The first section of this paper outlines the effect of gender norms on the productivity and incomes of women in the agricultural sectors of various African countries. The main challenges faced by women in value chains are outlined, including limited land rights, lower education levels and lower financial inclusion, as well as traditional division of labour in the household. These constraints are examined in turn, and their implications in terms of agricultural productivity and earnings are discussed.
The findings of a Nigerian case study discussed in this paper indicate that the notion of wives of leisure is really not applicable to most women in Nigeria, as women have always worked. Even those in purdah engage in income generating activities within the confines of the compound. It is therefore wasteful to continue to by-pass or displace women in development. Selective mechanisation of difficult processes in agriculture could become a useful method of integrating women into, and enhancing their contributions to, development.
Women in agriculture are far from the end of poverty, zero hunger, quality education, and gender equality — some of the sustainable development goals that can be significantly improved if we achieve greater participation and better working conditions for women in agriculture.
Building on this potential, Katalyst’s Women’s Economic Empowement (WEE) sector designed an intervention to provide training in modern prawn cultivation techniques and input and create linkages between feed and aqua-chemical companies with women prawn farmers of the Jessore-Khulna Bagerhat Satkhira Narail belt. Through this intervention, 22,170 women farmers have improved access to quality inputs and relevant know-how.
This brief outlines why it is needed an index to measure and monitor women’s access to the services, markets, policies and other aspects constraining their ability to contribute to and benefit from opportunities in agriculture and agribusiness, especially in the developing world. This would allow policy-makers, women’s development advocates and development partners to better focus their efforts so they make agriculture work for women
Women play important roles at different nodes of both agricultural and off-farm value chains, but in many countries their contributions are either underestimated or limited by prevailing societal norms or gender-specific barriers. We use primary data collected in Asia (Bangladesh, Philippines) and Africa (Benin, Malawi) to examine the relationships between women’s empowerment, gender equality, and participation in a variety of local agricultural value chains that comprise the food system.
This paper documents a positive relationship between maize productivity in western Kenya and women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using indicators derived from the abbreviated version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Applying a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method to a data set of 707 maize farm households from western Kenya, we find that women’s empowerment in agriculture significantly increases maize productivity.
This Working Paper on Capacity Building is one of a series of 10 papers published alongside DFID's Research Strategy 2008-2013. It presents the case for DFID-funded research on Capacity Building - drawing on the responses given during a global consultation that DFID convened in 2007 about its future research.
The purpose of Working with Smallholders handbook is to enable the development of more sustainable, resilient and productive supply chains for agribusinesses and to illustrate the substantial development impact. Smallholder farmers are both an opportunity and a challenge for food and agribusiness companies. The predominance of smallholders in many frontier and emerging markets makes them an integral part of agribusiness supply chains. Many firms source from smallholders or are actively seeking to source from them. Calls for fairer, more inclusive supply chains will hasten this trend.
This report refers to the workshop which was held on October 21-25, 2013 at ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya. The workshop involved a variety of sessions which made use of presentations, card exercises, group work and discussions to facilitate the engagement of the participants in sharing, learning, discussing and planning around CapDev in CGIAR. This report provides an overview of the workshop sessions, focusing mainly on the key discussion topics, results and next steps.