Closing the Gender Gap in Agriculture - SAGE Journals

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Closing the Gender. Gap in Agriculture. Sophia Huyer1. Abstract. Agriculture is the largest employment sector for 60% of women in. Oceania, Southern Asia and ...
Introduction

Closing the Gender Gap in Agriculture

Gender, Technology and Development 20(2) 105–116 2016 Asian Institute of Technology SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/0971852416643872 http://gtd.sagepub.com

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Sophia Huyer1 Abstract Agriculture is the largest employment sector for 60% of women in Oceania, Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and women make up 2/3 of the world’s 600 million small livestock managers. Despite this, women’s activities in agriculture are characterised by a global gender gap in vulnerabilities, access to resources, and productivity. As a result of these differences, women and men farmers in developing countries have different abilities to adapt to climate change. But addressing gender inequalities in agriculture to address climate change involves more than erasing inequities in access to resources. The question of whether women have control of these resources; whether they participate in use of and decisions around the accrued benefits of increased production and income, and whether resources meet their requirements and priorities, will all determine whether the gender gap in agriculture is closed. It also involves ensuring that women’s needs and priorities are met, in terms of how priorities are set, modes of support and resources. Technologies to support resilience and adaptation to climate change by smallholder farmers can promote women’s empowerment and the transformation of gender relations in addition to sustainably increasing agricultural production. But this will only happen if they are implemented in a framework of mutually reinforcing resources, women’s Gender and Social Inclusion Research Leader, CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Programme (CCAFS)/Women in Global Science and Technology (WISAT), Brighton, Canada. 1

Corresponding author: Sophia Huyer. Gender and Social Inclusion Research Leader, CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Programme (CCAFS)/Women in Global Science and Technology (WISAT), Brighton, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

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control of assets, equitable decisionmaking between women and men, and strengthened capacity. Keywords Women, gender, agriculture, climate change, technology, assets, equality

Agriculture is the largest employment sector for 60 percent of women in Oceania, Southern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, and for 80 percent of women in least developed countries (LDCs) (United Nations, 2015). They make up 2/3 of the world’s 600 million small livestock managers (Distefano, 2013). Women’s activities in agriculture are characterized by a global gender gap in vulnerabilities, access to resources, and productivity (FAO, 2011; Perez et al., 2015; Quisumbing & Pandolfelli, 2010). According to a study led by the World Bank, the gender gap in agricultural productivity—the value of agricultural produced per unit of cultivated land—ranges from 4 to 25 percent, depending on the country and the crop, with the cost of the gender gap in agriculture to be $100 million in Malawi, $105 million in Tanzania, and $67 million in Uganda (UN Women, UNDP, UNEP, & World Bank, 2015). Substantial gender gaps in access and control continue to exist in regard to six key resources and inputs for agriculture: land, labor, credit, information, extension, and technology (Sheahan & Barrett, 2014; World Bank, 2012; World Bank & IFPRI, 2010). In many developing countries, statutory and customary laws continue to restrict women’s access to land and other assets. In nearly a third of developing countries, laws do not guarantee the same inheritance rights for women and men and in an additional half of countries, discriminatory customary practices against women are found. Lack of security of land tenure results in lower access to credit and inputs leading to inefficient land use, reducing yields (United Nations, 2015). Farms run by female-headed households tend to have less labor available for farm work, as these households are typically smaller, and because women have unpaid household duties that take them away from income-generating productive activities, including fetching fuelwood and water. As a result, women, especially those from poor households, are more likely to face time constraints that affect their ability to participate in community-based climate adaptation initiatives or may reject practices that increase their labor burden (Behrman, Bryan, & Goh, 2014; Jost et al., 2015). Lower levels of income globally, as well as increased reliance on part-time, informal and insecure employment,

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mean that they are less able to invest in resources and inputs for their productive activities, and less attractive as clients to financial institutions (World Bank, 2012). With respect to technology, poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, especially women, lack access to irrigation infrastructure and technologies (Carr & Hartl, 2010; Perez et al., 2015), while women are less likely to receive information on and adopt improved agricultural technologies in comparison to man (Jost et al., 2015; Tall et al., 2014). Women and men may also have different priorities for technologies based on their different tasks and responsibilities: women tend to manage household kitchen gardens and small livestock while men have responsibility for commercial crops and large livestock (Huyer, Twyman, Koningstein, Ashby, & Vermeulen, 2015). Carr and Hartl (2010) note that women’s agricultural technologies – traditional technologies that are labor-intensive – tend to be overlooked in technology support, particularly those for land preparation, weeding, drying, and energy. The tools that are available tend to be oriented towards men’s physique or activities and will often be too heavy or culturally inappropriate for women to use them comfortably (Carr & Hartl, 2010). While information and communications technologies ICT-carried information services are seen as strategies to compensate for lack of access to formal agricultural knowledge systems (for both women and men), women’s lower levels of access globally prevent them from benefitting equally with men. In Kyengeza, Uganda, for example, 80 percent of the men listen to the radio for daily weather forecasts, compared with only 20 percent of women. When women own mobile phones, they use them less frequently than men, and for less sophisticated services; fewer women reported using messaging and data services beyond voice (GSMA Connected Women, 2015; ITU, 2015; Kyazze, Owoyesigire, Kristjanson, & Chaudhary, 2012). Women also tend to have much lower access to formal information channels of training and agricultural extension, partly because extension services do not always consider women to be farmers, fewer women attend community meetings organized by extension services, or visit demonstration plots (Ragasa, 2012, World Bank & IFPRI 2010). Where women are not reached by extension services, the role of different institutions in supporting their concerns and priorities needs more attention—women tend to interact with small, communitybased and informal groups while men are better connected with groups that operate beyond the locality and are more formalized (Agarwal, 2000; Perez et al., 2015; Westermann et al., 2005).

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As a result of these differences in vulnerabilities and capacities, women and men farmers in developing countries have different abilities to adapt to climate change (Gonda, current issue; Huyer et al., 2015). For example, insecure land tenure, lack of capital and limited farm inputs pose major barriers to the adoption of conservation agriculture (a climate change adaptation strategy) in sub-Saharan Africa (Goh, 2012). Other studies have found that financial and resource constraints as well as lower levels of access to information and extension services can prevent women from implementing adaptive practices (Jost et al., 2015; Tall et al., 2014; Twyman et al., 2014). Rural women, in particular, are at high risk of negative impacts from climate change due to increases in both household responsibilities and agricultural work from male out-migration. One of the important effects of environmental stress in farming systems, such as those imposed by climate change, is the intensification of women’s workloads, while another is decreases in assets of poor households (Agwu & Okhimamwe, 2009; Goh, 2012; Jost et al., 2015). Climate variability and weather-related shocks affect women’s and men’s assets in different ways (Jost et al., 2015; Kristjanson et al., 2014). Women and men are changing their cropping practices in response to climate variability, with different impacts on access to and control of the income from crops, as well as their respective workloads (Jost et al., 2015; Nelson & Stathers, 2009). In Guyana, droughts and floods caused both women and men to spend more time planting and diversifying their crops, but women’s workload increased further as they also had to find food for the household (Bynoe, 2009; Goh, 2012). Cultural norms can affect control and ownership of assets during drought; in one case, women gained increased control of livestock because men were responsible for household food security and sold their livestock first (Kristjanson et al., 2014). In general, poor farmers are often forced to sell assets to make ends meet in times of resource stress (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014). Women are also important agents of innovation in response to climateinduced change (Denton, 2002). Their resilience strategies and local environmental knowledge are valuable resources for recovery and adaptation. For example, in mapping exercises of changes in Fiji’s coral reef, women identified changes such as coral bleaching, the spawning period of certain fish species, algal blooms, and the extent of the dry and rainy periods. They also were able to identify locations for new well drilling in Micronesia based on their knowledge of local water tables (Lane & McNaught 2009).

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Considering the impact that climate change is expected to have on agriculture (Lipper et al., 2014) and on vulnerable people and communities (IPCC, 2014), failing to incorporate gender equality into climate change adaptation will be likely to increase global gender inequalities overall (Dankelman, 2010). But, addressing gender inequalities in agriculture to address climate change involves more than erasing inequities in access to resources. The question of whether women have control of the use of these resources equally with men, whether they participate in the use of and decisions around the accrued benefits of increased production and income, and whether resources they have access to meet their requirements and priorities, will all determine whether the gender gap in agriculture is closed. Emerging research indicates that a mix of factors will address gender inequalities in different situations. In many cases, access by women farmers to information on the impacts of climate change, weather, and alternate agricultural production practices is an important factor in influencing climate change adaptation and mitigation, and also contributes to a range of gender equality results. Women farmers in Vietnam who received information on crop production and management, improved rice technologies and practices, and pest and disease management not only increased their agricultural production but also diversified products and increased incomes. As a result, they began to participate in household (HH) decision-making on selection, management, and processing of crops. Seventy-five percent of participating women farmers felt that their social position in the household and community improved and 84 percent felt that they were more highly respected by their husbands, children, and other family members because they contributed to higher rice yields and higher incomes (Chi, Paris, Anh, Duy, & Loan, 2015). As I have discussed elsewhere, access to information and knowledge can lead to gender equality when women are able to use it to control assets and resources, make decisions to affect outcomes in their life, and experience increased confidence or status at a personal level (Huyer, 2006). When crucial elements to achieve these goals are missing, then information and knowledge are insufficient. For example, in this issue, Murray et al., observe that women smallholder farmers will be unable to implement and benefit from climate-smart agricultural practices if they do not have the appropriate technologies, tools, or resources. Reliance on

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human power over technology for a large range of farming activities continues to be a fact of life for women in many rural areas. Shortages of cash to hire labor, to sponsor communal labor parties, or to purchase inputs are reducing the ability of female-headed households to intensify production, gain access to labor-saving technology such as oxen, or access capital to repay the credit (Perez et al, 2015). There continues to be a lack of knowledge of how social and gender disparities affect the ways in which poor men and women respond to climate-change impacts on agriculture, and the support women farmers need to adapt to climate change. But research is starting to fill this gap. The CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Program (CCAFS), promotes gender equality in climate-smart agriculture (CSA), food systems, and landscapes. It focuses on research to inform, catalyze, and target CSA solutions to women and vulnerable groups, increase their control over productive assets and resources, and increase participation in decision-making at local and national levels. In March 2015, CCAFS co-organized a seminar on “Closing the gender gap in farming under climate change”1 in Paris, with the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and Future Earth. Five articles presented at the seminar are included in this issue from research led by CCAFS, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the University of Copenhagen, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), 3D4AgDev with National University of Ireland Galway, and the Central European University. In the first article, by Una Murray, Zewdy Gebremedhin, Galina Brychkova and Charles Spillane, the authors cover productivity constraints among women smallholders in Malawia. The authors assess the potential for climate-smart practices and technologies to facilitate climate change adaptation by women smallholder farmers through focusing on the ability of women farmers in Malawi to adopt climatesmart practices and experience livelihoods benefits.2 They argue that promoting climate change adaptation practices is futile if a lack of basic technologies, resources, and capacities restrict women farmers from being able to adopt them productively. The need for gender analysis of roles, access to and control of productive resources, and power relations around the adoption of CSA practices is highlighted. Noemi Gonda, in “Climate change, ‘technology’ and gender: ‘Adapting women’ to climate change with cooking stoves and water reservoirs”, reiterates the importance of gender analysis and intersectionality in her

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critique of the introduction of climate change technologies in rural communities in Nicaragua. Gender is one of a number of categories, including ethnicity, class, age and geographical location, which affect the ability of women and men to benefit from climate change adaptation technologies. The need for gender analysis of roles, access to and control of productive resources, and power relations around the adoption of CSA practices is highlighted. Gender is one of a number of categories, including ethnicity, class, age, and geographical location, which affect the ability of women and men to benefit from climate change adaptation technologies. Gonda calls for a rethinking of the role of these technologies as vehicles for challenging current gender inequalities. She argues that a failure to value local knowledge may lead to technology-centric approaches which are not appropriate to the local culture or environment and that failing to understand power and gender relations may, in fact, reproduce existing injustices. She concludes that technology-centered approaches to climate change adaptation in rural communities can have potentially oppressive effects, and may, in fact, impede progress toward gender equality. Providing women with information and knowledge that they value is an important step towards gender equality and women’s empowerment (see Hafkin & Huyer, 2006). But do women farmers benefit from information delivery mechanisms? In “Role of mobile phone-enabled climate information services in gender inclusive agriculture”, Surabhi Mittal argues that this kind of service can reduce knowledge gaps between large and small farmers and between women and men. Gender and socioeconomic differences were seen in the value attributed to information, time invested in accessing information, and the type of information accessed. Mittal concludes that providing low-cost information through mobile voice services can address resource constraints for women farmers and potentially increase incomes through improved production while increasing their participation in household decision-making. In this way, mobile information services can be a route to increased empowerment for women. Laura Cramer, Wiebke Forch, Ianetta Mutie, and Philip Thornton investigate how men and women interact with organizations in communities in West Africa, East Africa, and South Asia in “Connecting women, connecting men: how communities and organizations interact to strengthen adaptive capacity and food security under climate change”. They assess gender trends in organizational preference and how interventions are perceived to be building adaptive capacity and food security in the face of climate change. Their findings reflect research elsewhere

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which indicates that women value local organizations more highly and are less connected to external organizations than men. They also note that women’s preferences for interactions with organizations are rooted in a perspective that is broader than food production to include health and food processing—in contrast to the more narrow focus of many external organizations. Along with other authors here, they conclude that “traditional” development activities are not sufficient for building adaptive capacity in a community. New modes of participation and working with communities are required, which strengthen existing capacities while working with social networks and ensuring that external investment is responsive to local priorities. Microinsurance is a potentially important form of financial support to smallholder farmers in the developing world in the face of climate change. In her research on women’s attitudes to index-based insurance products in Bangladesh, Neha Kumar provides insight into preconceptions of gender roles and trends in risk aversion. While it is often assumed that women in the country are not involved in agriculture, the participation of women has, in fact, increased since 2000 as men’s participation has decreased. In contrast to assumptions that women tend to be more riskaverse than men, in this study, women and men indicated interest in buying agricultural insurance at equal rates. Gender differences were found instead in relation to the degree of financial literacy, income level and level of education. While different aspects of supporting the agricultural production of women and men smallholder farmers are addressed in this issue, several common themes emerge, which are mentioned as follows. (a) Technology is not sufficient in itself; it needs to be understood in the context of local knowledge, culture, gender relations, capacities, and ecosystems. The old or “traditional” transfer of technology approach is inadequate. (b) Technology is not gender-neutral (Wajcman, 1991), and can reinforce existing gender and power imbalances. (c) Gender roles and relations are changing in response to socio-economic and environmental stresses, changing employment patterns, and technology. Finally, technologies to support resilience and adaptation to climate change by smallholder farmers can promote women’s empowerment and the transformation of gender relations in addition to sustainably increasing agricultural production. But this will only happen if they are implemented in a framework of mutually reinforcing resources, women’s control of assets, equitable decision-making between women and men, and strengthened capacity.

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Acknowledgments We acknowledge the CGIAR Fund Council, Australia (ACIAR), European Union, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), New Zealand, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and Thailand for funding to the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Notes 1. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from https://ccafs.cgiar.org/closing-gender-gap#. Vt8wpBiuwih 2. Climate-smart agriculture is an approach to “sustainably improve agricultural productivity and enhance food security, increase farmers’ resilience and adaptation to climate change, and reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions where possible” (FAO, 2013).

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