Theme: Gender equality, youth and social inclusion
Gender and other social differences such as age, wealth and ethnicity, have an enormous influence upon the success of agricultural interventions. To ensure equitable impacts and benefits to rural people, CIMMYT emphasizes inclusive research and development interventions. Starting with the collection of data on gender and social differences, efforts are underway to address these gaps and ensure equitable adoption of technologies and practice. This includes working towards gender-equitable control of productive assets and resources; technologies that reduce women’s labor; and improved capacity of women and youth to participate in decision-making.
Timothy Krupnik has worked in agricultural research for development in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. At CIMMYT, he leads a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural research team that comprises the Sustainable Agrifood Systems program’s Innovation Sciences in Agroecosystems and Food Systems theme across Asia.
This team spans disciplines and brings together technical skills ranging from systems agronomy, remote sensing, socioeconomics, climatology, agricultural engineering, and modeling and data science. The team’s research generates real-world impact by addressing key knowledge gaps, developing tools, and facilitating partnerships that increase productivity, sustainability and resilience in the context of the region’s biophysical, economic, and sociocultural diversity.
Krupnik has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers, policy briefs, chapters and books, and has led the development of numerous extension modules, decision support tools, and early warning systems.
CIMMYT research in Ethiopia and other countries has shown that, in communities where women and men work together and women have access to knowledge and resources and share in decision making, everyone benefits. Photo: CIMMYT/Apollo Habtamu
Gender awareness and gender-sensitive approaches are slowly spreading into agricultural research, extension, and policy in Ethiopia, based on recent statements from a cross section of professionals and practitioners in the country.
Moges Bizuneh, deputy head of the agricultural office of Basona District, attended a CIMMYT-organized workshop in which Ethiopia-specific results were presented from GENNOVATE, a large-scale qualitative study involving focus groups and interviews with more than 7,500 rural men and women in 26 developing countries. “I have learned a lot about gender and it’s not just about women, but about both women and men,” said Bizuneh.
The District of Basona has nearly 30,000 households, 98 percent of which depend on agriculture for food and livelihoods but have access to an average of only 1.5 hectares of land. More than 10,000 of those households are headed by females, because many males and youth have left Basona to seek opportunities in large cities or other countries.
Bizuneh and his colleagues are working with a district gender specialist and a women and gender unit to make gender sensitive approaches a regular part of their activities. In this, he concedes that he and other professionals are contending with “deep-rooted social and cultural norms around divisions of labor and a lack of awareness regarding gender issues.”
One surprise for Bizuneh, from group discussions regarding innovation and involvement in CIMMYT’s gender research, was that women said it was important to share experiences with other farmers and obtain new knowledge.
“No men mentioned that,” he remarked. “This shows that, if provided with information and support, women can innovate.”
Kristie Drucza, CIMMYT gender and development specialist, has been studying, publishing on, and presenting widely about people-centered, evidence-based approaches for gender equality that are being taken up by agriculture-for-development professionals. Photo: CIMMYT/Apollo Habtamu
Women and men plan and change together
Another product from the project is a 2017 review of gender-transformative methodologies for Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, co-authored by Kristie Drucza, project lead, and Wondimu Abebe, a research assistant, both from CIMMYT.
Drucza presented on the people-centered methodologies described in the publication at a recent workshop in Addis Ababa, offering diverse lessons of use for research and development professionals.
“The methodologies involve participatory research to help households and communities assess their situation and develop solutions to problems,” said Drucza. “By working with men and boys and allowing communities to set the pace of change, these approaches reduce the likelihood of a backlash against women—something that too frequently accompanies gender-focused programs.”
Annet Abenakyo Mulema, social scientist in gender at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), intends to apply some of the same methods to help rural families understand household and community gender dynamics and their role in managing the families’ goats, sheep, and other livestock.
Annet Abenakyo Mulema, social scientist in gender at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is applying participatory research and gender-sensitive methods to help households and communities assess their situation and develop solutions to problems. Photo: ILRI archives
“A 2015 study we did uncovered gender relationships associated with disease transmission,” Mulema explained. “Women and girls normally clean the animal pens and so are exposed to infections. Social conventions in the community make women feel inferior and not empowered to speak out about animal health, which is considered a man’s domain. We encouraged men and women to share roles and work together, and this made it easier for both to quickly identify disease outbreaks at early stages and prevent infections from spreading throughout the herd or to humans.”
Mulema said Drucza’s workshop helped her to understand and appreciate methodologies such as social analysis and action, community conversations, and gender action learning systems to support a shared, local response to the problem. “As another outcome, we spoke to service providers, such as veterinarians and extension agents, who needed to understand how gender related to animal health and the fact that the relationships between women and men in a community can change.”
Meskerem Mulatu, gender and nutrition specialist in Ethiopia’s Agricultural Growth Program II (AGP II) Capacity Development Support Facility (CDSF), said her group invited Drucza to speak on gender and social norms at a national workshop organized by AGP II CDSF in October 2017.
“Our event was on gender, nutrition, and climate-smart agriculture,” according to Meskerem. “Many technologies are gender-sensitive but research and extension are not giving this adequate attention because there is no common operational definition. Their preconception is ‘technology is technology; it’s the same for men and women.’ Drucza’s evidence-based presentation showed that men and women may have different technology demands.”
Meskerem is going to train district agricultural officers to use a transformative methodology identified by Drucza. “Kristie’s report is really good timing,” she said. “We were thinking of doing something in terms of gender and these methodologies make sense.”
Recording data on changes in social norms
In June 2017, Drucza presented the findings of her meta-analysis of evaluations of gender in Ethiopian agricultural development at a senior staff meeting of the Ethiopia office of CARE, the global humanitarian organization. Among the 26 agricultural program evaluations considered, explained Drucza, only three had strong findings, a heavy inclusion of gender, and evidence of changes in social norms—and all three were CARE projects.
Moges Bizuneh helps lead an agricultural office in Basona District, home to more than 10,000 female-headed households, and is working to support innovation by women. Photo: CIMMYT/Mike Listman
One was the Graduation with Resilience to Achieve Sustainable Development (GRAD) initiative. As an outcome of Drucza’s presentation, CARE is refining the way it records certain social data, according to Elisabeth Farmer, Deputy Chief of Party for the CARE’s Feed the Future Ethiopia–Livelihoods for Resilience Activity project, which emerged from GRAD.
“Our baseline study protocol and questionnaire for the new project hadn’t been finalized yet,” Farmer said. “We were thinking through the difference between using a scale that scores responses along a range, such as a Likert scale, versus asking respondents “yes or no”-type questions, for instance regarding women’s access to information or equitable decision-making in the household.
“As Drucza explained, when it comes to gender norms, you may not get all the way from a “no” to a “yes”, but only from a “2” to “3”, and we want to make sure that we are capturing these smaller shifts, so we incorporated scales with ranges into our baseline and will ensure that these are used in future assessments to track transformations in social norms.”
According to Drucza, who leads the CIMMYT project “Understanding gender in wheat-based livelihoods for enhanced WHEAT R4D impact in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia,” funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, research must be relevant and useful.
“I’m happy to learn that our results are useful to a diverse range of actors, from development partners to policy makers and local agricultural officers,” she said.
A new publication suggests strategies to improve rural women’s access to agricultural machinery. Photo: CIMMYT/ Martin Ranak
A new research note published for International Women’s Day, details current gender gaps in rural mechanization in Bangladesh, and outlines plans to overcome these challenges.
Using simple technologies, such as multi-crop reaper-harvesters can reduce the time farmers spend harvesting by up to 80 percent and can reduce the costs of hiring field labor by up to 60 percent. The problem is that women may face cultural constraints to working in the field, running machinery service provision businesses, and do not have equal access to financing, which is a huge barrier, as the technologies can cost $500-2000 up front.
The authors suggest a number of gender-balanced approaches to scaling-out technologies such as use of targeted, selective and smart subsidies and access to finance to women-headed households, methods to spread investment risks, and prioritizing joint learning, with husbands and wives attending field courses together and jointly developing business plans.
The research note is a result of joint efforts between the USAID/Washington and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), the USAID/Bangladesh CSISA – Mechanization and Irrigation Project, and the the USAID/Washington funded USAID funded Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) project, all of which involve collaborations between the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, the International Food Policy Research Institute, International Development Enterprises, the International Rice Research Institute and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – A new set of resources has been released to aid agricultural researchers integrating gender sensitivities into their research for development projects. The guidance notes are based on findings from GENNOVATE, a global comparative gender norms research initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Integrating gender into research is challenging,” said the project leader Lone Badstue. “The purpose of these GENNOVATE resources is to inspire and help scientists who are not gender experts to think gender into their own work.”
Agricultural research often fails to use gender analysis, which provides important information on women’s and men’s different needs and opportunities in agriculture, Badstue said.
(Photo: CIMMYT)
In a bid to turn the tide, GENNOVATE initiated a series of tools and guides to give evidence about gender roles in agriculture, challenge assumptions and provide gender-inclusive data collection instruments that are easily accessible to researchers.
“These resources provide evidence-based inputs and recommendations on how to integrate gender considerations in research on, for example, climate-smart-agriculture, conservation agriculture, mechanization, farmer training events and more,” said Badstue. “Some of the tools have broad geographical relevance, while others have a regional or even country-level focus.”
The resources draw on GENNOVATE research, which focuses on how gender norms influence women’s and men’s abilities to learn about, adopt and adapt innovations in agriculture and natural resource management. This research initiative runs across multiple CGIAR research programs to provide contextually grounded evidence on how gender interacts with access to information, resources and decision-making processes.
Girls and women are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The likelihood of female students graduating with a degree in a science-related field is much lower than for male students, according to a U.N. study conducted in 14 countries. In an effort to improve their representation, a U.N. resolution established February 11 as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
To celebrate the occasion this year, CIMMYT asked women involved in agricultural science to share their views on what they would like to see change.
Rahma Adam
CIMMYT Gender and Development Specialist
Nairobi, Kenya
There are two inspiring women in science, who have made significant contributions to the world. The first woman is Wangari Maathai and the second woman is Marie Curie. Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree, the first to become a professor at the University of Nairobi. She made a significant contribution to environmental/forest conservation, women’s rights and peace. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement (GBM), an organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation and women’s rights. The GBM has planted over 51 million trees in Kenya. In 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
French-Polish scientist Curie’s work led to the discovery of radium and polonium in 1898, setting the stage for nuclear medicine, which allows internal imaging of tumors. Curie is the first person and only woman to win a Nobel Prize twice, including the 1903 physics prize jointly with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and the 1911 chemistry prize. She was also the first woman to win the Nobel Prize.
The key factor that will encourage women and young girls to get involved in science is to be paired up with already practicing women scientists through mentorship programs so that they see firsthand what it is like to be a female scientist, and what it takes to become one. Starting a mentorship early in life – from the primary school level – will inspire young female students to take more interest in science classes and contemplate a career in science.
Bev Postma
HarvestPlus CEO
Washington DC, United States
Women’s contributions to science are vast and immeasurable. Heroes like Jane Goodall and Marie Curie, are some of the world’s most famous scientists who also happen to be women. One of my own personal role models from the past is Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who isn’t usually remembered as a scientist, but her efforts to dismantle the barriers to women in science and other research and intellectual fields is a major source of inspiration to me. Today, I am inspired every day by the young scientists in the CGIAR, both women and men, who continue to challenge all forms of gender disparity and are making huge contributions to our body of knowledge.
Women have long contributed innovations to various scientific fields, but their efforts are not always acknowledged, remembered or encouraged as readily as their male counterparts. Women of all ages have been fighting an uphill battle to become equals in the scientific community. Progress is being made but young women still face too many barriers to enter STEM fields and there are still too many hurdles to clear once they enter the workforce. The statistics speak for themselves and must not be ignored. The world needs these women scientists and we need to do all we can to nurture them and encourage a new generation of young women to enter into STEM fields. We must encourage and excite young women about studying STEM subjects, especially in developing countries. We can do this by profiling more female role models and by ensuring that new and established scientists get their fair share of airtime in publications and on conference panels. Sadly, I still see far too many male-only panels at STEM conferences. We all have a role to play in creating a work environment that provides opportunities for everyone to succeed, regardless of gender. Together, we must continue to support and elevate woman scientists within our workplaces and throughout the CGIAR system. I pledge to do my part to support and champion this movement.
Julie Borlaug
Inari Agriculture, Inc. VP Communications and Public Relations
United States
In my opinion, getting more girls and women involved in science will create more innovation, creativity and competitiveness. Women look at issues and research in a different light than men and are often more effective in communication. We must change the current perception of science as a negative, especially in agriculture. It is my hope that women will be able to talk about the benefits of innovation and technology in a manner that makes it easier to understand and acceptable to the public.
I would like to see more STEM programs in schools as well as in after-school programs and camps to introduce girls to science at an early age. Introduction at an early age is critical to furthering their passion and interest. By the time they are teenagers, they are more influenced by their peers and it is often too late to gain their interest.
Additionally, there are many opportunities for parents to provide toys that expose girls to math, chemistry and physics at an early age. Lego sets and many science kits have lines focused solely on girls and provide an important way for girls to grow confident in their capabilities. Several web-based STEM-themed games and apps have been released to encourage girls’ interests.
We need more young female scientists to serve as mentors to girls through various media, including social media outreach. It is hard to find programs or social media activities that highlight young female scientists to inspire girls. We must make a concerted effort to change this and empower the current and future generation of scientists!
Reshmi Rani Das
CIMMYT Research Scholar
Hyderabad, India
Women and girls have made significant contributions in various science disciplines, especially in agriculture, irrespective of their social status. We know women are the major workforce in agriculture worldwide, but sometimes they are marginalized due to limited land rights. When this is the case, they have less control over resources. Women’s contributions to agriculture are significant, across the sector, starting with research and development, and including the deployment of scalable technology leading to the capacity to make an impact on humanity.
It is essential to bring women working in agriculture into the mainstream and to empower them with direct access to knowledge of improved agricultural technologies. The female presence in scientific fields has been largely disproportional compared to male; however, the trend is slowly changing, as more and more women are entering these fields.
Equality in recognition of their contributions and equal rights in ownership of the resources might work as a strong motivator for women and girls to get more involved in science. Introducing women and girls to scientific fields and encouraging them to follow their hearts and minds irrespective of social issues that influence career choices could also help overcome the negative perceptions that girls develop at a young age that science is a hard subject, leading them to avoid it. Friendly environments in high school and the university level, inviting females to participate and get over a fear of science, would encourage those with talent and a genuine interest to develop their interest.
Encouraging women to participate in training and workshops by motivating young girls to explore and challenge typically male-dominated fields could also help bolster the number of women in the field. As well as providing more financial assistance in the form of fellowships so that they become financially independent.
Parents are primary mentors, and therefore right from the beginning if there is support, women and girls can accomplish much more. The value of mentorship outside the home is also irreplaceable. In the past, we have seen the majority of successful women credit their success to their mentors for helping them reach career goals.
Mina K. Devkota
CIMMYT Systems Agronomist
Kathmandu, Nepal
Many girls begin making a significant contribution to science from a very early age. As they grow older, a sizeable portion of them will work in various research organizations, contributing to science in different fields. Women often also play a big supporting role in the successes of men working for science. Thus, women, directly and indirectly, contribute to scientific advancement.
In my opinion, enabling environments in family, society and in communities, promoting knowledge gathering, support for education and career development will encourage more women and girls to get involved in science. For example, in some countries, certain people have the mindset that women and girls must still be confined to household activities, an unfair bias limiting access to opportunities and exposure to science.
The idea that “Educating women/girls is nothing but a loss,” used to be a common sentiment amongst members of rural Ethiopian communities where the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project works. Now one is more likely to hear “Women are the foundation for change.”
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led NuME project is reducing food insecurity in Ethiopia by increasing the country’s capacity to feed itself. The project is improving household food and nutritional security, especially for young children and women, through shifting gender norms and the adoption of Quality Protein Maize (QPM).
QPM refers to a type of maize biofortified with two essential amino acids through traditional breeding to improve the inadequacy of protein quality of the conventional maize grown widely by farmers. Consumption of QPM instead of conventional maize leads to increase in the rate of growth in infants and young children with mild to moderate undernutrition from populations in which maize is the major staple food.
According to the World Bank, women contribute 40-60 percent of the labor in agricultural production in Ethiopia and play an important role in income generation, as well as unpaid household tasks. However, many women face severely restricted access to resources and services and lack control over income, greatly hindering their participation in and benefit from new innovations.
A community conversation session in Shebedino, Ethiopia. Photo: Tsegaye, M./SNNPR.
Few programs have specifically considered gender relations when implementing new initiatives in communities, however, when NuME found lower participation of women in the community-based promotion and dissemination of QPM, adapted community conversations were launched in two selected project woredas, or districts – Shebedino and Meskan – for a nine-month pilot in an attempt to raise women’s role in the project.
Community conversation (CC) is a facilitated approach based on the principle that communities have the capacity to identify their societal, economic and political challenges; set priorities; mobilize human, physical and financial resources; plan for action and address their challenges sustainably. It focuses on people’s strengths, resources and how they relate to challenges or problems communities face.
The people benefiting from a CC-driven project set priorities and create a plan of action to mobilize resources to address their challenges sustainably. This helps communities develop a sense of ownership, use local resources and take responsibility to bring about sustainable changes.
Because this approach involves the entire community, it also includes traditionally marginalized groups like women and youth.
When NuME first started community conversations, seating was very rigid due to cultural and religious traditions, but as the sessions continue paving the way for more community awareness on issues around gender norms and stereotypes, the seating has become much more mixed.
A facilitator from Shebedino woreda said, “Participants can’t wait for the bi-monthly conversations and they never want to miss them. These exchanges have helped men and women to get together and discuss their concerns, which was not a common practice before.”
“Women have begun raising their voices during community conversation meetings, while they used to be too shy and afraid to speak and very much reserved about sharing their ideas in public,” a female participant from Meskan woreda reported.
Community conversation participants have started changing the traditional gender stereotypes.
Through debate and the sharing of opinions, and more active participation from women, community conversations have educated participants on gender inequality, its prevalence and harm and have allowed men and women community members to exchange ideas about nutrition more effectively.
The NuME project will continue into 2019. Read more about how CIMMYT is working to equally boost the livelihoods of women, youth and men here.
Farmers walk through a field that has been cleared by slash and burn agriculture in the Yucatan peninsula. Photo: Maria Boa/ CIMMYT
MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) — The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico has been hard hit by drought and extreme weather events related to climate change in recent years, exacerbating local poverty and food insecurity. In addition, slash-and-burn agriculture techniques have led to environmental degradation and contribute to climate change. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is working to help indigenous Mayan farming families in the Yucatan peninsula adapt to and mitigate climate change, increasing maize yields and food security while minimizing negative environmental impact. This comes as world leaders mull a crucial decision on agriculture at the UN Climate talks in Bonn, a decision that could support farmers everywhere to take similar actions.
Maize is the backbone of diets in the Yucatan Peninsula, and has sustained indigenous Mayan families for millennia. It is grown as part of the “milpa,” a pre-hispanic intercropping system that revolves around the symbiotic relationship of maize, beans and squash.
Traditionally, the milpa system has involved clearing new land for farming using the slash and burn method. However, after two to three years, the soils begin to deteriorate and new land must be cleared. These practices have contributed to deforestation, increased CO2 emissions, and loss of invaluable local biodiversity.
In the Yucatan Peninsula, climate change has begun to threaten milpa agriculture. The rains have been later and shorter every year, reducing maize yields. As it has become more difficult to make a living from agriculture, young people have been forced to migrate to find work. Farmers have also lost seeds of their traditional maize varieties when they have been unable to harvest after severe drought.
A new CIMMYT project, Milpa Sustentable Yucatan Peninsula, is helping farming families increase their maize yields through sustainable, inclusive solutions. The Project, which means “sustainable milpa” in Spanish, is working to help farming families identify the best soils in their communal land and incorporate sustainable intensification and conservation agriculture (CA) practices to improve soils in order to prevent deforestation and mitigate climate change.
The project has a strong social inclusion component and works to make sure that women and youth are included and prioritized in capacity development opportunities and decision-making processes. “As milpa is a family system, women and youth must be included in order to attain impact,” said Carolina Camacho, principal researcher on social inclusion at CIMMYT. “Complex challenges such as climate change require social change and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups such women and youth in order for mitigation to be successful.”
Farming families are taught CA techniques such as zero tillage that help prevent erosion and water runoff. This increases soil health and uses water more efficiently, which helps maize better survive drought and allows farmers to farm the same land for many years without resorting to deforestation or burning.
Native maize diversity in the Yucatan peninsula. Photo: Maria Boa/ CIMMYT
“Farmers used to harvest 500 kilograms of maize per hectare. Now, with techniques they have learned from CIMMYT, they are harvesting up to 2 tons per hectare,” said Vladimir May, technical leader of the Milpa Sustentable Yucatan Peninsula project. The project has also helped farmers increase yields by identifying natural inputs that can be integrated into an integrated pest and fertility management strategy This allows farming families to sustainably increase their maize yields despite limited inputs and resources.
The native maize grown by farmers in the Yucatan Peninsula adapted to its local environment over centuries of selection by farmers to perform well despite poor soils and other challenges. However, climate change has threatened the survival of this maize genetic diversity. Some farmers lost all of the seed of their traditional maize varieties when they were unable to harvest anything after extreme drought. Others have found that their traditional varieties do not perform as well as they had due to environmental stress related to climate change.
CIMMYT is working to help farmers replace stores of traditional maize seed they have lost due to drought and climate change. The CIMMYT maize seed bank safeguards over 28,000 maize varieties for the benefit of humanity, including seeds that are native to the Yucatan Peninsula. Milpa Sustentable Yucatan Peninsula has worked with the seed bank to find farmers original varieties, restoring a priceless component of many families’ food security, culture and biodiversity.
The project has also helped farmers increase their yields through participatory variety selection. By crossing farmers’ native varieties with other native maize varieties that are more resistant to drought or climate change, farmers can sustainably increase maize yields without losing the qualities they love about their traditional varieties. Women have played a key role in this participatory variety selection, because as they process and prepare all of the food grown by the family, they have intimate knowledge of the characteristics the maize must have to perform well and feed the family.
Farmers working with the CIMMYT project in Yucatan Peninsula. Photo: Maria Boa/ CIMMYT
Poverty and food insecurity in the region have meant that migration has been a necessity for many. With new technologies and support from CIMMYT, women and youth are beginning to see that they may have a future in farming, despite the challenge of climate change. “Now that they see how much maize and other cash crops can be produced with sustainable technologies, young people are deciding to stay,” said Maria Boa, a consultant working with the project. “As youth are sometimes more accepting of new technologies, young farmers in the Yucatan play a crucial role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Inclusion of women and youth is necessary to make a positive change in these communities.”
These and other farmers around the world will play an important role in fighting climate change, by reducing emissions from farming. While a majority of countries, including Mexico, have committed to reducing the climate footprint of agriculture, world leaders must now decide how to best support and finance these actions.
At this year’s UN Climate Talks, CIMMYT is highlighting innovations in wheat and maize that can help farmers overcome climate change. Click here to read more stories in this series and follow @CIMMYT on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.
Kristie Drucza, a gender and social development research manager at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and project lead, recently co-authored a report detailing how researchers can boost gender equality and reach program goals even faster by applying people-centered research methods in their work.
Traditionally, communities are not involved enough in development processes for researchers to offer permanent solutions. The seven methodologies laid out in the report use participatory methods, such as mapping exercises, to put people in control of the agenda.
“Program managers seem to be looking for ways to improve gender within their programs, these methodologies work and should be used more. Currently, non-government organizations implement these methodologies to change behaviors and gender norms, but the data is not collected. These methodologies generate a rich source of data that reveals how gender norms change and at what pace, this data could advance our understanding of how and why gender norms change.”
Drucza tells us more about these methodologies and where they’ve been successful in the following interview:
Creating a gender balance tree. Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza.
Q: What are ‘participatory methodologies’?
Participatory methodologies are a collection of research tools or activities that are designed to get participants to think, learn, analyze and plan for action. They often use visioning exercises and diagram tools to enable participants to see the world in a new way, build empathy for those who are less fortunate and plan to change what they do not like.
Each participant draws all the members of their household at the trunk, and the tasks family members do at the roots. The branches represent expenses and symbols are placed on the tree to show who owns what property and who makes which decisions.
The participants discuss any imbalances and draw an action plan to make the tree more balanced.
This exercise helps put a focus on gaps that are directly identified and agreed upon by families and helps illiterate people envision a future that they can control.
Q: How do these methodologies boost gender equality?
Participants at a gender workshop. Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza.
We collected data from four wheat-growing communities, and in one there was a really big difference in gender relations: in how people understood it, explained it and how equal their relations were.
We found out that this community was doing community conversations (CCs), a methodology that we identified as being very effective. This community was part of a health program that was using CCs, but it also had a positive and unintended impact on the agricultural sector by enabling women and men to work as one economic unit.
Usually, men make decisions without consulting their wives on things like household expenditure and which crops to grow. This can leave a wife having to secretly take from the harvest, or sell assets so that she can make ends meet. In the community where CCs were held, households worked better together to make more informed and transparent decisions that benefited the whole family.
Q: How does your project help boost gender equality?
The most important thing we need to realize is that gender equality doesn’t just mean focusing on women, and doing so can actually create more inequality. We need to empower women but not at the expense of male sense of self and happiness.
Moreover, the social norms that underpin gender inequality need to be addressed for lasting change to ensue. Because these methodologies put communities in the driving seat, they deliver empowerment with community cohesion.
Afghan women from wheat farming villages in focus-group interviews as part of Gennovate, a global study on gender and agricultural innovation. Photo: CIMMYT archives
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — New research shows improved wheat raises the quality of life for men and women across rural communities in Afghanistan.
A recent report from Gennovate, a major study about gender and innovation processes in developing country agriculture, found that improved wheat varieties emerged overwhelmingly among the agricultural technologies most favored by both men and women.
In one striking example from Afghanistan, introducing better wheat varieties alone reduced women’s work burden, showing how the uptake of technology – whether seeds or machinery – can improve the quality of life.
“Local varieties are tall and prone to falling, difficult to thresh, and more susceptible to diseases, including smuts and bunts, which requires special cleaning measures, a task normally done by women,” said Rajiv Sharma, a senior wheat scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and country liaison officer for CIMMYT in Afghanistan. “Such varieties may comprise mixes of several seed types, including seed of weeds. They also give small harvests for which threshing is typically manual, with wooden rollers and animals, picking up sticks, stones, and even animal excrement that greatly complicates cleaning the grain.”
Both women and men spoke favorably about how improved wheat varieties have eased women’s wheat cleaning work. “Improved seeds can provide clean wheat,” said an 18-year old woman from one of the study’s youth focus groups in Panali, Afghanistan. “Before, we were washing wheat grains and we exposed it to the sun until it dried. Machineries have [also] eased women’s tasks.”
Finally, Sharma noted that bountiful harvests from improved varieties often lead farmers to use mechanical threshing, which further reduces work and ensures cleaner grain for household foods.
Gennovate: A large-scale, qualitative, comparative snapshot
Conceived as a “bottom-up” idea by a small gender research team of CGIAR in 2013, Gennovate involves 11 past and current CGIAR Research Programs. The project collected data from focus groups and interviews involving more than 7,500 rural men and women in 26 countries during 2014-16.
According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if women farmers had the same access to resources as men, agricultural output in developing countries would rise by an estimated average of as high as 4 percent. Photo: CIMMYT archives
Some 2,500 women and men from 43 rural villages in 8 wheat-producing countries of Africa and Asia participated in community case studies, as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.
“Across wheat farm settings, both men and women reported a sense of gradual progress,” said Lone Badstue, gender specialist at CIMMYT and Gennovate project leader. “But women still face huge challenges to access information and resources or have a voice in decision making, even about their own lives.”
According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if women farmers, who comprise 43 per cent of the farm labor force in developing countries, had the same access to resources as men, agricultural output in 34 developing countries would rise by an estimated average of as high as 4 percent.
“Gender-related restrictions such as limitations on physical mobility or social interactions, as well as reproductive work burden, also constitute key constraints on rural women’s capacity to innovate in agriculture,” Badstue explained.
Gender equity drives innovation
The Gennovate-wheat report identified six “positive outlier communities” where norms are shifting towards more equitable gender relations and helping to foster inclusiveness and agricultural innovation. In those communities, men and women from all economic scales reported significantly higher empowerment and poverty reductions than in the 37 other locations. Greater acceptance of women’s freedom of action, economic activity, and civic and educational participation appears to be a key element.
“In contexts where gender norms are more fluid, new agricultural technologies and practices can become game-changing, increasing economic agency for women and men and rapidly lowering local poverty,” Badstue said.
The contributions and presence of CIMMYT in Afghanistan, which include support for breeding research and training for local scientists, date back several decades. In the last five years, the Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan (ARIA) of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation & Livestock (MAIL) has used CIMMYT breeding lines to develop and make available to farmers seed of 15 high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties.
GENNOVATE has been supported by generous funding from the World Bank; the CGIAR Gender & Agricultural Research Network; the government of Mexico through MasAgro; Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); numerous CGIAR Research Programs; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Breaking Ground is a regular series featuring staff at CIMMYT
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Social inequality, including gender discrimination, hinders the potential for economic development, a key focus of the agriculture for development community.
Women in developing countries make up more than 40 percent of waged farmworkers, a percentage that is even higher if unwaged farm work is included, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Despite their significant representation in the sector, women often experience acute poverty due to unequal access to seeds, fertilizer, land and other agricultural necessities.
The challenges are great, but the aim of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls everywhere by 2030 is entrenched in the international development framework by the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Spurred on by the SDGs, gender has become a key agricultural research and policy focus for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR system research programs in recent years.
“Despite improvement, there are still several opportunities which could significantly decrease inequality between men and women,” said CIMMYT gender researcher Anya Umantseva. “Little data exists on gender roles in rural communities and most importantly, a systematic integration of social components like gender into scientific, data-based research could really help expand outcomes and impacts to more women as well as men.
“Women in rural communities often face very strict gender norms,” said Umantseva, referring to local women’s and men’s expected roles and behaviors. “What we’re trying to do is see how these norms influence the way men and women adopt agricultural innovations, and how adoption of different innovations affects gender norms across different communities.”
Umantseva is one of many researchers working on GENNOVATE – a global comparative research initiative, which addresses the question of how gender norms influence men, women and youth to adopt innovation in agriculture and natural resource management.
Gender norms include restricted access to land and financial resources, or even the social taboo of walking alone as a woman, can make it difficult to have equal access to agricultural trainings and other farming inputs, she explained.
Umantseva grew up in Yurga, Russia during the country’s economic transition to capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union. “Witnessing the abrupt change of political-economic regimes, and the impact it had on society, shaped my interest in social sciences and anthropology,” she said. “I decided that I wanted to study how social norms and culture are historically constructed.”
“Gender in agricultural research for development is not an isolated topic; it is deeply intertwined with social inclusion of disadvantaged groups in general,” Umantseva said. “Gender is not just about men and women, but who these men and women are. Through GENNOVATE we want to go deep into their stories, their socio-economic status, religion, position in the family and more.”
Around 8,000 rural study participants of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds reflected on gender norms and how these social rules affect their ability to access, adapt and benefit from innovations in agricultural and natural resource management.
“GENNOVATE is the first attempt of this scale providing this type of gender-based data for agricultural research for development initiatives,” said Umantseva. “But most importantly, we want to convince the research for development community of the important opportunities, that insights from this kind of data, can bring. It might not always be easy to integrate gender into research, and may require us to do certain things a little differently, but it is necessary if we want to have inclusive development impact.”
Along with other researchers, Umantseva is analyzing GENNOVATE data to produce a series of reports, journal articles and other products so researchers and project managers can begin incorporating GENNOVATE’s findings into their work.
“Right now we’re looking at men and women who have successfully adopted agricultural innovations and what factors their success might have in common, and how men and women differ in adoption. We hope to produce a paper on these findings sometime this year,” said Umantseva.
Umantseva received her bachelor’s degree in linguistics and translation from Russia’s Tomsk State University. She then went on to pursue a master’s at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where she studied minority policies, ethnic relations and gender norms.
Before she joined CIMMYT in 2016, she worked at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, focusing on human trafficking and migration. She currently lives in Mexico City and is based at CIMMYT’s Headquarters in El Batan, outside Mexico City.
Surinder K. Vasal, former CIMMYT maize scientist and World Food Prize laureate, with Natalia Palacios, head of the CIMMYT maize quality laboratory, and Martin Kropff, CIMMYT director general, helped unveil the plaque in honor of Dr. Evangelina Villegas. (Photo: A. Cortés/CIMMYT)
El BATAN, Mexico, (CIMMYT) – To celebrate and expand the legacy of the late Evangelina Villegas Moreno, a pioneering Mexican cereal chemist who won the 2000 World Food Prize for co-developing quality protein maize, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has named its maize quality laboratory in her honor.
A memorial plaque was unveiled on 6 June by Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general, at the entrance of the CIMMYT lab that generates crucial grain quality data for the center’s global maize breeding efforts.
“What better way to honor Dr. Villegas’ accomplishments than to have a CIMMYT maize quality lab named after her?” Kropff said. “The center is proud to have counted among its ranks a professional like Dr. Villegas, a pioneering Mexican scientist whose contributions to nutrition and food security will continue to resonate in impoverished regions.”
Breeding lines and populations from CIMMYT’s maize program are used in 100 countries and result in high-yielding, resilient varieties and hybrids grown on at least 20 million hectares throughout the tropics and subtropics.
One derivative of that work, known as quality protein maize (QPM), was developed by Villegas and Surinder K. Vasal, another former CIMMYT maize breeder and distinguished scientist, with whom she shared the 2000 World Food Prize.
Maize grain is rich in carbohydrates but poor in protein. In particular, it is lacking in the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which are key protein building blocks in human diets. QPM grain contains more of those amino acids and so offers better nutrition for people with heavily maize-based diets, as is the case in parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
A 2009 study in the science journal Food Policy found that eating QPM instead of conventional maize resulted in respective 12 and 9 percent increases in growth rates for weight and height, in infants and young children with mild-to-moderate undernutrition and where maize constituted the major staple food.
“Today, almost 30 years after Villegas retired from CIMMYT, the chemical and analytical approaches she developed still underpin work to monitor protein quality in QPM,” said Natalia Palacios, CIMMYT maize nutrition quality specialist and current head of the renamed lab. Together with Kropff, Vasal and Villegas’ sister, Juana Villegas Moreno, Palacios helped unveil the new plaque in a ceremony attended by 100 current and former CIMMYT personnel and Villegas’ family members.
Groundbreaker in science and society
Known as “Eva” to colleagues, Villegas, who passed away in April 2017, was born in Mexico City in 1924 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and biology at Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute, at a time when higher education for women was still a novelty.
In 1950, she began her career as a chemist and researcher at Mexico’s National Institute of Nutrition and at the Office of Special Studies, an initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government that was CIMMYT’s precursor.
She returned to CIMMYT in 1967, after earning a Master of Science degree in cereal technology from Kansas State University and a doctoral degree in cereal chemistry and breeding from North Dakota State University.
Villegas worked with Vasal in CIMMYT’s QPM breeding program, which operated from 1970 to 1985. Requiring the capacity to select for intricate gene combinations before the advent of DNA markers or genetic engineering, the program could not have succeeded without the support of Villegas’ lab and science, according to Vasal.
“I would call it exemplary interdisciplinary work (for) a breeder and a biochemist,” said Vasal. “Her lab analyzed 26,000 grain samples or more a year and provided the data in time for us to sow or pollinate experimental lines. Eva also furnished valuable critical suggestions that improved our breeding work.”
In a message read at the unveiling, Sanjaya Rajaram, 2014 World Food Prize recipient and former CIMMYT wheat scientist and program director, recalled Villegas’s significant contributions to the center’s wheat breeding research, which included establishing the center’s wheat industrial quality lab.
An inspiration in science to improve nutrition
Villegas’ prizes and professional recognitions include the 2000 Woman of the Year award of the Mexican Women’s Association, presented to her by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. In 2001 Villegas was named to Alpha Delta Kappa’s prestigious list of International Women of Distinction and received the Lazaro Cardenas Medal from the National Polytechnic Institute. In 2013 Kansas State University (KSU) honored Villegas with an Outstanding Alumni Award.
“As a scientist, as a woman and as a Mexican, Villegas will continue to inspire future generations working to enhance food security and nutrition for the disadvantaged,” said Palacios.
CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Margaret Krause, a doctoral candidate in plant breeding at Cornell University, became interested in science and nature at an early age. She recalls growing and crossing flowers as a teenager, transferring the pollen from one plant to another as she had learned in biology class.
“I had little exposure to agriculture or how food is produced,” explained Krause. “When I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota in 2009, I was unsure how these interests would eventually translate into a career.”
Fast-forward to 2017, and Krause is serving as the U.S. Borlaug Fellow in Global Security at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the bread wheat breeding program and is one of five recipients of the 2017 Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum (WIT) Early Career Award.
“The goal of the award is to provide professional development opportunities and a support network for these women in the future,” said Maricelis Acevedo of the Delivering Genetic Gains in Wheat Project at Cornell University, while presenting the WIT winners during CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program Visitors’ Week in March.
In the following interview, Krause shares past experiences, her thoughts about the relevance of the award for future generations and her own career direction.
Q: When did you first become interested in agriculture?
A few weeks into my first semester of undergrad, University of Minnesota alumnus and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Norman Borlaug, passed away. Interested in learning more about his contributions, I attended a memorial ceremony on campus. I was inspired by Dr. Borlaug’s work to improve crops around the world and I began to realize that the field of plant breeding combined my interest in science and the natural world with my desire to improve livelihoods and the environment on a global scale.
Around the same time, I was looking for a part-time job on campus and, coincidentally, the wheat breeding lab was hiring an undergraduate laboratory assistant. Despite my lack of experience, I was hired. I got my start in this world assisting graduate students in the lab, greenhouse and field with wheat breeding and genetics experiments and since then I’ve never looked back.
Q: Tell us about the steps that led you here.
I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2014 with a bachelor’s in applied plant science. As an undergraduate, I researched the genetic mechanisms that govern the plant’s response to fungal diseases in both wheat and barley. I also participated in two summer internships with Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer.
As a doctoral candidate in plant breeding at Cornell, my research interests focus on integrating new phenotyping, genotyping and environmental-sensing techniques to develop new wheat varieties for a range of environmental conditions. I’m currently working with CIMMYT conducting my dissertation research with the Global Wheat Program.
Q: What does receiving theWomen in Triticum award mean to you?
It’s an honor to join this international community of women who have also focused their careers around improving livelihoods worldwide by delivering higher-yielding, nutritious and climate-resilient crop varieties. I’m most excited about the opportunity to be joining this network so that we may support one another and learn from each other, as we grow in our careers.
Q: Why is it important to have such a community of women?
There is a plethora of research documenting the importance of including women in the scientific process, but female agricultural scientists continue to face challenges and inequalities when entering the workforce.
Female scientists bring a variety of experiences and viewpoints that may benefit scientific advancement and improve the situation for other women, but studies have shown that they can encounter difficulties in accessing funding, seeking promotions or participating in conferences. Most shocking is that these challenges exist for female scientists in developing and developed countries alike.
Q: What are you currently working on with CIMMYT?
I will be spending a total of two years at CIMMYT, working with the Global Wheat Program to develop new strategies for breeding wheat varieties adapted to different environments. We are interested in integrating advanced genotyping technologies, high-throughput phenotyping techniques and environmental information into prediction models for crop performance. The goal is to more quickly and efficiently develop new, climate-resilient wheat varieties that are tailored to perform well under different environmental conditions.
Currently I’m located at the Campo Experimental Norman E. Borlaug in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico. This past season I worked with CIMMYT’s Bread Wheat Breeding and Wheat Physiology Programs to operate small unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with cameras and sensors in the field. These tools allow us to track each wheat variety’s growth and development throughout the season; the response to stress and the data acquired will be used to improve the efficiency of selection.
Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I envision myself pursuing a career in agricultural research with the primary focus being global development. I would love to be involved in collaborative research projects aimed at developing climate resilience in agricultural production, improving the nutritional quality of food systems, or addressing the agricultural needs of marginalized communities.
I also hope to continue mentoring students interested in plant sciences and to become more active in educating broader audiences about agriculture through science communications platforms.
Farmers head home after harvesting maize in Chipata district, Zambia. CIMMYT/Peter Lowe
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Compiling gender-inclusive data could help scientists understand how to help smallholder farmers improve nitrogen fertilizer application practices, according to a new research paper.
Smallholder maize and wheat farmers need to make use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer alongside other good agronomic practices to produce healthy and productive crops, but nitrogen can be misapplied.
Fertilizer overuse can be harmful to plants and soil, contaminate drinking water and kill off fish species. Additionally, nitrogen fertilizer produces nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, which contributes to climate change.
“Gender and environmentally-blind fertilizer policies have been the norm in many regions, leading to negative effects in both high and low nitrogen fertilizer use scenarios that impact most strongly on women and children”, said Clare Stirling, a senior scientist with the Sustainable Intensification Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
“Our study shows that moving towards a more balanced and efficient use of nitrogen fertilizer will significantly improve gender and social equity outcomes,” Stirling said, adding that such outcomes can only be brought about by significant socio-economic and cultural changes influencing gender and social norms.
“Agriculture needs to function within a ‘safe operating space’ for nitrogen,” she said. “We need to make sure that nitrogen use efficiency is neither too high nor too low. If it’s too high, soils are at risk of being mined and become degraded, if it’s too low, large amounts of reactive nitrogen are released to the environment.”
In developing countries, women make up about 43 percent of the agricultural labor force, but in comparison to men, they have access to only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs – such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information, according to the Farming First coalition
The lack of resource access puts women heads of household at a disadvantage. Even if they are primary decision makers, in general they are hampered by weaker socio-economic status, lower availability of male labor, lower access to markets, agricultural technologies, machinery, credit, collateral and advice, including on how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. As a result of unequal access, women use less fertilizer. They may also forgo food to ensure that children and other family members eat nutritious food, putting their own health at risk.
“There’s a growing consensus that gender gaps in access to inputs are in part behind differences in productivity and on-farm practices,” he said.
Women farmers who use too little nitrogen fertilizer are trapped in a negative cycle of lower crop yields and income, leading to a greater risk of household food and nutrition insecurity, the scientists said. On the other hand, where too much nitrogen fertilizer is used woman and children are likely to be the most vulnerable to suffering ill-health consequences.
Despite their significant role in agricultural production, particularly in the developing world, women are neglected in most development initiatives, suggesting that the returns on targeting women farmers in relation to promoting best practice fertilizer use, may be very high with respect to increasing production and incomes, according to the authors.
Due to their central role regarding child health, nutrition and education, women should be key beneficiaries of development efforts, the scientists argue.
“These factors make the case that the social returns on agricultural investments are higher when targeted to women,” Attwood said.
The scientists took several case studies from India and sub-Saharan Africa, confirming their theory that imbalanced nitrogen fertilizer use has a greater impact on women and children.
The first case study revealed clear connections between negative health outcomes for poor rural women and their infants and the timing of nitrogen fertilizer applications in India. The study showed that morbidity of the babies of poor rural women appears to be negatively affected through their mother’s work in rice paddy fields, where they absorb fertilizer-derived toxins.
The second case study suggests that applying nitrogen fertilizer to cash crops rather than staple food crops such as maize may contribute towards less food availability and poorer nutrition outcomes for families in some sub-Saharan African countries.
The third case study in Lake Victoria connects the dots between insufficient fertilizer use, soil degradation leading to soil erosion and runoff into the lake and health problems for both men and women. The presence of high levels of nitrogen in the lake due to poor land management is changing its ecology, affecting the lives of artisanal fisher communities and leading to higher rates of HIV/AIDS.
“As long as the majority of policy-makers and planners remain frozen into a conceptual lock-in oblivious to the gendered implications of technically balanced and socially balanced fertilizer use, women smallholder farmers will not reach their potential,” said Cathy Farnworth, a gender specialist working with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and lead author on the research paper.
“We need gender awareness in research studies and rural advisory services to develop appropriate strategies to reach and empower women in different households to help them act independently.”
The project was funded by CCAFS, Bioversity, CIMMYT, and the CGIAR Research Programs on wheat and maize.
Women account for over 50 percent of farmers in many parts of Africa. Photo: CIMMYT/Peter Lowe
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — In a special interview to mark International Women’s Day, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) gender and development specialist, Rahma Adam, detailed how her research aims to improve the agricultural productivity of women in southern and eastern Africa.
With women making up over 50 percent of farmers in many parts of Africa, it is essential to understand how gender roles, relations and responsibilities encourage and hinder their agricultural productivity, said Adam.
Understanding gender relations improves the work of researchers and development specialists to target programs in the correct areas and with right people in order to get the most impact, she said.
Conservation agriculture systems involve crop rotations and inter-cropping with maize and legumes to increase yields. Pictured here are conservation agriculture practitioner Lughano Mwangonde (L) and gender and development specialist Rahma Adam in Balaka district, Malawi. Photo: CIMMYT/Johnson Siamachira.
Sustainable intensification agriculture practices are aimed at enhancing the productivity of labor, land and capital without damaging the environment. In practice, sustainable intensification involves such conservation agriculture practices as minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and the use of inter-cropping and crop rotation to simultaneously maintain and boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment. It contributes to improved soil function and quality, which can improve resilience to climate variability.
Through SIMLESA, supported by the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Adam shares her findings with a network of stakeholders, such as governments and non-governmental organizations, aiding the delivery of agricultural technologies, taking into account gender norms to hold a greater chance of adoption.
We spoke to about her work in a short interview listen here or read below:
Q: Please explain a bit about your work. What is SIMLESA, where does it operate and what are its key objectives?
A: SIMLESA stands for, Sustainable Intensification of Maize and Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa, we are now in the second phase of the project. We focus on several things, providing the needed knowledge in terms of technology, improved varieties of seeds for maize and legumes and how to use them in the practice of sustainable intensification practices. The idea is to improve crop yields from current levels, that’s the basic idea of SIMLESA.
The project operates in mainly five countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia for Eastern Africa and Malawi and Mozambique for southern Africa. But we have three spill over countries where SIMLESA also have some activities, they are Rwanda, Botswana and Uganda.
We want to make sure farmers know the practices of sustainable intensification, they are able to use them, able to adapt them for the benefit of improving food security of the household and increase their livelihoods.
Q: Why is gender analysis important in meeting SIMLESA’s objectives?
A: Women in sub-Saharan Africa play a lion’s share of farming, the literature shows on average they farm as much as men, they make up 60 percent of farmers or more in some countries. Because they are the majority, there is no way we could put them on the back-burner, and not address or try to understand what are their constraints for agricultural production and agricultural marketing and all the other things that go with an agricultural household being successful in terms of their livelihoods.
It is very important to think about women, not alone, but also their relationships with men, we also have to think about who are their husbands. In sub-Saharan Africa most households are patriarchal, so they are male dominated, meaning a husband has much more say than the wife in terms of decision making in regards to what to grow, how much money should be spent that they have collected from agriculture, among other things.
It is important to not only think about how to improve the lives of women but also to understand the norms that go on. The institutional norms within a community, within a household and how they can play some sort of role that can either make a women successful or make a woman unsuccessful in terms of bringing up her household, in terms of the betterment of nutrition and schooling, etc.
It is a very complex issue. That’s why we cannot ignore gender itself as it sits in the rural households of Africa, because it is the nucleus of it. Once we understand how the relationship works between husband and wife or man and woman working within a society then we will be able to say how we can really propel sustainable intensification in these communities.
Q: Although rural women in southern and eastern Africa play crucial role in farming and food production why are they less likely to own land or livestock, adopt new technologies, or access credit?
A: Most of the problem of women’s lack of ownership of assets, such as land, among others stems from the institutional social norms of the communities in which they reside. Usually for patriarchal societies in sub-Saharan Africa, women are married into their husband’s home, and thus nearly all assets including land, livestock, improved or new technologies and money belong to their husbands and in some occasions, wives have very little say, with regards to those assets.
Because the major assets of the households are under the hands of the husband, it is hard for the wife to be able to access credit facilities, without involving the husband. As most of the credit and financial facilities, require a collateral, before they provide one a loan.
GENNOVATE focus groups testified to high rates of poverty reduction in communities with more numerous women-headed households. Photo: CIMMYT/P. Lowe
Sometimes change unfolds where least expected.
In many cultures, households headed by widows are among the poorest and most excluded population groups. Across diverse rural areas, and especially where customary laws continue to exert strong force, widows are fully expected to relinquish their family home, farmlands, livestock and other assets to their deceased husband’s family — leaving them destitute, even as they must alone provide for their children. The impoverishment and ostracism endured by women and children involved in divorce or separation can be even more severe as they may lose respect from the community.
However, stories of resilience, change and achievement emerged from the testimonies of many women running their own households who participated in a recent qualitative study exploring gender and innovation processes in 27 villages in maize farming regions of Ethiopia, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
The research, conducted under the umbrella of GENNOVATE, a CGIAR comparative research initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explored how gender norms affect agricultural innovation. It showed that many of the “unattached” women in our sample rated themselves as strongly empowered by their experiences with running their households and with managing their own farms and livestock and petty trades to make ends meet. Moreover, focus groups testified to some of the highest rates of poverty reduction in communities where we received reports of more numerous women-headed households.
These findings are consistent with wider trends underway in sub-Saharan Africa where women-headed households now constitute one-in-four of the region’s households and are experiencing faster poverty reduction than male-headed households, according to a recent World Bank study. Heavy male migration is part and parcel of these trends.
In our data we found many widows innovating in their agricultural livelihoods and working their way out of poverty.
“I am proud to say that I am one of them,” said a 42-year-old woman farmer from a village in Ethiopia, describing how she lifted her household out of poverty. “I have been moving up since I divorced my husband and started raising my eight children alone. I have rented land . . . and entered into equb (an informal savings group) to buy inputs for my land. I also am growing vegetables as well as selling firewood.”
In another Ethiopian village, a 35-year-old father of six and farmer relates how a widow in his village escaped poverty and became “known in the area for her bravery.” He shares the story of how she got ahead by processing and selling false banana (a root crop processed into a variety of staple goods) in the market, and using that income to purchase a heifer to get involved in cattle breeding activities.
We also heard about a 48-year-old woman in Ethiopia who separated from her husband and managed to provide for eight children by using farming techniques she learned from him and by planting improved maize seeds. She was also one of the first to cultivate potatoes in her area and became one of the female model farmers of her area.
GENNOVATE case studies reveal more restrictive gender norms in rural Ethiopia than other villages studied. Photo: CIMMYT/P. Lowe
The GENNOVATE case studies set in rural Ethiopia feature more restrictive gender norms — or societal rules governing men’s and women’s everyday behaviors — than many other villages we studied. These are communities where gender norms highly discourage women from participating in household decision making, moving about their village unaccompanied or engaging in paid work. In order to provide for themselves and their children, it is deemed acceptable for women who head their households to work around these social conventions.
Study participants were careful to distinguish between the more fluid gender norms that apply to widows and other women who head their households in comparison to the more restrictive norms for married women.
A participant in the focus group of poor women in a village of Malawi observed that it is easier for a widow to work for pay, “because they have no one to provide for their needs.”
“They are also free to make decisions about working because they are not controlled by their husbands like married women,” she added. In a poor indigenous community of Mexico, a member of the men’s nonpoor focus group declared that the only kind of women to leave their village in order to vend in a market would be widows, because otherwise women “work in the home.”
One of the most unexpected findings to emerge from the GENNOVATE maize case studies is the disproportionate numbers of women who report heading their households in our sample of semi-structured interviews with women “innovators.” They had been identified for these interviews because they are known in their village as liking to try out new things. Among the 54 women innovators interviewed, 21 — nearly 40 percent — report themselves as de jure heads of household — single, widowed, separated, or divorced. This figure does not include women interviewed who report their status as married but whose husbands may be away working. By comparison, among the 54 men innovators interviewed there was only one unmarried man and one widower.
“I have power and freedom to make most major life decisions because I’m now the husband and the wife,” said a 42 year-old widow and mother of six children from 2 to 19 years old from a village in Nigeria.
During her interview, she shared details of how her yields improved from adopting hybrid maize and new practices such as planting only two seeds per hole. “Before now, I used to drop four to five seeds in a hole,” she said, explaining that she learned about improved practices from the local extension agent.
Women who head their households often face great struggles. In Ethiopia, especially, but in other countries as well, testimonies gathered attest to the hard lives, impoverishment, loss of respect and exclusion still endured by women running their own households.
“All the burden is on me,” said a widow from a village in Nigeria, explaining the difficulty of taking responsibility for every aspect of caring for her family.
Yet, across diverse contexts, we find these women moving about the village, accessing information, interacting with the opposite sex, encountering opportunities to apply new learning and assuming leadership positions. Such findings suggest that surveys which target female-headed households, and compare them with male-headed households, may not accurately capture important barriers to agricultural innovations faced by most women.
Our research suggests that women heads of households may offer entry points for strengthening agricultural innovations at the local level as they can provide role models which may help to shift local normative environments for other women and men. More research is needed, however, to identify approaches for supporting these local change agents in ways that ease stigma, work burdens and other risks.
Patti Petesch is GENNOVATE’s expert advisor and a CIMMYT associate researcher.
Lone Badstue chairs the GENNOVATE Executive Committee and CIMMYT’s strategic leader for gender research.
