The Need for Gender-Transformative ApproachesGender and Aquaculture: Equity and Empowerment in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Value Chains 24–25 February 2015

Afrina Choudhury, Gender Specialist, WorldFish, Bangladesh

• What are women-targeted technologies?

• How do study findings substantiate the need for gender-transformative approaches (GTAs)?

• What are gender-transformative approaches (GTAs), conceptually and practically?

Contents

Women-targeted technologies

Why target women? How?

Close to home for easy access (time and labor burden, mobility and access constraints)

More control over homestead assets

Income opportunity from an underutilized resource (without hindering other usage)

Enhanced resilience through diversified food and income options

Nutritional consumption enabled through small fish

Selection based on interest and close proximity to resources

Technical knowledge transfer through short-duration trainings

Coaching

Demonstration set up for practical learning and scaling out

Linkage events

Targeting women with technologies

Recent study confirms need for GTA

Introduction to research study

Rationale:• Research on agriculture and aquaculture technologies focuses

on testing and refining them to increase output. • There is a need to understand how the social and gender

relations in a local context shape how women and men adopt, use and adapt these technologies.

• Such knowledge will help to design more appropriate technologies and dissemination strategies that lead to independent uptake, sustained use and equitable development outcomes.

Research question: How do gender relations shape the uptake and use of aquaculture

technologies?

Research sites and methodology

Khulna District Barisal District TotalBohalia Jalapara Sarendrapur Lakripur

Innovation (cage or pond)

Cage Pond Cage Cage andpond

Project (CSISA-BD or AIN)

CSISA-BD AIN CSISA-BD CSISA-BD

Primary religious background

Hindu Muslim Muslim Muslim

FGDs 6 10 6 10 32

In-depth interviews 25 15 19 30 89

Total 31 25 25 40 121

Study findings: Technology users are embedded in a range of relationships

WorldFish project staff, officers and contact people

Relationships inside household

Projects want to involve or target women, but this requires the whole household to consent to attend training, provide inputs and investment, and provide labor time.

Attending training can affect these relationships:• Training affects the type of work women are perceived to be able to do.• Training affects how much work women do.

One woman (pond adopter in Khulna in her 30s with secondary education) said:

“[Husbands say,] ‘you have learned everything, fish farming along with vegetable farming. We husbands don’t have to do anything; you can do it all.’ Saying this, they leave it to us. Now [because of] training I am in another hassle—now the husbands don’t do things, and we have to.”

Household relationships can affect who controls the money and benefits.

Relationships inside household

Relationships among group

There are both benefits and drawbacks from a group.

Strong relationships help to foster technology use and benefit, especially for women.

“If I’m away, [my wife] can call our neighbors, like my brother’s wife. That is why this project was kept jointly.” (Male respondent, Barisal)

Lack of trust and certain power dynamics can affect the potential for pooling resources and sharing knowledge.

“When doing it together, someone does more. The person whose house the food is in gives food on two extra days. The person who doesn’t have the food in his house doesn’t remember and stays busy with other work. But if each one is on his own, each will remember about the work—that the work of looking after the fish has to be done first. Otherwise one sits in expectation of the other.” (Female respondent, Barisal)

Relationships among group

Inequalities within the community can lead to problems within households

“If anyone fails on any paper in an exam, then how does the heart feel? [The demonstration farmer] got this fish; how does her heart feel? And we who didn’t get the fish; how do our hearts feel? ... My husband also says, you go swaying to the meeting and come back swaying, but only the Anwar fisher’s wife got the fish …” (Female respondent, Barisal)

“My husband prohibited me from going to the [next] meeting. ‘You have been going to the meeting for so many days but they don’t give you anything.’ That is why the husband says it’s bad and forbids me.” (Female respondent, Khulna)

Another woman from the same village said, “My husband doesn’t help me with my work anymore … My husband says they don’t give you anything in your meeting.”

Relationships outside village

Potential trade-offs in testing technologies “Those who can afford to release fish worth 1000–2000 taka were given fish, and those who do not have the ability to release fish weren’t given fish. That’s why I say that the poor constantly have to bear kicks … Our space is small, and that is why we didn’t get fish.” (Female respondent, Khulna)

Managing expectations

Facilitating independent use:

•What processes?

•What technologies?

•What additional skills?

Relationships outside village

The need for gender-transformative approaches

Why gender transformative?

• Practice is lagging behind understanding.

• “Empowerment lite” does not lead to real and sustained change.

• Technical approaches and gap filling (e.g. delivering technologies to women) can accept or reinforce inequity.

• Gender integration without social change limits sustainability of impacts.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present … so we must think and act anew.”

Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1865

Key features of a gender-transformative approach

understands people and social diversity in their context

engages with both women and men

addresses unequal power relations

enables critical learning, reflection and questioning

fosters dynamic and multiscale change processes.

Gender-transformative research

Integrates efforts to redress gender disparities in resources, markets and technologies with complementary actions to address underlying social norms and power relations.

Institutions and

policies

Community

Individual

Research and development organizations

Technical interventions

Gender-transformative action

GTA mechanisms: Plans and possibilities

• household approaches to foster more equitable intrahousehold decision-making and relationships

• participatory action research (PAR)—experiential learning to build new capacities and recognition of those capacities

• technology training approaches that integrate social issue awareness (e.g. HKI manual)

• strategic gender initiatives to foster change in norms, attitudes and practices for positive development outcomes (e.g. communications for social change campaigns targeting different groups, gender champions)

• supporting collective action and networks.

GTA in Faridpur

New aquaculture technology dissemination approach

• The technology extension package is re-designed to combine technical aquaculture training with gender-consciousness-raising exercises from HKI’s Nurturing Connections manual.

• Training is modularized to interact with different stages of the production cycle and address social issues that may arise as a result of applying new knowledge.

• Changes in production and knowledge, attitudes and practices (both technical and social) are being monitored among participating women and their spouses through survey research methods and process documentation.

Sessions initiated

Baseline designed and conducted

HKI conducts TOT

Training designed

FGD

PAR on challenged ponds

Why is this research important?•There are 4.27 million small shaded homestead ponds in Bangladesh (Ben and Arif 2012), which have the potential for enhanced fish productivity.•Traditional aquaculture technologies don’t work well in small shaded ponds. •Women’s engagement and preference for homestead shaded ponds provide opportunities for greater equity of benefits.

How this research is different?•It engages farmers as co-researchers in knowledge generation and analysis.•The research seeks to understand alternative food systems appropriate for shaded multi-use ponds.•The focus is on a regular off-take of fish for consumption as the primary objective.

• Key research question: What technologies lead to sustainable intensification and regular harvesting of fish from small homestead ponds, and how can these be developed and delivered in ways that lead to equitable benefits?

• Desired outcomes:

• increased productivity in small homestead ponds

• reduced external feed and fish seed inputs

• enhanced and more constant fish harvesting for consumption and income

• increased diversity of fish species

• increased equitable benefits for women.

• Key research interventions:

• research on appropriate fish species and density

• research on effects of diversity of fish habitats on fish productivity and reproduction

• understanding shaded pond food and energy cycle

• impacts of participatory action research on gender equity outcomes.

Gender and aquaculture review

Study conclusions

• Aquaculture training is leading to enhanced status and strengthened voice in intrahousehold bargaining, irrespective of methodology.

• Long-lasting and deeply held beliefs around gender roles and responsibilities can be challenged when women are involved in activities that bring clear economic benefits to their households, or that enable them to perform their culturally ascribed roles more effectively.

• However, the impacts of involving women can be temporary. Women may not be able to secure long-standing, sustainable change in their roles and responsibilities.

• Securing long-lasting change can only succeed if women and men themselves take charge of—and feel they benefit as individuals and as families from—changes in gender relations.

• Innovative methodologies for technology development and dissemination need to focus on promoting farmer adaptive capacity and enabling them to take charge of their own learning, which is not a gender-neutral process.

• Working with development partners, value chain actors, communities, families and individuals to remove gender-based constraints to women's full participation in aquaculture is essential.

Study conclusions

Thank You