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Integrating gender equity and empowerment in the Dairy Goat and Root Crop Production project: current issues and next steps

Alessandra Galiè Social Scientist: Gender, ILRI

Integrated Dairy Goat and Root Crop Production Workshop, ILRI Nairobi, 19 June 2013

Overview of presentation

• Why empowerment and gender equity in AR4D

• Status of empowerment and gender equity in

the project

• Next steps: integrating an empowerment

framework and pathway in the project

Gender equity and empowerment definitions

Empowerment is considered to be:• Change in power relations

• Domination by individuals over chance and circumstances

• Capability to negotiate, influence, hold institutions accountable

• A means to self-determination

Gender equity denotes the equivalence in life outcomes for women and men, recognising their different needs and interests, and requiring a redistribution of power and resources.

Sources: Kabeer 2010; Sen 1990

Why empowerment in agricultural research for development (AR4D)

Empowerment is considered a means for farmers to:

• Better participate in research

• Voice their needs and benefit from AR4D

• Safeguards their interests and livelihoods

• Achieve gender equity

Sources: Almekinders 2006; De Schutter 2009; Song 2010

Empowerment integration in projects

Empowerment is frequently integrated as:• A vague concept• An activity• An outcome of participatory approaches• An outcome of accessing financial resources • Any impact on the life of vulnerable groups

Gender equity and empowerment in the Dairy Goat and Root Crop project

Project objectives:– To analyse impacts (productivity, environmental, gender and

empowerment, food security and nutrition) of integrating improved goat breeds with sweet-potatoes and cassava into an agro-pastoral farming system (p. 13)

Project outcomes: – Increased ability of women to independently participate in various

stages of the value chains;

– More equitable social relationships between men and women involved in the goat and root crop value chains (p. 27)

Gender strategy and activities

Strategy: gender analysis to assess current situation; integration of gender in all project activities, M&E and Impacts; gender research to inform other interventions

Activities: • Capacity building of staff in gender analysis• Community trainings on gender awareness-raising• Inclusion of women in breeding, market, animal health activities• Provision of assets to women (joint ownership)• Support women’s special interest groups • Strategies to involve very poor households and youth• Gender analysis to enhance gender-equity • Integration of gender into project components

Findings and recommendations of the Mid-term evaluation

Findings• Gender equity as a key emergent property of system• Focus on transforming people’s normative

frameworks• Farmers limited involvement in the intervention

Recommendations• Research into development pathways• Gender empowerment framework

Key issues and research questions

• What do we mean by gender equity and empowerment?

• Do all women and men want the same development path?

• What activities contribute to empowerment and how?

• How do we measure progress towards empowerment?

From empowerment framework to empowerment pathway

Empowerment conceptual framework: – What is empowerment?

Empowerment pathway:– How do we translate empowerment framework

into local realities to achieve equity of development?

Developing an empowerment framework

Defining empowerment:• What do we mean with gender equity and empowerment?• Who decides which gender relations are ‘desirable’?

Empowerment as self-determination• What does it mean to (different) farmers?• What change based on current realities and aspirations?

Sources: Kabeer 2010; Sen 1990

Developing an empowerment pathway

• Adopt the Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis framework with farmers at local level

• Define indicators of change with farmers • Build in feed-back loops for accountability to

farmers and improved effectiveness

At what stage of the project do we integrate this new understanding?

Sources: Alvarez et al 2008; Jacobs 2010

Empowerment framework and pathway Gender analysis

Participatory ML&E

, Gender Strategy p.11

Integrating the empowerment framework and pathway into the project

Further questions

• Can gender analysis alone contribute to achieving empowerment

and gender equity?

• Who decides what are desirable gender relations?

• How do we accommodate alternative development paths?

• Where is empowerment in the research-to-development

continuum?

• Is a non-participatory project intrinsically disempowering?

• What about aspirations that ‘do not fit’ with our mandate?

Sources: Hellin et al 2007

Bibliography

• Almekinders, C. and J. Hardon, eds. 2006 Bringing Farmers Back into Breeding: Experiences with Participatory Plant Breeding (Wageningen: Agromisa Foundation).

• Alvarez, B. et al. 2008. Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis: A practical method for project planning and evaluation, ILAC Brief No. 17. The ILAC Initiative, Bioversity.

• De Schutter, O. 2009, “Seed Policies and the Right to Food: Enhancing Agrobiodiversity and Encouraging Innovation,” UN General Assembly, vol. 42473.

• Hellin, J. et al. 2007. Increasing the Impacts of Participatory Research. Experimental Agriculture, 44(01), pp. 81–95.

• Jacobs, A. 2010: Creating the missing feed-back loop, IDS Bulletin 41, 6. • Kabeer, N. 2010. Women’s Empowerment, Development Interventions and the

Management of Information Flows, IDS Bulletin 41, 6.• Sen, A. 1990. Development as Capability Expansion, in Human Development and the

International Development Strategy for the 1990s, ed. K. Griffi n and J. Knight (London: MacMillan)

• Song, Y. and R., Vernooy 2010. Seeds of Empowerment: Action Research in the Context of the Feminization of Agriculture in Southwest China, Gender Technology and Development 14, 1: 25– 44.