Download or read book Qualitative research on women s empowerment and participation in agricultural value chains in Bangladesh written by Rubin, Deborah and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2018-10-12 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bangladesh, IFPRI has received support from USAID through its Policy Research and Strategy Support Program in Bangladesh (PRSSP) to work in the geographic areas targeted by Feed the Future interventions (known as the Zone of Influence) to construct this new WEAI4VC module. The qualitative research study, conducted by IFPRI field officers, complements a 1,200 household quantitative survey, looking in greater depth at the individual, household, and community level experiences of men and women to understand the consequences of value chain participation on them as producers, entrepreneurs, and wage workers on women’s empowerment. The quantitative study sampled 400 households for each of the three economic activities of interest – (1) agricultural production, (2) agricultural entrepreneurship, and (3) agriculture sector employment. It was carried out in ten administrative units (upazilas or sub-districts), and five villages in each upazila to total 50 villages.

Download or read book Does market inclusion empower women Evidence from Bangladesh written by Raghunathan, Kalyani and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increased market inclusion through participation in agricultural value chains may increase employment and household incomes, but evidence on its empowerment impacts is mixed. In societies with restrictive social norms, greater market inclusion can enhance existing income and empowerment inequalities by relegating marginalized groups, including women, to low value chains or lower value nodes within those chains. We use primary data from rural Bangladesh to investigate the associations between households’ primary economic activity – agricultural wage-earning, production, or entrepreneurship – and absolute and relative levels of men’s and women’s empowerment. Women in producer households, on average, fare better on empowerment outcomes than women in wage-earner or entrepreneur households; the opposite is true for men. The gap between men’s and women’s empowerment scores is also lowest in producer households. A decomposition of these results into composite indicators yields insights into potential trade-offs, while accompanying qualitative work highlights the importance of social and cultural norms in shaping the economic roles women can adopt. With a push towards diversification of agriculture into higher value market-oriented crops, more careful programming is needed to ensure that market inclusion translates into an increase in women’s empowerment.

Download or read book Empowerment in agricultural value chains Mixed methods evidence from the Philippines written by Hazel J. Malapit and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women’s participation and empowerment in value chains are goals that concern many development organizations, but there has been limited systematic, rigorous research to track these goals between and within value chains (VCs). We use the survey-based project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) to measure women’s and men’s empowerment in the abaca, coconut, seaweed, and swine VCs in the Philippines. Results show that most women and men in all four VCs are disempowered, but unlike in many other countries, Filipino women in this sample are generally as empowered as men. Pro-WEAI results suggest that respect within the household and attitudes about gender-based violence (GBV) are the largest sources of disempowerment for both women and men, followed by control over use of income and autonomy in income-related decisions. Excessive workload and lack of group membership are other important sources of disempowerment, with some variation across VCs and nodes along VCs. Across all four VCs, access to community programs is associated with higher women’s empowerment, and access to extension services and education are associated with higher men’s empowerment. Our results show that, despite the egalitarian gender norms in the Philippines, persistent gender stereotypes influence men’s and women’s empowerment and VC participation.

Download or read book Gender dynamics in value chains written by Pyburn, Rhiannon and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 20 years, value chain development (VCD) initiatives and value chain research have increasingly integrated gender dimensions to allow for gender-differentiated employment and income opportunities and other benefits for women and men, and to address the exploitation of women’s labor (Pyburn and Kruijssen 2021). This research often addresses constraints to women’s participation in specific value chains, such as administrative procedures in transboundary fish trade (Ratner et al. 2018) or disproportionate harassment of women food traders by authorities in Nigeria (Resnick et al. 2019). This brief draws on research conducted under the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) to illustrate how VCD supports and constrains progress toward gender equality and women’s empowerment. In particular, the brief summarizes work from a portfolio of six PIM co-funded projects (2020–2021) on gender dynamics in value chains beyond the production node and single commodity analysis (Box 1), a book chapter in a CGIAR-wide gender publication (Pyburn and van Eerdewijk 2021), the Pro-WEAI (project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index) for Market Inclusion, and other gender-integrated value chain work within PIM (Crimi 2018; Vos and Pyburn 2021), and provides an outlook for future research.

Download or read book Measuring empowerment across the value chain The evolution of the project level Women s Empowerment Index for Market Inclusion pro WEAI MI written by Malapit, Hazel J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2023-03-09 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many development agencies design and implement interventions that aim to reach, benefit, and empower rural women across the value chain in activities ranging from production, to processing, to marketing. Determining whether and how such interventions empower women, as well as the constraints faced by different value chain actors, requires quantitative and qualitative tools. We describe how we adapted the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (pro-WEAI), a mixed-methods tool for studying empowerment in development projects, to include aspects of agency relevant for multiple types of value chain actors. The resulting pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) includes quantitative and qualitative instruments developed over the course of four studies. Studies in the Philippines (2017), Bangladesh (2017), and Malawi (2019) were intended to diagnose areas of disempowerment to inform programming, whereas the Benin (2019) study was an impact assessment of an agricultural training program. The pro-WEAI+MI includes all indicators included in pro-WEAI, plus a dashboard of complementary indicators and recommended qualitative instruments. These tools investigate the empowerment of women in different value chains and nodes and identify barriers to market access and inclusion that may restrict empowerment for different value chain actors. Our findings highlight three lessons. First, the sampling strategy needs to be designed to capture the key actors in a value chain. Second, the market inclusion indicators cannot stand alone; they must be interpreted alongside the core pro-WEAI indicators. Third, not all market inclusion indicators will be relevant for all value chains and contexts. Users should research the experiences of women and men in the target value chains in the context of the programto select priority market inclusion indicators.

Download or read book Empowerment of Rural Women in Bangladesh written by Shahnaj Parveen and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the author's dissertation and field studies carried out in 2003 in three villages in Mymensingh district. Assesses the perceived status of rural women and gender division of labour at household level. Analyses the nature of rural women's empowerment and factors influencing it, and develops a strategic framework for promoting the status of rural women.

Download or read book Development of the project level Women s Empowerment in Agriculture Index pro WEAI written by Malapit, Hazel J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.

Download or read book Migration Labor and Women s Empowerment written by Alan de Brauw and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a substantial portion of the rural labor force migrates to urban areas, it is commonly assumed that women could take over traditionally male tasks in agricultural production, with potentially empowering outcomes for women. We study how changes in the supply of labor may influence female labor participation and empowerment outcomes. Using a detailed panel dataset on jute producers in Bangladesh, we test whether out-migration of household members and perceived labor shortages are associated with the share of household and hired labor performed by women, and women's empowerment. When a household experiences reduced household or hired labor supply, we observe a relatively larger use of female household labor but not of female hired labor. We find that reduced male household labor supply is associated with improved wages mainly for male laborers, whereas reduced female household labor is associated with improved wages for male laborers and enhanced empowerment of other women in the household. These findings suggest that given existing gender norms, male and female labor are not perfect substitutes for one another, and as a result, male outmigration is not associated with improved outcomes for women in cash crop production. Our results demonstrate a need for better understanding of the role of gender in rural labor markets, particularly in contexts of rapid urbanization.

Download or read book Women s empowerment and crop diversification in Bangladesh A possible pathway to climate change adaptation and better nutrition written by De Pinto, Alessandro and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The existing literature shows that climate change will likely affect several of the dimensions that determine people’s food security status in Bangladesh, from crop production to the availability of food products and their accessibility. Crop diversification represents a farm-level response that reduces exposure to climate-related risks and it has also been shown to increase diet diversity and contribute to the reduction in micronutrient deficiencies. In fact, the Government of Bangladesh has several policies in place that encourage and support agricultural diversification. However, despite this support the level of crop diversification in the country remains low. Women empowerment has been linked to diversified diets and positively associated with better child nutrition outcomes. Furthermore, although traditionally their role in agriculture tends to be undervalued, women involvement has already been shown to affect agricultural production choices and enhance technical efficiency. This paper connects three different areas of inquiry - climate change, gender and nutrition – by exploring whether women’s empowerment in agricultural production leads to increased diversification in the use of farmland. Specifically, we use a series of econometric techniques to evaluate whether there is sufficient evidence to claim that a higher levels of empowerment lead to greater diversity in the allocation of farmland to agricultural crops. Our results reveal that indeed some aspects of women empowerment, but not all, lead to a more diversified use of farmland and to a transition for cereal production to other uses like vegetables and fruits. These findings provide some possible pathways for gender-sensitive interventions that promote crop diversity as a risk management tool and as a way to improve the availability of nutritious crops.

Download or read book Empowering women in agriculture The role of the WEAI in Bangladesh written by Ahmed, Akhter and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empowering women is crucial for a country's development because it leads to greater economic growth, increased productivity, and improved social outcomes. When women have access to education, economic opportunities, and decision-making power, they are better able to contribute to their families and communities. This can lead to increased income, improved health and education outcomes, and reduced poverty. In Bangladesh, women and girls still face considerable barriers to accessing education and economic opportunities, and are often subjected to traditional gender roles that may hinder them. Although women play a crucial role in agriculture, they experience many challenges that limit their productivity and economic potential, such as limited access to credit and training. They are also often marginalized and excluded from decision-making processes. As the complexity and importance of gender equity in development work has increased, so too has the need to measure empowerment and progress made toward improving empowerment and achieving gender parity. In Bangladesh, there has been growing momentum by the government and development partners to use evidence to inform gender-sensitive and -responsive policies and programs. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has emerged as a key tool to achieve this objective. This brief examines how WEAI data have informed and supported the design of policies and programs to promote women's empowerment in Bangladesh.

Download or read book Women s Empowerment in Agriculture written by Esha Sraboni and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women’s low status and persistent gender gaps in health and education in South Asia contribute to chronic child malnutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even as other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, have improved. This is particularly relevant for Bangladesh, where chronic food insecurity continues to be an important issue despite steady advances in food production. To be able to leverage agriculture as an engine of inclusive growth, there is a need to develop indicators for measuring women’s empowerment, examine its relationship to various food-security outcomes, and monitor the impact of interventions to empower women. Using nationally representative survey data from Bangladesh, we examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and two measures of household food security: per adult equivalent calorie availability and dietary diversity. We use the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index to assess the extent of women’s empowerment in agriculture and instrumental variables techniques to correct for the potential endogeneity of empowerment. We find that the overall women’s empowerment score, the number of groups in which women actively participate, women’s control of assets, and a narrowing gap in empowerment between men and women within households are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity.

Download or read book Women s empowerment agricultural extension and digitalization Disentangling information and role model effects in rural Uganda written by Lecoutere, Els and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many developing countries, agricultural extension services are generally biased towards men, with information targeted mainly to male members of a farming household and in formats that are rarely tailored to female members. Nevertheless, female farmers may also benefit from such services as this may affect their ability to make informed decisions, resulting in increased farm productivity, household income, and welfare. We conduct a gendered field experiment among maize-farming households in eastern Uganda to test whether video-enabled extension messaging affects outcomes related to maize cultivation. In this experiment, men, women, and couples are shown randomly assigned videos about improved maize management practices in which male, female, or both male and female actors are featured. We first vary exposure to the videos by gender to test the effects of changes in intra-household information asymmetries, investigating whether involving women as recipients of information increases their ability to participate in household decision-making, and thus their involvement in household production choices. We then vary exposure to the gender of the actors in the videos to test for role-model effects, exploring whether involving women as information messengers challenges the idea that decision-making is a predominantly male domain, in turn affecting women’s outcomes. Results show that targeting women with information increases their knowledge about improved maize management practices, their role in agricultural decision-making, the adoption of recommended practices and inputs, production-related outcomes, and the quantity of maize women sell to the market. Results for the role-model effects are mixed, and are evident more in joint household outcomes than individual women’s outcomes. Overall, our findings suggest that in the context of our study, extension efforts aimed at directly addressing intra-household information asymmetries may be a first-best means of empowering women in agriculture. Other, more subtle means that seek to influence perceptions and norms about gendered roles in the household may not generate expected effects or work via expected impact pathways, though they remain worth further exploration.

Download or read book Gender Agriculture and Agrarian Transformations written by Carolyn E. Sachs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents research from across the globe on how gender relationships in agriculture are changing. In many regions of the world, agricultural transformations are occurring through increased commodification, new value-chains, technological innovations introduced by CGIAR and other development interventions, declining viability of small-holder agriculture livelihoods, male out-migration from rural areas, and climate change. This book addresses how these changes involve fluctuations in gendered labour and decision making on farms and in agriculture and, in many places, have resulted in the feminization of agriculture at a time of unprecedented climate change. Chapters uncover both how women successfully innovate and how they remain disadvantaged when compared to men in terms of access to land, labor, capital and markets that would enable them to succeed in agriculture. Building on case studies from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book interrogates how new agricultural innovations from agricultural research, new technologies and value chains reshape gender relations. Using new methodological approaches and intersectional analyses, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agriculture, gender, sustainable development and environmental studies more generally.

Download or read book Engendering Agricultural Research Development and Extension written by Ruth Meinzen-Dick and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Can Dairy Value Chain Projects Change Gender Norms in Rural Bangladesh Impacts on Assets Gender Norms and Time Use written by Agnes R. Quisumbing and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value-chain projects are increasingly being used to link smallholders to markets. However, in contexts where women tend to own and control fewer assets than men, and are more likely to be involved in informal rather than formal market activities, there is potential for value-chain projects to have unintended consequences on gender dynamics. In particular, there is concern among project implementors regarding possible adverse effects for women in terms of shifting intrahousehold distribution of assets, gender norms, and household members' time allocation to various activities. Using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP) worked with CARE-Bangladesh to assess the impact of the Strengthening the Dairy Value Chain Project (SDVCP) on (1) women's ownership of assets, men's ownership of assets, and jointly held assets; (2) gender norms around asset ownership and control; (3) gender norms regarding decisionmaking in these areas surrounding the dairy value chain; and (4) trade-offs and time costs involved in project participation. We find that participation in SDVCP had significant positive impacts on the composition of household assets. SDVCP participants increased the value of livestock assets, as well as the value of agricultural and nonagricultural productive assets, relative to nonparticipant households that were similar prior to the program. While participation in the program increased the value of men's assets, it also increased the value of assets held jointly by men and women. This finding suggests that women were able to build up assets, not by acquiring assets that they exclusively owned, but by acquiring jointly owned assets. We also find that program participation tended not to affect who makes dairy-related decisions. Regardless of SDVCP participation, dairy-related decisions involving financial outlays or inflows were made by husbands, while those about allocation of milk not for sale were made by wives. However, SDVCP participation had a modest impact on men's and women's decisionmaking within the household, favoring greater participation of women in household decisions and greater control by women of money for household expenses. SDVCP also increased women's mobility and ability to access value-chain services (input dealers, livestock health workers, milk collection points) both inside and outside the community. SDVCP participation also increased households' time allocation to the specific dairy activities encouraged by the program, particularly activities related to livestock health and hygiene. This increase in time allocation was borne mostly by adult women. SDVCP also increased women's time spent on dairy activities located within the homestead, while it increased adult men's time spent on dairy activities that required leaving the homestead. There was no significant impact on young girls' time devoted to dairy activities, but there was a small increase among young boys. We find that the increased allocation of adult women's time for dairy activities came at the expense of their time in household activities, with young girls (but not boys) consequently increasing their time in domestic work.

Download or read book Challenging Chains to Change written by Anna Laven and published by Kit Pub. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very often, efforts to improve value chains miss out half of the population - the female half. It is men who sell the products and who keep the money from those sales. The women, who do much of the work but are not recognized for it, often have to work even harder to meet ever-increasing quality requirements. But they see few of the benefits. How to change this? This book explains how development organizations and private entrepreneurs have found ways to improve the position of women in value chains - especially small scale women farmers and primary processors. It outlines five broad strategies for doing this: (1) working with women on typical "women's products" such as shea, poultry and dairy; (2) opening up opportunities for women to work on what are traditionally "men's commodities" or in men's domains; (3) supporting women and men in organizing for change by building capacity, organization, sensitization and access to finance; (4) using standards and certification to promote gender equity, and (5) promoting gender-responsible business. The book draws on dozens of cases from all over the world, covering a wide range of crops and livestock products. These include traditional subsistence products (such as rice), small-scale cash items (honey, vegetables) as well as export commodities (artichokes, coffee) and biofuels (jatropha). The book includes a range of tools and methodologies for analyzing and developing value chains with gender in mind. By bringing together the two fields of gender and value chains, this book offers a set of compelling arguments for addressing gender in value chain development.

Download or read book Measuring Food Security Using Household Expenditure Surveys written by Lisa C. Smith and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: