation of women (for example, national gender strategies or specific

Box 16.8 Linking Gender Outcomes with the Overall Objective

The specific objective or purpose for a project could be: To increase the efficiency and impact of existing livelihood, infrastructure, and administrative systems on poverty reduction, economic growth, and equity in project districts.

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The corresponding indicators could be the following: ■

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Percentage of the population below the poverty line for income Number of district-commune roads (percentage of communes covered) Number of commune-village roads (percentage of villages covered) Percentage of households with secure land-use certificates in both husband’s and wife’s names Number of villages having access to reliable market information on relevant agricultural products Percentage of women, men, disabled, and minority groups represented in decision-making bodies

Percentage of women, men, disabled, and minority groups represented in management bodies Seventy-five percent of surveyed community members rating their access to livelihood development services as having improved during the life of the project.

But the overall objective could be: Enhanced, equitable, pro-poor growth in X Province The corresponding indicators could be the following:

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Implementation of the project resulting in an improvement in living conditions for at least 75 percent of rural households The number of acutely poor households in project areas reduced by at least 25 percent by project end Percentage of women staff in management roles in provincial agricultural department increased Participatory approaches used in socioeconomic development planning by all departments.

Source: Author.

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goals such as the percentage of women in management committees) must be integrated into project and program planning. Unfortunately, the experience to date is not good.

For instance, evaluations of DFID’s Country Strategy Papers note that they tend to see the whole community as poor and are less likely to differentiate specific subgroups that should be included in program activities. General statements that gender will be mainstreamed throughout the country program are insufficient unless specific guidance is given. In addition, international conventions and agreements must be observed, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. These national representatives should ensure that quantitative and qualitative indicators to promote gender equity are included in project and program documents (logical or results framework), and gender training is included in project or program work plans. Appointing high-level professional women to gender positions in the ministry of agriculture and ensuring that they have the

training and resources to support gender promotion nationally are vital actions. Also, including ministry-level gender focal points in field visits to give them a good understanding of grassroots issues should be done. Examples of program- and policy-related questions that could be asked are given in box 16.9.

Local guidelines

Local authorities may need training; representatives of local government and civil society should be included in capacity-building efforts on gender and M&E. Their inclusion serves several purposes: it ensures that the work of the project or program is well understood, it provides a broader base of understanding about gender issues and monitoring, and it leads to a level of sustainability, by leaving behind a trained cohort to continue the work.

In addition, ways of accessing information, the aims of gender mainstreaming, and the benefits for agricultural

Box 16.9 Examples of Program- and Policy-Related Questions

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Do national legislation and policies support gender equity? For instance, in 2003 Vietnam passed a new Land Law, which requires the names of husband and wife to be included on all Land Tenure Certificates.

This legislation was a big advance, but strong followup is needed to ensure that it is implemented at the local level.

Are women’s voices heard in planning and monitoring? Do representatives from women’s unions, nongovernmental organizations, or other groups advocating on behalf of women participate in national committees? What is the gender of the decision makers as well as staff of the finance and agriculture ministries at the national level?

Are there specific efforts to design and monitor gender-sensitive indicators in national agriculture, transport, and water programs?

Has gender-disaggregated baseline information been collected prior to commencing program activities, in monitoring national progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, or for undertaking other tasks? Are gender-disaggregated data collected during monitoring. If so, how is this information analyzed, reported, and used to adjust plans?

Source: Author.

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Do agricultural extension services reach women and men farmers equally, with information and services given at appropriate times and in culturally appropriate forms? For instance, theoretical training provided in the dominant national language at central locations is more likely to reach men than to reach women who are members of ethnic minorities, who might be the persons responsible for putting the training into practice.

Are the different roles of women and men farmers considered when new seed, crops, or technologies are researched and developed? In central Vietnam, for example, a seemingly promising larger and stronger rice variety was developed with higher seedling survival and production rates, but it was not successful in farmers’ fields. Women are mainly responsible for transplanting rice seedlings, and their larger size meant a heavier load for them. Purely quantitative monitoring would not have discovered why the new variety did not produce the expected higher yields.

Qualitative techniques were vital in this case.

Is agricultural credit equally available to women and men farmers? Usually the answer to this question is tied to the question of collateral: Do both women and men farmers have access to land?

livelihoods all should be promoted in local media. The appointment of women to provincial and district departments should be encouraged.

Box 16.10 Kyrgyz Republic: Gender Perspectives Reflected in an Agricultural Development Project

Project guidelines

At the design stage of an agricultural area development project in the Kyrgyz Republic, rural women were identified as a highly disadvantaged group.

Particular attention was given to mainstreaming gender issues, and efforts were made to increase the project’s inclusiveness. The monitoring and evaluation of benefits examined the project’s effects with respect to gender, including women’s ownership of land, their access to and membership in producer organizations, their participation in training and the types of training they were given, changes in women’s incomes compared with men’s, and the relative social position of womenheaded households.

Ensure that gender perspectives are incorporated into the following documents and actions: ■ ■

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Terms of reference for all staff, particularly M&E officers Progress reports: For all components of the project or program, report on progress by gender Staff recruitment: Encourage the recruitment of a genderbalanced staff, and if one group is particularly disadvantaged, consider recruiting a less-qualified person, but provide intensive training and support The subcontracting of local organizations Activity monitoring Briefings of team members Training Annual plans Project redesign or review Project steering and coordinating committee meetings Project completion report and ex post evaluation report Lessons-learned database, disaggregated by gender Project and program steering committees or other coordinating bodies that are monitoring the project, including representatives of women’s organizations and genderequity authorities (ideally as full members).

At the project level, the questions are more relevant to household equality issues: ■

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Who participates in meetings, planning, and implementation of activities at the community level? A simple gender disaggregation of the data on meeting participants will provide some information but will not give the full picture. Qualitative monitoring is needed to establish how actively different groups are participating.

What is the division of labor in the household and community?

Are there differences between men and women in the amounts of time spent on agricultural tasks, and who makes decisions about the time spent?

Who makes decisions on planting, marketing, and consuming crops and using water for agricultural or domestic purposes?

What are the patterns of food allocation (sharing, quantity, quality, and so forth) among family members?

Source: Adapted by author from ADB Web site, www.adb.org, loan/TA case studies on gender.

Box 16.10 gives an example of how some of these perspectives might be incorporated into the design and monitoring of an agricultural development project.

Monitoring formats

When monitoring results, it can be useful to set out the expected results in a who, what, when, where, and how sense, as in table 16.1 (modified from UNDP 2002). A monitoring planning worksheet can add another level of detail and enable the entire system to be visualized easily (table 16.2).

GOOD PRACTICE: HOW TO INTEGRATE GENDER INTO MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Working through the following checklist is valuable when integrating gendered M&E, both in project planning stages and during implementation.

Stage 1— Identification and preparation: ■

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Ensure that the benchmark survey or baseline study is gender sensitive.

Conduct an initial stocktaking: Who are the stakeholders? What are their activities? What is their capacity?

What are their roles and needs?

Undertake an initial gender study or analysis to identify the potential negative impacts of project intervention on women as well as men.

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Table 16.1 Monitoring Formats Type of result Impact

What is measured Effectiveness or results in terms of the effect of a combination of outcome activities that improve development.

Conditions at a national level, disaggregated by gender.

How is the information used

Indicators

Who is measuring

Use of outcomes and sustained positive development change, such as the change in economic status of women in a district over a five-year period.

Senior donor agency management or government authorities. Usually information comes from an internal impact evaluation, midterm review, final or ex post evaluation, as well as joint reviews of donor and government staff.

Blocks to positive change can be identified—for instance, gendersensitive legislation may be needed.

Outcome

Effectiveness, or results in terms of access, usage, and stakeholder satisfaction from goods and services generated by projects, programs, partners, and soft assistance, disaggregated by gender.

Use of outputs and sustained production of benefits— for example, the change in attitudes or understanding in a local area regarding women’s access to land over a period, or the change in number of women beneficiaries accessing agricultural extension services.

Project and program management and staff and local authorities; information from quarterly and annual reports, discussions at the steering committee level, and visits by donors.

Outcomes are fed back into project or program design.

Unexpected negative outcomes— such as an increase in domestic violence arising from changes in gender relationships in the household once the woman has more income—may indicate a need for training, awareness raising, or other adjustments.

Output

Effort or goods and services generated by projects and programs, disaggregated by gender.

Implementation of activities—for example, how many (what percentage) of beneficiaries, participants, or extension staff are women and their satisfaction levels with the project.

Project management and staff, by means of day-to-day monitoring and use of management information system to verify progress, as well as field visits and reports and information received from project management.

If there is an imbalance in the way that the means are being used, then the project or program activities can be redesigned to achieve more gender balance.

Source: Author, adapted from UNDP 2002.

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Identify gender-related goals and priorities based on available information and consultation with stakeholders.

Conduct a gender-sensitive social analysis or assessment.

Assess the institutional capacity for integrating gender into development activities.

Stage 2—Design and appraisal:

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Ensure that gender is integrated into goals and objectives, and set clear targets.

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Plan for developing capacity to address gender issues and to monitor and evaluate progress and outcomes.

Set up an M&E system. Adopt and “engender” the logical framework or the results framework as included in the project appraisal document, design gender-sensitive indicators, and develop or select the “best” data collection methods. Decide how to organize reporting and feedback processes. Clearly identify who will collect and analyze information, who will receive it, and how it will be used to guide implementation.

Table 16.2 Sample Monitoring Planning Worksheet Planning worksheet THEMATIC NOTE 1: DESIGN OF SOUND GENDERED MONITORING AND EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Data collection Project objective Costeffective, gravity-fed upland irrigation projects functioning

Source: Author.

Indicators Women make up at least one-third of membership of irrigation user management committees. Women and ethnic minorities participate actively in decision making on water use and production planning

Information sources Minutes; accounts of management committees

Baseline data needed None if the committees are new

Data analysis and use

Who is involved

Tools and methods

Project engineers, M&E officer

Observation of user group meetings; minutes of meetings

How often needed

How often used

Four times each year

Four times each year, and especially annual report

Who is involved M&E officer and project management unit

How information is to be used

Who gets information

Fed into annual planning; disseminated in bulletins to beneficiaries

Project management; shared with all user groups

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Stage 3— Implementation: ■

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Develop capacity to integrate, monitor, and evaluate gender-related issues.

Collect gender-sensitive data based on the selected indicators.

Monitor progress against outcome targets set for the period under evaluation, and feed results back into the system to allow for midterm corrections.

Assess progress and make corrections if needed to obtain expected gender-related outcomes.

Stage 4—Completion: ■

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Assess the outcomes and impact of gender integration in the overall context of the project.

Assess outcomes and impact of project interventions on men and women.

Include gender-differentiated results in reporting lessons learned from implementation.

INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES TO SUPPORT MAINSTREAMING GENDER VIA THE MONITORING SYSTEM

Ideally a gender specialist in the donor agency, Ministry, or project team can provide a range of supportive actions, but in lieu of this the following range of steps can be taken to support gender mainstreaming and improved M&E in projects and programs.

Situations when no gender specialist is on the team

Many programs, projects, or government departments have no gender expert. Although this situation might not be ideal, it does not mean that gender mainstreaming and gendersensitive monitoring cannot happen. Ensuring that guidelines and toolkits are available (those from donors and national departments, and those specially designed for the program or project) and that skills development is a continuing effort is more important. Newly hired and existing staff need training in gender concepts and their application, and gender analysis training must be a regular feature of the staff development program. In addition, the steering committee and management team must take gender issues seriously and ensure both vertical and horizontal integration of a gender approach, including the setting of indicators and regular analysis of monitoring data and the project’s

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impacts on men and women participants. Ideally shortterm inputs from a gender expert could be used to support a team in this situation.

Appointment of a gender focal point among staff can ensure that a trained person is available to answer questions, advise other staff, and prevent attention to gender from being lost in everyday work. This person does not need to be a gender expert but should have a good understanding of gender issues and monitoring. A 2007 survey found that 58 percent of projects supported by IFAD had a gender focal point. Of these, 40 percent worked exclusively on gender issues and 60 percent worked on gender in addition to other duties (IFAD 2007).

Job descriptions, responsibilities, and terms of reference

Gender mainstreaming should be an explicit requirement in all job descriptions, job responsibilities, and terms of reference for studies, consulting work, and training. Ideally, projects should aim for a gender balance among technical advisers and field staff, particularly those involved in M&E. A reasonable representation of women among project or program staff gives credibility when the project asks others to take gender into consideration. When employing staff, preference should be given to candidates who not only possess the necessary skills and experience but also have a good working knowledge of gender issues and an appropriate attitude.

Job descriptions of all project staff should include genderrelated tasks such as the following: ■

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Participate in training to gain knowledge and skills, where necessary, to be able to mainstream gender.

Actively support the inclusion of gender mainstreaming through adherence to the gender-mainstreaming guidelines in all project or program activities.

Specific job descriptions may also need modification to ensure that staff members consider gender in specific topics.

For instance, the terms of reference of an agriculture program officer might include such tasks as the following ■

Develop and introduce a sustainable extension service in crop husbandry (including plant protection) and forestry that is farmer-centered, market-oriented, and financially feasible; works in close cooperation with other extension agencies; and meets the needs of both women and men.

The job description of the M&E officer should also include gender-specific descriptions such as working in close cooperation with x staff to:

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Specify quantitative and qualitative indicators at the objective, purpose, result, and subresult levels that are gender inclusive.

Carry out participatory M&E at the activity level and through qualitative evaluations on a regular basis, ensuring the active participation of women and men, boys and girls, and disadvantaged groups.

Assist the project management team in carrying out a participatory rural appraisal, baseline surveys, and other fact-finding activities, including appropriate gender analyses.

Management contracts

If the project or program has management contracts with local partners, the requirement of gender mainstreaming should be made explicit. The project or program should support partners to access adequate technical assistance to help mainstream gender in programs and activities, as well as offer training for staff in partner organizations. The contracts should also require that gender considerations are included in monitoring and reporting.

Gender policies, guidelines, and action plans

To put gender-sensitive monitoring into practice in projects, gender policies and guidelines or action plans should be developed, including at least the following instructions to local and international staff: ■

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Mainstream the promotion of gender equity in all planning and budgeting of project activities and in progress reports. In the project planning exercises, ensure that the anticipated impacts on all groups are considered.

Provide gender-specific objectives and indicators for the logical framework of the project or program document and annual work plans.

Develop qualitative and quantitative indicators as measurements of gender-equity promotion at the activity level.

Disaggregate data by gender in reports and in the information provided to all stakeholders.

Ensure that project personnel receive gender training.

Ensure that the project personnel are informed of, and understand, the partner country’s national plan for promoting gender equity.

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Ensure that study visits and training opportunities made using project funds include equal numbers of women and men as much as possible.

Bring up issues connected with promoting the status of women in visits to the field and hold discussions with both women and men workers and intended project beneficiaries.

Always act in accordance with local laws as well as the gender policies of the donor. In their personal behavior, staff should try to promote the rights of women and men and more equal relations between them.

GENDER CHECKLIST

A gender checklist supports the planning, implementing, and M&E of projects and activities undertaken within a project or program to ensure that gender is mainstreamed and that the outcome is equality of participation and benefits for men and women. Box 16.11 provides key questions that may be asked during the design, implementation, monitoring, or evaluation stage.

Setting times for analysis and encouraging feedback

Clearly a midterm review is a crucial externally imposed time to assess progress and alter program or project activities as necessary. Annual planning should also be used as an opportunity to review what occurred over the last year and consider any differential gender impacts. Many societies have no tradition of giving realistic feedback, either positive or negative. It is likely that many in the community, particularly women and other disadvantaged groups (the very poor or those of low caste), feel constrained and reluctant to complain about problems with project activities. Even if community members report dissatisfaction with an activity, no follow-up discussion of the problem or action may be taken. Both the community and the project or local government authorities need to understand that criticism can be positive, in the sense that it can lead to improvements in the future. Follow-up training and case studies (small-scale gender analyses) of gender impacts may be useful to refresh the minds of staff and potential beneficiaries about the importance of the issue.

Management information system design and use and reporting

The management information system (MIS) devised for the program or project should integrate information flows

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Box 16.11 Key Questions to Be Asked in Project and Program Design, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation General questions: ■

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Does the project involve most stakeholders in monitoring and evaluating? Are there provisions for women and men (disadvantaged target groups) to participate systematically in the monitoring?

To what extent may disadvantaged groups be organized and empowered to take corrective action in response to the discovery of weakness or failure during project implementation?

Are mechanisms in place to ensure that intended project beneficiaries have the ability to change the direction of the project?

Are mechanisms in place to ensure that any negative impacts of the project can be averted?

Questions related to indicators: ■

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Will it be possible to assess whether women or men have been disadvantaged socially or economically? For example, will data be collected on changes to the gender division of labor and on access to, and control of, resources (by socioeconomic group)?

Will it be possible to assess if women’s or men’s workload increased as a result of program inputs, and if women or men have control over income generated from their labor?

Will women’s (and men’s) participation in the project be monitored—for example, the extent to which women (compared to men) receive access to project resources? “Resources” include decision making and training.

Will it be possible to assess if women’s status (or men’s) improved because of program inputs?

Source: Author.

on inputs, outputs, impacts, and outcomes using quantitative and qualitative data. The MIS should produce a range of reports according to need—financial reports, time-based reports, monitoring of results or components, reports by socioeconomic groups of beneficiaries, and others. In a rural development setting, the MIS ideally should incorporate a geographic information system that maps data on

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project activities and outputs. An MIS can provide genderdisaggregated data on stakeholders involved in various aspects of a project and on the indicators selected to monitor change and impact. Both men and women stakeholders should be involved in identifying indicators to monitor change and impact, and both should be involved in providing feedback.

The following information sets should be managed by the MIS: ■

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Monitoring of management and administration: Includes data on staff and personnel (performance, time use, capability), vehicles (mileage, repairs), physical plant (buildings, land, utilities), supplies (stocks, costs, quality), and others.

Financial monitoring: Includes all information about financial resources, such as budget, income, expenditures, and cash flow. In reports, this information may be used to compare income and expenditure over time, changes in sources of revenue, or changes within the organization’s expenditures (particularly with regard to gender).

Program and process monitoring: Looks at the management approach, background information, inputs, activities, outputs, and progress toward objectives and impact.

SEAGA (FAO 2001) lists the key components of a monitoring, evaluation, and reporting system: ■ ■

■ ■

■

A clearly defined purpose and focus Indicators for each activity, input, output, outcome, and impact Data concerning the indicators Analysis of data and presentation of the analysis in useable ways for different people Easy access to the information for use in individuals’ work.

A deficiency in many MIS designs is that they rely too much on quantitative data and find it difficult to incorporate information derived through qualitative and more participatory approaches (box 16.12). A key decision at the start is to determine what information is needed (compared to what might be interesting). Collecting and recording irrelevant data will complicate the system and waste time. Information should be recorded and entered into the system only if it is going to be used.

Developing and testing computer programs are always more difficult and time consuming than initially expected;

Box 16.12 How Can Participation Be Measured and Reported Meaningfully?

Participation is one of the most important factors to ensure gender equity and thus one of the most important to monitor, yet participation can be difficult and time consuming to measure. Participation can range from attending meetings to initiating empowered activity. Different kinds of participation are desirable in different project activities. For each activity, a decision must be made as to the kind of participation that is desired—for instance, assessing not just the number of women attending meetings but whether they express opinions and ask for more information.

It is particularly difficult to assess program participation and benefits at the community level and to assess any effects on power relationships. Genderdisaggregated data are not the only requirement.

Indicators must be identified so that meaningful participation by men and women and real benefits accruing to them can be determined and any resulting power imbalances in the community can be identified clearly. Accurate socioeconomic profiles, including gender analysis, of the target community should inform project activities and assess change.

These analyses are not a one-off event but part of the monitoring process.

Each of the following questions can be posed to gain a clearer or richer understanding of true participation in meetings and training sessions: To what extent did women actively participate in the meeting?

To what extent did women contribute to the meeting outcomes?

To lessen the subjective nature of the answers, development of criteria to form the basis of the answer is

important. For example, criteria to judge “active participation” may include the number of questions asked, the number of comments given, the perseverance of opinion giving in the face of opposition, and attempts to sway others with argument. The answer choice for the questions listed above can be quantified, and change can be noted over time. Initially, for example, 15 percent of women attending meetings may have participated “somewhat” and the remainder “not at all,” whereas after a year of involvement in the program, 35 percent of women attending meetings may have participated “a lot,” 20 percent “somewhat,” and the remainder “not at all.”

Note that for the answers to these questions to have any meaning, clarifying how many women the answers refer to is important. Therefore, the questions above need to be followed by another: To what percentage or fraction of women present at the meeting does this apply?

A range of program impacts are often difficult either to measure or attribute, such as changes in selfconfidence, skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Personal attribution is a valid means to gauge program impacts—in other words, a person or group believes that involvement in program activities has occasioned a change in their self-confidence, skills, knowledge, or attitude. Another method is to collect purely qualitative data using a consistent format and record it on an activity fact sheet. This allows effective monitoring and evaluation of project and program activities and their impacts. The use of participatory rural appraisal or gender analysis techniques to monitor indicators is a helpful tool.

Source: Author, adapted from unpublished project documents.

final expenditures of three times the estimated cost are not uncommon. Standard codes can be used in different packages or modules to link related physical activities in the various databases or records to financial budgets. A better approach at the project level may be to rely on a standard, off-the-shelf accounting system, which can be customized with project codes to identify cost centers, components, and activities and to use the same codes in any other packages (such as data-

bases) used to record monitoring data. Keep the quarterly reporting as simple as possible and try to avoid reporting too much numerical data at the activity level. The numerical detail may not add much information that is meaningful to other users of the report and complicates reporting (many numbers need to be reconciled and actual data reported against targets). More detail on results versus expected outputs and outcomes can be included in the annual report.

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Operating budgets

PRACTICALITIES OF M&E

Sufficient funds need to be made available for genderrelated activities. For instance, funds are needed to purchase gender training materials and to conduct specific studies on the socioeconomic situation of men and women in the project area (gender analysis). Collecting quantitative data disaggregated by gender need not be more costly, but qualitative monitoring of projects, which will pick up on changes in attitudes and changes in gender roles, will require more time and money. The triangulation is important, however, to ensure reliability.

How much M&E is enough? The key is to remember that the purpose of M&E is to guide implementation of a program or project, so a limit exists to the resources that should be used for M&E. The cost of collecting information will usually determine the methods selected and the scope of information collected. A balance must be found between using as few indicators as possible, for reasons of simplicity and cost, and using sufficient indicators to measure the breadth of change and to cross-check results.

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T H E M AT I C N O T E 2

Gender in High-Level Programs, Policies, and Newer Aid Modalities: How Should We Monitor It?

he discourse on aid effectiveness has focused on which modality of aid—project or program modalities, in their various forms—has the greatest impact on poverty reduction and economic growth.

Arguments in favor of the project approach include the ability to make and monitor change at the local level, to control the work and use of funds closely, and to provide good opportunities for capacity building. The opposing arguments are that delivering aid through projects leads to a proliferation of parallel management systems within or outside the public administration, which hamper coordination, planning, and budgeting and result in heavy transaction costs and insufficient impact. The current paradigm in development thinking, agreed to by many donors in the Paris Declaration on Harmonization of Aid, is to move toward programmatic aid, supporting local governments to run activities directly. The increasing emphasis on harmonization and alignment means that all donors are faced with the dilemma of finding an appropriate balance between their own policy objectives and country-led approaches to development.

Some of the “new” modalities include the following:

T

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Program support Poverty reduction strategy programs/national development plans Budget support (general or targeted/sectoral) Public financial management Sectorwide approaches Joint assistance strategies Basket funds (usually a precursor to SWAPs).

These newer modalities require the implementation of monitoring measures on a scale that differs to a great extent from those applied in projects, because in most cases an entire country is covered.

KEY ISSUES RELATED TO MONITORING GENDER IN THE NEWER AID MODALITIES

The attention given to gender within these larger initiatives, unfortunately, is not good. Although SWAPs and budget support have many advantages with regard to impact, they can cause gender equity to receive even less priority, unless deliberate steps are taken to monitor gender impacts.

Gender-sensitive M&E in more traditional projects, although perhaps not done well in practice, is usually better understood in theory. The monitoring of gender issues within PRSPs, budget support, and SWAPs, on the other hand, is more problematic, to both plan and implement. It is difficult to link and track the diagnosis of priorities to plans, budgets, expenditures, and outcomes, and they are very often gender blind. Developing countries usually lack the organizations and technical capacity for accurately monitoring how the funds are spent and what gender outcomes are achieved. Although the newer aid modalities have the potential to mainstream gender equity at a national level, experience to date has shown that gender has not been given much consideration. It is rarely considered to be an independent sector, nor is it effectively mainstreamed, and if equity has improved, this happens usually by accident rather than design.

Gender equity is not explicitly addressed in the Paris Declaration. There is a risk that as the influence of donors on resources diminishes under new aid modalities, their ability to encourage partners to pursue gender-sensitive strategies and carry out M&E will diminish. In addition, SWAPs and budget support tend to be implemented from capital cities, in meetings, rather than at the grassroots level. This context may be far away—in distance and perceptions—from what is actually happening on the ground. Competing priorities, discussed by societal leaders (generally men), usually are found, as well as a diminished scope for gender equity. The demands from donors and local government for time and

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human resources to hold regular working group meetings and joint reviews are enormous. If field visits take place during joint reviews, they often consist of convoys of cars and many visitors sweeping into small villages, with the participation of local leaders and the presence of police for security.

Under these circumstances, it is unlikely that the reviewers can collect good qualitative information, and certainly crosscutting issues or negative results are unlikely to be mentioned.

The Development Assistance Committee review of development cooperation agencies (OECD 2007: 15) found that “a number of respondents believe that the new aid modalities have hampered gender-equity actions. Over half of the mature agencies say the new aid modalities have made gender mainstreaming more difficult—and none say that they have made it less difficult.” In addition, problems of attribution often arise when monitoring results at the budget support or SWAP level: did the support of one particular agency make the difference for women in the partner country, or was it a combination of many actions?

REASONS TO MONITOR GENDER SPECIFICALLY IN THE NEW MODALITIES

The Gender Action Partnership (GAP) Web site in Vietnam states, “Experience shows that if Poverty Reduction Strategies do not comprehensively address the gender dimension of poverty throughout the strategy, then it is most likely that the impact of the strategy on poverty reduction and economic growth will be insufficient, inequitable, and less successful (than it could have been had gender been mainstreamed). The responsiveness of income poverty to growth reduction increases significantly as inequality is lowered— that is, ‘more equal societies will be more efficient transformers of growth into poverty reduction.’”1 Effective gender mainstreaming and gender-sensitive monitoring in the context of budget support can take place only if the national poverty reduction strategy has captured poverty, vulnerability, and the causes of poverty as genderspecific phenomena and outlined effective measures and interventions to overcome them. Establishing a framework to manage for results that incorporates gender equity requires agreement that gender-equity targets are appropriate and that their monitoring is worth the investment. However, this commitment is not always carried through into action.

The connection between policies, spending commitments, and actual implementation will be strengthened if wellfunctioning monitoring systems track the introduction of gender-sensitive performance measures and incentives in the public sector and if community organizations lobby for them.

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EXPERIENCE AND ACHIEVEMENTS

As noted, the experience of gender-sensitive monitoring of the newer aid modalities has been somewhat weak. The following sections look at monitoring of MDGs, PRSPs, SWAPs, and joint reviews—both experiences to date and possible improvements.

Experience with PRSPs and SWAPs

In these early stages of working with new aid modalities, an emphasis is given to measuring management processes, measuring the consistency of aid flow, and tracking finances and economic performance, rather than measuring progress on achieving development priorities, including gender priorities.

The World Bank’s PRSP Sourcebook (World Bank 2002) notes that men and women experience poverty differently and that poverty reduction strategies (PRSs) often do not take these differences into account: A full understanding of the gender dimensions of poverty can significantly change the definition of priority policy and program interventions supported by the PRS. Evidence is growing that gender-sensitive development strategies contribute significantly to economic growth as well as to equity objectives by ensuring that all groups of the poor share in program benefits.

Yet differences between men’s and women’s needs are often not fully recognized in poverty analysis and participatory planning and are frequently not taken into consideration in the selection and design of PRSs. World Bank (2002: 335)

National statistical data are often insufficient. Normally data on early childhood growth or schooling will record the gender of survey participants, yet this level of detail often disappears by the time the information is summarized in background documents for PRSPs or SWAPs. In addition, household-level income or consumption surveys will not usually indicate gender, unless women-headed households are recorded. Intermediaries processing raw data may make a decision regarding the importance of gender and delete important data for monitoring. Qualitative monitoring and attempts to improve participation have been made using participatory poverty assessments and civil society consultations, and the resulting information used to develop PRSPs, but experience has shown that consultations were usually limited and rushed, at least in the first round of PRSPs. It is also difficult to integrate statistical data with the participatory poverty assessment unless specific examples are presented to support particular topics. Consequently, the recommendations did not appear in the final documents.

Another difficulty faced when working with sectoral basket funding or budget support involving multiple donors is that checklists and monitoring requirements may overlap or even be contradictory, despite the harmonization principle endorsed in the Paris Agreement. As a consequence, some recipient governments have tried to develop their own harmonized guidelines and request that donors use them. The Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines of the Philippines (NEDA 2004) are a good example, but not all recipient governments are strong enough to take a similar action.

Typically PRSPs have had a poor record of including women’s organizations in their planning and have lacked a sound gender analysis. Moser and others (2004) identified three types of difficulties in following gender issues in PRSPs: evaporation, “invisibilization,” and resistance. “Evaporation” means that although commitments and general statements are made regarding the importance of women in, for example, subsistence agriculture or nutrition, these words do not progress to action. Even if factors exacerbating women’s poverty and vulnerability are recognized, plans and objectives may not be developed to counteract them.

“Invisibilization” occurs when gender is not monitored or reported, because baseline and monitoring data have not been recorded or passed up to decision makers, because women were not consulted and their perspectives are missing, or because gender information was filtered out as “unimportant.” Issues with clear gender dimensions may also become invisible when they are discussed in gender-neutral terms.

“Resistance” is the refusal to take problems on board and is perhaps the more traditional obstacle in projects.

One difficulty in a PRSP is the sheer amount of information to be gathered. Too many indicators can overwhelm the abilities of national governments to collect and analyze the information. For instance, although the initial PRSP in Bolivia contained 157 national-level indicators, a subsequent, pared-down draft had 17 (Kusek and Rist 2004). Experience indicates, however, that any data pruning is liable to drop indicators linked to gender.

In the new aid modalities (for instance, in PRSPs or the frameworks for targeted budget support), conscious efforts are needed to mainstream gender and to include gendered indicators. National stakeholders should then collect gender-disaggregated data through national statistics offices and surveys as well as qualitative surveys, to monitor implementation and outcomes. Performance assessment frameworks should consist of a set of indicators that monitor progress against national development strategies and sector programs. However, most assessment tools identified within

the Paris Declaration do not monitor gender and social equity. Box 16.13 (below) describes some difficulties encountered in monitoring the PRSP of Mozambique.

Fong, reviewing SWAPs for agriculture implemented between 1989 and 1998, identified SWAPs that successfully integrated a number of gender characteristics, specifically “capacity building on gender in the ministry; using gender objectives to reinforce overall SWAP objectives; a participatory approach with special attention to women stakeholders; mainstreaming gender throughout the program; and strong support of donors.” The review also found increasing recognition of the need to address gender issues in agricultural programs: “Fifteen of the 24 SWAPs made efforts to address gender or women in development issues. Analysis of gender issues was undertaken in twice as many SWAPs in the second five-year period as in the first, so there was progress.”2 Although gender needs were recognized in many SWAPs, real action, such as developing activities or earmarking budgets, was limited. The contradiction between the lack of gender considerations in the main document of the Mozambican agricultural SWAP and the practical instructions given for gender-sensitive monitoring is provided in box 16.14.

Experience with monitoring gender progress in the Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) developed at the Millennium Summit in 2000 consist of a set of eight goals, 18 targets, and 48 indicators for monitoring socioeconomic and environmental change by 2015 (box 16.15).

Although improvements in gender equity and the status of women are vital for achieving all of the MDGs, gender mainstreaming of the MDGs has not been particularly strong. It has been assumed that if the goals are achieved, progress would occur in social areas at the same time. An analysis of the indicators for monitoring progress shows very little emphasis on gender, other than goal 3. Rather than mainstreaming gender, the goals have seemingly circumscribed it within goals 3 and 5.

The indicators for goal 3 are the ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; the ratio of literate women to men among 15–24-year-olds; the share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector; and the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. Clearly, these indicators reflect only a limited subset of activity in education, nonagricultural employment, and political representation. They do not reflect agricultural and rural livelihoods adequately, especially disparities in

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Box 16.13 Mozambique: Strengths and Weaknesses of Gender Monitoring in the Second Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty Mozambique’s second Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (known by its acronym in Portuguese, which is PARPA) shows some improvement in gender monitoring over the first, although many issues remain to be resolved.

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Improvements: ■

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The second version of PARPA has more consideration of gender than the first.

Specific progress has been made in some areas: a bill on domestic violence is in the pipeline, a Family Law has been passed, and a National Gender Policy is under development.

A Gender Coordination Group—with representatives from government, donor agencies, United Nations agencies, and civil society—chaired by the United Nations Population Fund, has considered gender issues in the agriculture meetings, although the group has not functioned very well in the joint reviews.

Unresolved issues: ■

Key documents focus very little attention on women’s economic empowerment. No systematic attention is given to women’s rights or to the application of a rights-based approach in general.

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The capacity for stakeholders to conduct gender analyses is low. No strategic approach or results orientation is present. Agriculture has a separate strategy on gender equity, but the substance is weak.

Progress has been made in institutionalizing gender-mainstreaming mechanisms, such as gender units and the appointment of gender focal points, but their true capacity, resources, and motivation remain unclear.

Women’s advocacy within government is weak in human resources and authority.

In general, the motivation among government officials to discuss gender issues seems low. Many consider gender-equity strategies to be imposed by donors and feel resistant.

Much gender training has occurred, yet staff cannot apply the theory in practice.

Some sectors collect gender-disaggregated data; some do not. Room for improvement exists in all sectors.

Gender issues are treated in an ad hoc way, not based on analysis. A systematic approach for gender mainstreaming is missing.

Clearly, much work remains to be done, and incentives must be found to mainstream gender in PARPA.

Source: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland, internal memo, May 29, 2007.

access to productive resources such as land, credit, and technology. These indicators are also only quantitative in nature and measure equality of access to those areas. They do not measure whether women receive good education or are empowered (World Bank 2007).

Many of the MDGs have a gender dimension. For instance, gender-sensitive activities in agriculture can contribute to goal 3 directly by empowering women farmers and indirectly by reducing women’s time burden for domestic tasks. Experience at the project level, however, teaches that if we do not measure the impacts on gender, we cannot assume that benefits will flow equally to women and men.

Consequently, various agencies have attempted to strengthen the monitoring. Ideally, at least one gender-sensitive indicator should be used within each MDG. For instance, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

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has improved the list of indicators, and various groups have reviewed country reports to assess the quality of gender mainstreaming.

In 2006 in a paper for the Development Assistance Committee Network on Gender Equality, Gaynor (2006) noted that gender was not reflected as a cross-cutting issue in any of the 13 MDG country reports reviewed in 2003, and goal 3 (on gender equality) was the only one consistently addressing gender issues across countries. The World Bank reported that “data on all six official indicators of MDG3 are available for only 59 out of 154 developing countries (for 2000–05), and even fewer countries have time-series data that would allow tracking over time for both the official and expanded list of indicators. . . . [O]nly 41 countries have current (2000–05) information. This lack of data limits considerably the ability to monitor progress, learn from success, and,

Box 16.14 Mozambique: Monitoring Gender in a Sector-Wide Agriculture Program

ProAgri, a sectoral program implemented by Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADER), receives financial support from some 20 donors. Its objective is to protect, conserve, and use agriculture, forestry, and wildlife resources in a sustainable way. The second-phase strategy document for ProAgri emphasized that continued blindness to gender differences in agricultural planning could undermine the program, resulting in poor production, food insecurity, and increased rural poverty. Proposals were made for improved gender-sensitive monitoring and technical support to MADER to develop and apply gender-sensitive socioeconomic participatory methodologies. Interestingly, the targets and milestones listed in this same document make no reference to gender, although the chapter on M&E presents a useful recommendation on including gender concerns in M&E mechanisms, especially the necessity of the following: ■

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Including explicit and feasible instructions for analyzing equity issues to generate useful data for planning Specifying results and relevant indicators, and ensuring that equity goals are reflected in the definition and selection of impact and process indicators and evaluation criteria Documenting best practices to build up models.

Source: Strategy Document, ProAgri II, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mozambique, www.pwg.gov.mz.

ultimately, to make informed decisions regarding scaling up investments (World Bank 2007: 106). The report strongly recommended that the collection and analysis of genderdisaggregated data be significantly scaled up to permit more accurate and full measurement of progress toward goal 3.

Access to land has considerable influence on progress toward goals 1, 3, and 7 (and others as well, given the links between access to land and access to credit). Gender-sensitive data referring to land rights and security of tenure would provide good information for monitoring progress toward these goals. Links are also present in goals 1, 3, and 6 with respect to the impact of HIV and AIDS on rural households and gender issues in agriculture. The adverse effects of HIV

Box 16.15

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Millennium Development Goals

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Achieve universal primary education.

Promote gender equality and empower women.

Reduce child mortality.

Improve maternal health.

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Ensure environmental sustainability.

Develop a global partnership for development.

Source: United Nations, www.un.org/millenniumgoals.

and AIDS and malaria specifically on agriculture and rural development are manifested primarily as the loss of labor and on- and off-farm income. Gender inequality, which is at the core of the epidemic’s spread, is one of the main determining factors associated with vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. In the case of goal 7, gender differences in the way natural resources are used are important to outcomes. If women in the boundary zone of a protected area collect nontimber forest products for household use, no point can be seen in monitoring only the forest products sold by men at the local market.

The indicators for many of the MDGs should be expanded, but this task is not simple because data are not available in all countries. Many countries lack basic, genderdisaggregated data on productive assets, including land, livestock, house ownership, ownership of other property, credit, and business ownership. Information on land tenure by gender is included in agricultural censuses or surveys, but it is not usually possible to get national data disaggregated by gender on access to credit (formal and informal) and business ownership; it is necessary to rely on smaller, targeted surveys. Without these data, progress cannot be monitored.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs of Cambodia provides a good example of how the monitoring of goal 3 can be improved. The Ministry improved the collection and handling of statistics and expanded the official indicators for goal 3 to strengthen the focus on gender. It added indicators of gender equity in (1) literacy rates for 25–44-year-olds, to cover women in their prime child-bearing and working years; (2) wage employment in agriculture, industry, and services, to monitor sex segregation within sectors (women are underrepresented in the service sector); and (3) all elected bodies (National Assembly, Senate, and commune councils)

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and government positions. In addition, it added a new target focused on reducing all forms of violence against women and children (World Bank 2007).

PRINCIPLES AND GUIDELINES FOR ACTION

With development cooperation increasingly dependent on PRSs, sectorwide strategies, and other country-generated development plans, drawing up gender-equity objectives for these plans and strategies is vital. To minimize policy evaporation, linking policy and strategies with clearly identifiable inputs, outputs, resource allocations, expected outcomes, and their relationship to policy goals is important. A number of indicators, tools, and methods that can support this process are summarized in box 16.16 and discussed in the sections that follow.

MONITORING PRSPS

The PRSP Sourcebook (World Bank 2002) recommends three steps for gender-sensitive monitoring of PRSPs: 1. Integrate a gender dimension into the outcome monitoring system.

2. Integrate a gender dimension into the PRS evaluation strategy, and use gender monitoring and impact evaluation results.

3. Build institutional capacity for gender-responsive M&E.

Box 16.16 Summary: Gender Indicators, Tools, and Methods for the New Aid Modalities In dealing with the new aid modalities, a number of indicators, tools, and methods may be useful for reflecting gender outcomes and impacts.

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When selecting indicators, tools, and methods to reflect gender outcomes and impacts in PRSPs, PRS managers should consider the following: ■

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Select only a few critical goals, outcomes, and indicators from the PRS for monitoring and evaluating gender outcomes and impacts. In the selection process, consider how the information is to be used, and by whom, and assess these needs in light of budgetary and time constraints.

Ensure that the data are collected.

Data collection methods are determined by the kinds of information and data needed to monitor change and progress. Optimum results are obtained when traditional and participatory approaches to M&E are used to complement one another.

Collecting new data on gender is not always necessary.

Assess the availability of gender-responsive data before considering the need to collect new data. Gender M&E is frequently done by disaggregating data already being collected and using other available sources of information.

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Conduct gender analysis, including genderoriented analyses of PRSPs and other development plans, to track the extent to which partnercountry development plans incorporate a gender dimension.

Conduct participatory assessments, including poverty and social impact analyses and needs assessments.

Use gender-responsive public financial management tools, such as gender budgeting or genderdisaggregated benefit incidence.

Include gender indicators as milestones or even triggers for disbursement.

Ensure that gender is considered when preparing terms of reference for joint reviews or monitoring visits.

Use gender audits, peer review, and genderequity markers and indices to study progress.

Include activities to mainstream gender throughout all levels. Embed gender equity in national monitoring and accountability frameworks and mechanisms.

Formulate clear, measurable objectives and indicators, and link them with annual information sources.

Promote capacity building (also for civil society) to contribute to the monitoring process.

Conduct ex ante assessments of the gender impact of proposed development actions, which in principle identify gender-biased outcomes and permit mitigating actions to be built into a program or project.

Disseminate good practice and experience locally and internationally.

Source: Author.

Three countries—Mozambique, Uganda, and Vietnam— offer examples of practical steps for monitoring gender in poverty reduction strategy programs, and these are described in box 16.17.

Poverty and social impact analysis reveals the distributional impact of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, with a particular focus on

Box 16.17 Practical Steps Taken in Three Countries to Monitor Gender in Poverty Reduction Strategy Programs Mozambique Monitoring for Mozambique’s Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA) is being integrated into the regular system of quarterly and annual government reports to parliament. A special annual poverty report will also be prepared, based on quantitative and qualitative data. The PARPA does not specify the form of the poverty report, but ideally it should include monitoring at three levels: sectoral performance, execution of program expenditures and revenues, and changes in welfare as measured by poverty and social indicators. The main quantitative data sources will be administrative data produced by the line ministries and annual household surveys of key welfare indicators (through the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaires).

The indicator table in PARPA’s monitoring section represents an initial attempt to focus on a smaller number of key targets and indicators for each priority area, with a clearer distinction between intermediate and outcome indicators. However, some of these measures are provisional, because in some cases the precise quantities still need to be established and the relevant data sources defined. Targets and indicators are best specified in those sectors that have sectorwide approaches in place. As reporting on the PARPA becomes more institutionalized, further refinement of its indicators may be expected, and the link to poverty outcomes should be strengthened (ideally with more gender consideration).

Uganda Uganda developed a detailed sectoral information and monitoring system (SIMS) for a water and sanitation program, which includes the monitoring of gender.

The system features the following: ■

Sector Management Arrangements—the institutional framework or system that guides the development, oversight, and coordination of SIMS (Water and

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Sanitation Sector Working Group, sector performance thematic team).

Sector Strategic Monitoring monitors results for the sector using 10 key “golden indicators,” including gender. These indicators are identified by all stakeholders at the start. Various studies also support monitoring, such as national surveys, tracking studies, expenditure analysis, and equity studies.

Sector Implementation Monitoring monitors project/program inputs and outputs through quarterly progress reports, performance assessment framework, monitoring reports, and others.

Some of the lessons learned from this process include the importance of agreeing on definitions, data sources, and data collection methods from the outset and agreeing on annual indicator targets for assessing performance changes over time. Linking SIMS to budgeting and resource allocation within the sector is still a significant challenge, and putting monitoring findings and recommendations into action is still difficult.

Vietnam Vietnam has included two gender targets in its Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. First, 40 percent of newly created jobs should go to women; second, land tenure certificates should be issued in the names of both women and men. To meet the first target, targets are being created for different organizations, gender indicators will be included into the national targeted program on job creation, coordination will take place with concerned agencies, and monitoring and evaluation indicators and processes will be identified. For the second target, the Land Administration will set targets for every year, and the number of certificates to be issued or reissued will be specified. Instructions will be given to district cadastral officers, budget and staff will be allocated, and reporting and evaluation formats established. The concerned ministries and the Women’s Union will monitor progress.

Sources: IMF/IDA 2001; Disan Ssozi, “Sector Information and Monitoring System (Uganda Case Study),” www.worldwater week.org; Thi Minh Chanh, “Hanoi Action Plan Review,” www.unifem-ecogov-apas.org.

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the poor and vulnerable (see box 16.18 for an example from Vietnam). Poverty and social impact analysis also addresses sustainability and the risks to policy reform and helps to monitor poverty and social outcomes and impacts of policy changes. It can inform national poverty reduction strategies, specific reform programs, and development bank lending, as well as strengthen evidence-based decision making (World Bank 2004).

Needs assessments can be used to collect information, raise awareness, and understand the priority needs of women based on their different tasks, concerns, and responsibilities. They can divide practical gender needs and strategic needs (which contribute to transforming subordinate relationships between women and men). A needs assessment might be done at the community level but can Box 16.18 Examples of How Gender Analysis Is Used Gender Analysis in a Sectorwide Program: Kenya Between 1996 and 1998, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture led a study of gender relations in agriculture in three regions, which brought to light constraints and challenges regarding equitable agricultural development, along with institutional inhibitions to change. As a result, a separate objective for gender equity was added to Kenya’s Agricultural Sector Investment Program. The objective received a separate budget line, ensuring funding of activities to improve women’s economic security. Responsibilities were clearly set for monitoring at each level, and capacities were built.

also be used right up to the level of national bodies or internationally. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean undertook a needs assessment of economic planning units in four Caribbean countries to evaluate their capacity to integrate gender into macroeconomic planning processes (for instance, to carry out gender-sensitive budget analysis of both revenues and expenditures).3 The study assessed the extent to which the countries sought to integrate gender into macroeconomic planning, as well as the institutional, human resource capacity, and attitudinal factors that facilitated or hindered such integration. It included interviews with Finance and Planning Department staff, NGOs, women’s organizations, and training bodies. Current policies and practices were examined as well. The needs assessment formed the basis for designing and implementing subregional training workshops aimed at increasing the capacity of regional economic planners in gender analysis and gender planning. It was a very useful baseline to support gender-sensitive budget analysis in those countries and analyze the constraints to monitoring government commitments to gender equity.

Gender integration in SWAPs should have a number of characteristics to be successful:4 ■

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Gender Analysis of Structural Reforms: Vietnam An analysis of the gender dimensions of Vietnam’s structural reforms focused on links between reform, gender equity, economic growth, and women’s welfare in Vietnam during the 1990s. The gender dimensions of key reform policies received special attention. The analysis found that women on the whole are better off as a result of the reforms, but the gains are not evenly distributed across income groups, regions, and ethnic groups. Household and enterprise survey data presented mixed results regarding gendered outcomes and formed the basis for recommendations to enable women to improve their economic and social welfare.

Sources: OECD 2002; Packard 2006.

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Capacity building on gender in the ministry: For example, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture has given extensive emphasis to building capacity for integrating gender at the ministry, regional, and community levels during SWAp preparation and implementation.

Using gender objectives to reinforce overall SWAP objectives: Enhancing attention to gender will increase the likelihood of reaching overall objectives, such as poverty alleviation and enhanced food security (see box 16.18 for an example from Kenya).

A participatory approach, with special attention to gender stakeholders: To ensure good coverage of ideas and attention to gender issues and increased ownership of the process, groups that do not otherwise participate in the planning or monitoring will need to be tapped at national, regional, and community levels, including a range of government ministries, NGOs, universities, women entrepreneurs, and women farmers, among others. Practical steps may need to be taken to ensure that women have good access to planning meetings (such as ensuring proper timing, providing child care, and identifying a suitable location).

Mainstreaming gender throughout the program: Gender should not be isolated within a separate task force. All

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groups involved in program preparation and monitoring must consider gender as a cross-cutting issue.

Strong donor support. Strong donor support may be important to the success, for example, of gender focal points in ministries or of including specific, gendersensitive M&E in the program.

Gender budget analysis tools are used to review general or mainstream budget expenditures (for instance, within the annual budget of a nation or of a specific sectoral program) or to review expenditures specifically targeted to groups of women or men to meet prioritized needs or promote equal opportunities. Gender budget initiatives (GBIs) can be defined as “diverse efforts aimed at breaking down the government’s budget in order to analyze its impact on women, men, girls, and boys, as well as on other axes of social differentiation (such as race, ethnicity, class, and caste). Their main purpose is to examine whether public expenditures are allocated in an equitable way, and hence promote gender equality” (Balmori 2003: 15). They can also help to reshape government policy goals and resource allocation.

Local organizations have used GBIs to analyze expenditures and link policies to actual spending commitments to women and the poor (for example, in India and Tanzania).

This information has been channeled back to governments to promote gender-responsive budgeting. The rationale is to establish a process in partner countries whereby the differential effects on men and women of particular budget decisions are understood and biases are corrected. The most commonly used method takes the government’s policy framework and examines it sector by sector, exploring how budget expenditures are used and identifying the longer-term impacts on men and women.

In Morocco a gender-sensitive Economic and Financial Report accompanied the 2006 finance bill and provided a baseline for measuring progress on gender issues in budgets and outcomes in several ministries, including agriculture (for details, see the Web site of the Ministry of Finance and Privatization, www.finances.gov.ma, or the UNIFEM Web site, www.gender-budgets.org). Many examples of gender budget initiatives in other countries are given in World Bank (2007), which identifies the key steps in implementing budget initiatives as upgrading the technical skills of budget officials and gender experts and strengthening government agencies, raising public awareness of gender issues to ensure the sustainability of the initiatives, and supporting wellinformed coalitions of NGOs for advocacy. The key challenge for gender-informed budget analysis and policy making is to move beyond gender-targeted interventions to

full and sustained gender mainstreaming in the budget process. A range of tools are available (table 16.3).

One difficulty with GBIs is that results for a given year are usually available only after the following year’s budget has been planned, so a lag of one year tends to occur before findings can lead to change.

Linkages with advocacy, research, and training are vital for moving the results of GBIs forward into the development of improved programs. These roles may be carried out by government, but this is unusual. More commonly, governmental “women’s machinery” (women’s unions, NGOs, and other groups that advocate on behalf of women) may work together with NGOs and university institutions to lobby politicians and raise awareness among the general public. The Tanzania Gender Networking Program, a nongovernmental agency, pioneered the use of gender budgeting (Muro 2007). The gender budgeting process (1997–2000) focused primarily on collecting information, conducting research, disseminating results, lobbying and advocacy, establishing links and recognition, and building capacity of partners and resource persons. Major achievements have been the following: ■

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Gender budgeting has been institutionalized. It is now a requirement in the government budget process.

There has been a trend of increased budget to social sectors such as health and water.

Gender is now a Public Expenditure Review Working Sector Committee.

The Tanzania Gender Networking Program is a resource organization for gender budgeting and is called to support other countries that wish to implement it.

Public and media engagement in policy debates has increased, along with involvement in GBI campaigns on HIV and AIDS, water, and gender-based violence.

In Kenya, experience has shown that at least three years of capacity building and financial and technical support are needed to ensure that gender-mainstreaming concepts are embedded in national organizations and in strategic and budget frameworks (GTZ 2005).

The performance assessment framework (PAF) is a commonly agreed-to matrix or consolidated list of priority policy reforms, measures, and indicators against which progress is monitored and reported on by the government. The PAF is used as the main point of reference for making disbursement decisions. If donors wish to use the PAF as a tool, indicators that measure progress in gender equity and are gender disaggregated could be inserted (although usually a

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Table 16.3 Seven Tools for Gender Budget Initiatives and Examples of Their Use Tool

Application

Gender-aware policy appraisal

Designed to analyze policies and programs from a gender perspective and identify how these policies and the resources allocated to them are likely to reduce or increase gender inequalities.

Gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessment

Implemented to evaluate the extent to which programs or services meet the needs of actual or potential beneficiaries, as identified and expressed by the beneficiaries.

Gender-disaggregated public expenditure benefit incidence analysis

Used to evaluate the distribution of budget resources among women and men, girls and boys, by estimating the unit costs of a certain service and calculating the extent to which this service is being used by each group.

Gender-disaggregated analysis of the impact of the budget on time use

Designed to establish a link between budget allocations, the services provided through them, and the way in which different members within a household spend their time.

Gender-aware medium-term economic policy framework

Designed to incorporate a gender perspective into the mediumterm frameworks of policy development, planning, and budgetary allocations, such as by disaggregating variables by gender, combining national income accounts and household income accounts, and highlighting and challenging gender-blind, underlying assumptions about how the economy works.

Gender-aware budget statement

Generated by government agencies for use in reports on the implications of their expenditures on gender-equity objectives.

Disaggregated tax-incidence analysis

Used to assess the differential impacts of taxation on women and men, as well as to evaluate the level of revenue raised in relation to the needs and demands for public expenditure.

Source: Balmori 2003.

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reluctance to make the indicators too complicated is encountered). Progress on gender indicators could then be used as a means of conditionality, with disbursement taking place only if agreed-to steps have taken place or if agreed-to results have been achieved. Unfortunately, to date gender has usually not been considered, and much more emphasis has been placed on issues of financial management.

ministries). If reliable data can be collected on the outcomes of the support, this information will prove very useful for addressing positive or negative trends in indicators and discussing the reasons at the highest level with all major stakeholders. The development of alliances of donors and local organizations can also be supported and used to promote gender equity by lobbying government decision makers.

JOINT MONITORING MISSIONS

EXAMINING GENDER ACTIVITIES OF DONORS

Programmatic, sectoral, and budget support is usually monitored via regular missions (for instance, six-monthly or annual missions), often consisting of one or many donors and government representatives (joint review missions). To ensure that gender-sensitive monitoring takes place, attention must be given to inserting it in the terms of reference for joint reviews (box 16.19). Guidelines should be established for the review process and missions to ensure that genderequity issues are included. Meetings with local womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advocacy groups and other relevant persons or agencies should be required as part of data collection. Gender focal points should participate in and support the joint review in their sectors (for example, the focal points in agriculture

Peer review is a tool developed by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD (OECD/DAC) in which a panel of peers assesses a multilateral agencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s evaluation systems and processes. This tool can be applied equally well to evaluate whether gender is being considered in evaluations.

OECD/DAC has also developed a gender-equity marker to allow donors to record whether activities have the explicit goal of achieving gender equity. The marker has been used mainly in social policy areas but not yet in productive areas, which, of course, are highly relevant in agricultural livelihoods. Its use has been limited largely to measuring the policy objectives of a program. The next step is to start using this tool in evaluations, in which it might give some idea of

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Box 16.19 Examples of Gender-Specific Topics to Include in Terms of Reference for Joint Review Missions

Poverty and institutional analysis: ■

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Are gender and other equity, disparity, or human rights issues included in the performance assessment framework reporting instructions and have guidelines been made for the sectors?

Did government approve any significant new gender legislation or policies during the period in question? Were legal instruments that discriminate against women revised? Has the institutionalization of gender policy and strategy improved in line ministries?

Have any studies been carried out providing new information on the income, consumption, or other dimensions of poverty from a gender perspective?

With what results?

What progress has been made, and what measures have been taken to improve the production and use of gender analysis and disaggregated data, compared with the previous year?

Does the analysis consider linkages between sectors, such as links between nutrition and water and sanitation?

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Entrepreneurship and economic development: ■

Agriculture and nutrition: ■ ■

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How many women in comparison to men were reached with extension or new technology services, seed, tools, and fertilizer support?

What is the percentage increase of women having official title to land in comparison with men and the

previous year? What actions were taken to increase women’s land ownership?

What is the percentage increase in women having access to credit? What is their average interest rate and loan amount compared to those for men? How do women’s and men’s loans and repayment rates compare?

What is the number and position of women in agricultural production and marketing associations?

What developments have occurred in household food security and nutrition indicators (under-five malnutrition, wasting, and stunting)?

In related sectors, such as water or transport, in which prices and affordability of services produced by gender have been analyzed, can women afford to pay for transport, energy, and water? What are the utilization rates by gender?

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What is women’s share of the benefits provided?

Examples include the number of women in training courses, as beneficiaries of credit and other funds, as project beneficiaries, and as participants in national and international marketing events.

What is women’s access to capital, credit, and formal banking services?

How has the number of micro-, small, or medium enterprises owned by women developed? How many are registered under women’s names, compared with the previous year?

Source: Adapted from the Gender Checklist for the Joint Budget Review, Mozambique, unpublished.

how gender equity has been affected. The gender-equity index represents another effort to measure progress or regression in gender equity internationally as a result of new aid modalities.5 The index uses a set of indicators for which data are available in most countries.

Gender audits have been used increasingly as a selfassessment tool for measuring gender equity among institutions, including development agencies and NGOs. Moser (2007: 17) lists the issues that might be considered: ■

Analysis of gender issues within organizations in relation to, for example, flexible working hours for both women and men, child care provision, and policies that encourage more flexible gender roles

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Mainstreaming of gender equity in all mainstream policies and creating requirements for gender-sensitive M&E systems Human resources, including issues such as gender equity in recruitment Technical capacity of staff in gender issues and internal capacity building Allocation of financial resources to gender-mainstreaming efforts or women-focused initiatives Organizational culture, including a culture of participation and consultation.

The DFID’s internal gender audit of its staff in Malawi found that most of them had limited knowledge of gender

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mainstreaming and very few realized that DFID even had a gender strategy.6 If staff members are unaware of the importance of gender in projects and programs, they are not likely to ensure gender-sensitive monitoring. It can be extrapolated that local project and government staff will be even less likely to focus on gender in monitoring, if the donor does not actively encourage it. Other NGOs and bilateral and multilateral funding institutions have audited the extent to which gender has been incorporated into their field activities.

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CONCLUSION

Evaluation is a much more complex task under the newer aid modalities than in projects because of the greater number of stakeholders, broader geographic coverage, and lack of clear logical frameworks. Tools are gradually being developed for M&E in this new context, however, and their use will be vital for ensuring that gender-equity priorities do not become lost in a myriad of other considerations.

T H E M AT I C N O T E 3

Setting Gender-Sensitive Indicators and Collecting Gender-Disaggregated Data

f we are to measure progress in gender-related targets, we need gender-sensitive indicators. Indicators are the building blocks of an effective M&E system, but they are highly context specific and uniquely representative of a particular program or project. This Thematic Note examines how to set high-quality indicators and collect the data. Practical examples for projects and programs are provided.

I

GENDER-SENSITIVE INDICATORS

A gender-sensitive indicator can be defined as “an indicator that captures gender-related changes in society over time” (Beck 2000: 7). The DFID Gender Manual (Derbyshire 2002) defines gender-sensitive indicators as follows: Gender-sensitive indicators allow measurement of benefits to women and men and include the impact/effectiveness of activities targeted to do the following (Derbyshire 2002: 28): ■

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Address women’s or men’s practical needs, such as new skills, resources, opportunities, or services in the context of their existing gender roles Increase gender equality of opportunity, influence, or benefit, such as targeted actions to increase women’s role in decision making, opening up new opportunities for women and men in nontraditional skill areas Develop gender awareness and skills among policy making, management, and implementation staff Promote greater gender equity within the staffing and organizational culture of development organizations, such as, the impact of affirmative action policy.

importance of designing gender-sensitive indicators to monitor the gender impacts of programs and projects. Initially the impact on women was emphasized, but now the emphasis is on gender as it is broadly defined.

REASONS FOR USING GENDER-SENSITIVE INDICATORS

Despite making up half of the population, women are often invisible in society because of their low sociocultural and economic status. Women’s invisibility is particularly acute in agriculture, despite the fact that they often do much of the work related to farming. Counting the participation of women and other disadvantaged groups in every activity is a simple way to make them visible to all stakeholders. Even if women are absent, their absence should be mentioned and recorded, and the reasons explained in reports. Because indicators show changes, they can demonstrate that women are participating more or less in project activities over time, and they can prompt discussion among stakeholders as to the reasons.

Gender indicators should show how and if gender equity is being reached, and if the approaches used are effective.

They should answer the following questions: ■

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During the 1970s and 1980s, more emphasis was given to quantitative general (and particularly economic) indicators.

Since the 1990s, however, realization has grown of the

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Is the gap between women and men decreasing in terms of access, income, and power?

Are project activities the most appropriate and effective activities for achieving an improvement in gender equity?

Could the project or program do more to benefit different disadvantaged groups?

How have women and men benefited directly from the activities?

Are the direct or indirect impacts of the project or program having an adverse effect on the gender situation

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(including the socioeconomic position of women and the power relationships between women and men)?

How do the women and men themselves assess the impact on their lives, and would their situation have been different without the project?

EXPERIENCE AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Most projects tend to collect only basic disaggregated data.

Gender-specific monitoring, like monitoring in general, tends to be lost in the day-to-day pressures of implementation.

A survey by the IFAD revealed that the weakest areas for gender-disaggregated data collection are the composition of project-related committees and decision-making bodies, beneficiaries of extension and technical assistance, and beneficiaries of microcredit (IFAD 2007). Given the critical nature of these issues for gender, project monitoring systems are probably missing gender differences.

The FAO is collaborating with other United Nations agencies to collect and provide gender-specific data that will help mainstream gender across the organization. It is hoped that such data will more clearly illustrate gender inequalities in agriculture, rural development, and food security. This effort includes the incorporation of gender-specific demographic data into FAOSTAT (FAO’s statistical databases; FAO 2003).

Through technical assistance to many national institutions in charge of data collection, FAO has also raised awareness of the importance of gathering gender-disaggregated data through the national agricultural census. The FAO has supported pilot studies to develop a methodology for collecting gender-disaggregated data for countries in transition in Central and Eastern Europe, and it has developed and fieldtested sets of gender-sensitive indicators on natural resources management and socioeconomics. Other projects have supported training of FAO field staff in conducting gender-sensitive household surveys and using community appraisal methods. Even so, the FAO progress report noted that “more work is needed in technical units compiling and analyzing statistics, such as from national agricultural censuses and surveys, to assist FAO Members to generate genderdisaggregated data, produce surveys on the gendered nature of work, and provide detailed gender analysis of statistical material and information on data and on data collection methodologies” (FAO 2003: para. 49).

The Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines of the government of the Philippines (NEDA 2004) is an attempt to ensure that gender is mainstreamed across all activities and levels of management. The guidelines include

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a good set for project management as well as sector-specific monitoring indicators for gender and development.

GUIDELINES IN DESIGNING GENDER-SPECIFIC INDICATORS AND FINDING SOURCES OF VERIFICATION

Many guides for designing appropriate indicators are available. This section provides only a brief overview and some specific examples.

Types of indicators

Indicators can be distinguished in a number of ways.

Input indicators specify the means and resources required for an action. Input indicators are normally part of the project or program document and reporting system, and they describe what is being physically done—for example, how many hours of training are provided to men and women, how much money is spent, or the quantity of fruit trees planted.

Process indicators ensure the effective and efficient use of means and resources for implementing an action. Process indicators are of particular importance for participatory monitoring to ensure that all (primary) stakeholders, disaggregated by gender, have knowledge of and, if appropriate, participate in, progress being made, obstacles encountered, solutions presented, and decisions made, from start to finish.

Output indicators measure the achievement of intended outputs and determine whether project goals are being achieved. Outcome indicators measure the immediate impacts produced by the outputs. Typically, output and outcome indicators are used as internal monitoring or evaluation tools. Generally, these are defined prior to the project, but ideally they should be modified in the early stages of implementation to reflect changes that may have taken place and to be certain that data will be available to verify them from baseline and other sources. When output indicators are analyzed, it is essential to consider the influence of gender roles and relations on the distribution of benefits. What measures can verify whether project benefits accrue to women as well as men and identify the different types of women engaged in or affected by the project? Output indicators might include the number of people trained or the number of rural women and men accessing a Web site with agricultural information. An example of an outcome indicator might be the percentage increase in average crop yield among men and women farmers included in the project over the project period.

Impact indicators measure a project’s medium- or longterm impacts on poverty and livelihoods among the primary stakeholders. Impact indicators describe the actual change in conditions as a result of a program or project activity, such as changed attitudes of men and women as a result of training, changed practices, or a decrease in the number of households living in poverty over five years. Ideally, indicators for expected local impacts should be established in a participatory manner for any subprojects.

Qualitative versus quantitative indicators

Quantitative indicators are measures of quantity (total numbers, percentages, and others) that show the degree to which a goal or an objective has been attained. Sources of quantitative indicators are data systems and records in which information is presented in a gender-disaggregated manner. They could be project-specific collection systems (specific surveys targeting data related to project outcomes) or existing records, such as the census, agricultural production records, or transport ministry statistics. Traditionally quantitative indicators have been favored because they are more objective and can be verified using data from government records or project-established monitoring systems. In addition, they are easier to incorporate into a management information system and track in reporting. By nature, quantitative indicators may be the simplest means of demonstrating gender differences (and tracking changes) for all audiences. Examples include the number of women participants in technology testing and on-farm trials, gender-disaggregated adoption of new technologies, yields of women’s crops, increased incomes for women from cropping, labor time changes by gender, the percentage or number of men and women (or young and old, or ethnic minority women, or members of other groups) receiving training, or the proportion of women farmers adopting new technologies or crops.

Qualitative indicators can be defined as recording people’s judgments and perceptions about a given subject. They are useful for understanding processes: Who is participating in decision making? Who benefits? What are the local perceptions of successes and failures? Qualitative indicators are harder to measure because they involve processes and use categories of classification, such as those based on perceptions. Qualitative indicators might relate to levels of participation of women, men, and other groups in meetings, the satisfaction levels of different users of a service, or attitudinal changes. Examples of data sources include interviews, focus groups, user surveys, participant observation, and participatory appraisals.

Quantitative indicators sometimes do not capture the true impacts of a project or program. For this reason, qualitative indicators should be used to complement quantitative ones. In a rural development project in Mongolia, for example, data showed that increased problems were reported in infrastructure construction. Further questioning revealed that the problems had not increased but that community members’ involvement in a participatory monitoring process caused more problems to be reported and acted on.

If quantitative data alone were considered, they would give an erroneous impression of the project’s success. This experience is common, and project and program staff should always question whether increased reporting of a finding really means increased incidence or if it is actually the result of increased awareness or improved consultation. If monitoring by local women in a protected area produces new reports of illegal hunting, it may be that such hunting has always taken place but that only women who collect firewood in the forest see it happening.

Likewise, when recording women’s participation in training events or resource management committees, gender-disaggregated quantitative data are insufficient. Finding ways to record whether women participate actively in discussions and are heard (and which group of women), or whether women simply participate to make up the numbers and comply with donor demands.

The power of triangulation

If qualitative data are used to triangulate quantitative results, a powerful and multifaceted case can be built. For instance, direct quotes from participants can be used in reports and explanations provided for quantitative changes.

Triangulation is also important to ensure that cultural biases do not affect the results. For instance, in some cultures a woman may not give a truthful answer to a question if it might imply criticism of her husband. In this case, consultation with independent sources is important to confirm the data. Triangulation makes it possible to reduce the sample size and at the same time increase the reliability and validity of the data.

Capacity building is an area that in particular requires qualitative indicators. The interest here lies not only in the number of women trained but also in the extent to which capacity building has increased the social capital of women farmers, extension workers, and the poor, such as access to market information, increased confidence of the poor in their skills, and access to local agricultural extension staff.

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Designing indicators

Two acronyms have been used to describe sound performance indicators: ■

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TQQ: Time (time-bound accomplishment), quantity (numerically measurable), and quality (what level of quality or degree of achievement is desired).

SMARTS: Simple and easily defined, measurable, attributable, realistic, targeted, and specific. Consideration should be given to whether the indicators selected are relevant (do they provide the necessary information for making decisions?), understandable and meaningful for relevant stakeholders, and feasible (do project staff or stakeholders have the time, skills, and means to monitor it?).

In designing indicators, many issues must be considered.

Comparison to a norm: The use of gender-sensitive indicators should involve comparison to a norm (for example, “the situation of women in a program compared to the situation of men in the program” or “compared to women in the country as a whole”). In this way, the indicator can focus on questions of gender equity rather than only on the status of women. Examples would include “the percentage of women actively participating as members of natural resource management committees” or “numbers of women and men with land certificates in the project province compared with a neighboring province.”

Disaggregation: Data should be disaggregated by gender.

In an ideal situation (and especially on a larger scale), indicators should also be disaggregated by age, caste, socioeconomic grouping, and by national or regional origin (for instance, “graduates from training course, disaggregated by sex and caste”). This level of detail will allow a broader analysis of which social forces within a society have shaped the particular status of women and men in that society. For instance, in Nepal, high-caste city women are likely to be in a considerably better socioeconomic situation than lowcaste rural men.

Ease of access and clarity: Indicators should be phrased in easily understandable language and developed at a level relevant to the institutional capabilities of the country concerned. They must not be ambiguous. An indicator should be understood in the same way by all the project staff carrying out M&E. A potentially ambiguous term can be defined according to an existing definition, or a more precise definition can be formulated until there is no ambiguity whatsoever. For instance, rather than “the adoption of a new technique by the target group of men and women farmers,” a more precise indicator might be “the use of a new technique

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over two successive planting seasons by the target group of men and women farmers.”

Validity: The information that indicators provide must be close to the reality they are measuring. Ways to ensure this include (1) common sense, (2) whether the indicator reflects similar findings in different situations, and (3) whether different survey instruments yield or uncover the same indicators. In general, the validity of an indicator can be enhanced by triangulation or by using multiple sources of information and data.

Reliability: Reliability means that indicators must be accurate and consistent. For example, an indicator is reliable if multiple uses of the same instrument (such as an interview or a survey) yield the same or similar results. No data are absolutely reliable, but reliability checks should be made: for example, census findings should be compared to findings from microlevel studies for accuracy.

Measurability: Indicators must be about items that are measurable. Concepts such as “women’s empowerment” or “gender equity” may be difficult to define and measure.

Proxy indicators may have to stand in for less precise concepts: for instance, “the percentage of women enrolling in agricultural training in x province before and after the project intervention” is easier to measure than “the number of women motivated to pursue agricultural training as a result of project empowerment.”

What is being measured? Indicators should be relevant to the level: Is a project’s impact being measured, or the output of a particular activity? At the output level, “the number of women and men that participated in x training course” is relevant, but at a higher level, it would be better to measure the result of that training, such as “the number of women and men confidently providing extension advice to farmers” or “the percentage of surveyed women in the target group who rate their access to land titling processes as having improved during the period of the program or project.”

Sensitivity and time span: The time covered by the indicator should be specified—for example, “over the implementation period of the program,” or “three years after the project has ended.” It is also worth considering the sensitivity of indicators; in other words, will the indicator demonstrate a short-, medium-, or long-term change? Although demonstrating a long-term change may be useful for stakeholders, a project time scale of only a few years needs shorter-term indicators if changes are to be recorded and activities fine-tuned as necessary: for example, measurable positive changes are unlikely to be seen in national forest cover during a three-year project (no matter how laudable the goal).

Feasibility of indicators: An indicator makes it possible to focus and structure data collection but serves no purpose as long as the data do not exist. To ensure the feasibility of an indicator, it is necessary to indicate the source of the information to use, for example, land administration office records of land title issuance or questionnaire surveys to be carried out by the project, using specially employed enumerators.

If no source is available or feasible, the indicator should be changed. If no feasible indicator can be found, then the question may need to be excluded.

Simplicity: There should not be too many indicators.

Relying upon several indicators allows for cross-checking and strengthens the evidence base for answering a question, but an excessive number of indicators will increase the data collection workload and cost and may not necessarily improve the soundness of the answer. As a rough guide, only six indicators per component/output or project objective should be used.

Be realistic: Make sure that the indicators at the goal and purpose level are realistic and measure achievable benefits. For example, do not anticipate an unrealistic (over 25 percent) increase in household incomes during a short period or do not expect training of women legal advisers to change women’s access to land dramatically (use measures of staff capability to measure the benefit of the training instead).

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The Canadian International Development Agency, in its Guide to Gender Sensitive Indicators (CIDA 1997), gives useful examples of how to design gender-sensitive indicators for agriculture.

Indicators at the program or sectoral level will usually have a longer time frame and cover a larger geographical area and target group (table 16.5). They might be designed to measure the following: ■

Setting up the system in projects and programs

Baseline and targets: An outcome indicator has two components—a baseline and a target. The baseline is the situation before a program or activity begins. It is the starting point for monitoring results. The target is the expected situation at the end of a program or activity. (Output indicators rarely require a baseline, because outputs are being newly produced and the baseline is that they do not exist [UNDP 2002]).

Project versus program indicators: Indicators at the project level are usually limited to the time frame in which a project is implemented (or a set period after completion, for measuring impact). They encompass only the limited geographical and target group focus of a project (for an example, see table 16.4). They usually measure the following:

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Expected or unexpected project outcomes for women and men (compared with project objectives) Participation (quantity or quality) of women and men in project activities Access to decision making, project resources, and project services by women and men

Changes in the capacity of staff in government partner organizations, NGOs, and international donor agencies to deal with gender issues Development and use of tools and procedures to mainstream gender equity: – Changes in recruitment practices relating to equal opportunities – Changes in budget allocation toward gender and related outcomes

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■ ■

Changes in equality of opportunity or decision-making opportunities The impact or effectiveness of activities targeted to address women’s or men’s practical needs, such as new skills, knowledge, resources, opportunities, or services Changes in human resources devoted to the project (for example, the number of women or men among project staff or the number of women extension staff) The impact and effectiveness of activities targeting improved gender awareness among staff and beneficiaries Met or unmet practical and strategic needs of women and men (compared with expressed needs) Changes in project budget allocation toward gender at this level Emergence of new gender issues in a project or as a result of a project.

Whether subprojects carry out gender-sensitive monitoring Whether gender-disaggregated data are collected from the field and used at the national level How resources are being transferred to the field level and then spent How effective the expenditure on gender-related outputs has been in meeting agricultural program goals.

Gender-sensitive outcomes may include a range of agriculture-related as well as other sectoral indicators, depending on the particular constraints identified in the institutional analysis and the baseline gender analysis.

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Table 16.4 Indicators from a Rural Development Project in Central Vietnam, at the Result Area Level Expected result

Indicators

Data sources

Result 1: Improved agricultural extension service system

• By project end, all participating communes have at least one trained commune-level extensionist, and a minimum of 20 percent are women • Extension staff carry out their jobs in a confident and competent manner • Provincial and district extension officers in project areas actively support fieldwork at the community level • Willingness to pay is demonstrated: farmers pay 10 percent of the costs of commune extensionists • Women and men farmers are satisfied with their access to quality extension services

• • • •

Commune records Community interviews Observation Training records

Result 2: Diversified and strengthened farming systems leading to improved income generation for men and women farmers

• Both women farmers and poor farmers are included as beneficiaries • By the end of the project, income per hectare has increased by 15 percent from productivity gains • More productive and diverse production models are applied and replicated by men and women farmers in project areas • New species or technology does not cause adverse environmental impacts (environmental impact assessed before use) • x number of new models for crop and animal diversification are in use, based on the preferences of men and women farmers

• Extension service records • Project records

Result 3: Cost-effective, gravity-fed upland irrigation schemes completed

• By project end, at least 50 upland irrigation schemes are completed • Irrigation users have an improved understanding of the importance of watershed protection and the potential impact on water quantity and quality • Schemes are self-managed, with revenue collection systems covering the operational and maintenance costs • Women and ethnic minorities participate actively in making decisions regarding water use and in production planning • Women make up at least one-third of the membership of irrigation user management committees

• Commissioning records • Infrastructure bidding and contracting records • Irrigation user agreements • Minutes and accounts of management committees

Source: Adapted from an unpublished program document for the Thua Thien Hue Rural Development Program, Vietnam, 2004.

Designing milestones and triggers for loan disbursement

When development banks are preparing country loans, a set of conditions, triggers, and milestones are developed that are used in clarifying, implementing, and monitoring the overall reform program supported by the development policy operation. Gender has not figured highly in this

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process thus far, but it would be one means to encourage the consideration of gender in monitoring (box 16.20).

As in designing indicators, specificity—meaning clarity, not excessive detail—is a key attribute of good conditions, triggers, and milestones. Poorly specified conditions or triggers may give rise to disputes about whether the key elements of the reform program are on track.

Table 16.5 Gender-Sensitive Indicators in an Agricultural Sector Program (continued) Development objective Higher and increasingly equal standard of living in program target areas

Immediate objectives

Impact indicators

Targets

Level of income generated from agricultural activities for both men- and women-controlled crops

Men: Increase by 15 percent; Women: Increase by 20 percent In Project Year (PY) 15

Difference in income level between woman- and man-headed households

Decrease by 20 percent in PY 15

Nutritional status for women and men (targets will be broken down into further detail after preliminary surveys)

n.a.

Distribution of workload: working hours of rural women

Reduced by 5 percent in PY 15

Outcome indicators

Targets

Rights: Increased women’s control over income and agricultural products

Percentage of women who have control or joint control over family income and farm products

Increased by 15 percent in PY 10

Number of lawsuits concerning women’s access to land under new Land Act

Increased by 20 percent by PY 8

Increased productivity of womencontrolled cash and noncash crops

Productivity of agricultural products

Increased by 10 percent by PY 15

Poultry and vegetable production

Poultry increased by 40 tons, vegetables by 100 tons in PY 8

Marginalized men livestock producers having found new viable sources of income

Percentage of marginalized livestock producers who have created a viable source of income as crop producers, agricultural and industrial workers, and so on

Increased by 30 percent by PY 15

Resources:

Outputs

Output indicators

Targets

Rights: Increased awareness among men and women farmers of gender equity in regard to control over income and products

Percentage of target population who are aware of women’s rights to control income and agricultural products

Increased by 30 percent by PY 5

Increased awareness of women’s and men’s rights to land

Percentage of target population who know basic facts about their rights

Increased by 60 percent by PY 5

Government officials practicing gendersensitive extension methodologies and promoting gender-sensitive technologies

Percentage of spot checks in which extension is found to be gender sensitive

Increased by 80 percent by PY 8

Increased homestead gardening

Number of households producing vegetables for own consumption

Increased by 20 percent by PY 10

Improved loan access for marginalized livestock producers

Number of loans given to former livestock producers

Increased by 20 percent by PY 10

Gender-sensitive evaluations and annual and semiannual progress reports, including gender-sensitive indicators and monitoring tools, produced

Three reports per year from PY 3

Lessons learned from monitoring fed back into the planning system

Minimum of two lessons learned from PY 3

Gender-sensitive databases established

One database by PY 3

Resources:

Cross-cutting issues: Improved monitoring of gender issues in the agricultural sector

(Table continues on the following page)

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Table 16.5 Gender-Sensitive Indicators in an Agricultural Sector Program (continued) Outputs

Output indicators

Targets

Improved gender-sensitive planning in the agricultural sector

Number of measurable gender-sensitive targets formulated in annual work plans at all levels by PY 2

At least two targets per plan by PY 2

Strategies concerning woman-headed households implemented

Percentage of all extension officers aware of and practicing the strategy’s central elements

80 percent by PY 5

Activities

Process indicators

Targets

Rights: Pilot projects to increase women’s control over agricultural products identified

Number of pilot projects approved

Four projects approved

Formulation of gender strategy for the agricultural sector at national, regional, and local levels

Strategy has been approved

One approval

Formulation of women's rights in new Land Act

Act has been approved and includes women's inheritance and ownership of land

One approval

Implement information campaigns on women's improved rights concerning access to and control over land

Number of men and women farmers reached by the campaign

Men: 100,000; Women: 100,000

Source: Adapted from DANIDA 2006.

Box 16.20 Designing Conditions, Triggers, and Milestones

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Conditions are the actions deemed critical to achieving the outcomes of the program supported by the development policy operation and included in the operation documents as legal conditions for disbursements under a World Bank loan, credit, or grant.

Triggers, as used in the context of programmatic development policy operations, are the planned actions in the second or later year of a program that are deemed critical to achieving the outcomes of the program and that will be the basis for establishing the prior actions for later operations. In other words, triggers are the expected prior actions for a subsequent loan, credit, or grant.

Milestones mark the progress in implementing the program. A milestone can be an action or an outcome that is expected to be realized during the implementation period rather than at the end of the operation. Milestones are not legal conditions for disbursement or triggers.

Source: World Bank and OPCS 2004.

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Don’t set too many triggers or conditions, only those of highest priority, as there is a risk for disbursement and progress if they are not met.

Don’t use outcomes (that is, monitorable effects of actions) as conditions or triggers unless their realization is largely under the control of the government.

Do indicate what actions are to be done, by which agency of the government, and approximately when.

Do include intermediate outcomes and monitor them carefully.

Do use quantitative indicators, including baselines and targets, whenever possible.

Good examples:

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Condition for first loan: “Parliament has adopted legislation to ensure land certificates are issued to both husband and wife.”

Trigger for second disbursement: “Increase allocation in the 2008 Budget for recruitment of women staff in the agriculture ministry nationwide by at least 10 percent over the allocation in the 2007 budget.”

A bad example:

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As a milestone, “improved social indicators” is too vague to be useful.

Practicalities of monitoring and evaluation

How much monitoring is enough? The key issue to consider is that the purpose of M&E is to guide implementation of a project or program, so there is a limit to the resources that should be used for M&E. The collection of information has a cost, and that cost will usually determine the methods used and the scope of information collection. Collecting primary data in the field is more expensive than using census data.

Modification of indicators

As a program or project is implemented, it sometimes becomes necessary to modify the logical framework or results framework in light of experience or changed circumstances, then it also becomes important to modify the indicators. Modifying the indicators does not mean lowering the targets to meet the expected outcomes (although this sometimes occurs in national planning systems during the annual cycle). Instead, the types of indicators need to be modified.

For example, if a project was implementing activities to encourage local communities to support the concept of women obtaining legal tenure together with their husbands or as single landowners, the indicators might be “the percentage of certificates including a woman’s name, out of the total number of land certificates issued in the district during 2007.” However, if the national government changes the law to require that women’s names are included, then the awareness-raising activities may no longer be required and therefore would probably not be monitored.

GENDER-DISAGGREGATED DATA AVAILABILITY AND COLLECTION

In order to carry out gender-sensitive monitoring, disaggregated data are required. Ideally, for reasons of cost and scale, existing data sources should be used. The following sections look at what is available, how useful it is, selecting data sources, and improving their accuracy.

What data are available now, and how useful are they?

A prerequisite for establishing gender-sensitive indicators is the availability of statistical data disaggregated by gender (and ideally age and ethnicity), as well as qualitative information reflecting differences between women and men.

Three main data systems produce useful information for monitoring, some of them gender sensitive: census surveys,

the System of National Accounts of the country in question (comprising data from different administrative units), and sample surveys of the population, such as official living standards surveys. Programs and projects usually rely on these systems for baseline and monitoring information, particularly for quantitative data, in addition to developing their own program- or project-specific indicators. In addition, country-level social assessments, such as the Country Social Analysis and Country Gender Assessments, are important references for developing relevant indicators.

Limitations face planners in using statistical information.

The accuracy of the data generated from censuses may be subject to various problems, including infrequent collection, gender bias, poor enumeration, and imprecise definition of key terms. For instance, women’s economic activity is underrepresented in most censuses and national surveys, because women often work outside of the formal job market, and the contribution of women to economic development is difficult to measure. In many developing countries, statistical data are outdated or inaccurate, and the capacity to collect, analyze, disseminate, and store data is often inadequate.

Gender-sensitive quantitative indicators cannot be used alone. They must be complemented by gender analysis and qualitative monitoring to understand any changes they may demonstrate. As well as designing specific indicators and collecting information, projects and programs may also find it useful to access data from other organizations, such as information gathered by the World Bank in participatory poverty analyses or international crop or forestry data from FAO. For high-level data, the UN Human Development Report may contain useful national information.

As noted earlier, a general lack of gender-specific data exists relevant to agriculture. Most government agencies collect data based on households, products, or regions, which usually means that gender is ignored. Even when disaggregated information is collected, it is often ignored or filtered out of project or program planning. The FAO concluded that a number of fundamental issues were not addressed adequately in agricultural censuses and surveys, such as gender differentiation in land ownership and use, access to credit, training and extension services, technology, and income (FAO 1999). A study of agricultural census data from Africa found that data collection methods were usually inadequate.1 The authors identified a clear need for capacity building—first, among statisticians to perform genderexplicit analyses of agricultural data, and second, among development planners, so that they can better use census data in general development planning and use genderdisaggregated data in gender-specific planning.

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Manasan and Villanueva (2005) tried to analyze how economic contraction in the Philippines affected women’s benefits from government programs and noted the difficulty of obtaining gender-disaggregated agricultural data.

Even when figures are provided for women and men, they can be quite misleading because they tend to assume that only the “household head”—usually recorded as being a man—is the farmer. Tempelman and Keita observe that, particularly in Africa, the oldest household member who is a man (whether usually present or not) is recorded automatically as the “household head.”2 This tendency potentially contributes to the underestimation of the number of (sub)holdings run by women who manage their own subproduction units within man-headed agricultural holdings.

Tempelman and Keita also report that since the 2000 round of the World Census of Agriculture, several African countries have tried to rectify this problem by adopting the concept of “subholder.” Defining the concept of “household” carefully is particularly important, as is, with societal norms in mind, to recognize the role played by many women as the main household provider. Economic activity may be defined or understood in varied ways (paid or unpaid work is an obvious difference). But is work on a family farm by a woman considered economic activity? What about household chores? If a nonfamily member is paid to thresh rice, cook, or clean, then this work is counted as economic activity, but if a family member does the work, it usually is not.

Women themselves will often discount their own work (both paid and unpaid) as a contribution to the family income. Data from censuses and surveys generally underreport women’s paid employment.

Household surveys commonly consider the amount of income spent on food per household per year but do not differentiate between food consumed by men and women household members. If data are to be collected from household surveys, and gender-specific information is required, phrasing the questions so that this information is actually obtained is important.

Women’s land ownership rights differ from country to country, but land is often under ownership and control of men (box 16.21). Gender-sensitive indicators may be available from agricultural censuses or land registration records to track land-tenure issues. Because access to credit often depends on access to land, the monitoring of credit activities should take land tenure into consideration.

The FAO’s Gender and Population Division is working with its Statistics Division as well as member countries to build capacity through training and technical support in gender and statistics for Ministries of Agriculture and central

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Box 16.21 Culturally Related Questions for Monitoring Is land mainly under the control of men or women? What are the consequences for gender relations, decisions about land sales, and cropping patterns?

What are the inheritance practices in the country concerning land? If women can legally inherit land, do they do this in practice?

If women own land, does this also mean that they make key decisions concerning crop selection and marketing?

Has land reform benefited men and women equally?

Do women have equal access to credit facilities?

Does such access translate into control over credit in terms of decision making?

Source: Author.

statistics offices. The FAO has developed gender-sensitive indicators for the agricultural sector (Curry 2002) and proposed that a gender focus incorporating both age and sex is important for analysis of the agricultural sector, because women and children make important contributions to agricultural production and food security. Gender-sensitive data and indicators on the structure of land ownership, access to and use of productive resources, and cropping and livestock production patterns are required to supplement available data on the age-sex composition of the labor force economically active in agriculture. In anticipation of stakeholders’ increased need for information, steps have been taken to improve the indicators and gender sensitivity of data collected through national censuses or to supplement census data with data from other socioeconomic surveys.

Examples include the concept of “plot manager,” introduced in the national censuses of Guinea, Senegal, and Togo; the collection of gender-disaggregated labor data, including data on unpaid family labor, in Burkina Faso; and the addition of questions on specific topics, such as agroprocessing, in Cape Verde.

In its work with national governments, the DFID supports a stronger focus on generating evidence, statistics, and indicators.3 For example, the DFID supported Cambodian efforts to integrate gender indicators into the monitoring framework for the national poverty plan, and in Nepal it will support the development of a national poverty monitoring

and analysis system using inclusive and disaggregated indicators. These efforts should increase the availability, routine collection, and reporting of gender-disaggregated data from national statistical systems (including more specific data on, for example, income, employment, and access to services) and foster greater use of such data in national monitoring systems. They will also increase the use of gender-disaggregated data in the monitoring sections of national development strategies.

Selecting data sources for gender-sensitive monitoring

Secondary data are not produced specifically for monitoring and evaluation but can have direct and indirect links with a project or program. Secondary data provide baseline information and help monitor a project or program’s overall goal and objectives, the form its inputs (investments) have taken, how it is carried out (activities), and its results (outcomes).

The main sources of secondary data include official documents such as country development sector plans, sociological and demographic research, reference documents for the project, activity reports, and situation analyses.

FAO maintains databases with information from the censuses of individual countries. These data are derived from periodic agricultural censuses and yearly surveys of agricultural production, including forestry and fisheries.

These data collection instruments are designed to monitor the inputs, outputs, and management of agricultural holdings to formulate policy recommendations for sustainable development and reliable food production systems.

The national statistics system in a country can normally provide the following: ■

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National statistics (census, household, and business surveys), usually gathered by the central statistics agency with support from provincial statistics agencies Administrative data (from line ministries and local governments and services) Other surveys and datasets (usually from academic and research institutes) Qualitative data (these constitute a small but growing data component and include, for example, participatory poverty assessments).

Primary data are collected specifically for monitoring and evaluating a project or program. Data are collected from all project stakeholders (involved directly and indirectly, positively and negatively), using such tools as

direct observation, focus group discussions, interviews, and meetings.

In policy and national program monitoring, secondary data sources will be most important, supplemented by field visits to cross-check their validity against local circumstances. In project monitoring, primary data sources are important, because they respond to the specific project indicators. An inventory of available data should be made during planning. What and where are the data, and how can project/program leaders use them for M&E? What additional data need to be collected to cover gaps?

In making decisions about data sources for indicators, consider these questions for each indicator: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

■

Is the information available from existing sources?

Is a new data collection effort required?

How much data do we really need?

How much data can we really use?

What data sources are practical?

Who will pay for data collection?

Who will do data collection?

How can staff and other stakeholders be involved in data collection?

How will the data be analyzed?

For instance, in a rural development program in Vietnam, the plan outlined in the program document was to conduct a thorough baseline survey. However, analysis of existing data available from the government demonstrated that it would be adequate, supplemented by some qualitative and more localized information gathered from participatory rural appraisals and disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, and poverty. This approach saved time and money during the program’s busy start-up period. On the other hand, data collection can go too far. A review of the monitoring system of a large, donorfunded rural development project in the Philippines recommended that a reality check should be conducted about the amount of data collected, because the system was overloaded.

Projects should make sure that collecting additional data is really worthwhile and should consider the implications of each marginal addition to the data collection. For agricultural projects, recommendations suggest considering the benefits of collecting detailed data on farm household incomes and expenditures from a small sample (such as 10–20 farmers per zone or farming system) to back up broader secondary data.

Collected properly, such primary data can provide useful insights into why farm families make the decisions they do, especially when trying to examine the gender impacts. Monitoring data should include a record of how men and women

THEMATIC NOTE 3: SETTING GENDER-SENSITIVE INDICATORS AND COLLECTING GENDER-DISAGGREGATED DATA

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use time and money over the time frame of the program (to determine whether and why they change with the implementation of program interventions).

■

■

Steps to improve the accuracy and gender sensitivity of survey data

A numbers of steps can be taken to improve the accuracy and gender sensitivity of data collected through surveys.

■

■

■

■

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Enumerators should be given gender training. For instance, they could be trained to recognize that many activities done by women are part of general economic activities.

In the instructions to enumerators, special emphasis should be given to gender issues.

Local political and cultural sensitivities may mean that enumerators are reluctant to ask questions about “difficult” or “conflictive” issues. The importance of these questions should be explained, and enumerators encouraged to ask them—otherwise the results may not be accurate.

Instructions to enumerators should emphasize the need to ask probing questions and not simply accept “yes” or “no” answers.

MODULE 16: GENDER ISSUES IN MONITORING AND EVALUATION

■

In recruiting enumerators, efforts should be made to achieve a gender balance. Issues of age, ethnicity, or caste may also be vital to consider in seeking to reduce bias.

Interviews should be timed to maximize opportunities for meeting with women and men, the young and old— in other words, with a cross-section of the community in question.

Gathering data on the ages and genders of the head of the agricultural holding and members of the holding’s labor force will make it possible to construct extremely useful, gender-sensitive indicators.

Recommendations for improving data collection

Development cooperation organizations should continue to support capacity building in statistics offices, including training in gender sensitization, the development of gendersensitive indicators, and interview training (for census workers). Support should also be provided to purchase equipment that facilitates data handling.

The information collected by statistics offices and other data collection agencies should be made available as needed, to provide field workers and government staff with data in various formats for monitoring programs and projects.

I N N O V AT I V E A C T I V I T Y P R O F I L E 1

Training Community Members to Carry Out Project Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation

any projects have trained members of participating communities to carry out M&E. The World Bank Social Analysis Sourcebook (World Bank 2003: 49) cites participatory M&E as a “means to systematically evaluate progress and impact early in the project cycle by bringing the perspectives and insights of all stakeholders, beneficiaries as well as project implementers. All stakeholders identify issues, conduct research, analyze findings, make recommendations, and take responsibility for necessary action.”

Levels of participation and the means of ensuring gender equity vary from project to project. This Innovative Activity Profile discusses lessons from Sri Lanka’s Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project—also known as the Gemi Diriya (“village strength”) Project— with some additional insights from Indonesia’s Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project.

One difficulty with participatory M&E is that community-driven development programs typically serve a large number of small, widely dispersed communities, and managing such programs requires intense support, especially at start-up and in the early stages of implementation. Using local NGOs, local government staff, and other local resources is not always successful because of high costs, large distances, and insufficient local capacity.

M

What’s innovative? Training women as community professionals or facilitators is a successful step in building confidence and providing a good gender role model. Community facilitators can identify constraints and opportunities in their villages and are effective at instilling confidence and mobilizing their communities. Women facilitators have much better access to women and youth— key decision makers and beneficiaries.

Experience with the Gemi Diriya Project demonstrates that building a network of trained community professionals or facilitators and involving them in all aspects of project implementation is an effective strategy to scale up in a sustainable, cost-effective manner (www.gemidiriya.org; Munshi, Hayward, and Verardo 2006).

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A Village Self-Help Learning Initiative was piloted in 1999 in three villages in Sri Lanka’s poor North Central Province.

Its main objective was to introduce and test a model of participatory rural development that focused on empowering local communities to find their own solutions to local development problems. Key actions included mobilizing communities; building inclusive, accountable village organizations; and supporting their self-management.

To scale up the self-help initiative, the World Bank financed the Gemi Diriya Project, starting in October 2004.1 The Bank has committed $181 million for 12 years to implement the project, which, like the village self-help initiative on which it is modeled, focuses on self-management and learning. To avoid the risk of exclusion of women, the project rules specified at least 30 percent women’s representation in decision-making roles and that at least 50 percent of the benefits must be received by women, including capacity building and training. The project contracts external support organizations, such as local NGOs, to carry out an initial information campaign in villages, facilitate participatory planning and appraisals, support formation of village organizations, and offer preliminary training to its office holders. Once established, village organizations have access to a village development fund that finances activities in three main areas: capacity building, community infrastructure services subprojects, and livelihood support. Continued support and guidance are needed to strengthen the village organizations,

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but continued reliance on project staff would increase dependence and cost, so the idea of training and using community facilitators emerged. The community professionals and facilitators are trained in numerous ways, all supported by the project: through community peer trainers, Community Professionals Learning and Training Centres, and a mobile capacity-building team, which trains, mentors, and monitors community facilitators in the field, building their capacity and confidence in a cost-effective way.

Community professionals and facilitators have a number of advantages. They have a stake in their communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development, are better suited to identifying the constraints and opportunities in their villages, and are much more effective than outsiders in instilling confidence and mobilizing their communities. They also tend to be more accountable to their communities, because they live there and enjoy local legitimacy and trust. They provide a strong local input to Bank supervision missions and are a go-between for the overall implementation team of the project.

The formation of small groups is the foundation of the village organizations; it is the small groups that achieve the objectives of the development programs identified by the community. Training for small group members is thus one of the most important aspects of the project, and this training is provided by community professionals.

LINKING LEARNING, GENDER, AND M&E

The Community Professionals Learning and Training Centres are designed to provide comprehensive training for community professionals in social mobilization skills, M&E, and the Community Operational Manual used by the project, as well as overall social development processes.

Based on the knowledge, skills, and field experience gained through this training, facilitators can provide better services to the project (and to other programs assisting with community development) and gain economic benefits for their work. They are paid via the Village Development Funds, but as their skills develop, they also can sell their services on a commercial basis (for instance, to NGOs, donors, or the government). A selection process and a system of grading and promotion are in use. More than 60 percent of community professionals or facilitators are women, who focus on improving gender equity in their communities. Women and poor youth in particular, and poor families more generally, have found the Community Professional Learning and Training Centres to be a very good source of income. The project has conducted a strong information campaign about its objectives and its emphasis

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on women and youth as project decision makers and intended beneficiaries.

In addition to providing specialized training to community facilitators, the project has had other impacts on improving gender equity, for example, the microfinance program, which provides loans exclusively for livelihood improvement and income-generating projects. Within only two years of its implementation, the program has acquired 71,000 members, who have formed 11,762 small groups. Of these, 80 percent of the beneficiaries are women.

Six key methods are used to monitor and evaluate the project: a self-monitoring system, a monitoring system based on the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s management information system, internal management reviews, an external process monitoring system, impact evaluations, and social accountability monitoring. The village organization and its various committees continually assess their own performance against the locally developed indicators for capacity building, infrastructure development, livelihood support fund activities, and other activities. This self-monitoring is the main tool for the community to learn from project implementation and build capacity to manage village development.

Process monitoring evaluates how project activities lead to the required outputs, which ultimately produce the desired outcomes and benefits. More specifically, external process monitoring generates the information necessary for project management at all levels and for village organizations to perform their expected roles and responsibilities in the most effective and efficient manner.

One monitoring tool that has proven effective is the Community Report Card, which gathers feedback from the communities about the performance (quality, efficiency, and adequacy) of village organization office holders, community professionals, and project staff, among others. The Report Card is a powerful tool for the community to exert social control on the performance of these teams and alert them as to desired changes.

Another community training scheme with a gender focus was recently implemented in Indonesia and provides good comparisons to the one in Sri Lanka (box 16.22).

LESSONS LEARNED

Community facilitators are a powerful tool for social change and supporting development program activities. In particular, gender, age, and ethnicity should be considered in the selection of community trainers or facilitators (and, indeed,

Box 16.22 Indonesia: Bringing a Gender Focus to Community Empowerment

Between 2000 and 2006, the ADB-funded Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project sought to raise the incomes of about 110,000 poor families in six Indonesian provinces in Kalimantan and Sulawesi. The project supported the development of communitybased savings and loan organizations and sought to strengthen rural financial institutions’ capacity to extend credit. The project’s second major effort was to build capacity for decentralized development planning within villages and within local and provincial levels of government, with an emphasis on infrastructure development.

The economic crisis in Indonesia in the late 1990s highlighted the need for a long-term strategy to reduce poverty significantly by emphasizing social inclusion and skills development among the poor. The Community Empowerment Project supported formal and informal training and decision-making processes to give local communities and government the institutional capacity to direct resources more efficiently to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life in their communities.

The project targeted women as members and decision makers of both savings and loan organizations and village planning committees. The decision to encourage women’s full participation in this project was based on the fact that women in the project areas make major economic contributions to their house-

holds. Another reason to include women was to protect and develop women’s economic interests in the project.

Despite the fact that women played an important role in the village economy and community affairs, they often felt more constrained than men in participating in village forums. The project was designed to foster women’s equitable participation in two ways: ■

■

It offered leadership training for women in the operation of savings and loan organizations, the workings of village planning forums, and the selection of village infrastructure projects.

It considered women’s specific capacities, economic activities, and interests in designing and forming training programs, village organizations, and savings and loan organizations.

Village planning forums were organized and social mobilization and human development training provided to ensure that women’s groups participated in the village development planning process. Aside from training community members in planning and monitoring, government officers in the project’s executing agency received training on decentralized development planning and gender and development. Gender-based training targets were set to ensure that women government staff received equitable training opportunities.

Source: ADB Gender and Development Web site and specific project documents, Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project, www.adb.org.

in all selection processes) to ensure access to the poorest sections of the community. In Gemi Diriya, an ethical framework is applied—the “golden rules” of good governance, equity, transparency, and cost efficiency—when dealing with the use of public finances. Information sharing and awareness raising have also proven to be vital in highlighting the role of all groups in the community, but particularly the key roles played by women and youth.

and Indira Ekanayake, Eija Pehu, and Riikka Rajalahti (World Bank).

Thematic Note 1

The Thematic Note was written by Pamela White (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); John Curry (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Indira Ekanayake, Eija Pehu, and Riikka Rajalahti (World Bank).

NOTES Overview

Thematic Note 2

The Overview was written by Pamela White (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); John Curry (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD);

The Thematic Note was written by Pamela White (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); John Curry (FAO); Maria Hartl

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(IFAD); and Indira Ekanayake, Eija Pehu, and Riikka Rajalahti (World Bank).

1. United Nations (Vietnam), “Gender Action Partnership (GAP),” www.un.org.vn.

2. Monica Fong, “Gender in Sector-Wide Development Policies and Programs,” paper presented at the 3rd World Congress of Rural Women, Madrid, October 1-4, www.oecd.org.

3. See “Needs Assessment of Economic Planning Units in Gender Analysis in Selected Caribbean Countries,” www.cepa.org.

4. See note 5 above.

5. See “Gender Equity Index 2007,” www.socialwatch.org.

6. Caroline Moser, “An Introduction to Gender Audit Methodology: Its Design and Implementation in DFID Malawi,” www.enterprise-impact.org.uk.

Thematic Note 3

The Thematic Note was written by Pamela White (Consultant) and reviewed by Chitra Deshpande and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants); John Curry (FAO); Maria Hartl (IFAD); and Indira Ekanayake, Eija Pehu, and Riikka Rajalahti (World Bank).

1. Diana Tempelman and Naman Keita, “Gender Concerns in Agricultural Census in Africa,” paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Agricultural Statistics, Measuring Sustainable Agricultural Indicators, Cancún, November 2–4, www.fao.org.

2. Ibid.

3. “Gender Equality Action Plan 2007–2009,” www.dfid. gov.uk.

Innovative Activity Profile 1

The Innovative Activity Profile was written by Pamela White (Consultant) and reviewed by Catherine Ragasa (Consultant); and Natasha Hayward, Meena Munshi, and Eija Pehu (World Bank).

1. See “Community Development and Livelihood Improvement,” Gemi Diriya project, www.worldbank.org.

REFERENCES Overview

Asian Development Bank (ADB). n.d. Gender Checklist: Agriculture. Manila: ADB. Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).

2002. Gender and Development: GAD Lessons and Challenges for the Australian Aid Program. Canberra: AusAID.

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Bamberger, Michael. 2002. “Impact Evaluations When Time and Money Are Limited: Lessons from International Development on the Design of Rapid and Economical, but Methodologically Sound, Impact Evaluations.” Paper presented at the American Evaluation Association Professional Development Workshop, Impact Evaluation on a Shoestring, November 5.

Derbyshire, Helen. 2002. Gender Manual: A Practical Guide for Development Policy Makers and Practitioners. London: Department for International Development.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2001. Project Cycle Management Technical Guide. Rome: SEAGA Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme, FAO. ———. 2003. Progress Report on Implementation of the FAO Gender and Development Plan of Action (2002–2007).

Rome: FAO. Gender and Rural Development (GENRD). 2006. “FY05 Gender Portfolio Review.” Internal report, Agriculture and Rural Development, World Bank, Washington, DC. ———. 2007. “FY06 Gender Portfolio Review.” Internal report, Agriculture and Rural Development, World Bank, Washington, DC. Hunt, Juliet, and Samvada Kheng. 2006. Gender Equality Results in ADB Projects: Cambodia Country Report.

Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Mason, Karen Oppenheim. 2007. Gender Equality and Aid Delivery: What Has Changed in Development Cooperation Agencies since 1999? Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) Finland. 2003. Strategy and Action Plan for Promoting Gender Equality in Finland’s Policy for Developing Countries, 2003–2007.

Helsinki: MFA. Also available at http://formin.finland.fi.

Nordic Development Fund (NDF). 2004. Gender Equality Study: A Study on Addressing Gender Aspects in Projects CoFinanced by NDF in Developing Countries. Final Report, March. Helsinki: NDF. Also available at www.ndf.fi.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 1999. DAC Guidelines for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Development Cooperation.

Paris: OECD. Also available at www.oecd.org.

———. 2007. “Gender Equality and Aid Delivery: What Has Changed in Development Co-Operation Agencies since 1999?” Paris: OECD. Also available at www.oecd.org.

Peck, Lennart. 1998. “Evaluating Gender Equality—Policy and Practise: An Assessment of Sida’s Evaluations in 1997–1998.” SIDA Studies in Evaluation 98/3, Swedish Agency for Development Cooperation, Stockholm.

Punkari, Mikko, Marlene Fuentes, Pamela White, Riikka Rajalahti, and Eija Pehu. 2007. “Social and Environmental

Sustainability of Agriculture and Rural Development Investments: A Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit.”

Agriculture and Rural Development, Discussion Paper 31, World Bank, Washington, DC. Swedish Agency for Development Cooperation (SIDA).

2004. Looking Back, Moving Forward. SIDA Evaluation Manual. Stockholm: SIDA. White, Pamela. 2007. “Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Component, Sustainable Livelihoods Project, Mongolia.” Final report, unpublished project documents.

World Bank. n.d. World Bank Operational Manual. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 1996. The World Bank Participation Sourcebook.

Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2003a. Social Analysis Sourcebook: Incorporating Social Dimensions into Bank-Supported Projects. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2003b. Report on Social and Institutional Assessment: Pakistan: NWFP Community Infrastructure ProjectII. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2003c. Implementation Completion Report: NWFP Community Infrastructure and NHA Strengthening Project. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2005. Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Development Projects: A Tool Kit. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2006a. “Implementing the Bank’s Gender Mainstreaming Strategy: Annual Monitoring Report for FY04 and FY05.” Gender and Development Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, World Bank, Washington, DC, January 11.

———. 2006b. “Monitoring and Evaluation: Measuring and Assessing Agricultural Development Programs.” In Agriculture Investment Sourcebook, Module 12. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2007. “Process Monitoring in Andhra Pradesh: An Award-Winning Innovation in Project Supervision.”

Agricultural and Rural Development Notes 22, World Bank, Washington, DC, June.

Thematic Note 1

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2001. Intermediate Level Handbook. Rome: Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme, FAO. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2007. “Exploring Gender Issues in Our Work: Main Findings from a Questionnaire Survey.” Paper presented at Looking for New Directions: Gender Mainstreaming and Women’s Empowerment Workshop, Rome, May 16–17.

Punkari, Mikko, Marlene Fuentes, Pamela White, Riikkaa Rajalahti, and Eija Pehu. 2007. “Social and Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture and Rural Development Investments: A Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit.”

Agriculture and Rural Development, Discussion Paper 31, World Bank, Washington, DC. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2002.

“Handbook on Monitoring and Evaluation for Results.”

Also available at www.undp.org.

Thematic Note 2

Balmori, Helena Hofbauer. 2003. “Gender and Budgets: Overview Report.” BRIDGE (Development-Gender), Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. Also available at www.bridge.ids.ac.uk.

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). 2005. “Kenya.” Making Poverty Reduction Strategies Work, Good Practice Sheet, GTZ, Eschborn, Germany, October.

Gaynor, Cathy. 2006. “Paris Declaration Commitments and Implications for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.” Paper for consideration by the OECDDAC Network on Gender Equality and the OECDDAC Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, July 6–7.

International Monetary Fund/International Development Association (IMF/IDA). 2001. “Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.” IMF and IDA, Washington, DC. Kusek, Jody Zall, and Ray C. Rist. 2004. “Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System.”

Washington, DC: World Bank. Also available at www.wi.wur.nl.

Moser, Annalise. 2007. Gender and Indicators: Overview Report.” BRIDGE (Development-Gender), Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Also available at www.bridge.ids.ac.uk.

Moser, Caroline, Olivia M’Chaju-Liwewe, Annalise Moser, and Naomi Ngwira. 2004. “DFID Malawi Gender Audit: Evaporated, Invisibilized or Resisted?” Department for International Development, London, October.

Muro, Asseny. 2007. Presentation on Tanzania Gender Networking Program to a Seminar on New Aid Modalities of Funding, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Helsinki, May 4.

National Economic and Development Authority, Philippines (NEDA). 2004. Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines for Project Development, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation. Manila: Asian Development

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Bank for NEDA and the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2002. Gender Equality in Sector Wide Approaches—A Reference Guide. Paris: OECD. ———. 2007. Gender Equality and Aid Delivery: What Has Changed in Development Co-Operation Agencies since 1999? Paris: OECD. Packard, Le Anh Tu. 2006. “Gender Dimensions of Viet Nam’s Comprehensive Macroeconomic and Structural Reform Policies,” Occasional Paper 14, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva.

World Bank. 2002. PRSP Sourcebook. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2004. “Using Poverty and Social Impact Analysis to Support Development Policy Operations.” Good Practice in Development Policy Note 2, World Bank, Operations Policy and Country Services, World Bank, Washington, DC. ———. 2007. “Promoting Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.” In Global Monitoring Report 2007: Confronting the Challenges of Gender Equality and Fragile States, chapter 3. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Thematic Note 3

Beck, Tony. 2000. Using Gender Sensitive Indicators: A Reference Manual for Governments and Other Stakeholders.

London: Commonwealth Secretariat.

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). 1997.

Guide to Gender Sensitive Indicators. Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, Hull. Also available at www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/inet/images.nsf/vLUImages/Policy/$file/WID-GUID-E.pdf.

Curry, John. 2002. “Establishment of a Core Set of GenderSensitive Indicators for the Agricultural Sector: A Preliminary Proposal.” Paper presented at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and Statistical Commission Conference of European Statisticians, Working Session on Gender Statistics, Geneva, September 23–25.

Derbyshire, Helen. 2002. Gender Manual: A Practical Guide for Development Policy Makers and Practitioners. London: Department for International Development.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 1999. Filling the Data Gap: Gender-Sensitive Statistics for Agricultural Development. Rome: FAO. ———. 2003. Progress Report on Implementation of the FAO Gender and Development Plan of Action (2002–2007).

Rome: FAO. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

2007. “Exploring Gender Issues in Our Work: Main Find-

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ings from a Questionnaire Survey.” Paper presented at Looking for New Directions: Gender Mainstreaming and Women’s Empowerment Workshop, Rome, May 16–17.

Manasan, Rosario, and Eden Villanueva. 2005. “The Impact of Fiscal Restraint on Budgetary Allocations for Women’s Programs.” Discussion Paper Series No. 200516. Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Makati City, August.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (DANIDA). 2006.

“Gender-Sensitive Monitoring and Indicators.” Technical Note, DANIDA, Copenhagen. Also available at www. danidadevforum.um.dk.

National Economic and Development Authority, Philippines (NEDA). 2004. Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines for Project Development, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation. Manila: Asian Development Bank for NEDA and the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2002.

Handbook on Monitoring and Evaluating for Results. New York: UNDP. World Bank and Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS). 2004. “Designing Development Policy Operations.” Good Practice Note for Development Policy Lending 1, World Bank, Operations Policy and Country Services, Washington, DC. Innovative Activity Profile 1

Munshi, Meena, Natasha Hayward, and Barbara Verardo.

2006. “A Story of Social and Economic Empowerment: The Evolution of ‘Community Professionals’ in Sri Lanka.” Social Funds Innovation Notes 4 (2), World Bank, Washington, DC. World Bank. 2003. Social Analysis Sourcebook: Incorporating Social Dimensions into Bank-Supported Projects. Washington, DC: World Bank.

FURTHER READING Thematic Note 1

Derbyshire, Helen. 2003. “Progress Report on Implementation of the FAO Gender and Development Plan of Action (2002–2007).” Rome: FAO. Available at www.fao.org.

IFAD. 2002. Managing for Impact in Rural Development: A Guide for Project M&E. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

World Bank. 2002. PRSP Sourcebook. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. World Bank. 2006. “Monitoring and Evaluation: Measuring and Assessing Agricultural Development

Programs.” In Agriculture Investment Sourcebook, Module 12. Washington, DC: World Bank.

———. 2007. Social and Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture and Rural Development Investments: A Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit. Washington, DC: World Bank.

The Asian Development Bank has an excellent Web site (www.adb.org/Gender/practices.asp) on “Projects Addressing Gender Concerns,” with case studies.

Thematic Note 2

Bamberger, Michael, Mark Blackden, Lucia Fort, and Violetta Manoukian. 2002. “Gender.” In A Sourcebook for Poverty Reduction Strategies, chapter 10. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Budlender, Debbie. 2007. “Financing for Development: Aid Effectiveness and Gender-Responsive Budgets.” Commonwealth Secretariat, Eighth Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting Kampala, Uganda, June 11–14.

Department for International Development (DFID). 2006.

Evaluation of DFID’S Policy and Practice in Support of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Thematic Studies, vol. 3: “Gender and Budget Support,” “Gender Equality through Justice and Rights-Based Policies and Programs,” “DFID’s Efforts to Address Gender Equality Goals in International Partnerships,” and “Summary of Research in Gender and DFID’S Support to Pro-Poor Growth.” London: DFID, COWI Evaluation Team.

Thematic Note 3

Asian Development Bank (ADB). 2003. Gender and Development: Our Framework Policies and Strategies. Manila: ADB. Available at www.adb.org.

Curry, John. 2004. Establishment of a Core Set of GenderSensitive Indicators for the Agricultural Sector: A Preliminary Proposal. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization.

Curry, John, and Diana Tempelman. 2006. “Improving the Use of Gender and Population Factors in Agricultural Statistics: A Review of FAO’s Support to Member Countries in Gender Statistics.” Paper presented at the InterAgency and Expert Group Meeting on the Development of Gender Statistics, December 12–14, United Nations, New York. Available at http://unstats.un.org.

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. 2002. “Tools and Indicators for Gender Impact Analysis, Monitoring and Evaluation.” Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality, New York, February 26–March 1. Available at www.un.org.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). n.d. Documentation on gender and statistics available at http://unstats.un.org.

———. 2001. Gender Sensitive Indicators: A Key Tool for Gender Mainstreaming. Rome: FAO. ———. 2003. “Socio-Economic and Gender-Sensitive Indicators in the Management of Natural Resources.” Sustainable Development Department, FAO, Rome. Available at FAO’s SD Dimensions Web site: www.fao.org.

———. 2005. Agricultural Censuses and Gender: Lessons Learned in Africa. Rome: FAO. Mayoux, Linda. 2002. “What Do We Want to Know? Selecting Gender Indicators.” Available at www.ids.ac.uk.

Whitehead, Ann. 2003. “Failing Women, Sustaining Poverty: Gender in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.” Report for the UK Gender and Development Network (GADN), GADN and Christian Aid. Available at www.gadnetwork.org.uk.

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INDEX

Note: Boxes, figures, notes, and tables are indicated by b, f, n, and t, respectively.

A AAU. See Association of American Universities (AAU) abandonment, and land rights, 142, 166n4 accountability, 24, 25, 56–57, 509 of CDD projects, 61 and governance, 33 mechanisms for, 69 accumulating savings and credit associations (ASCAs), 86, 96, 120n1 ACEs. See civic extension associations (ACEs) acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 1, 2 and agricultural markets, 193 and child-headed households, 603, 635n7, 635n10 contract clauses concerning, 380 coping strategies for, 433, 434b10.5 in fishing communities, 578 and food security, 14 and forestry sector, 651, 652b15.1, 654, 668n2 impact of, 305, 310n1–2 on MDGs, 645 on rural households, 613 and JFFLSs, 305–8, 310n107 and labor rights, 337 and land and water degradation, 456 and local knowledge systems, 461b10.14 and rural infrastructure, 368, 374 as safety risk for women in workforce, 321 Tanzania, 303 and training programs, 197 workplace awareness campaigns, 326 See also health and health care ACT. See African Conservation Tillage network (ACT) ActionAid, 544

Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA), Mozambique, 681b16.5, 700b16.13, 703b16.17 active labor market programs (ALMPs), 324 ADB. See Asian Development Bank (ADB) administration, monitoring of, 694 ADR. See alternative dispute resolution (ADR) advertising, to promote women’s economic activity, 101, 120n6 advisory services, 265, 268, 269, 270t7.3, 271 advocacy, for women’s voice in farmer organizations, 70 AET. See agricultural extension and training (AET) affinity groups, and value chains, 210b5.17 affirmative action strategies, 323, 324 Afghanistan, poultry farming, 204, 205b5.12 Africa conservation in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, 665–68 dairy farming, 662b15.12 Gender and Rural Transport Initiative, 377, 377b9.1 Improved Seed Systems for Agroforestry in African Countries project, 663 Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation, 534 rice farmers, 272 unproductive soil in, 529, 529b12.4 Africa Educational Trust, 393 African Conservation Tillage network (ACT), 303 African Development Bank, 272 African Highland Program, 277 African Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (AWLAE), 286 Africa Travel and Transport Project, 379 Agence Nationale d’Appui au Développement Rural (ANADER), 74–76 Agha Khan Rural Support Program, 66

729

AGRECOL, Bolivia, 393 agribusiness, regional opportunities and constraints in, 174–75 Agribusiness in Sustainable Natural African Plant Products (ASNAPP), 205b5.11 agricultural extension and training (AET) good practices and lessons learned from, 283–87 guidelines and recommendations for, 287–88 overview, 280 women’s participation in, 280–81 See also extension services; trainers and training agricultural extension field schools, 63, 64b2.14 agricultural fairs, 622 agricultural innovation systems (AIS), 258–60, 263, 265 agricultural labor. See labor force agricultural markets marketing extension tool, 211–14 supporting agricultural value-adding strategies, 206–10 See also markets and marketing agricultural production. See production agricultural sciences, study in, 280–81, 284, 284b7.12 agricultural services reforms, Côte d’Ivoire project, 74–76 agricultural support, versus food aid and sustenance of social capital, 507–12, 516n3–4 Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), India, 270–71 Agriculture for Development Policy Brief, 522 agriculture water management (AWM) gender mainstreaming in, 229–34 groundwater development and management, 242–46 multiple-use water services, 235–41 See also water services; water supply agrobiodiversity, 15–16, 433b10.4, 440, 459–62, 468n1 agroenterprises, 278 agroforestry, 211–14, 441, 643, 645 designers of, 647–48 domestication programs, 435 and home gardens, 645, 659–60 knowledge and practice in, 658–64, 669n2 See also forests and forestry Agro-Innovation and Competitiveness Project (INCAGRO), Peru, 261b7.3, 268, 269, 271 agroprocessing, 342, 374, 413n3 aid modalities, 43 examining gender activities of donors, 706–8 experience and achievements in, 698–702 gender indicators, tools, and methods for, 702b16.16 monitoring gender in, 684, 697–98 monitoring PRSPs, 702–6 joint monitoring missions, 706, 707b16.19 AIDS. See acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) AIS. See agricultural innovation systems (AIS) all-season roads, 378, 413n6 ALMPs. See active labor market programs (ALMPs) ALs. See alternative livelihoods (ALs) alternative dispute resolution (ADR), 149 alternative fuels and energy, 293b7.17, 451 alternative livelihoods (ALs), 580, 582–87, 594n1–2, 594n8

730

INDEX

ANADER. See Agence Nationale d’Appui au Développement Rural (ANADER) analytical capacity, 38, 41–42, 44 Andean region, participatory research in, 276–77 Andes community, 298–301 Andhra Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives Project (APDPIP), India, 112–16, 121n1, 210b5.17 Andhra Pradesh Rice Credit Line Project, 17 Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (APRPRP), India, 112–16, 121n1, 203, 215–19, 223–24n1–3, 683b16.6 Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Marketing Federation Limited (APMARKFED), India, 217 animal diseases, 611–16, 636n1, 636n5 animal genetic resources, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 437, 633–34 animal health, 613–14, 628 animal health workers, 615 animal husbandry, 603, 615, 629 animal production, 603 animal waste, 384, 385 Annan, Kofi, 23 Anthra, 613 APDPIP. See Andhra Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives Project (APDPIP), India APMARKFED. See Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Marketing Federation Limited (APMARKFED), India APRPRP. See Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (APRPRP), India aquaculture, 561–67, 593n1–5 accessing and managing resources, 568–71, 593n1–3 alternative livelihoods for fishing communities, 582–87, 594n1–2, 594n8 aquaculture extension project, 220–22, 224n1 associations for protecting livelihoods of fishers, processors, and traders, 577–81, 594n1 CARE Bangladesh, 591–93 coral reef rehabilitation and management project, 588–90 family-based systems in Asia, 572–76, 594n1–3 Aqua Finca, Honduras, 581 aquifers, overexploitation of, 243 Aridity Index, 468n4 armed conflicts. See conflicts and crises Armenia, Network and Capacity Building for Rural Women, 396 arsenic poisoning, 243, 243b6.4 artichokes, 179, 180b5.3 artisanal fisheries, 329, 580, 582, 594n1 ASCAs. See accumulating savings and credit associations Asia agricultural resource management, 456–57 family-based aquaculture systems in, 572–76, 594n1–3 wood energy in, 653 Asian Development Bank (ADB), 568, 620, 621, 679b16.3, 723b16.22 ASNAPP. See Agribusiness in Sustainable Natural African Plant Products (ASNAPP) assessments, gender sensitive, 511–12 assets, 4–6 access to during crises, 480, 515n7 in agriculture sector, 16f1.4

asset–sharing strategies, 490 and GAL framework, 427 link to technology development, 629 livestock sector, 605, 606b14.1 structural barriers to, 480, 515n7 Association of American Universities (AAU), 286 ATMA. See Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), India ATMs. See automated teller machines (ATMs) audits and auditing gender audits, 98–99, 120n4, 387, 707 of projects, 509 Australia Agency for International Development (AusAID), 677b16.2 automated teller machines (ATMs), 96, 105 avian influenza, 611, 612, 614 AWARD program, 286 AWLAE. See African Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (AWLAE) AWM. See agriculture water management (AWM) B Badia Livestock Extension Project, Jordan, 628b14.3 Bangladesh, 40b2.3, 296, 568 CARE Bangladesh, 570–76, 591–93 Centre for Mass Education in Science, 330 crop selection, 535, 535b12.8 cyclone in 1991, 449 Empowerment of Coastal Fishing Communities for Sustainable Livelihoods Project, 585–86 flooding in, 489–90 food security project, 197 governance issues in, 71–73 Greater Noakhali Aquaculture Extension Project, 220–22, 224n1 Greater Options for Local Development through Aquaculture Project, 591 Livelihood Empowerment and Agroforestry Project, 198, 211–14 Livestock Development Program, 620, 621 marketing extension tool, 211–14 Meghna–Dhanagoda Command Area Development Project, 568–69 NGOs in, 197 Oxbow Lakes project, 568–69 Rural Roads and Market Project, 379, 379b9.3 solar home systems, 388b9.5 women in growth center markets, 191b5.7 Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), 296, 568 BBC World Service Trust, 393 BCRCA. See Buhoma Community Rest Camp Association (BCRCA) Bhairahawa Lumbini Groundwater Irrigation Project (BLGWIP), Nepal, 244b6.5 bicycles, 378 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 286 BINP. See Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP)

biodiversity, 428, 432–34, 465n3–5 Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, 665–68 Convention on Biological Diversity, 434, 456 in dry lands, 454 good practices and lessons learned from, 434–36 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 436–37 impact of intensive agriculture on, 521 and LinKS project, 459–62, 468n1 management of, 262, 277 monitoring and evaluation of, 437 overview of, 431–32 policy and implementation issues of, 434, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 466n8 trends in, 423, 424b10.1, 431b10.2 bioenergy, 421, 428–29 definition, 467n11 gender issues, 443–47, 467n1–6 production of, 445 sources of, 443, 467n2 trends in, 423, 424b10.1 biofortified crops, 521, 554n3 biofuels, 443, 444–45, 467n6, 467n11 Biofuels Association of Zambia, 446 biomass definition, 467n11 transfer of, 660–61 use of, 383–85, 414n3, 440, 443, 444, 653 Biorganika, 204 biosecurity, in livestock sector, 611–16, 636n1, 636n5 biotechnology, 177 BLGWIP. See Bhairahawa Lumbini Groundwater Irrigation Project (BLGWIP), Nepal Bolivia adjusting local agriculture to loss of rural labor, 523b12.3 AGRECOL, 393 Noel Kempff Climate Action Project, 440 Bosnia and Herzegovina, rural producer organizations in, 201b5.9 Botswana, labor-saving technologies for crops, 290b7.15 BRAC. See Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) Brazil, 402, 403b9.8, 542b12.11 breeding improvement of local breeds, 627–28 livestock, 461b10.13, 607, 633–35 of plants, 262, 436, 437, 541, 543, 543b12.13 sheep, 631–32 brewing, 294 bribery, attitudes about, 31b2.2 B2B. See business to business (B2B) budgets budget support, 684 experience with PRSPs and SWAPs, 698–99 gender budget initiatives, 705, 706b16.3 gender-responsive, 28b2.1, 37, 41, 44, 79n3, 405–6 in newer aid modalities, 697–98 operating, 696 reasons to monitor, 698 buffalo milk, 604 Buhoma Community Rest Camp Association (BCRCA), 667

INDEX

731

Buhoma village walk, 666–67 Burkina Faso, Centre for Low-Cost Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation, 402 Business Edge, 197 business environment, 184–91 business plans for CeCs, 412 gender equity in accessing rural energy enterprises, 387 nontraditional business opportunities, 193 business incubators, 198 business to business (B2B), 221, 224n2 bus service, 351 Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), 665–68 C CA. See conservation agriculture (CA) Cafe Femenino, Peru, 203, 203b5.10 Cage Aquaculture for Greater Economic Security (CAGES), 591 Cambodia, 501–2, 679b16.3, 701–2 Cameroon, indigenous vegetables, 432b10.3 Canadian International Development Agency, 713 capacity building, 56 for agricultural services reforms, 75 in aquaculture, 572 in chain partnerships, 203 for control of animal diseases, 613 to cope with disasters, 451–52 in fisheries, 580, 587 and livestock disease protection, 612 and MARENASS project, 300 and participatory research, 275b7.8 rural roads project, 410 for small-scale women entrepreneurs, 192–99 for social economic reintegration, 507, 508 and sustainable land management, 457 training for, 72 capital and land acquisition, 138 and veterinary services, 618 capital requirements, 216b5.18 capture fisheries. See fish and fisheries carbon emissions, 440–41, 643, 660 carbon sequestration, 441, 467n3 CARE Bangladesh, 570–76, 591–93 Care International, 490 Cargill, 338, 350–52 The Caribbean, 346t8.11, 581 gender and agribusiness, 174 women entrepreneurs in, 195 Carnegie Corporation, 286 case law, 337 cash crops, 18, 425 jatropha oil, 446 views of, 523–25 cash payments, by procurement centers, 218 caste, 370 casualization of labor, 317–18, 337–38 casual wage laborers, 328–29 catarrhal fever, 613

732

INDEX

CATIE. See Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE) cattle. See livestock sector CBD. See community-based development (CBD); Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) CBDP. See community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP), India CBIK. See Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) CBNRM. See community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) CBOs. See community-based organizations (CBOs) CBRIP. See Community Based Rural Infrastructure Project (CBRIP), Vietnam CCMC. See community credit management committees (CCMCs) CDD. See community-driven development (CDD) CDFs. See community development funds (CDFs) CeCs. See community e-centers (CeCs) CEDAW. See Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) cellular telephones, 390–91, 391, 464 CEM. See Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) Ce-Mujer, 198 census data, 717 Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK), 543b12.12 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), 278 Center for Tropical Agriculture, 277 Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA), 175 Central Asia, gender and agribusiness, 175 Central Dry Area Smallholder and Community Services Development Project, Kenya, 291, 292b7.16 Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, 584 Centre for Low-Cost Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation (CREPA), Burkina Faso, 402 Centre for Marketing Information and Advisory Services for Fishery Products in Latin America and the Caribbean (INFOPESCA), 581 Centre for Mass Education in Science, 330 Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), 230 Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE), 664b15.13 CGAs. See country gender assessments (CGAs) CGIAR. See Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) chain mapping, 178–79 chain partnerships, 203, 204, 205b5.11 Chari River, 580 chemical fertilizers, 530, 531–32, 533b12.5 chemicals exposure to, 338, 345–46, 552, 553 reducing access to hazardous chemicals, 552–53 See also pesticides Chiapas, Mexico, 604–5, 631–32 Chiapas sheep, 604–5, 631–32 child labor, 319, 352n3, 352n5, 593n2 in export crop production systems, 346

and gender, 322 and working conditions, 341 children, exposure to natural disasters, 449 Chile informal workers in horticulture, 346, 346t8.11 producer organization for marketing, 266b7.6 China alternative fuels for domestic cooking, 291b7.17 forestry and farmers’ self-help groups, 656b15.7 seed fairs, 543b12.12 women’s access to resources, 619b14.2 Wulin mountains minority-areas development project, 457 CIAL-CIAT. See Community Agricultural Research Groups (CIAL-CIAT) CIARA Foundation, 271 CIAT. See International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) CIFOR. See Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) citizens citizen report cards, 26 as customers, 29 civic extension associations (ACEs), 271 civil service reform, 29–30 civil society civil society organizations, 579–80 and governance, 25 and reforms, 30 civil status, and land rights, 155 Civil Supplies Corporation, 218 Clean Development Mechanism, 441, 442b10.9 climate change, 421, 428 and disaster mitigation, 486 gender dimensions of, 438–42, 466n1–6, 466n10–11, 466–67n13 impact of desertification on, 454 impact on forests, 643–44 negative impacts of, 438, 439b10.8 and risk management, 489 and rural infrastructure, 368–69 trends in, 423, 424b10.1 coastal storms, 448 codes of conduct, 323 in agricultural labor, 343–44 expansion of, 349 fisheries, 578, 579–80, 581 Guatemala, 339 importance of, 346–47, 353n2 coffee, 203, 203b5.10, 341–42 COHRE. See Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) Collaborative Research Programs, 274 Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP), 276b7.9 collective association, 185 collective bargaining, 318, 336 collective economic action, in agricultural markets, 200–205 commercial crops, 532 commercialization, 177, 433 Commission for the Verification of Corporate Codes of Conduct, Guatemala, 339

commodities commodity exchanges, 219 revenues from, 341 and working conditions on plantations, 341–42 common property, 140 communicable diseases, and forestry sector, 651, 652b15.1, 654, 668n2 Communication for Development, 390, 390b9.7 communications in Hills Leasehold Project, 160 and LinKS project, 461 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 400–402 and seed systems, 543–44 social processes of, 264–65 for women, 59 communities alternative livelihoods for fishing communities, 582–87, 594n1–2, 594n8 animal health workers in, 614 community-managed procurement centers, 215–19, 223–24n1–3 Community Professionals Learning and Training Centres, 722 community seed fairs, 541, 542b12.11 competition between, 299–300 and ecotourism, 666–67 empowerment of, 487 financial systems in, 112–16, 121n1 forestry programs, 159–61, 167n2, 645, 650 gender issues building community assets and opportunities, 278 community-based water programs, 291–94 and decision making, 400, 426 to enhance women’s participation in community projects, 404, 405t9.7 forest management, 645, 650 IKP project, 112–16, 121n1 and land dispute mechanisms, 148–49 and natural resources management, 426 in watershed development project, 463–65 women representation in community organizations, 265–66 identifying and strengthening community organizations, 587 initiatives to reduce disaster risk-factors, 490 and land rights, 136–37, 151, 166n2 postcrisis assistance in, 507, 508 preventing elite capture of programs, 134 rural poverty reduction projects, 215–19, 223–24n1–3 and seed production, 544–45 self-help groups in, 584 training of to carry out project planning, monitoring, and evaluation, 721–23 Community Agricultural Research Groups (CIAL-CIAT), 262 community-based development (CBD), 53b2.9, 465n4 community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP), India, 487, 487b11.5 Community-Based Enterprises for the Conservation of Biodiversity at Bwindi World Heritage Site, Uganda, 665, 667 community-based natural disaster management, Nepal, 451

INDEX

733

community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), 139, 166n7, 568, 569 community-based organizations (CBOs), 251, 508 and agroforestry-related issues, 663, 669n2 and aquaculture extension project, 221 and forestry-related issues, 655–56 and gender-sensitive assessments, 511–12 and marketing extension process, 211–14 and sanitation, hygiene, and potable water issues, 402, 403b9.8 See also rural producer organizations (RPOs) Community Based Rural Infrastructure Project (CBRIP), Vietnam, 56, 57b2.11 community credit management committees (CCMCs), 248, 253n1 Community Development Carbon Fund, 446 community development funds (CDFs), 52, 55 community-driven development (CDD) approaches of, 53, 54b2.9 definition, 32, 53b2.9 gender issues, 53–55 challenges for, 61–62 gender-responsive actions in, 55–56 good practices and lessons learned concerning, 56–60 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 60–61 and governance, 31, 32–33 overview, 52–53 in Sri Lanka, 77–79 community e-centers (CeCs), 411–13, 415n1 Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project, Indonesia, 723b16.22 Community Link Workers, 628 Community Professionals Learning and Training Centres, 722 community seed banks, 541, 542b12.11 community seed fairs, 434–35 Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy 2002, Vietnam, 681b16.5, 703b16.17 conflict resolution, 489 conflicts and crises and access to food, 17 countries involved in armed conflicts in forested regions, 652b15.2 gender issues agriculture during crises, 475–76, 479–81 conceptual framework for agricultural programming in crises, 481–82 food aid versus agricultural support and sustenance of social capital, 507–12, 516n3–4 forestry sector, 647, 651, 652b15.2, 652b15.3, 655–56 integrating gender perspectives in, 482–83 and JFFLS approach, 310n3 link between food aid and agriculture in emergencies, 492–98 managing land and promoting recovery postcrisis, 499–506 monitoring and evaluation of, 483, 484t11.1 multidimensional issues of agriculture in times of crises, 477–79 overview, 475 strategies for, 485–91, 515n2 women entrepreneurs in war zones, 195–96 impact of natural disasters on, 448

734

INDEX

impact on forest products, 646 See also natural disasters Congo, Democratic Republic of, rape as weapon in conflict, 652b15.3 Conradie v. Hanekom and Another, 339 consensual unions, 156–57 conservation agriculture, 530 Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture Development Project, 291 conservation agriculture (CA), 302–4 conservation areas, perceptions about women working in, 573, 573t13.3 conservation of natural resources, 298–301 conservation of protected areas, 665–68 conservation tillage, 533 constitutions, and land rights, 503 consultations involving communities, 508 and land policies, 505 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), 541 and IPM, 549b12.16 research initiatives, 262, 274, 277, 664b15.13 consumers consumer protection, 111 and livestock technologies, 629 contract labor, 318 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 434, 456 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 334, 335t8.8, 339, 503b11.7, 602, 635n5 cool chain distribution, 328–29 cooperative organizations, 67 COPRAUL. See Regional Cooperative of United Farmers Ltd. (COPRAUL) Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP), Indonesia, 569, 588–90 coral resources, 588–90 COREMAP. See Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP), Indonesia corn, 467n4 corporate social responsibility (CSR), 323, 342, 343t8.9 corporations, and working conditions, 352 corruption, reforms to reduce, 30–31 Costa Rica Payment for Environmental Services Programme, 440–41, 466–67n13 solar-powered cookers, 447 costs associated with sustainable land reform, 501 of biosecurity measures, 615–16 of conservation agriculture implements, 303–4 of human resource programs, 351 for multiple-use water services, 238 of occupational segregation, 192 Côte d’Ivoire, gender in agricultural services reforms, 74–76 cotton growers, 552b12.17 Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), 41

country gender assessments (CGAs), 41–42, 717 Country Social Analysis, 717 cover crops, 534, 535b12.7 craftswomen, 396 credit, 103, 104–7 access to, 80n3, 189b5.5, 190b5.6, 380, 502 as barrier for women entrepreneurs, 186 fishing sector, 583–85 forest-related technologies, 664 historical perspective, 96–97 link to land rights, 153 livestock sector, 620 postcrisis issues, 502 See also loans credit market, 153–54 CREPA. See Centre for Low-Cost Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation (CREPA), Burkina Faso crises. See conflicts and crises Critical Rating Index, 113, 121n1 crop agriculture, 513, 554n1 areas for intervention, 526–27 crop varieties, 539b12.10 development strategies and trends, 519–20, 520–21, 554n3 monitoring and evaluation of, 527–28 policy and implementation issues, 549–53 selection of crops, 534–36 and soil productivity management, 529–37 technologies for processing, 290b7.15 versus livestock production, 455 women as vital components of, 521–23 crop management practices, 524–25, 529, 532–34 crop protection, 523–26, 548–49 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 554 overview, 547–48, 555n1 strategies for, 526 cross-border exchanges, 620 cross-breeding interventions, 31 CRSP. See Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) CSR. See corporate social responsibility (CSR) culture and agrobiodiversity, 468n1 cultural relativism, 503 culture-bound assumptions in Peru, 276b7.9 and discriminatory attitudes against women, 186 and entrepreneurial skills programs, 198–99 and formal law, 127 and insurance products, 109 and interventions during crises, 496–97 and land rights, 155–58 monitoring culturally-related questions, 718b16.21 Noel Kempff Climate Action Project, 440 as obstacle to knowledge sharing, 489 postcrisis issues, 500 and use of long-handled hoes, 289–90, 295 curricula agricultural education, 627 animal health, 614 revision and modernization of, 282–83, 284, 285b7.13

customary law, 336–37 customary systems for access and ownership of land, 127–31, 134–35, 136–40, 165n708, 165–66n10, 166n1–4, 166n6–7 agroforestry in Niger, 659b15.9 dispute management, 148–50, 166n5 invalidation of, 144 postcrisis issues, 501 and resource availability, 477 and women’s access to knowledge skills, 574 and women’s property rights, 141–46, 166n2, 166n4–5 CWANA. See Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) D dairy farming, 207, 603, 617, 618f14.1, 626, 662b15.12 Danish International Development Assistance, 568 Darfur, 448, 466n6 data availability and collection of gender-disaggregated data, 717–20 census, 717 employment, 326 experience and achievements using gender-sensitive indicators, 710 guidelines in designing gender-specific indicators and verification sources, 710–17 reasons for using gender-sensitive indicators, 709–10 recommendation for improving collection of, 720 decentralization, 25, 53–55, 71 of decision making, 66 definition, 53b2.9 gender-responsive actions in, 55–56 good practices and lessons learned concerning, 56–60 and governance, 31–32 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 60–61 and multiple-use water services, 239–40 overview, 52–53 Decent Work for All, 336 decent work for women in agricultural labor, 334–40 decision making decentralization of, 66 gender issues in agricultural resource management, 456–57 concerning resources, 569 energy issues, 313n4, 385, 386t9.4 ensuring women participation in, 570–71 gender equity, 364 Indian carbon sequestration project, 441 livestock sector, 602–3, 612, 613, 622 postdisasters, 450 raising gender awareness in rural transport, 377 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 400 in watershed development project, 464 women as decision makers, 37–38, 57, 78–79, 79n4, 88, 299 on infrastructure services, 361 participatory, 67 deep tubewell (DTW) development, 244b6.5, 245 deforestation, 369, 448, 455, 466n10, 476b11.1 degradation,

INDEX

735

of environment, 476, 476b11.1 of land, 429, 454–58, 468n4, 476b11.1 of natural resources, 448 of water, 429, 454–58, 468n4 demand-driven mechanisms, 60 demand-oriented approaches, and energy issues, 388 demand-side strategies, 24–26 Democratic Republic of Congo, 493, 652 demographics, in agricultural labor force, 317, 318t8.1, 319t8.2, 321t8.4 Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom, 179, 520b12.1, 536, 580 conceptual framework for gender equity in sustainable livelihoods, 4–6 gender audits, 707–8 gender mainstreaming, 681 integration of gender-specific indicators into monitoring, 718–19 research in poverty in fishing industry, 180b5.2 role of agriculture in poverty reduction, 520b12.1 Department of Forests (DOF), Nepal, 159–61, 167n2 Department of Livestock Services (DLS), Nepal, 621 desertification, 429, 466n6 gender issues of, 454–58, 468n4 trends in, 423, 424b10.1 design of projects in agricultural labor, 322–26, 353n8 gender-sensitive M&E component, 679–82 ground water development and management, 245–46 LADEP project, 251 multiple-use water services, 240–41 with national extension programs, 269–72 rural roads projects, 409–10 for self-help groups, 68–69 development, 2 development cooperation strategies, 44 East Asia Region CDD operations, 56, 57, 57b2.12 interventions for women, 68 strategies and plans for, 36, 79n1 development agencies, and energy assistance programs, 383, 413n1 Development Assistance Committee (DAC), 43, 680b16.4, 698, 700, 706 development cooperation agencies, 677b16.2, 678, 698 Development Credit Agreement, 508 DEWA. See Division for Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA) DFID. See Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom dietary diversity, 18, 174–75 Digital Broadcast Initiative, 394 Dimitra Project, 395 disaster management, 452–53 disaster risk reduction, 449 discrimination against women, 89 and access to financial services, 87 and disaster recovery, 496 as entrepreneurs, 185 and gender equality strategies, 482 and governance, 25 discrimination in education, 282

736

INDEX

diseases communicable, 651, 652b15.1, 654, 668n2 livestock, 607, 611–16, 636n1, 636n5 water borne, 249 See also acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); health and health care displacement, 499 displaced persons, 494, 504b11.8, 651 internally displaced persons, 477, 482, 499, 501, 502 and rural infrastructure, 368 by transport infrastructure, 375 dispute resolution, and land rights, 133t4.1, 147–52, 166n1, 166n3 dissemination, of labor-savings technologies, 294–96 distance education, 394, 411 distributional gains, mapping of, 180b5.3 District Poverty Initiatives Project (DPIP), Andhra Pradesh, India, 112–16, 210b5.17 diversification, in agriculture, 433–45, 526 Division for Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA), 488 divisions of labor in agriculture, 524–25 in fisheries, 562, 582–83, 593n2 gender issues in, 230–31 and natural resource management, 425 and risk recovery, 490 and water management, 455 within households, 291 divorce, and land rights, 142, 166n4 DLS. See Department of Livestock Services (DLS), Nepal DOF. See Department of Forests (DOF), Nepal domestic animals, and local knowledge, 603 domestic energy, 383–85 domestic markets for food, 176 growth of, 175 domestic relations, 90 domestic violence, 161 domestic water supplies, 235–37 donor agencies, 53, 79n1, 287, 410, 502 for CeCs, 412 donor policy-lending instruments, 42 examining gender activities of donors, 706–8 Downsizing Options Simulation Exercise tool, 41 DPIP. See District Poverty Initiatives Project (DPIP), Andhra Pradesh, India droughts, 618 drug trafficking, 476 drylands, definition, 454, 468n4 DTW. See deep tubewell (DTW) development dump pickers’ project, 402b9.8 E EALA. See East African Legislature Assembly (EALA) early warning systems, 487–88, 494 earnings gender gaps in, 329 from informal work, 332 See also income

East African Legislature Assembly (EALA), 38 East Asia, and agribusiness, 174–75 East Asia Region CDD Flagship Report, 56, 57, 58b2.12 eBario project, 412, 415n1 ECLAC. see Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) economic access, 125–26 economic and sector work (ESW), 38, 42, 310n3 Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 346t8.11 economic development, terms for joint review missions of, 707b16.19 economic empowerment, 361–62 gender equity in rural infrastructure, 365–66 and livestock production, 604 and market access, 580 and rural transport, 375 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 402–3 and watershed development, 464 economic growth, 375 and food security, 16 and women’s access to financial services, 87–88 ecosystems, 421, 466n10 coral reefs, 588–90, 594n8 destruction of, 477 impact of intensive agriculture on, 521 mangrove, 594n8 role of trees in, 660 See also biodiversity ecotourism, 665–68 education, 76 access to, 262, 367 addressing imbalances in, 394–95 agroforestry, 664b15.13 animal health practices, 614 curricula, 282–83, 284, 285b7.13, 614, 627 financial assistance for, 351 higher, 280–82 impact of disasters on school attendance, 450 interventions for women, 283, 283b7.11 JFFLS approach to, 306 and labor-saving technologies, 289–97 and land rights, 505 management of for disaster mitigation, 488–89, 515n2 and occupational choices, 325 in participatory research, 274–79 in pesticide management, 548 Radio Teacher, 393 and rural transport, 375–76 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 400–402 women’s enrollment in AET, 280 See also agricultural extension and training (AET); trainers and training efficiency, and women’s access to financial services, 87–88 EFTA. See European Fair-Trade Association (EFTA) e-government projects, 395 Egypt, Matruh Resources Management Project, 457 e-Lanka Development Project, 394–95

el Balcon, Mexico, communal forests in, 657b15.8 electric power, 385, 443, 467n6 elite capture, 165n8 challenges of, 32 of community programs, 134 definition, 636n4 of land, 158 monitoring of, 630 risk of, 56 El Niño, 488 El Salvador, 490 e-mails, 393 emergencies emergency kits, 489, 515n2 emergency responses to crises, 480–91 emergency transport, 367, 374, 375, 380 and food banks in Niger, 513–15 link between food aid and agriculture in emergencies, 492–98 employment, 365 access to, 337 for AET graduates, 286–87 conditions of, 579 crop production as source of, 522–23 employee benefits, 351–52 in fisheries, 562–66 in forest industry, 645 generation at local level, 217 increasing opportunities rural areas, 324 link to migration, 619–20 rural opportunities, 323, 324 seasonal, 324, 328–29, 332, 337, 346 share by sector, 317, 318t8.1, 318t8.2, 321t8.4 temporary, 337, 346, 347 in transport enterprises, 374, 379–80 empowerment of women, 13, 60, 65, 90, 173 and access to financial services, 88 in agriculture organizations, 63–65 in COREMAP project, 588–90 during crises, 480–81 in financial sector, 91–92 and innovations in financial product development, 111 and insurance, 108–9 Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Project in India, 655 organizational models and strategies for, 96–102, 120n1 practices that increase commitment to, 265 and remittance transfer services, 103, 104, 110, 111b3.10 and rural finance, 104, 105b3.6, 121n2 savings and pensions issues, 107–8 through group action, 160–61 through self-managed microfinance associations, 117–20 versus sustainability, 98, 99b3.3, 120n3 Empowerment of Women in Irrigation and Water Resources Management for Improved Food Security, Nutrition and Health (WIN project), 13 ENAM. See Enhancing Child Nutrition through Animal Source Food Management (ENAM)

INDEX

737

ENERGIA, 387 energy sector, 367, 368 gender issues, 383–87, 414n4 gender equity in accessing, 385 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 387–89 overview, 383, 413n1 and modern biofuels, 445, 467n6 source for ICT access, 391 wood as source of energy, 644, 653 enforcement of land rights, 127, 144–45, 146 of laws against exposure to hazardous chemicals, 552–53 Enhancing Child Nutrition through Animal Source Food Management (ENAM), 620 Enterprises, 395 and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, 665–68 gender equity in business creation, 365 small-scale seed enterprises, 544–45 entrepreneurs terms for joint review missions, 707b16.19 women in forestry sector, 654 women in livestock, 622 environmental issues and bioenergy, 443–44, 467n5 degradation of environment, 368–69, 476 environmentally sustainable practices in livestock technology, 627 impact of natural disasters on, 448 role of trees in, 660 water for livestock, 236 See also deforestation; desertification environmental services, 440–41, 466–67n13 epidemiological services, 612 eSourcebook, 411–12 ESW. See economic and sector work (ESW) ethanol, 467n4 ethical operational principles, 581 Ethical Trading Initiative Impact Assessment, 348b8.10 Ethiopia Household Food Security and Nutrition Project, 17 links of food aid and conflict, 493 no-free-grazing project, 659b15.9 PARIMA project, 620 Seed Systems Development Project, 543 soil fertility management in, 534, 534b12.6 ethnicity, 370 ethnobotanical knowledge, 436 ethnoveterinary applications, 611, 612 Europe, women in forestry, 644 European Commission, 395 European Fair-Trade Association (EFTA), 343, 344b8.8 excreta disposal facilities. See sanitation expenditure patterns, 90 export agriculture, 344–46 agroprocessing industries, 342 good practices and lessons learned from, 346–47, 353n2 governance structures, 342–43 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 347–49

738

INDEX

overview, 341 plantation agriculture, 341–42 exports crops, 523–25 export value chains, 177 markets for, 318 timber, 657b15.8 extension agents and workers, 26, 196, 310n6 extension services, 72, 264, 280, 607, 611–12 Badia Livestock Extension Project, 628b14.3 definition, 265 demand for, 257 gender issues, 261–62, 268–73, 273b7.7 Ghana, 533b12.5 for rural farmers, 215 staff and postcrises issues, 502 and technologies under CDM, 442b10.9 and technology transfer, 282 types of, 268–69 external factors, gendered impacts on, 481–82 F facilitators, 306–7, 310n5–6, 722 FACs. See farmer advisory committees (FACs) factory workers, 577–81 FAESIS. See Food and Agriculture Education Information System (FAESIS) fair trade, 319, 352n3 Fair Trade and Ethical Trading Initiatives, 323, 346, 347, 348b8.11 fair trade cooperatives, 201 Fair-Trade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International, 342, 343, 344b8.8 Fair Trade Organization (FTO), 348b8.11 fair trade organizations, 342–43, 348b8.11 fallows, 660–61 families family approaches to aquaculture, 572–76, 591–93, 594n1–3 family farms, 321 family law, 145, 184, 337 FAO. See Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) FAOSTAT, 710 FARC. See Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) FARM. See Farmer-Centered Agricultural Resource Management (FARM) program farm animal genetic resources management, 436 farmer advisory committees (FACs), 270–71 Farmer-Centered Agricultural Resource Management (FARM) program, 456–57, 620 farmer field schools (FFSs), 219, 260, 262, 274, 306 and conservation agriculture, 302–3 and knowledge of hazardous chemicals, 553 and participatory research, 275–76 and pest management project, 550 Farmer Life Schools (FLSs), 306 farmers and farming, 291, 436, 622, 634 in drylands, 454–58 farm equipment and tools, 289–91, 295, 303–4 farmer interest groups, 270–71

farmer research groups, 63, 64b2.14 farmers’ rights, 434, 435b10.7 farmer-to-farmer training, 299 gender issues agricultural resource management, 456–57 agroforestry technologies, 660–62 and climate change, 439–40 farm tools and equipment, 289–91 food security, 522 management of gender-based farmer groups, 592 as pathway out of poverty, 519–28, 554n1 self-help organizations in China, 656b15.7 social biases in labor force, 175 in watershed development project, 463–65 women as trainers for, 196 women’s view of, 523 increasing farm power, 289–91 Integrated Rural Resource Management, 275b7.8 junior farmer field and life schools, 305–8, 310n1–7 and landmines, 500 off-farm activities, 293–94, 323 on-farm activities, 289, 317, 323 postharvest processing and storage, 186–87, 190, 190b5.6 procurement centers for, 215–19, 223–24n1–3 rice farmers, 272 use of ICTs, 393 and use of liquid biofuels, 445 wholesale and assembly market, 187, 190 See also livestock sector; seeds farmers’ organizations, 193, 266, 266b7.6 experience, impacts, and benefits from gender-responsive actions of, 65–66, 80n1 as extension service, 269 and GAL framework, 427 good practices and lessons learned from, 67–69, 80n3 group functions, advantages, and disadvantages, 63–65 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 69–70 overview, 63 policy and implementation issues of, 66–67 and rice projects, 272 farmers’ rights, and seed systems, 545b12.15 farmer training demonstrations (FTDs), 248 FEDEV. See Femmes et Développement (FEDEV) fee-for-service programs, 268, 269 feminization of agriculture, 526 of labor markets, 317 Femmes et Développement (FEDEV), 66 fertilizers, 529 chemical, 530, 531–32, 533b12.5 use of, 536 FFGs. See Fish Farming Groups (FFGs) FFS. See farmer field schools (FFSs) FIAS. See Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS) Fiji, Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises and Development, 395 financial planning, 111

financial sector, 88, 198 community financial systems, 112–16, 121n1 financing for light and power, 388b9.5 financing of agricultural advisory services, 269, 270t 7.3 financing of CDD projects, 60 gender equity in accessing markets, 366 gender mainstreaming in, 91–92 and ICTs relevant to rural women, 393 IKP project, 112–16, 121n1 KRC project, 117–20 monitoring of, 694 overview, 85–86 postcrisis recovery, 502–3 and rural development, 96–98 savings and pensions, 103, 104, 107–8, 121n2 speculative financial activities link to food crises, 476 women’s access to, 89–90 See also rural finance Finca Village Banking, 87 FINE criteria, 343, 344b8.8 firewood collection, 652b15.1 First Mile Project, 295, 309n4, 393–94, 396, 397 fish and fisheries, 19, 294b7.18, 329, 488 access to, 580–81 alternative livelihoods for fishing communities, 582–87, 594n1–2, 594n8 CARE Bangladesh, 591–93 decline in fish stocks, 577 fish-for-sex, 564, 565, 577 fish health inspections, 580–81 fish processors, 562 gender issues, 561–67, 593n1–5 for accessing and managing resources, 568–71, 593n1–3 associations for protecting livelihoods of fishers, processors, and traders, 577–81, 594n1 Bangladesh, 568–69, 591–93 coral reef rehabilitation and management project, 588–90 gendered nature of fishing communities, 178 as livelihood for women in Ghana, 180b5.2 Honduras, 208, 209b5.16 Fish Farming Groups (FFGs), 571 FishPHOM, 180b5.2 FLGs. See functional literacy groups (FLGs) FLO. See Fair-Trade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International floods, 452 flower industries, 344 FLSs. See Farmer Life Schools (FLSs) fodder, 662b15.12 FONAFIFO. See National Fund for Forestry Finance (FONAFIFO) food availability of, 14–17 food banks, 513–15 increase in prices of, 443, 467n4 processing of, 294, 294b7.18 production of, 533b12.5 support for women as producers of, 395–96 utilization of, 14, 18–19

INDEX

739

food aid, 17 development oriented, 493 link between food aid and agriculture in emergencies, 492–98 versus agricultural support and sustenance of social capital, 507–12, 516n3–4 Food and Agriculture Education Information System (FAESIS), 286–87 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 287, 396, 710 and agriculture workforce, 230 animal genetic diversity, 632 community seed fairs, 434–35 and extension programs, 257 and forestry, 643, 644, 665–68 Gender and Population Division, 718 and gender mainstreaming, 3 gender-specific units in, 28–29 and Hills Leasehold project, 159–61, 167n2 land policy and administration, 125, 165n1 and livestock management, 436 and nonwood forest products, 653–54 role of agriculture in poverty reduction, 520b12.1 Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme, 488 and work with vulnerable youth and orphans, 305–6 Food Bank Project, Niger, 17 food insecurity, 476 food security, 177, 185, 306, 480, 521–22 in Afghanistan, 205b5.12 and agricultural water management, 229–34 conclusion concerning, 19 definition, 11, 14 elements in achieving, 12, 13f1.2 IASC guidelines on, 497–98 impact of HIV on, 305 link to agriculture, 11–12 link to seed security, 538 and LinKS project, 459–62, 468n1 and livestock sector, 611, 625 monitoring and of, 19, 20t1.1 overview, 11, 12f1.1 pillars of, 14–19 and seed systems, 543–44 and soil productivity, 530 Sri Lanka, 478–79 and women farmers, 522 women’s role in, 12–14, 14–19 Food Security for Vulnerable Group Development Women and Their Dependents (FSVGD), Bangladesh, 197 Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), 189b5.5 forest land leasehold of, 139 user rights to, 159–61 forests and forestry, 644–46 changes and trends in forestry livelihoods, 643–46, 668n2–3 conservation in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, 665–68 development and management in Mexico, 657b15.8 gender-responsive policies of, 646–47 innovative approaches to gender barriers in, 647–48 monitoring and evaluation of, 648–49

740

INDEX

as safety net, 650–57, 668n1–2, 668n5 See also agroforestry Forests and Poverty Linkages Toolkit, 646–47 formal sector, as provider of financial services, 86, 97b3.2 forums, 452, 723b16.22 fossil fuels, replacements for, 443 Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises in Development (FRIEND), Fiji, 395 franchise services, 217 FRIEND. See Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises in Development (FRIEND), Fiji fruits domestication of, 662b15.12 production of, 441, 536 FSVGD. See Food Security for Vulnerable Group Development Women and Their Dependents (FSVGD), Bangladesh FTD. See farmer training demonstrations (FTDs) FTO. See Fair Trade Organization (FTO) fuelwood, 291–92, 293, 445, 645, 653 collection of, 425, 444, 659b15.9 safe access to, 451 as source of energy, 384 supply of, 368 functional literacy groups (FLGs), 248, 249 G GAL. See gender in agricultural livelihoods (GAL) framework The Gambia, 569, 570b13.1 irrigation program, 457 Lowlands Agricultural Development Programme, 15, 139, 166n6, 250–52 GAP. See Gender Action Partnerships (GAP) garden/pond/animal husbandry, 572, 594n1 Gates Foundation, 286 Gaza, access to water in, 477b11.2 GBIs. See gender budget initiatives (GBIs) GDP. See gross domestic product (GDP) GEF. See Global Environment Facility (GEF) Gemidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project, Sri Lanka, 77–79, 721–23 Gender Action Partnerships (GAP), 698 Gender Action Plan, 679b16.3 gender and growth assessments (GGAs), 189, 189b5.5, 338 Gender and Rural Transport Initiative (GRTI), Africa, 377, 377b9.1 gender-assessment tools, 388–89 gender audits, 98–99, 120n4, 387, 707 gender budget initiatives (GBIs), 705, 706b16.3 gender consultants, 408, 409, 413–14n5–6 gender-disaggregated data, availability and collection of, 717–20 gender equality definition, 2 gender-sensitive rural transport results indicators, 380, 381b9.4 importance of in agriculture, 2–3 of opportunity for financial services, 91 promotion of, 26, 28–29 and women’s access to financial services, 88 Gender Equality Study, 677

gender equity, 125, 681 in accessing markets, 365–66 in economic empowerment, 365–66 gender-equity markers, 706–7 and implementation of staff gender policies, 99–101, 120n6 and land policy, 126–30 in management of services, 365 in newer aid modalities, 697–98 in planning and decision making, 364 promotion of through FJJLS, 306–7 in road maintenance, 408–9, 415n7 gender in agricultural livelihoods (GAL) framework, 426–28 Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook considerations in creation of, 6–7 lessons learned and ways forward, 8–9 overview, 3–4 process of, 8–9 structure of, 7–8, 9n7 and sustainable livelihoods through a gender lens, 4–5 gender inequalities challenges and opportunities for in crises, 496–97 in fisheries, 565, 593n4 and food security, 11 in labor markets, 315 and women’s work, 561, 593n1 Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Development Projects toolkit, 678 gender mainstreaming at agency level, 405–6 in agricultural water management, 229–34 in agriculture sector, 45–51, 76, 80n1–2, 522 CARE Bangladesh, 591–93 definition, 45, 80n1 in financial sector for pro-poor development, 91–92 Gemidiriya project, 77–79 implications for M&E, 680–81, 692–93 irrigation project in Sri Lanka, 510 livestock sector, 603–5, 635n9–10 of MDGs, 699 models and strategies for, 96–102, 120n1, 120n3, 120n8 and national machineries, 45, 46–47 perspectives in, 6, 9n6 and policy making, 38 in producer organizations, 74–75 and public administration, 28–31 gender mapping, 575, 594n3 gender pyramid, 579 Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiatives (GRBIs), 79 gender-sensitive indicators, 709 accuracy of, 720 in agricultural sector program, 715–16t16.5 experience and achievements using, 710 guidelines in designing and verification sources, 710–17 reasons for using, 709–10 selecting data sources for, 719–20 gender specialists, 692 gender units, 46, 47–48, 49b2.7 genetically modified (GM) crops, 521, 541, 548, 551

genetic diversity, 431–32, 433 genetic erosion, 433, 465n5 genetic resource management, 277 geographical sourcing of products, 613 geographic information system (GIS), 378b9.2 German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), 446 Germidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project, Sri Lanka, 77–79 germplasm supply, 661, 663, 669n2 GGAs. See gender and growth assessments (GGAs) Ghana Grains Development Project, 533b12.5 Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project, 232, 247–49, 253n1 maize production in, 524 Volta River Estates, Ltd., 348b8.11 and women entrepreneurs, 189b5.5 women’s role in fishing industry, 180b5.2 GIS. See geographic information system (GIS) global business environment, 184–85, 187–88 Global Environment Facility (GEF), 435b10.6, 441 Global Forest Resource Assessment, 643 GLOBALGAP standards, 174 globalization, 1–2, 200, 281–82, 372 Global Plans of Action, 434, 435b10.6 Global Positioning System (GPS), 378b9.2 global warming, 438, 466n2, 466n11 GM. See genetically modified (GM) crops GNAEP. See Greater Noakhali Aquaculture Extension Project (GNAEP), Bangladesh GNI. See gross national income (GNI) goats, 607, 611 GOLDA. See Greater Options for Local Development through Aquaculture (GOLDA) project, Bangladesh Gopal Mitras, 464 GoSL. See government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) governance, 48 and CDD, 52–62 conceptual framework for reforms, 24–27 and decentralization, 31–32, 52–62 definition, 23 and farmer organizations, 63–70 Gemidiriya project, 77–79 global governance, 33–34 in labor-intensive export agriculture, 342–43 and land rights, 125–26 in local government, 71–73 overview, 23–24 policy processes for, 27–28 and public administration and public sector reform, 28–31 reforms in, 45 and risk management and preventive action, 486–87 and rural transport issues, 376–77 and self-help groups, 63–70 strengthening of, 409 See also policies government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), 507, 508 See also Sri Lanka

INDEX

741

GOWE. See Growth Oriented Women Enterprise (GOWE) program, Kenya Grains Development Project, Ghana, 533b12.5 Grameen Bank, 87, 96, 111, 620 grants, to promote AET for women, 286 GRBIs. See Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiatives (GRBIs) Greater Noakhali Aquaculture Extension Project (GNAEP), Bangladesh, 220–22, 224n1 Greater Options for Local Development through Aquaculture (GOLDA) project, Bangladesh, 591 greenhouse gas emissions, 441, 442b10.9, 466n2–3, 466n11 reduction of, 438, 440, 447 variations of, 467n5 Green Revolution technologies, 520–21 gross domestic product (GDP), 16, 341 gross national income (GNI), and food security, 17 groundwater, development and management of, 242–46, 489 group action programs, 262 growth center markets, 191b5.7 Growth Oriented Women Enterprise (GOWE) program, Kenya, 198 GRTI. See Gender and Rural Transport Initiative (GRTI), Africa GTZ. See German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) Guatemala Commission for the Verification of Corporate Codes of Conduct, 339 Maria Eugenia Morales de Sierra v. Guatemala, 337 working conditions in, 326b8.3 Guide to Gender-Sensitive Indicators, 713 H Habitat Agenda, 503b11.7 handbooks, for humanitarian action, 490 hand washing, 399 Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines, 699, 710 healers, 612 health and health care and chemical exposures, 338, 345–46, 552, 553 as factor in food security, 13, 14 gender issues access to, 367 in agricultural labor, 321–22 and climate change, 439 and exposure to pesticides, 553 in forestry sector, 652b15.1 ICTs to deliver services to poor, 394 impact for women agricultural workers, 326 lessons learned and guidelines for practitioners, 403–6 and natural disasters, 449–50 and use of traditional bioenergy, 444 and water quality, 243, 243b6.4 impact of multiple-use water services on, 217 informal sector, 331, 332 and insurance products, 109 link to domestic energy, 384 link to income, 18 link to sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 399 livestock sector, 612–13

742

INDEX

occupational safety and health, 321, 332, 336, 345 and use of solar cookers, 447 water-borne diseases, 249 See also acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) Health Unlimited, 394 Heifer Project International, 607 Heifer Zambia, 604 heterogeneity of rural infrastructure and services, 363–64 of women’s social class, 68 higher education challenges for, 280–81 opportunities for women in, 281–82 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), 611, 612, 614 high-value products, 205b5.11, 317, 341 demand for, 176 informal labor in, 344 and labor unions, 346 women’s access to, 366 high-yield crops, 433, 465n5, 524 Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project (HLFFDP), Nepal, 159–61, 167n2 HIV. See human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) HLFFDP. See Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project (HLFFDP), Nepal hoes, long-handled, 289–90, 295 home-based work, 332, 333b8.6 home gardens, 645, 659–60 HomeNet, 332, 333b8.6 homestead land purchase program, India, 139–40 Honduras ethical fish processing, 581 improving marketing abilities in, 208, 209b5.16 Land Access Pilot Project (PACTA), 162–65, 167n2 titling systems, 145 horticulture, 322, 326, 346, 347b8.9, 535–36 household arrangements informal conjugal unions, 156 and PACTA, 163–64 See also marriage practices Household Food Security and Nutrition Project, Ethiopia, 17 household resource management, 283, 285b7.13 households child-headed households, 603, 635n7, 635n10 composition of in rural areas, 1 division of labor within, 293 domestic chores, 291, 292, 293b7.17 and domestic energy, 383–85 food security, 12–13 househead, 718 identifying by type, 332 impact of IKP project on, 115 and invisible economies of, 373 link of resources to land rights, 126 resource poor, 530 women’s responsibility for, 89 household surveys, 718 house ownership, 165–66n10

HPAI. See highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) human capital, 103, 602 access to, 612 impact of MARENASS project on, 300 and livestock sector, 608 and rural infrastructure, 361–62 and rural transport, 375 human development, 366–67 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 1, 2 and agricultural markets, 193 and child-headed households, 603, 635n7, 635n10 contract clauses on, 380 coping strategies for, 433, 434b10.5 in fishing communities, 578 and food security, 14 and forestry sector, 651, 652b15.1, 654, 668n2 impact of, 305, 310n1–2 on MDGs, 645 on rural households, 613 and junior farmer field and life schools, 305–8, 310n107 and labor rights, 337 and land and water degradation, 456 and local knowledge systems, 461b10.14 and rural infrastructure, 368, 374 as safety risk for women in workforce, 321 Tanzania, 303 and training programs, 197 workplace awareness campaigns, 326 See also health and health care humanitarian assistance, 451, 478, 480, 490, 493 guidelines for, 494 See also relief efforts human resource management, 350 hunger, 529, 650 Hurricane Mitch, 500 husbandry, 457–58 hybrid seeds, 538 hygiene, 400–403 monitoring and evaluation of, 405 overview, 399 Hyogo Framework, 488 I IADB. See Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) IAP. See indoor air pollution (IAP) IASC. See Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), United Nations ICARDA. See International Center for Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) ICECD. See International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (ICECD), India ICESCR. See International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) ICICI Bank, India, 96, 97b3.2 ICM. See integrated crop management (ICM) ICP. See internally displaced persons (IDP) ICRAF. See World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) ICRC. See International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

ICT. See information and communications technologies (ICTs) ICT-enabled procurement centers, 219 IDA. See International Development Association (IDA) IDPs. See internally displaced persons (IDPs) IDRC See International Development Research Centre (IDRC) IFAD. See International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) IFAT. See International Federation for Alternative Trade (IFAT) IFC. See International Finance Corporation (IFC) IFPRI. See International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) IGAs. See income-generating activities (IGAs) IIM. See Indian Institute of Management (IIM) IK. See indigenous knowledge (IK) Ikirezi Natural Products Project, 205b5.11 IKP. See Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP), India illiteracy, 157, 393–94 ILO. See International Labour Organization (ILO) IMF. See International Monetary Fund (IMF) impact indicators, 711 implementation gender issues and access to land and property, 138–39 and biodiversity, 434, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 466n8 and bioenergy, 445, 447 and choice of director for gender strategies, 76 crop protection, 549–53 and desertification, 456 family-based aquaculture systems, 574–75 and farmer organizations, 66–67 for fishers, processors, and traders, 579–80 of forestry-related programs, 652–54 land dispute resolution, 148–50, 166n1, 166n3 and land rights, 143–45 livestock sector, 419–20, 604, 608, 613–14, 619–20, 621, 626–27, 636n5 marketing sector, 619–20, 621 of multiple-use water services, 238–39 and natural disasters, 450–51 and postcrises land issues, 505 in rural transport, 376–77 seed production and distribution, 540–41, 545–46 and self-help groups, 66–67 and titling of land, 154–55 partnerships in, 287–88 of water services, 232–33 Improved Seed Systems for Agroforestry in African Countries project, 663 IMT. See irrigation management transfer (IMT) IMTs. See intermediate means of transport (IMTs) INCAGRO. See Agro-Innovation and Competitiveness Project (INCAGRO), Peru incentives, to ensure monitoring and evaluation, 676–77 income in Afghanistan, 205 in agriculture sector, 17 fishing sector, 583–84 households with business income, 388f 9.2 and insurance, 109, 487b11.4

INDEX

743

link to contribution of financial services, 90 link to nutrition and health, 18 link to proximity of procurement centers, 217 loss of due to resettlement and displacement, 368 marginalization of low-income groups, 651 nonfarm income opportunities, 372 in rural transport, 374 and watershed development project, 464 for women farmers, 522 See also wages income-generating activities (IGAs), 464 India Agricultural Technology Management Agency, 270–71 Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project, 112–16, 203, 215–19, 223–24n1–3, 683b16.6 biofuel production, 447 carbon sequestration project, 441 community seed bank, 542b12.11 disaster recovery, 487b11.5 District Poverty Initiatives Project, 112, 210b5.17 gender-related responsibilities, 384t9.3 health insurance for unorganized labor force, 332b8.5 homestead land purchase program in, 139–40 ICECD, 198 ICIC Bank, 96, 97b3.2 impact of HIV and AIDS on, 613 Indian Institute of Management, 196b5.8 Indira Kranthi Patham, 92, 112–16 insurance for low-income workers, 487b11.4 Integrated Pest Management Program for Cotton, 552b12.17 Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Program, 655 Karnataka Watershed Development Project, 463–65 market prices in, 264b7.5 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, 331b8.4 National Development Dairy Cooperative, 330 resource management project, 654–55 rice credit line project, 17 sanitation and hygiene issues, 403, 404b9.9 self-help groups in, 65b2.15 SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre, 396 type of workers by gender, 329, 330t8.7 Vishaka v. Rajasthan and Others, 339 Warana Wired Village Project, India women-managed community financial system, 112–16, 121n1 women willing to use clean fuels, 387, 387b9.5 Working Women’s Forum, 66 Indian Institute of Management (IIM), 196b5.8 indicators design of, 712–13 modification of, 717 qualitative versus quantitative, 711 from rural development project in Vietnam, 714t16.4 setting up systems in projects and programs, 713 types of, 10–11 indigenous fruit, 662b15.12 indigenous knowledge (IK), 264, 436, 543b12.12 LinKS Project, 16, 434–35, 459–62, 461n1, 633–35

744

INDEX

indigenous people, 407, 436 Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation (ISWC), Africa, 534 indigenous vegetables, 432b10.3 indigenous women, sheep improvement research, 631–32 Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP), India, 92, 112–16 individual rights, 147 Indonesia Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project, 723b16.22 Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program, 588–90 Kecamatan Development Program, 54b2.10, 55 indoor air pollution (IAP), 364, 367, 384, 385, 425, 444 industrialization of agriculture, 317 INFOPESCA. See Centre for Marketing Information and Advisory Services for Fishery Products in Latin America and the Caribbean (INFOPESCA) informal economy, 328, 331, 353n1 informal organizations, and women’s access to information and services, 263–64 informal sector labor, 328–33, 353n1 information, 4–6, 59 access to, 257–58, 263–64, 367, 480, 525–26 on animal disease control, 614 exchange of, 264, 265, 393 farmers exchange of, 393 and GAL framework, 427 increasing of, 103 information divide, 397 as key to services of projects, 119 lack of, 295 livestock sector, 607, 620 and natural resources management, 426 promotion of safe pesticides, 551–52 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 400–402 seed sources, 539–40, 555n2 social processes of information exchange, 264–65 soil productivity, 531 information and communications technologies (ICTs), 26, 264, 265 and First Mile Project, 295, 309n4 gender perspectives to improve ICT policies and projects, 391–92 good practices and lessons learned in, 393–96 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 397–98 ICTs relevant to rural women, 392–93 for informal workers, 330 livestock sector, 628 overview, 390–91, 414ne product market information concerning, 366 role in rural areas, 366, 367 for transport, 380 women entrepreneurs, 198 information technology (IT), 218, 330 infrastructure, 55 dimensions for services, 362, 362f 9.1 energy, 391, 414n3 to prevent livestock diseases, 613 and rural transport technologies, 292–93

sequencing of interventions in, 364 Vietnam’s CBRIP project, 56, 57b2.11 See also rural infrastructure inheritance practices, 128–30, 165–66n10–11 and land administration programs, 130–34 and livestock, 617 Rwanda, 504 innovations in design of loan products, 105, 106b3.7 gender issues, 260–63 approaches to overcome gender barriers, 647–48 conservation agriculture for sustainable development, 302–4 emerging trends affecting gender roles in agriculture, 263–67 extension organizations, 268–73 framework for AIS, 258–60 labor-saving technologies, 289–97 overview, 280 in participatory research, 274–79 trends in access to information and technology, 257–58 womens’ role in innovation in Africa, 294b7.18 in IKP project, 113 in soil fertility management, 533–34 inorganic fertilizers, 531 input indicators, 710 institutions capacity building, 664b15.13 definition, 6 and empowerment versus sustainability, 98, 99b3.3, 120n3 framework for JFFLS, 308, 310n7 and GAL framework, 428 gender issues for access and ownership of land, 126–31, 134–35, 165n7–8, 165–66n10 for accessing and managing resources, 568–71, 593n1–3 and agriculture sector, 45–51, 80n1–2, 325, 525 culture of and empowerment of women, 98–99 and gender equality, 54–55 for groundwater development and management, 242–46 and land dispute mechanisms, 148–49 livestock sector, 608 promoting women’s role in, 340 provision of goods and services to women, 58–59 impact of IKP project on, 115 institutional analysis at community level, 61 for terms for joint review missions, 707b16.19 and policies, 5f 0.1 political processes leading to reform of, 37 rural financial services, 86 rural transport institutional arrangement, 376 strengthening of to support rural livelihoods, 495 Institut Tadbiran Awam Negara (INTAN), Malaysia, 411 INSTRAW. See International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) insurance, 103, 104 good practices and innovations in, 108–9 insurance for low-income workers, 487b11.4

and livestock sector, 614, 615, 628 social, 331 INTAN. See Institut Tadbiran Awam Negara (INTAN), Malaysia Integrated crop management (ICM), 276f 7.2 integrated pest management (IPM), 275–76, 549–52 integrated production and pest management (IPPM), 276f 7.2 Integrated Pest Management Program for Cotton, 552b12.17 Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRAD), 384 Integrated Rice and Fish, 591 integrated rural accessibility planning (IRAP), 378 Integrated Rural Resource Management, 275, 275b7.8 intellectual property rights (IPR), 436 intelligence-gathering strategies for disease, 615 Interagency Gender and Development Group (INGAD), 40b2.3 Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), United Nations, 490, 497 Inter-American Commission, 337 Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), 407 Intercooperation, 211–14 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 438, 466n1, 466n3–4 intermediate means of transport (IMTs), 378, 388b9.2 internally displaced persons (IDPs), 477, 482, 499 location and resettlement of, 502 postcrisis issues, 501 international agreements, 34, 434, 435b10.6 International Bioenergy Platform, 445 International Center for Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 178 International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), 262, 278 International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (ICECD), India, 198 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 508 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 334, 335t8.8 International Development Association (IDA), 478, 507 International Development Research Centre (IDRC), 436 International Federation for Alternative Trade (IFAT), 343, 344b8.8 International Finance Corporation (IFC), 189b5.5 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 3, 38 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 654–55, 710 and agroforestry domestication, 435 and extension programs, 257 gender mainstreaming, 3, 55 gender-specific units in, 28–29 HLFFDP project, 159–61, 167n2 land policy and administration, 125, 165n1 lessons learned from, 41–42 North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project in India, 65b2.15 role of agriculture in poverty reduction, 520b12.1 International Institute for Environment and Development, United Kingdom, 536 international labor conventions, 323 International Labour Organization (ILO), 325, 334–36, 353n1, 461 gender-sensitive value chain model, 622–23

INDEX

745

International Land Coalition, Women’s Resource Access Programme (WRAP), 160 international law, 334–36, 502 International Livestock Research Institute, 276 International Monetary Fund (IMF), and PRSCs, 42 International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), 110 International Research Centre for Agroforestry, 436 International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), 290 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, 3, 434 International Union for Conservation of Nature, 644 International Water Management Institute, 236b6.1 Internet, 411 Internet access, 264–65 interventions agroforestry-related, 658–59 in crop agriculture, 526–27, 535 principles for effective intervention, 481b11.3 for pro-poor development, 85 reduction of time spent on domestic chores, 291 seed systems, 541–45 investments in agriculture, 2 in boats and fishing gear, 562 in fisheries, 565 to improve governance, 23, 24t2.1 in infrastructure, 55 and multiple-use water services, 235–36 in research and advisory services, 265 in roads, 372 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 399 scaling up of investments, 683–86 in soil productivity, 531 invisibility factors, and crop agriculture, 521 invisible economies, 373 IPCC. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) IPM. See integrated pest management (IPM) IRAD. See Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRAD) IRAP. See integrated rural accessibility planning (IRAP) IRRI. See International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) irrigation management transfer (IMT), 230 irrigation systems access to, 230 and agricultural water management, 229–34 community-focused project to develop, 507–12, 516n3–4 The Gambia, 457 and groundwater issues, 243b6.3, 455 labor contribution to, 230 LACOSREP project, 232, 247–49, 253n1 Sri Lanka, 478–79 irrigation tanks, 507, 516n3 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 499 ISWC. See Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation (ISWC), Africa IT. See information technology (IT)

746

INDEX

J jatropha oil, 446 JFFLS. See junior farmer field and life schools (JFFLS) Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Program, India, 655 job markets, for ACT graduates, 285–86 joint ownership, of housing, 452 joint property rights, and PACTA, 162–65 joint staff assessments (JSAs), 41 joint titling of land, 156–57 Jordan Badia Livestock Extension Project, 628b14.3 value chain analysis in, 178 Journal of International Agricultural Research and Extension, 268 JSAs. See joint staff assessments (JSAs) judicial systems and land dispute mechanisms, 148, 149–50, 166n1 See also legal framework junior farmer field and life schools (JFFLS), 305–8, 310n1–7 K Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC), Uganda, 92, 117–20 Kapitbisig Laban Sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services Project (KALAE-CIDSS), Philippines, 54b2.10, 55 KARI. See Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Karnataka Watershed Development Project (KWDP), India, 463–65 The Keita Project, Niger, 457–58 Kenya agroforestry technologies, 660–61 Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture Development Project, 291 dairy market chains, 617, 618f14.1 gender analysis in sectorwide program, 704b16.18 GOWE program, 198 PARIMA project, 620 women and community-based water programs, 291, 292b7.16 and women entrepreneurs, 189b5.5 Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), 303 Kerala mariculture project, 584–85 knowledge, 4–6, 258b7.1 agroforestry landscapes, 658–64, 669n2 differences in agricultural knowledge, 525 ethnobotanical, 436 livestock sector, 625–26 Maasai knowledge of cattle breeding, 633–35 management of for disaster mitigation, 488–89, 515n2 pesticide risks, 549 sharing of, 393–94 women’s access to, 574 See also indigenous knowledge (IK) KRC. See Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC), Uganda KWDP. See Karnataka Watershed Development Project (KWDP), India Kyoto Protocol, 441, 442b10.9 Kyrgyz Republic, 150, 689b16.10

L labor contracts, 323 labor force, 319–22, 352n5 agroprocessing industries, 342 and conservation agriculture, 303–4 considerations for program and project design, 322–26, 353n8 definitions of agricultural labor, 316–19 exploitation of, 579 in export agriculture, 344–46 in forestry, 644 good practices and lessons learned from, 346–47, 353n2 governance structures, 342–43 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 347–49 informal sector, 328–33, 353n1 labor improvement program in Thailand, 250–52 labor laws, 334–40 monitoring and evaluation of, 326–27 overview, 315–16, 341 participation in by gender, 175 plantation agriculture, 341–42 protection of in processing factories, 578 trends in, 317–19, 352n3 labor force participation (LFP), 315, 316f 8.2 labor-intensive export agriculture, 344–46 agroprocessing industries, 342 good practices and lessons learned from, 346–47, 353n2 governance structures in, 342–43 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 347–49 overview, 341 plantation agriculture, 341–42 labor-intensive industries, and low wages and skills, 350–52 labor law, 337–38, 352 and customary law, 336–37 governing informal sector, 329–30 international law, 334–36 lessons learned and guidelines for practitioners, 338–40 and women agricultural laborers, 334–40 See also legal framework labor markets flexibility in, 620 gender equity in access to, 366 gender inequalities in, 315 labor-saving technologies, 379 gender issues, 262–63, 289–91 good practices and lessons learned, 294–97, 309n4 guidelines and recommendations for, 297 low-cost water techniques, 291–94 overview, 289 LACOSREP. See Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP), Ghana LADEP. See Lowlands Agricultural Development Programme (LADEP), The Gambia Lake Chad, 580 Lake Fishing Teams (LFTs), 571 land access to land, 136–40, 166n1–4, 166n6–7, 531 common property, 140 degradation of, 429, 454–58, 468n4, 476b11.1

and dispute resolution, 133t4.1, 147–52, 166n1, 166n3 land improvement programs, 137–38, 457 landless systems, 619–20 managing land and promoting recovery postcrisis, 499–506 market in, 153–54 ownership issues, 142–43, 166n2, 232, 252, 271, 496 reform programs, 137, 166n3, 501–2 tenure systems, 126–27, 229–31, 531, 537, 602 Land Access Pilot Project (PACTA), Honduras, 162–65 land administration. See land policy and administration Land Claims Court (LCC), South Africa, 339 Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP), Ghana, 232, 247–49, 253n1 land husbandry, 534 landless systems, 619–20 land policy and administration gender issues, 126–30 and dispute resolution, 133t4.1, 147–52, 166n1, 166n3 future of, 134–35 gendered access to land and property, 136–40, 166nn6–7, 166n1–4 gender-responsive titling, 153–58 implementation of land administration programs, 130–34 importance of gender-sensitive policy, 125–26 legal reforms and women’s property rights, 141–46, 166n2, 166n4–5 overview, 125, 165n1–3 land reclamation, and LADEP project, 250–52 land rights, 602, 635n5, 718 Africa, 339 as economic and social access, 125–26 enforcement of, 144–45, 146 and food availability, 15 impact of disasters on, 449 importance of, 125 link to water rights, 242–43 and natural resources management, 426 and postcrisis issues, 500 and sociocultural issues, 130 tenure systems for, 126–27, 229–31, 531, 537, 602, 688 Land Tenure Certificates, 688 land use systems, 445, 457–58 Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), land titling, credit, and gender, 153, 154b4.1, 156, 157, 287, 653–54 LARC. See Legal Assistance to Rural Citizens (LARC), Kyrgyz Republic Las Hermanas coffee, Nicaragua, 203, 203b5.10 Latin America, 581 and fertilizer use, 532 gender and agribusiness, 174 women entrepreneurs in, 195 Lawler, John, 350 LCC. See Land Claims Court (LCC), South Africa LDW. See local development window (LDW) leadership training, 723b16.22 LEAF. See Livelihood Empowerment and Agroforestry (LEAF) Project Learning for Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), Sudan, 109

INDEX

747

leasehold forestry, 159–61, 167n2 leasing arrangements, 103, 104, 143 legal aid, 145 Legal Assistance to Rural Citizens (LARC), Kyrgyz Republic, 150–51 legal framework and access to hazardous chemicals, 552–53 and access to information, 26 and biodiversity, 434, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 466n8 and business environment, 185–87, 188, 191 crop protection, 549–53 in fisheries and aquaculture, 579 forest law, 653–54 to govern informal sector employment, 329–30 involved with land, 126–30, 131–35, 153–58, 499–500 and land dispute resolution, 133t4.1, 147–52, 166n1, 166n3 multiple-use water services, 238–39 postcrisis recovery, 502–4 and risk management, 486–87 seed systems, 540–51 for women agricultural workers, 323–24, 334–40 women’s property rights, 141–46, 166n2, 166n4–5 See also labor law legal pluralism, and land dispute resolution, 149–50, 166n3 legal services, 146, 339–40 legumes, 534, 535b12.7 leisure, access to, 367 Lesotho, mapping mobility and access in rural areas, 378b9.2 less conservation areas, perceptions about women working in, 573, 573t13.3 LFP. See labor force participation (LFP) LFTs. See Lake Fishing Teams (LFTs) liberalization of trade, 184–85 Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka, 507, 508 LIFE. See Locally Intensified Farming Enterprises (LIFE) project life skills, teaching of, 305–8 LinKS. See local indigenous knowledge systems (LinKS) project liquid biofuels, 445, 446 liquid propane gas (LPG), 293b7.17 literacy, 89, 622 among women, 271 digital, 394 financial, 111 as goal of self-help groups, 65b2.15 impact of bicycles on literacy program, 378 and land rights, 151, 502 and Radio Teacher, 393 rural indigenous women, 407, 414n4 and traditional bioenergy, 444 women farmers, 500 livelihood diversification. See alternative livelihoods Livelihood Empowerment and Agroforestry (LEAF) Project, 198, 211–14 livelihood strategies, 4–6 livelihood support activities (LSA), and irrigation project, 508–11 Livestock Development Program, Bangladesh, 620, 621 livestock genetic diversity, 454 Livestock Guru, 628

748

INDEX

livestock production, 617, 636n1 livestock sector, 513, 601–3, 635n7 access to water for, 236b6.1 and biofuel production, 445 characteristics of, 601, 602b14.1 disease control and biosecurity, 611–16, 636n1, 636n5 knowledge on breeding and selection, 461b10.13, 633–35 Maasai knowledge of, 633–35 mainstreaming gender, 603–5, 635n9–10 management of, 436 marketing, 617–24, 636n1 monitoring and evaluation of, 608–10 SL framework for, 605–8 technologies to improve agricultural livelihoods, 625–30, 635 and value chains, 617–24, 636n1 value of global agricultural output, 636n1 versus crop production, 455 living infrastructure, 363 loans, 103 application process, 99b3.3, 120n3 design of, 105, 106b3.7 and product design issues, 104, 105b3.6, 121n2 provided in IKP project, 112 triggers for loan disbursement, 714, 716, 716b16.20 women as borrowers, 89, 120n6 to women who complete training in business development, 101 See also credit local authorities, and land rights, 127, 165n7–8 local councils, and land rights, 145 local development window (LDW), 407, 408, 409, 410, 414n3 local government, gender and governance in, 71–73 local indigenous knowledge systems (LinKS) project, 16, 434–35, 459–62, 468n1, 633–35 local knowledge, 432, 433b10.4, 435b10.7, 465n3 and biodiversity, 436, 468n1 cattle breeding, 633–35 custodians of, 603 of farmers, 525 of livestock diseases, 612–13 and management of drylands, 455 on value of timber, 644 See also indigenous knowledge (IK) Locally Intensified Farming Enterprises (LIFE) project, 139, 166n7, 591 Local Road Institute, 409 long-term use rights to land, 143 low-external-input technologies, 533 Lowlands Agricultural Development Programme (LADEP), The Gambia, 15, 139, 166n6, 250–52 LPG. See liquid propane gas LSA. See livelihood support activities (LSA) LTTE. See Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka M Maasai livestock keepers, 460, 461b10.13, 633–35 Macallinka Raddiyaha, 393 MACEMP. See Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project (MACEMP)

machineries, for advancement of women, 26, 28–29, 45, 46–47 MADER. See Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADER), Mozambique Madhya Pradesh, India, 269 magic boxes, 264b7.5 Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Projects, 494, 496 maize production, 533b12.5 Malawi Department of Forestry, 654 and forestry studies, 651, 652b15.1, 654 rural travel and transport in, 377b9.1 Smallholder Seed Development Project, 544–45 WorldFish, 577 Malaysia, community e-centers, 411–13, 415n1 Mali, 43b2.5, 433b10.4, 446 Mali Economic Management Credit, 43b2.5 Mali Folke Center, 446 malnutrition, 14, 17 MAMS. See Maquette for MDG Simulations (MAMS) management authority, devolvement to user groups, 30 management boards, 30 management committees, 513–14 management contracts, 693 management information system (MIS), 693–94 management systems, 193–94 gender equity in, 365 monitoring of, 694 for sheep husbandry, 631–32 mandal samakhyas (MS), 112, 114t3.3 mapping, 378, 378b9.2 Maquette for MDG Simulations (MAMS), 41 MARENASS project, 298–301 marginalization of low-income groups, 651 of women, 480 Maria Elena Cuadro Women’s Movement, Nicaragua, 339 Maria Eugenia Morales de Sierra v. Guatemala, 337 mariculture projects, 584–85 marine conservation, 586, 594n8 Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project (MACEMP), 584b13.2 marital property, 156, 157 market economies and inheritance practices, 129, 130 and property rights, 157–58 marketing cooperatives, 269 marketing extension (ME) process, Bangladesh, 211–14 market-oriented smallholders, 7 markets and marketing access to, 4–6, 80n3, 103–4, 175–77, 365–66, 480, 515n7, 525–26 agroenterprises, 278 agroforestry, 663–64 for allocation of land, 138, 166n4 analysis of value chains in, 178 in aquaculture, 573–74 and biodiversity, 433, 465n4

capacity development for small-scale women entrepreneurs, 192–99 collective action and market linkages, 200–205, 218 entry points of gender integration, 181–82 for fishers, processors, and traders, 577–78, 594n1 and GAL framework, 427 impact of changes in, 176–77 infrastructure, 186–87, 190 land market programs, 143 livestock sector, 605–7, 617–24, 636n1 marketing extension tool, 211–14 market intelligence, 198 market orientation, 520 for milk, 201b5.9 monitoring and evaluation indicators, 182–83 overview, 173–74 producer organizations for, 266b7.6 regional opportunities and constraints in agribusiness, 174–75 research in, 111 and transport issues, 18 women’s role in local markets and seed enterprises, 540 See also agricultural markets; women entrepreneurs marriage practices and agroforestry, 659b15.9 and land inheritance, 129, 166n11 and land titling, 142, 155, 156–59, 166n4 maternity protection, 337 matrilineal communities and inheritance practices, 128–30, 165–66n10–11 and land rights, 156, 166n5 Mauritius, sustainable land management, 457 MBFOs. See membership-based financial organizations (MBFOs) MDGs. See Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ME. See marketing extension (ME) process M&E. See monitoring and evaluation (M&E) MEA. See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) mechanical energy, 384–85 mediation, 489 Meghna-Dhanagoda Command Area Development Project, Bangladesh, 568–69 membership-based financial organizations (MBFOs), 86, 96–98 mentoring, 272, 286 Mexico, communal forests in, 657b15.8 MFAs. See microfinance associations (MFAs) MFIs. See microfinance institutions (MFIs) Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust Fund, 665, 667 microcredit, 65, 66, 78 microenterprises, 185–86, 190, 666 microfinance associations (MFAs), 117–20 Micro-Finance Associations Program, 117 microfinance institutions (MFIs), 96–98, 108–9, 120n3, 120n8 microfinance organizations, 111 microfinance programs, 86, 96, 113 in IKP project, 112–16, 121n1 women’s participation in, 87, 88, 89–90 microinsurance, 108–9, 614, 615 Middle East, and women entrepreneurs, 194

INDEX

749

MIGEPROFE. See Ministry of Gender and Promotion of Women (MIGEPROFE), Rwanda migrants and migration, 1 and agricultural labor, 317 link to employment, 619–20 as livelihood diversification strategy, 586 and remittance transfer services, 110, 111b3.10 milestones, designing of, 714, 716, 716b16.20 milk milk collection networks, 201b5.9 procurement of, 217 Millennium Challenge Corporation, 42 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 1 and agriculture sector, 3 energy services, 367 and gender equality strategies, 482 and gender mainstreaming, 45 hunger, 529 impact of HIV and AIDS on, 645 impact of natural disasters on, 448 list, 701b16.15 and MAMS, 41 monitoring of, 683, 699–702 and rural energy, 383 and water resource management, 237, 239 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), 424, 468n4, 521 MINECOFIN. See Ministry of Economics and Finance (MINECOFIN), Rwanda Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, 494 Ministries of Agriculture (MOAs), 48, 50, 701b16.14 Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADER), Mozambique, 701b16.14 Ministry of Economics and Finance (MINECOFIN), Rwanda, 40b2.4 Ministry of Gender and Promotion of Women (MIGEPROFE), Rwanda, 40b2.4 miombo woodlands, 645, 651, 652b15.1, 668n2 MIS. See management information system (MIS) MOAs. See Ministries of Agriculture (MOAs) mobility constraints of, 519 and disaster exposure, 449 gender restrictions on, 89 as livelihood diversification strategy, 586 and rural transport, 372, 374 models, for organizations gender mainstreaming, 96–102, 120n1 modern bioenergy, definition, 467n11 monetization process, 492 Mongolia, Sustainable Livelihoods Project, 683b16.6, 684b16.7 monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of CDD projects, 61 codes of conduct, 347, 353n2 dropout records, 283 gender issues, 409, 410, 686–87, 697–98 AET graduates, 286–87 in agriculture sector, 182–83, 326–27, 483, 484b11.1, 700, 527–28, 701b16.14 alternative livelihoods, 587

750

INDEX

animal disease control, 616 and biodiversity, 437 and bioenergy projects, 447 and climate change, 442 for crisis, 483, 484t11.1 in crop agriculture, 527–28 design of gender-sensitive M&E component of projects, 679–82 ecotourism in BINP, 667 emergency operations during natural disasters, 453 examining gender activities of donors, 706–8 family-based systems, 576 fisheries and aquaculture, 566–67, 571, 576, 587 and food security, 19, 20t1.1 in forestry, 648–49 gender checklist, 693–96 gender integration in SWAPs, 704 gender-sensitive assessments, 511–12 and governance, 34–35 implementation of gender strategies, 76 indicators for, 91, 94–95t3.1 integrating gender into M&E, 676–79, 687–89, 689–93 involvement of women in innovation systems, 266–67 in irrigation projects, 233, 234t6.1 and land administration programs, 132–34 land and water degradation, 458 livestock sector, 604, 608–10, 616, 620–21, 623–24, 629–30, 635n9, 636n4 monitoring PRSPs, 702–6 in natural resources management, 429–30 PARPA project, 681b16.5, 700b16.13 participatory research, 279 and postcrises land issues, 505 reasons to monitor gender, 675–76, 698 and risk management, 487–88 rural energy, 387–89 in rural infrastructure, 370–71 rural transport, 377, 380–82 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water issues, 406 scaling up of investments, 683–86 soil productivity management, 537 tools for gender-sensitive monitoring, 676b16.1 joint monitoring missions, 706, 707b16.19 marketing extension process, 212 of MDGs, 683, 699–702 practicalities of, 696, 717 training communities to carry out project planning, monitoring, and evaluation, 721–23 See also gender-disaggregated data; gender-sensitive indicators monocultural farming systems and plantations, 445, 465n2 monolingual rural indigenous women, 414n4 Monterrey Consensus, 45 morbidity, and forestry sector, 651, 652b15.1 Morocco, olive oil production, 207b5.13 mortality and forestry sector, 651, 652b15.1 rates of during crises, 479

Mozambique Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty, 681b16.5, 700b16.13, 703b16.17 ProAgri, 701b16.14 Rural Roads and Bridges project, 380 MS. See mandal smakhyas (MS) M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, India, 295 multidisciplinary teams, establishing and training of, 197–98 multimedia presentations, 393 multiple use water services, 232–33, 235–41 municipality-level gender committees, 66 Muslim inheritance, 129, 130 mutual financial mechanisms, 86 N NAADS. See National Agricultural Advisory Service (NAADS), Uganda NABARD. See National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) name registration, 409, 415n8 Namibia, community-based natural resource management in, 139, 166n7 NARO. See National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Uganda National Agency for Rural Development, 74 National Agricultural Advisory Service (NAADS), Uganda, 268, 269, 271 National Agricultural Research Organization, 275, 275b7.8 National Agricultural Services Agency, 74 National Agricultural Services Project, 75 National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Uganda, 298 National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), 113, 116, 121n1 national business environment, 185–86, 188–90 National Center for Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer (NCARTT), Jordan, 178 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), India, 331b8.4 National Committee for the Advancement of Women (NCAFW), 40b2.3 national coordination units (NCUs), 589 National Development Dairy Cooperative, India, 330 National Fund for Forestry Finance (FONAFIFO), 441 National Gender Service, 75 national legal systems, 336 National Mission on Biofuels, India, 447 National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), 330t8.7, 332, 719 national project implementation units (NPIUs), 589 natural disasters, 429, 448–53, 467–68n1–4 disaster recovery, 487, 487b11.5 droughts, 618 economic issues from, 448, 4467n1 food aid versus agricultural support, 492–98, 507–12, 516n3–4 food banks in Niger, 513–15 forestry sector, 492–98, 646, 651, 652b15.2, 652b15.3 impact of, 475, 646 managing land and promoting recovery postcrisis, 499–506, 499–506

multidimensional issues of agriculture in times of crises, 477–79 strategies for, 485–91, 515n2 trends in, 423, 424b10.1 See also conflicts and crises natural resources access to, 136–37, 425–26 and agriculture sector, 15–16, 479–81 changes in availability of, 13 conservation of, 298–301 degradation of, 448 exploitation of, 586, 594n8 impact of crises on, 475–76 link to poverty, 643 rights to, 126, 425–26 scarcity of, 529 See also resources natural resources management (NRM), 130–31, 134, 140, 425–26, 569, 658 agricultural livelihoods framework, 426–28 benefits from gender-responsive actions, 428–29 and bioenergy, 443–47, 467n1–6 and climate change, 438–42, 466n1–6, 466n10–11, 466–67n13 forest management, 644 gender and biodiversity, 431–37, 465n1–5, 466n8, 466n12 Karnataka Watershed Development Project, 463–65 key issues in natural resources management, 423–25 land and water degradation and desertification, 454–58, 468n4 and LinKS project, 459–62, 468n1 monitoring and evaluation of, 429–30 and natural disasters, 448–53, 467–68n1–4 overview, 423 resource management in India, 654–55 natural resources managers, 395–96 NCAFW. See National Committee for the Advancement of Women (NCAFW) NCARTT. See National Center for Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer (NCARTT), Jordan NCEUS. See National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), India NCUs. See national coordination units (NCUs) needs assessments, 497 Nepal asset-sharing strategies in, 490 biogas program, 446 community-based disaster management, 451 Department of Livestock Services, 621 gender and governance issues in, 71–73 groundwater irrigation project, 244b6.5 Hills Leasehold Project, 159–61, 167n2 labor-saving technologies for crops, 290b7.15 leasehold of forest land, 139 Women’s Empowerment Program, 65–66 NEPC. See North East Provincial Council (NEPC), Sri Lanka NERICA. See New Rice for Africa (NERICA) project Network and Capacity Building for Rural Women, Armenia, 396 Network of European World Shops (NEWS), 343, 344b8.8 Network of Groups of Rural Women, Uruguay, 396

INDEX

751

networks and networking, 59, 88 agroforestry, 663 among rural people, 264 Dimitra Project, 395 extended family, 264 financial, 90 and GAL framework, 427 and gender units, 49 in Hills Leasehold Project, 160 informal workers, 332, 333b8.6 microfinance, 96 milk collection networks, 201b5.9 and natural disasters, 450 NEWS, 343, 344b8.8 and PACTA, 163 for RPOs, 202–3 social, 67, 501, 514 Uruguay, 396 Women’s World Banking, 87 new aid modalities. See aid modalities Newcastle Disease Programme, South Africa, 514 New Options for Pest Management (NOPEST), 573, 591 New Public Management (NPM), 29 New Rice for Africa (NERICA) project, 272, 551 NEWS. See Network of European World Shops (NEWS) NGOs. See nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Nicaragua Las Hermanas coffee, 203, 203b5.10 Maria Elena Cuadro Women’s Movement, 339 working conditions in, 326b8.3 Niger agroforestry parklands in, 659b15.9 credit approaches for women, 190b5.6 Food Bank Project, 17 Keita Project, 457–58 preventive action with food banks, 513–15 Noel Kempff Climate Action Project, Bolivia, 440 nonfarm income opportunities, 372 nonfinancial services, 101 checklist for integration in institutional culture, 99, 100b3.5 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 488 agroforestry-related issues, 663, 669n2 Anthra, 613 and aquaculture support, 573–74 Centre for Mass Education in Science, 330 and extension services, 268–69 and financial services, 86, 96–98, 120n8 and governance in local government, 72–73 Heifer Zambia, 604 monitoring of working conditions, 339, 347 and multiple-use water services, 239 Pattan, 451–52 promotion of ecological agriculture, 536 and reforms, 30 role in labor rights, 338 role in land dispute resolution, 151 training programs for women, 197 Women for Sustainable Development, 441

752

INDEX

nontimber forest products (NTFPs), 650–51, 668n1 nonwood forest products (NWFP), 644, 645, 650–51, 653–54, 668n1 NOPEST. See New Options for Pest Management (NOPEST) Nordic Development Fund, 677 North Africa gender and agribusiness, 175 and women entrepreneurs, 194 North East Provincial Council (NEPC), Sri Lanka, 509 Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, Vietnam, 58, 59b2.13 Northwestern Rural Development Project, Cambodia, 679b16.3 Novartis Foundation, 552 NPIUs. See national project implementation units (NPIUs) NPM. See New Public Management (NPM) NRM. See natural resources management (NRM) NSSO. See National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) NTFPs. See nontimber forest products (NTFPs) nutrient management in soils, 530 nutrition and nutritional security, 12, 13f1.2, 14, 480 link to income, 18 nutrition education, 307 terms for joint review missions, 707b16.19 and utilization of food, 14, 18–19 women’s role in, 12–14 NWFP. See nonwood forest products (NWFP) O obstetric fistula, 374, 413n2 occupational safety and health, 321, 332, 336, 345 occupational segregation, 192, 321, 325, 344–45 occupations choices in, 325 hazardous, 547 Occupied Palestinian Territories, 515n7 OECD. See Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) off-farm activities, 293–94, 323 oil imports, 443 Olifants Basin, 237b6.2 olive oil production, 207b5.13 on-farm activities, 289, 317, 323 organic farming, 536, 551 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 324, 579, 636n5 Development Assistance Committee, 43, 680b16.4, 698, 706 on emergency responses, 493 orphans, empowerment of through junior farmer field and life schools, 305–8, 310n1–7 outcome indicators, 710 out-migration, and natural disasters, 450 output indicators, 710 outreach, for AET graduates, 285 outsourcing, 30, 31, 217 Oxbow Lakes Small-Scale Fishermen’s Project, Bangladesh, 568–69

P PAs. See protected areas (PAs) Pacha Mama Raymi, 298–99 Pacific Island countries, 175 alternative livelihoods in, 583 and gender and agribusiness, 174–75 and trade agreement, 188b5.4 PACTA. See Land Access Pilot Project (PACTA), Honduras paddy cultivation, 575 PAF. See performance assessment framework (PAF) Pakistan access to water for livestock watering, 236b6.1 building capacity to cope with disasters, 451–52 Community Infrastructure Project, 683b16.6 gender and governance in, 71–73 and gender integration, 40b2.3 Palestinians, access to water, 477b11.2 PALSs. See Participatory Action Learning Systems (PALSs) PARIMA. See Pastoral Risk Management on East African Rangelands (PARIMA) Paris Declaration on Harmonization of Aid, 697 parkland agroforestry projects, 663–64 parkland products, 660b15.10 PARPA. See Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA), Mozambique Participatory Action Learning Systems (PALSs), 118–19 Participatory and Action Research Project, 278 participatory approaches for access to land, 138–39 and alternative livelihood projects, 586–87 assessments of, 389 in community-level groups, 67 gender issues, 56–58 of agriculture groups, 64 CARE project, 592 challenges for women in local government, 71 forest management, 645, 650 guidelines for increasing women’s presence in, 272–73 land dispute resolution, 148 LinKS project, 459–62, 468n1 monitoring and evaluation of, 683b16.6 participatory research, 274–79 in project design and in M&E, 679, 682–83, 694–95 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water issues, 404, 405t 9.7 soil improvement projects, 537 in watershed development project, 463–65 women in NAADS processes, 270 women participating in groups, 569, 570, 570b13.1 and governance, 26, 71–73 and information concerning pesticides, 554 to land rights, 126 middle-class effect of, 67, 68 PALSs, 118–19 to plant breeding initiatives, 543, 543b12.13 in RPOs, 202–3 and technical farming concept, 302–3 See also women in politics Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB-PRGA), 262

participatory rapid appraisals (PRAs), 251, 406t9.8 Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) Program, 261–62 Participatory Technology Development (PTD), 274, 279 partnerships and AET, 280–81, 285 building and managing of, 278 chain partnerships, 204, 205b5.11 creation of, 196 for development of community e-centers, 412 in fisheries and aquaculture, 579 institutional, 287 role in monitoring projects, 509 rural roads project, 410 and seed enterprises, 539 pastoralist communities, impact of droughts on, 618 pastoralists, 454–58, 460, 461b10.13, 608, 613–14, 618 Pastoral Risk Management on East African Rangelands (PARIMA), 620 patriarchal systems, values in, 127 patrilineal kinship, 128–30, 143, 156 patrilocal societies, and land rights, 143 Pattan Dehi Tanzeems (PDT), 452 Patuakhali Barguna Aquaculture Extension Project (PBAEP), 570 PCUWA. See Policy Coordinating Unit for Women in Agriculture (PCUWA), Egypt PDR. See Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) PDT. See Pattan Dehi Tanzeems (PDT) peace-building processes, 488, 489, 503 peanut butter processing, 208b5.15 peer reviews, 706–8 pensions, 103 performance appraisals, 351 performance assessment framework (PAF), 705–6 performance indicators, 711 periurban areas, water use in, 235, 236 PERs. See public expenditure reviews (PERs) Peru Agro-Innovation and Competitiveness Project, 261b7.3, 268, 269, 271 Cafe Femenino, 203, 203b5.10 culture issues, 276b7.9 Natural Resource Management in Southern Highlands, 290–301 Rural Infrastructure Program, 364–65, 375 Rural Roads Project, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 value chain for artichokes, 179, 180b5.3 pesticides, 526, 547 definition, 555n1 elimination of, 591 pesticide poisoning, 547, 552b12.17 reduction in, 592 women’s exposure to, 546 pest management, 575 petroleum-based fuels, 467n6 PFI. See Promoting Farmer Innovations (PFI) Philippines, 710 developing new products for, 208b5.14

INDEX

753

households with business income, 388f9.2 indigenous knowledge systems, 436 KALAE-CIDDS project, 54b2.10, 55 PHLAAT. See Post-Harvest Livelihoods Analysis Tool (PHLAT) photovoltaic pump project, 385 physical infrastructure, 361 pigs, 619b14.2 plantations, 341–42, 445 health and safety of workers, 345 for jatropha oil, 446 plant breeding, 262, 436, 437, 541, 543 plant genetic resources, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 437 plant varieties, 545b12.15 PMUs. See project management units (PMUs) PNASA. See Project National d’Appui aux Services Agricoles (PNASA) POKMAS, 589 policies and policy making and access to food, 11–12 definition, 6 enabling policy environments, 61 and GAL framework, 428 gender issues, 68, 75 and access to land and property, 138–39 to address climate change, 439, 441 agricultural water management programs, 233, 234t 6.1 analytical work in, 38 and biodiversity, 434, 435b10.6, 435b10.7, 466n8 and bioenergy, 445 crop protection, 549–53 and desertification, 456 energy issues, 385, 386t9.4, 414n4 family-based aquaculture systems, 574–75 for fishers, processors, and traders, 579–80 forestry-related, 646–47, 648, 653–55 gender in different policy processes, 36–37, 79n1–3 for gender-sensitive monitoring, 693 good practices and lessons learned from, 38–43 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 43–44 implementation of staff gender policies, 99–101, 120n6 implemented by Thai government, 350 to improve ICT policies and projects, 391–92 informal sector employment, 329–32 land dispute resolution, 148–50, 166n1, 166n3 livestock sector, 608, 613–14, 619–20, 621, 626–27, 629, 636n5 multiple-use water services, 238–39 and natural disasters, 450–51 overview, 36 participatory research, 277 in policy instruments, 42–43 questions concerning gender-specific issues, 688 and risk management, 486–87 and role in women in agriculture, 522 role of gender units in, 48 rural energy, 387–89 and rural infrastructure, 369–70 in rural transport, 376–77, 381

754

INDEX

sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 403, 404b9.9 seed systems, 540–41, 545, 546 soil productivity management, 531 and titling of land, 154–55 women as policy makers, 37–38, 79n4 for women’s groups, 66–67 women’s involvement in innovation systems, 263 and institutions, 5f 0.1 on local and traditional crops, 177 to promote governance, 23 types of processes for, 27–28 See also land policy and administration; public administration Policy Coordinating Unit for Women in Agriculture (PCUWA), Egypt, 50b2.8 Policy Research Report, 125 political economy, 44 political institutions representation of women in, 37–39, 43–44, 79n4–5 See also women in politics politics and commitment to gender mainstreaming, 49 and food aid, 493 and governance, 25, 27 and institutional reforms, 37 and land titling, 158 and public sector reforms, 29–30 See also women in politics pollution of domestic water supply, 236–37 indoor air pollution, 364, 367, 384, 385, 425, 444 polygamy and adult illness, 652b15.1 and land rights, 142, 155, 166n4 pond polyculture, 220–22, 224n1 POs. See producer organizations (POs) postcrisis issues link between food aid and agriculture in emergencies, 492–98 managing land and promoting recovery in, 499–506 Post-Harvest Livelihoods Analysis Tool (PHLAT), 180b5.2 potable water, 366–67, 369, 399, 400–406 potatoes, 277 poultry industry, 329, 455, 585b13.3, 620 Afghanistan, 204, 205b5.12 chicken feed costs, 467n4 chicken production and supply chain, 623f 14.2 control of, 612 permanent workers in, 344 Thailand, 347 value chain in, 607 women’s control of, 602, 603 working conditions, 338 poverty, 2–3, 64 and access to food, 17–18 and banking in India, 112–16, 121n1 and bioenergy, 443 as driver of food insecurity, 13–14 effective interventions for, 481b11.3 and fishing, 562

and forestry-related programs, 646–67, 652–54 gender and poverty analysis, 404b9.10 and identification of poorest women, 60–61 impact of desertification on, 454–55 impact of PACTA on, 162–63 inclusion of the poorest in CDD, 56–58 and insurance products, 109 link to natural resources, 299, 643 and marketing extension tool, 211–14 role of crop agriculture in, 519–28, 554n1 role of NGOs in, 120n8 rural roads projects, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 and soil fertility management in, 534, 534b12.6 terms for joint review missions, 707b16.19 poverty reduction, 698 and climate change, 438 community-managed rural poverty initiatives projects, 215–19, 223–24n1–3 and compartmentalization versus mainstreaming gender in, 681b16.5 and multiple-use water services, 235–41 Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, 58, 59b2.13 Philippines, 54b2.10 and rural transport, 375 views of agriculture as driver of, 519, 520b12.1 and women’s access to financial services, 88 poverty reduction strategies (PRSs), 698, 703b16.17 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), 27, 684 development strategies and plans, 36, 79n1 gender dimensions of, 39–41, 681, 681b16.5 gender-sensitive monitoring of, 698–99, 702–6 Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs), 42, 43b2.5 Poverty Resource Monitoring and Tracking model (PRMT), 119 power and light services, 388b9.5 PPB-PRGA. See Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB-PRGA) PRADAN. See Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) PRAs. See participatory rapid appraisals (PRAs) prawn markets, 220–22, 224n1 preventive action for crises, 494 with food banks in Niger, 513–15 strategies for, 485–91, 515n2 PRGA. See Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) Program prices of food, 476 increase in market prices, 217 market prices in India, 264b7.5 private extension services, 268, 269 private sector, 352 financial services in, 86 and food aid, 493 reform in, 30 seed enterprises, 540 Private Sector Development Programme, Noakhali, 221, 224n2 privatization, 30, 31

of biological resources, 465n4 of land and land rights, 137, 138 PRMT. See Poverty Resource Monitoring and Tracking model (PRMT) process indicators, 710 processing factories, protecting workers in, 578 processors of fish and fish products, associations for protecting livelihoods of, 577–81, 594n1 procurement centers, for rural farmers, 215–19 producer associations and cooperatives, 63, 64b2.14 producer organizations (POs), 69, 74–76 product design and gender issues, 104, 105b3.6, 121n2 in savings programs, 107, 108b3.8 See also design of projects product development, innovations in, 111 production, 11–12, 289, 375 dependence on natural resources, 15–16 gender in, 153, 154b4.1 impact of food banks on, 514 mechanization in, 564 multiple roles women play in, 258 technologies for, 277, 277b7.10 production groups, facilitating, 571, 593n3 production systems, 522 product markets, gender equity in accessing of, 365–66 Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), 65, 67 professional women interventions to promote AET for, 283, 283b7.11 representation in extension services, 272–73 visibility of, 263, 264, 272–73 profitability, and marketing tool, 212 PROFOR, 646–47 PROFOUND, Vietnam, 570, 574–76, 594n3 project management units (PMUs), 509, 589, 590t13.4 Project National d’Appui aux Services Agricoles (PNASA), 74–75 Promoting Farmer Innovations (PFI), 534 propagation techniques, 435 property grabbing, 456 property rights, 89, 499–500 impact of HIV on, 305 promotion of, 629 See also land rights pro-poor development, gender mainstreaming in financial sector for, 91–92 protected areas (PAs), 665–68 Provias Descentralizado, 408, 409 PRSCs. See Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) PRSPs. See Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) PRSs. See poverty reduction strategies (PRSs) PTD. See Participatory Technology Development (PTD) public administration, 26, 28–31 public expenditure management, 28b2.1 public expenditure reviews (PERs), 41 public extension services, 268, 269 public health, 500 public policy, implementation of, 28 public-private partnerships, 30

INDEX

755

public sector, seed enterprises, 540 public sector reform, 28–31 public service, 66 public works programs, 324 Q qualitative data, 717 qualitative indicators, 711 quantitative indicators, 711 Quechua women farmers, 177–78 questionnaires, 389, 389b9.6 quinoa processing, 523b12.3 quotas for women on board seats, 232 to ensure leadership positions, 70 and legislative reforms, 71 in local government, 73 in producer organizations, 69, 80n3 representation on councils, 145 in water management organizations, 244, 245 R radio, 367 to disseminate information relevant to women, 393–94 FAO programs, 396 satellite, 394 Radio Teacher, 393 rape, as weapon in conflicts, 652b15.3 rate of return, 414n2 RCUs. See regional coordination units (RCUs) RDI. See Rural Development Institute (RDI) RDSs. See rural development societies (RDSs) reconstruction, postdisaster, 451, 495–96 recycling, 402 redistributive land reform, 137, 166n3 redistributive water allocation reform, 237b6.2 reforestation, 384 reforms civil service reform, 29–30 conceptual framework for reform governance, 24–27 to improve agricultural livelihood, 23–24 and labor rights, 338 in land rights, 149, 501 public sector reforms, 29–30 to reduce corruption, 30–31 women’s property rights, 141–46, 166n2, 166n4–5 See also agricultural services reforms refugees, 305–6, 310n3, 482 location and resettlement of, 502 and natural disasters, 450 postcrisis issues, 501 return of, 477, 499 Regional Cooperative of United Farmers Ltd. (COPRAUL), 163 regional coordination units (RCUs), 589, 590t13.4 registration procedures, 144, 155–56, 501, 504 registry of agricultural workers and employers (RENATRE), 325b8.2

756

INDEX

regulatory framework conditions for unorganized wage workers, 331b8.4 standards for livestock disease control, 613, 636n5 relief efforts, 480 link between food aid and agriculture in emergencies, 492–98 See also emergencies remittance transfer services, 103, 104, 110, 111b3.10 RENATRE. See registry of agricultural workers and employers (RENATRE) representative bureaucracies, 29–30 research agroforestry, 664b15.13 in cattle breeding, 633–35 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, 549b12.16 informal research methods, 634–35 investment in diverse forms of, 265 livestock technologies, 626, 627, 628b14.3, 629 on local and traditional crops, 177 on multiple-use water services, 239 participatory research, 261–62, 274–79 and postcrises land issues, 505 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water issues, 403–4 in sheep improvement research for indigenous women, 631–32 training women in technology research, 626, 627, 628b14.3 value chain analysis, 178–81 Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles de l’Afrique de l’ouest (ROPPA), 69 resettlement, 138, 499 of refugees and IDPs, 502 and rural infrastructure, 368 and transport infrastructure, 375 resource persons, for agricultural marketing, 217, 223–24n3 resources access to, 568–71, 573, 593n1–3, 619b14.2 control of, 185 inequity in distribution of, 477, 477b11.2 and livestock production, 626–27 management of, 457, 489 seed sources, 539–40 See also natural resources resource tenure, 658, 660b15.10 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 476 revolving savings associations, 107 rice culture, CARE Bangladesh, 591–93 rice farmers, 272 rice-fish culture, 591 rice production, 15, 139, 166n6, 250–52 and land titling, 154b4.1 rice seeds, 290 risks and risk management, 4–6 for disaster management, 452–53 during crisis or natural disasters, 449–50, 479, 481, 494, 515n2 exclusion from marketing processes, 214 and GAL framework, 427–28 livestock sector, 606–7b14.1, 607–8, 614, 615 and microinsurance, 614, 615 pesticides, 548

reduction of through insurance programs, 628 in rural infrastructure, 362, 367–69 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 402–3 strategies for, 485–91, 515n2 road maintenance, gender equity in, 408–9, 415n7 roads, 372 rural roads projects, 380, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 See also rural infrastructure Rockefeller Foundation, 286 Rodrigues, sustainable land management in, 457 ROPPA. See Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles de l’Afrique de l’ouest (ROPPA) rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), 63, 64b2.144, 86, 96, 120n1 RPOs. See rural producer organizations (RPOs) RTT. See Rural Travel and Transport (RTT) Rural Access Index, 378, 413n6 rural areas and control of land, 138–39 employment opportunities in, 323, 324 by sector of activity, 15f 1.3 gender issues access to land dispute mechanisms, 148–49, 150–51 in agribusiness, 174 and desertification, 455–56 empowering fisherwomen, 585–86 empowerment of rural communities, 278–79 enabling rural innovation, 277–78 factors regarding gender differences in, 391, 392t 9.2 goals for innovation in livestock technologies, 627–28 ICTs relevant to rural women, 392–93 impact of forestry on, 645 improving access to information, 394 informal work in agriculture, 328–29 labor-saving technologies, 289–91 and Land Access Pilot Project, 162–65 land administration policies, 125, 165n1 and land rights, 156, 157–58 and multiple-use water services in, 235–41 in policy processes, 36 rural transport technologies, 292–93 unemployment of women, 319 heterogeneity of rural poor, 7 household tasks in, 285b9.13 impact of infrastructure services on, 363t9.1 labor opportunities in, 315 and land rights, 139–40 poverty reduction projects, 215–19, 223–24n1–3 resource management, 275b7.8 rural-urban divide, 368 social protection for informal sector in, 331 and technologies, 111 rural development, views of agriculture as driver of, 519, 520b12.1 Rural Development Institute (RDI), 505 rural development programs, 2–3 and financial services, 86, 684 indicators from, 714t16.4

rural development societies (RDSs), 509–10 rural energy. See energy sector rural finance access to types of, 91 benefits from gender-responsive action, 87–88 challenges of, 86–87, 88–91, 120n6 gender indicators and checklist, 93–95 and gender mainstreaming, 91–92, 96–102, 120n1, 120n3 innovations in product development, 111 insurance, 108–9 introduction, 85–87 KRC, 117–20 MFAs, 117–20 overview, 103–4, 105b3.6, 121n2 and pro-poor development, 91–92 range of products, 86 and remittance transfer services, 103, 104, 110, 111b3.10 savings and pensions, 107–8 women-managed community financial system, 112–16, 121n1 See also financial sector rural infrastructure community e-centers, 411–13, 415n1 framework for sustainable rural infrastructure, 361–64 gender equitable economic empowerment, 365–66 gender equitable human development, 366–67 monitoring and evaluation, 370–71 overview, 361, 413n1 in policies, programs, and projects, 369–70 risk and vulnerabilities, 367–69 rural roads projects, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 social empowerment, 364–65 sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 399–406 See also information and communications technologies (ICTs) Rural Infrastructure Development Project, Bangladesh, 191b5.7 rural markets, 379, 379b9.3 Rural Outreach Programme, Uganda, 395 rural producer organizations (RPOs), 200–205 Rural Roads and Bridges Project, Mozambique, 380 Rural Roads and Market Project, Bangladesh, 379, 379b9.3 Rural Roads Project, Peru, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 rural transport, 372–75, 413n1–2 Bangladesh project, 379, 379b9.3 benefits of gender-responsive action, 375–76 good practices and lessons learned in, 377–80, 413n5–6 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 380–82 overview, 372 policy and implementation issues, 376–77 overview, 372 Rural Travel and Transport (RTT), 377b9.1 Rwanda, 479, 493, 496 and chain partnerships, 204, 205b5.11 gender integration, 40b2.4 inheritance laws, 504 Rwanda Economic Recovery Credit, 43b2.5

INDEX

757

S SACEP. See South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP) SADC. See South African Development Community (SADC) Safe Access to Firewood and Alternative Energy (SAFE), 646, 668n2 safety in rural transport, 374 in the workplace, 326 safety nets, 266, 650–57, 668n1–2, 668n5 sanitation, 400–403, 454 lessons learned and guidelines for practitioners, 403–6 monitoring and evaluation of, 405 overview, 399 SARD. See Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) initiative SARI. See Selian Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Tanzania SASKI. See Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Knowledge, and Institutions (SASKI) savings, 103, 104, 107–8, 121n2 scholarships, to promote AET for women, 286 schools hygiene promotion in, 402 impact of disasters on attendance, 450 See also education SDC. See Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) seafood export processing industries, 564 SEAGA. See Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme seasonal employment, 324, 328–29, 332, 337, 346 Bolivia, 523b12.3 and labor allocations, 525 seaweed farming, 584b13.2 sectoral information and monitoring system (SIMS), 703b16.17 sectorwide approaches (SWAPs), monitoring of, 684, 698–99, 704, 704b16.18 security in conflict areas, 494 enhanced by rural infrastructure, 368 in postconflict settings, 500 and rural transport, 374 seed banks, 541, 542b12.11 seed dressing, 552, 553b12.18 seeds community seed fairs, 434–35 Ethiopia, 543 germplasm supply, 661, 663, 669n2 importance of, 538 improvement of seed systems, 663 production and distribution of, 538–46, 555n2 seed aid programs, 495 traditional seed system in Tanzania, 461b10.12 varieties of, 544 Seed Systems Development Project (SSDP), Ethiopia, 543 SEI. See Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), 66, 111, 333b8.6 and insurance for low-income workers in India, 487b11.4 Trade Facilitation Centre, 396 self-employment, in agriculture, 15f 1.3

758

INDEX

self-help groups (SHGs), 593n1 for community organizations, 584 in financial sector, 113, 114t3.3 forestry-related, 655–56 gender issues experience, impacts, and benefits from gender-responsive actions, 65–66, 80n1 good practices and lessons learned, 67–69, 80n3 group functions, advantages, and disadvantages, 63–65 guidelines and recommendations for practitioners, 69–70 overview, 63 policy and implementation issues, 66–67 POKMAS, 589 and poverty reduction, 215, 223n2 and procurement centers, 218 resource management in India, 654–55 to sustain watershed management, 463–64 Uruguay, 396 and value chains, 210b5.17 Self-Help Learning Initiative, 60 self-targeting, 58–59 Selian Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Tanzania, 303 service cooperatives, 30 service delivery, 394 services and service providers, 26–27 capacity building for women in, 197 for marketing extension process, 213 to prevent livestock diseases, 613 women’s access to, 263–64 Servicios Integrales a Mujeres Emprendedoras (SIEMBRA), 111 SEWA. See Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre (STFC), India, 396 sex discrimination, 336, 337 sex-for-fish exchanges, 564, 565, 577 sexual favors for job security, 321 sexual harassment, 321, 326, 337, 338, 345–46, 578 sexual services, and corruption, 31b2.2 sexual violence, during crises, 479 SFLP. See Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLSP) sheep Chiapas sheep, 604–5 research in sheep improvement for indigenous women, 631–32 shearing of, 277b7.10 shepherds, 631–32 short message system (SMS), 393 shrimp farmers association, 580 shrimp production, 562–63, 564f 13.1, 593n2–3 SIDA. See Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) SIEMBRA. See Servicios Integrales a Mujeres Emprendedoras (SIEMBRA) SIMS. See sectoral information and monitoring system (SIMS) Sino-Dutch Forestry Program, 656b15.7 site management committees (SMCs), 250–51 skills, 70 identifying and addressing gaps in, 193 for informal workers, 330 or women entrepreneurs, 198–99 See also trainers and training

SLA. See Sri Lanka Army (SLA); Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) SLs. See sustainable livelihoods (SLs) small cooperative groups, 593n1 Smallholder Seed Development Project, Malawi, 544–45 small-scale aquaculture, 572–76, 594n1–3 small-scale fisheries, 562, 580, 583, 593n3 small-scale seed enterprises, 544–45 smart cards, 332b8.5, 393 SMCs. See site management committees (SMCs) SMS. See short message system (SMS) social access, role of land in, 125–26 Social Analysis Sourcebook, 682, 721 social assessments, and land titling, 158 social capital, 603 enhancement of gender equity in, 364 and food aid, 507–12, 516n3–4 and livestock sector, 608, 611 strengthening of, 278–79 social class, heterogeneity of , 68 social control, 89 social costs, of biosecurity measures, 615–16 social empowerment, 362 and livestock production, 604 and market access, 580 and rural infrastructure, 364–65 social insurance, 331 social justice, 69 social marketing, 404–5 social mobilization, 73 social networks, 67, 501, 514 social protection, 18 definition, 353n8 in fisheries, 565, 593n5 improvement of for agricultural workers, 325–26, 353n8 for informal sector, 331, 346–47 livestock sector, 604 social security, 325b8.2, 331 social services, gender equity in accessing, 366 social systems, 264, 500–503 social training, in CARE project, 592 Sociedad de Pequeños Productores Exportadoras y Compradores de Café SA (SOPPEXCCA), 203, 203b5.10 society-forest relationships, 644 sociocultural issues, 203 and access to ICT, 391 and access to land, 136–37, 166n2 and land rights, 130 and land titling, 154 Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme, 310n6, 457, 694 socioeconomics, 67, 310n2 and alternative pest control technologies, 548–49 and delivery of ICT programs, 391 sources of and access to seeds, 539–40, 555n2 socioeconomic status, strengthening of, 570 socioeconomic surveys, 389 soil erosion, 521, 659b15.9

soil fertility, 17, 526, 529–30, 660, 661b15.11 gender-responsive approaches to, 530 management of, 533 soil productivity, 526, 529–37 soil rehabilitation, 455 Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, 285–86 solar energy systems, 294, 388b9.5, 447 solid waste collection, 402, 403b9.8 Somalia, Radio Teacher, 393 SOPPEXCCA. See Sociedad de Pequeños Productores Exportadoras y Compradores de Café SA (SOPPEXCCA) South Africa Conradie v. Hanekom and Another, 339 financing value addition, 208b5.15 inequitable water distribution in, 237b6.2 informal workers in horticulture, 346, 346t8.11 Land Claims Court, 339 Newcastle Disease Programme, 514 Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association, 349 South African Development Community (SADC), 436 South Asia, 594n8 and gender and agribusiness, 174–75 home gardens, 659–60 roles of women in, 2 South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP), 594n8 Southeast Asia home gardens, 659–60 and women entrepreneurs, 195 South India plant variety protection, 545b12.15 seed and crop diversity in, 539b12.10 specialty markets, 342 species genetic diversity, 454 Sphere Humanitarian Charter, 494 spillover effects, 179, 323 Sri Lanka food aid versus agricultural support and sustenance of social capital, 507–12, 516n3–4 Gemidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project, 77–79, 721–23 and gender integration, 40b2.3 irrigation systems project, 478–79 women’s concerns and the peace, 503, 504b11.8 women’s knowledge of forest-based resources, 660 Sri Lanka Army (SLA), 508 SSA. See sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) SSDP. See Seed Systems Development Project (SSDP), Ethiopia standards of living, 159 staple crops, 519, 532 state governments and allocation of land, 137 and land titling, 156 statistics concerning natural disasters, 449, 468n4 FAOSTAT, 710, 718 gender-sensitive, 287

INDEX

759

insufficiency of, 698 labor data, 326 national statistics systems, 719 on women’s role in agriculture, 522–23 status of women, 42, 79n9, 593n1 stereotyping of gender roles, 321 STFC. See SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre (STFC), India Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), 402 stone bunds, 533 stoves, 291–92, 293b7.17, 384 fuel-efficient, 451 and use of traditional biomass, 444 strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis (SWOT), 179 subcontracting, 344 Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme, 279 sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 279 agriculture sector, 2, 3, 174 crop cultivation in, 522 fertilizer use in, 532 impact of food aid on, 492 roles of women in SSA, 2 and women entrepreneurs, 194–95 subsidies and biogas program, 446 for fertilizers, 531, 533b12.5 subsistence crops, 18, 513 views of, 523–25 and women as smallholders, 522 subsistence production, 434b10.5 Sudan alternative fuels for domestic cooking, 291b7.17 environmental degradation as cause of conflicts in, 476, 476b11.1 gender units in, 49b2.7 LEAP, 109 links of food aid and conflict, 493 Sun Valley Foods, Thailand, 338, 350–52 supermarkets, 176 supply and demand, for agricultural products, 176–77 supply chain management, 217 supply-side strategies, 24, 26, 60 Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) initiative, 302 Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Knowledge, and Institutions (SASKI), 676 sustainable development, and conservation agriculture, 302–4 Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP), 562, 565, 580 sustainable land management, 457 Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), 4–6 gender issues, livestock sector, 601, 602, 605–8 sustainable livelihoods (SLs) in forestry, 644, 647 Mongolia, 683b16.6, 684b16.7 sustainable use, definition, 465n1

760

INDEX

Sustaining Forests, 643, 644–45 Swanson, Burton, 268 SWAPs. See sectorwide approaches (SWAPs) Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), 43, 677b16.2, 678 Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), 211–14 SWOT. See strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis (SWOT) T TA. See technical assistance (TA) talking maps, 299–300 Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction project, 202 Tanzania biofuel production, 446 community seed fairs, 434–35 conservation agriculture for sustainable development project, 291, 302–4 MACEMP, 584b13.2 pesticide problems, 552, 553b12.18 SARI, 303 Sokoine University of Agriculture, 285–86 strengthening technical and marketing assistance in, 584b13.2 traditional seed systems, 461b10.12 and women entrepreneurs, 189b5.5 targeted projects, 6, 9n6 to end discrimination against women, 482–83 irrigation project in Sri Lanka, 511 targeting mechanisms, development of, 332 technical assistance (TA), 50, 621 in documenting ethnobotanical knowledge, 436 fishing sector, 583–85 gender-related documents of, 38 and PACTA, 163 reduced international inputs of, 684 rural roads project, 408 technologies, 262 agroforestry-related, 660–63 for crop production, 521, 526 and domestic water supplies, 236–37 and food security, 16 fuel-efficient, 444–45 and GOLDA project, 591 in livestock sector, 604–5, 625–30, 635, 635n10 low-cost, 217 low-external-input technologies, 533 for multiple-use water services, 238, 240 and natural resources management, 426 for pest control, 548–49 and production control, 277, 277b7.10 and rural areas, 111 trends in access to, 257–58 women’s need for, 626 See also information and communications technologies (ICTs); labor-saving technologies technology transfer, 274, 575 and agricultural production, 16

and aquaculture extension project, 220–22, 224n1 and extension services, 282 telecenters, 394–95 telecommunications, 411–13, 415n1 temporary employment, 337, 346, 347 tenure systems insecurity of, 6, 455 and land rights, 126–27, 229–31, 531, 537, 602 shared tenure, 142 and water rights, 229–30 Thailand Cargill’s labor improvement program, 338, 350–52 chicken production, 623b14.2 time access to leisure time, 367 addressing of, 369 availability and use of by women, 12–13, 319 and climate change, 439 competing claims on, 373 as economic factor, 362–63 as factor in postcrisis issues, 500 link to labor-saving technology, 379 spent on collecting wood and water, 384, 444, 455 spent on domestic chores, 291 time allocation studies, 524 and use of modern fuels, 385, 414n4 titling systems, 130–32, 134–35, 502 gender-responsive, 153–58 Honduras, 145 legal framework for, 143–45 policies to guarantee women’s access to, 263b7.4 and polygamy, 142 tracer studies, 285, 286 trade in agricultural commodities, 341 fair trade cooperatives, 201 livestock sector, 605–7, 619 negotiations on global level, 184–85 trade agreements, 184–85, 322b8.1 trade associations, 349 Trade Facilitation Centre (STFC), India, 396 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), 433, 465n4 traders, associations for protecting livelihoods of, 577–81, 594n1 trade unions, 325b8.2, 346 traditional bioenergy, 444 traditional practices as obstacle to knowledge sharing, 489 and postcrisis issues, 502 trainers and training in agricultural development projects, 287 in aquaculture, 572–73 to become service providers, 213–14 for capacity building, 72 to carry out project planning, monitoring, and evaluation, 721–23 in community e-centers, 411, 412 on company values, 351

complementary support for, 198, 199 farmer-to-farmer, 299 in forest-related industries, 647 gender issues, 307, 436, 592–93 access to, 262 addressing imbalances in, 394–95 animal health workers, 615 in COREMAP project, 589, 590t13.4 fishing communities, 585b13.3 and leadership, 160, 161 livestock technologies, 628 loans to women who complete training, 101 and natural resources management, 426 promotion of safe pesticides, 551–52 rural roads project, 408, 413–14n5–6 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 400–402 technology research and development, 626 under PACTA, 163–64 in watershed development project, 464 and women’s land rights, 145 informal workers, 332 in land dispute resolution, 151 leadership training, 160, 161, 723b16.22 manuals for, 460 marketing skills, 208, 209b5.16 in peace building, 489 peer trainers, 722 promotion of training markets, 283 selection of, 196 training-of-trainer programs, 550, 572 on vegetative propagation, 435 for women, 76 See also agricultural extension and training (AET); education training and visit extension (T&V), 257 transboundary animal diseases, 611, 613, 615, 636n1 Transfer of Technology model of extension, 274 transformative programs, 6, 9n6 crises recovery, 495–96, 500–503 to end discrimination against women, 483 irrigation project in Sr. Lanka, 510 postdisaster land and recovery issues, 500–503 transparency, 509 and gender budgeting, 28b2.1 in transactions, 216 transport, 292–93 access to, 373–74, 413n2 of agricultural products, 187, 190 emergency, 367, 374, 375, 380 gender inequality in transport burdens, 373, 413n1 link to markets, 18 rural roads projects, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 See also rural transport trees access to and disposal of agroforestry tree products, 658–59 importance of, 658 located on women’s fields, 660b15.10 rights and responsibilities concerning, 444 tree domestication program, 435

INDEX

761

tree genetic variety, 658 wood and nonwood forest products, 644, 645, 650–61, 668n1 See also agroforestry; forests and forestry triangulation, power of, 711 triggers for loan disbursement, 714, 716, 716b16.20 TRIPS. See Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) tubewells, 244b6.5, 245 Turkey, social security schemes, 325b8.2 T&V. See training and visit extension (T&V) Tzotzil shepherds, 631–32 U UER. See Upper East Region (UER) Uganda, 434b10.5 Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, 665–68 Code of Practice for the Horticulture Sector, 347b8.9 indigenous vegetables, 432b10.3 Kabarole Research and Resource Centre, 92, 117–20 National Agricultural Advisory Service, 268, 269, 271 National Agriculture Research Organization, 298 Rural Outreach Programme, 395 sectoral information and monitoring system, 703b16.17 Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), 667 UNCCD. See United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 40b2.3 UNDAW. See United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW) undernourished, estimates of, 11, 12f 1.1 UNDHR. See Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR) UNDP. See United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) unemployment, 319, 324, 515n7 UNEP. See United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) UNESCAP. See United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) UNESCO. See United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) UNFCCC. See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) UNFF. See United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) UNHCR. See United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) UNICEF. See United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) UNIDO. See United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) UNIFEM. See United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) UNIMAS. See Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) United Kingdom Department for International Development, 4–6, 179, 180b5.2, 580, 681, 707–8 integration of gender-specific indicators into monitoring, 718–19 role of agriculture in poverty reduction, 520b12.1 International Institute for Environment and Development, 536

762

INDEX

United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 490 International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, 110 and labor rights, 334 Security Council Resolution 1325, 503b11.7 Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 503b11.7 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 310n5 United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 456 United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 28b2.1, 326 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 23, 436, 488 United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW), 46 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), 411 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 644 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 280, 281 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 456, 476, 476b11.1 United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), 646 United Nations Foundation, 665–68 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 441 United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 508 United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), 197, 198 olive oil project, 207, 207b5.13 seed dressing project, 552, 553b12.18 United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), 700 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR), 19, 334, 335t8.8, 493 Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), 412 unorganized sectors, 331–32 UNPF. See United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) Upper East Region (UER), 232, 247–49, 253n1 urban areas and land rights, 157–58 rural-urban divide, 368 urban agriculture, 554n1 urban finance, 86 Uruguay, Network of Groups of Rural Women, 396 U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 139, 145, 166n7, 620 user rights, 66 UWA. See Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) V VAC. See vuong/ao/chuong (VAC) vaccination campaigns, 615 value added calculation of, 179–81 strategies to support in agricultural markets, 206–10 to women’s associations, 203 value chains, 177–81

in agriculture sector, 173–74, 206–10 analysis of, 178–81 entry points of gender integration, 181f 5.1 export, 177 in fisheries and aquaculture, 562–64, 593n3 ILO gender-sensitive value chain model, 622–23 in livestock sector, 603, 604, 611, 613, 617–24, 636n1 localizing of, 216 opportunities for, 206–7 partnerships in, 201–5 for Peru’s thornless artichokes, 179, 180b5.3 poultry, 607 women’s place in, 89 VDCs. See village development committees (VDCs) VDs. See village development associations (VDs) veterinary services, 464, 603, 607, 611–12, 627, 628 VFFP. See Village and Farm Forestry Project (VFFP) Vietnam Community Based Rural Infrastructure Project, 56, 57b2.11 Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy 2002, 681b16.5, 703b16.17 gender analysis of structural reforms in, 704b16.18 and gender integration, 40b2.3 households with business income, 388f9.2 indicators from rural development project in, 714t16.4 Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, 58, 59b2.13 PROFOUND, 570, 574–76, 594n3 VAC system, 572, 594n1 Vietnam Poverty Reduction Support Credit, 43b2.5 Work Improvement in Neighborhood Development (WIND), 331 Vietnamese Women’s Union (VWU), 575 Village and Farm Forestry Project (VFFP), 211–14 Village Business Incubator program, 198 village by-laws committees, 278 village development associations (VDs), 63, 64b2.14 village development committees (VDCs), 72–73, 250, 251 village organizations (VOs) Bangladesh, 585b13.3 India, 112–16 Sri Lanka, 77–79 Village Self-Help Learning Initiative (VSHLI), 77, 721 violence against women, 321 during crises, 479 impact of natural disasters on women, 450 Vishaka v. Rajasthan and Others, 339 visibility, of professional women, 263, 264, 272–73, 299 Volta River Estates, Ltd. (VREL), Ghana, 348b8.11 VOs. See village organizations (VOs) VREL. See Volta River Estates, Ltd. (VREL), Ghana VSHLI. See Village Self-Help Learning Initiative (VSHLI) vulnerabilities, 4–6 addressing causes of, 495 and biodiversity, 436, 466n12 and climate change, 439 classification of, 513–14 during crisis or natural disaster, 479 empowerment of vulnerable groups, 515

in fish processing factories, 578 and food aid, 493 forestry sector, 650–57, 651, 668n1–2, 668n5 and GAL framework, 427–28 livestock sector, 606–7b14.1, 607–8 and natural disasters, 448–50, 468n2–4, 479, 481 postdisaster, 449–50, 451 reduction of, 103 of resource-poor households, 530 in rural infrastructure, 362, 367–69 in sanitation, hygiene, and potable water, 402–3 social, 449, 468n3 vuong/ao/chuong (VAC), 572, 594n1 VWU. See Vietnamese Women’s Union (VWU) W wage laborers, 328–29 in agriculture, 317–18, 319t8.2 unorganized, 331b8.4 wages discrimination in, 344–45 gaps in, 319–21, 325, 329 See also income Warana Wired Village Project, India, 391 warrantage, 190b5.6 war zones, and women entrepreneurs, 195–96 water-borne diseases, 249 water degradation, 429, 454–58, 468n4 water management associations, 456 water management projects, 229–34 water quality, 243, 243b6.4 water resources, South Africa, 237b6.2 water rights, 229–30, 242–43 water services groundwater development and management, 242–46 LACOSREP project, 232, 247–49, 253n1 multiple use water services, 232–33, 235–41 water-based water programs, 291, 292b7.16 See also agriculture water management (AWM); irrigation systems watershed management associations, 63, 64b2.14 watersheds, Karnataka Watershed Development Project, 463–65 water supply, 368 access to in Gaza, 477, 477b11.2 and climate change, 439, 466n6 decline of, 454 and natural disasters, 449, 450 potable water, 366–67, 369, 399, 400–406 transport of, 376 water user groups (WUGs), 244, 244b6.5, 245 water users associations (WUAs), 230, 232, 233, 247–49 welfare funds, 331–32 welfare programs, 18 Well Women Media Project, 394 West Africa Sustainable fisheries Livelihoods Programme, 562, 565 women’s role in innovation, 294b7.18 West Asia, gender and agribusiness, 175 wetlands, 466n10

INDEX

763

WFP. See World Food Programme (WFP) WHO. See World Health Organization (WHO) WID. See Women in Development (WID) WIEGO. See Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) WIETA. See Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association (WIETA), South Africa WIND. See Work Improvement in Neighborhood Development (WIND), Vietnam Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association (WIETA), South Africa, 349 WIN project. See Empowerment of Women in Irrigation and Water Resources Management for Improved Food Security, Nutrition and Health (WIN project) Winrock International, 286 women entrepreneurs, 184–91 capacity development for, 192–99 and financial sector, 198 livestock sector, 622 regionally specific features of, 194–96 in war zones, 195–96 Women for Sustainable Development (WSD), 441 Women in Development (WID), 74–75 Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), 332, 333b8.6 women in politics and governance issues, 25–26 local government, approaches to, 71–73 as policy makers, 37–39, 43–44, 79n4–5 Women in Rice Farming Systems, 208 Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), 295 women producers, 69, 80n3, 273 Women’s Empowerment Program, Nepal, 65–66 Women’s Resource Access Programme (WRAP), 160 women’s rights, 502 and agroforestry, 658, 660b15.10 and forestry, 647 forests as safety net, 650–57, 668n1–2, 668n5 recognition of, 147 Sri Lanka, 503, 504b11.8 and use of ICT, 395 women’s rural development societies (WRDS), 508–11, 516n4 Women’s World Banking, 87 Women Waging Peace, 505 wood and nonwood forest products, 644, 645, 650–61, 668n1 See also fuelwood wood energy, 653 wool production, 604 Work for Water programs, 324 Work Improvement in Neighborhood Development (WIND), Vietnam, 331 working conditions, 339, 350–51 employee benefits, 351–52 in fisheries, 578, 581 information concerning, 326b8.3 on plantations, 341–42 Working Women’s Forum, India, 66 workplace health, security and safety in, 326, 338

764

INDEX

violence in, 321 workshops, 408, 436 World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), 661b15.11, 662b15.12 World Bank, 3 Africa Travel and Transport Project, 379 Agriculture and Rural Development Division, 298 aquaculture in Asia, 572 and conflict analysis, 488 and extension programs, 257 forest strategy, 643, 644–45 Gemi Diriya Project, 77–79, 721–73 Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Development Projects, 678 Interagency Gender and Development Group, 40b2.3 Land Administration Project, 153, 154b4.1, 156, 157, 287 land policy and administration, 125, 165n1 Land Titling Projects, 143 Mainstreaming Hazard Risk Management in Rural Projects, 494, 496 Mozambique Rural Roads and Bridges Project, 380 and participatory research, 274–75 and PRSCs, 42–43 PRSP Sourcebook, 698 Rural Access Index, 378, 413n6 rural roads projects, 407–10, 414–15n1–7 Social Analysis Sourcebook, 682, 721 and women entrepreneurs, 189b5.5 WorldFish, Malawi, 577 World Food Programme (WFP), 193, 306, 310n5 and food aid, 492, 493 and women trainers, 196 World Health Organization (WHO), 238, 384 World Heritage Site, 665 World Relief Rwanda, 205b5.11 World Satellite Radio, 394 World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 139, 166n7 WOUGNET. See Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) WRAP. See Women’s Resource Access Programme (WRAP) WRDS. See women’s rural development societies (WRDS) WSD. See Women for Sustainable Development (WSD) WUAs. See water users associations (WUAs) WUGs. See water user groups (WUGs) Wulin Mountains Minority Areas Development Project, 293b7.17 WWF. See World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Y Yemen, women and water crisis in, 243b6.3 youth empowerment of through junior farmer field and life schools, 305–8, 310n1–7 skills training for, 330 Z Zambia agroforestry technologies, 660–61 pesticide problems, 552, 553b12.18 production of liquid biofuels, 446 zoonotic diseases, 611

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The Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook provides an up-to-date understanding of gender issues and a rich compilation of compelling evidence of good practices and lessons learned to guide practitioners in integrating gender dimensions into agricultural projects and programs. The Sourcebook is a joint product of the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and contributions from more than 100 writers and reviewers. “ The Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook is a timely and extremely important document as the criticality of increased agricultural investment is never more as clear as today with the potential crisis facing the world’s poor with soaring food prices.”

Nata Duvvury, former Director of Gender, Violence and Rights, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) “ The Sourcebook authors have integrated gender issues in meaningful ways into specific sectors within agriculture.”

Mary Hill Rojas, former Senior Manager of the Women in Development Project Management Unit, Chemonics International “ This book is an important step towards revitalizing attention to gender equality in the agricultural sector. This Sourcebook is a new compilation of ideas and examples that will guide practitioners in ensuring that new attention to agriculture is infused with up-to-date knowledge on gender issues.”

Deborah Rubin, Director, Cultural Practice “ This is a very important contribution. I hope that it is widely read by all involved in land tenure policy (not just those who are interested in gender). There is sound analysis and advice on how to ensure that land administration programs can strengthen women’s property rights.”

Ruth Meizen-Dick, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI)

ISBN 978-0-8213-7587-7

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