Many times, gender does not get a consideration at the inception of the project. It is often overlooked and then included ad hoc, and often in a hurry, during various stages of the research-for-development (R4D) project cycle. A rapid gender baseline or unnamed study may be conducted, or gender may be integrated in the mid-term assessment a few months or years into the project, or at the end of the project. To illustrate this, here are some quotes that reflect situations I have encountered in the past in the course of my research on gender and livestock.

Statements

• Graduate student (at a gender sensitization training): “My study is gendered: I have sampled bulls and cows!” … [applause]
• Livestock scientist (on phone at 4.00 pm): “Could you insert a gender paragraph here and there? These donors are on our back. I don’t understand them! Would you be so kind to send this proposal back first thing tomorrow? I’ll be eternally grateful. Tomorrow is the deadline for proposal submission.”
• Livestock scientist (at a workshop tea break): “These gender people like to interfere with other people’s work in order to make themselves relevant!”
• Livestock scientist (at a concept note development session): “I have two daughters, a wife and a mother. Of course I understand gender; these are people close to my heart.”

(Difficult) Dialogue

• Livestock scientist (just before a data collection field mission): “I have this focus group discussion checklist; could you please genderize it? I will be leaving for the airport in 30 minutes.”
• Gender scientist (to livestock scientist in a great hurry requiring ‘genderization’ of checklist pronto): “Just ask these same questions to women-only and men-only focus group discussions.”
• Livestock scientist (to gender scientist, in desperate exasperation and visibly exercising restraint): “That is impossible! We do not have the budget or time for so many focus group discussions. Please do something ‘reasonable’ that won’t cost us so much more time and money. We are really hard pressed. I’m sure there is a way. Please fix it.”

Strengthening the delivery of gender equity outcomes requires that research teams invest adequate time and effort into identifying appropriate gender analysis methods and tools. The methods and tools discussed here represent some that have been used with reasonable degrees of success, at different stages of the project cycle, in different studies.

Most tools used in data collection can be adopted for gender studies, but R4D projects tend to invest more in studies that will measure or establish changes and the direction of change in gender power relations that can be attributed to the R4D intervention. For example, asset accumulation is a desired outcome for most (if not all) R4D projects. Several gender integrated studies on the impact of gender-blind R4D projects have demonstrated that costs and benefits of such interventions are disproportionately experienced by women and men by virtue of their gender. For example, in agriculture or livestock interventions that increase production and participation (in terms of selling) in the formal markets, women often end up doing most of the work to ensure and sustain enhanced production, whereas men end up being the main actors in markets, receiving money from sales and controlling most of it. This applies to products that are considered to be traditionally women’s, like milk, chickens and eggs. This is unequal development.

Until recently, differences in benefits from interventions between women and men were supported by anecdotal evidence, which is not really convincing to policymakers, who prefer using measurable attributes that demonstrate significance in differences. Currently, quantitative measures of differences have been put in place by quantitative feminist researchers. These methods are strengthening the case for gendered differences in benefits from interventions and are now being used in R4D studies in tandem with qualitative methods more familiar among the gender researchers.

Among the popular qualitative methodologies used are focus group discussions, key informant interviews and in-depth individual case study interviews. The tools commonly used in qualitative studies include mapping tools (for example, resource maps, calendars and Venn diagrams) and pebble tools (for example, ranking, scoring, rating and proportion piling) (see Behrman et al. 2012 and Saghir et al. 2012 for a review on tools).

The main mode of quantitative data collection is the survey questionnaire at the household level. Questionnaires can also be administered to individuals from the same household as well as to an interest group. For the quantitative surveys, a random sample of individuals with attributes that represent those of the population must be obtained. Examples of quantitative study methods that have been used in gender impact evaluation studies include the gender and assets in agriculture (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 2010; Meinzen-Dick et al. 2011; Quisumbing et al. 2013 [forthcoming]) and the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) (Alkire et al. 2012).

References
Alkire S, Meinzen-Dick RS, Peterman A, Quisumbing AR, Seymour G and Vaz A. 2012. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. IFPRI Discussion Paper 01240.

Behrman J, Karelina Z, Peterman A, Roy S and Goh A. (eds). 2012. A toolkit on collecting gender and assets data in qualitative and quantitative program evaluations. Gender, Agriculture & Assets Project (GAAP) Technical Report. IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) and ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute). [Contributions from Agnes Quisumbing, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Jemimah Njuki, Nancy Johnson, Elizabeth Waithanji and Dee Rubin]. http://gaap.ifpri.info/files/2010/12/GAAP_Toolkit_Feb_14.pdf

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 2010. Agricultural development outcome indicators: Initiative and sub‐initiative progress indicators and pyramid of outcome indicators. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Meinzen-Dick R, Johnson N, Quisumbing A, Njuki J, Behrman J, Rubin D, Peterman A and Waithanji E. 2011. Gender, assets, and agricultural development programs: A conceptual framework. CAPRi Working Paper 99. IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), Washington, DC. http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/CAPRiWP99

Quisumbing A, Rubin D, Manfre C, Waithanji E, van den Bold M, Olney D and Meinzen-Dick R. Closing the gender asset gap: Learning from value chain development in Africa and Asia. The UN Foundation Trust (forthcoming 2013)

Saghir P, Njuki J, Waithanji E, Kariuki J and Sikira A. 2012. Potential of integrating improved goat breeds with sweet potatoes and cassava into agro-pastoral systems in selected districts of Tanzania: A gendered analysis. ILRI Discussion Paper No. 21. ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute), Nairobi, Kenya.

A mixed producer group on gender issues related to income sources, household expenditures and decision taking being trained (photo credit: ILRI/Birgit Boogaard)

A discussion paper titled ‘Reducing the gender gap in agricultural extension and advisory services: how to find the best fit for men and women farmers’, authored by among others, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Kathleen Colverson, has been published in the Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) this April.

‘The discussion paper addresses the concept of gender in agricultural extension and advisory services. It explores the significance of gender relations for the design, operation, and monitoring of agricultural extension and advisory services.

‘The report argues that reducing gender inequalities in access to productive resources and services could produce an increase in yields on women’s farms of between 20 percent and 30 percent, which could raise agricultural output in developing countries …..’

‘There are a number of compelling reasons why addressing gender issues in agricultural extension matters. These range from business case arguments that link reducing gender inequalities in extension services and agricultural production with improved institutional efficiency and development outcomes to development arguments that stress the importance of upholding international and national policy commitments eliminating discrimination between men and women and upholding gender equality….’

The Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) Discussion Paper series is designed to further the comparative analysis and learning from international extension efforts.

Read the whole article from the MEAS project website: www.meas-extension.org

Widowed farmer Maria Ngove feeds her goat in Lhate Village, Gurue, Mozambique. Gender researchers have called for more efforts towards building the evidence base on gender in agriculture and strengthening women’s assets (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) launched its 2012 Global Food Policy Report on 14 March 2013. This flagship report examines the major food policy developments during 2012 and covers various issues relating to global agricultural productivity, sustainable rural development and food security.

The report features a chapter on women in agriculture titled “Closing the Gender Gap“. In the chapter, IFPRI authors Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Agnes Quisumbing highlight case studies of gender-aware and gender-transformative approaches that have enhanced agricultural productivity and rural development.

One of these is a case study by CARE gender specialist Jemimah Njuki and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) postdoctoral scientist Elizabeth Waithanji on the gender inclusive approach used by the Gender, Agriculture and Assets Project (GAAP) in Mozambique that targeted both men and women in livestock ownership programs, farmer training and management of milk co-operative committees.

This integrated approach led to an increase in women’s livestock ownership, with more women having a say in decisions about managing livestock and greater control over the income from sale of milk.

Led by IFPRI and ILRI, the GAAP analyzes gender roles and accounts for gender differences within development interventions so that women’s assets are strengthened and gender equity is achieved.

While the chapter authors acknowledge that attention to gender in agriculture is not new, they note that it has not always been acted upon.

They also recognize that more efforts are required in future to build the base of research evidence on gender in agriculture so that women can participate as equal partners in development.

“The accumulating evidence shows that empowering women is not only important in its own right, but often highly conducive to improving agricultural productivity, food security, and nutrition,” the authors say.

Read the complete chapter here

A strategy combining activities that will simultaneously enhance livelihood and rights capabilities of target beneficiaries of development interventions appears to be a most  effective way of empowering women.

The strategy is also applicable for other marginalized groups. This strategy was the focus of discussions at a day-long workshop on integrating rights into livestock microcredit and value chain development programs for empowering women.

The workshop was held at the Nairobi headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on 25 February 2013 and hosted by ILRI’s Livelihoods, Gender and Impact Program.

Some 30 participants attended from the following institutions: CARE USA, the East Africa Dairy Development project (EADD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the Ford Foundation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), ILRI, Juhudi Kilimo, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), the University of Minnesota, the University of Nairobi, UN Women and the World Food Program.

Jemimah Njuki of CARE USA gave an introductory presentation on conceptualizing and measuring women’s empowerment, based on the approach used at CARE which considers three inter-related aspects: agency, structure and relations.

“We need to understand what empowerment is before we can measure it,” said Njuki.

Elizabeth Waithanji of ILRI then presented the findings of a pilot study in Kenya that measured the impacts of livestock microcredit and value chain projects on women’s empowerment using livelihood and rights indicators in an adapted Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI).

Postdoctoral scientist Elizabeth Waithanji presents findings of a pilot study in Kenya on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (photo credit: ILRI/Tezira Lore).

The pilot consisted of three case studies: a poultry value chain intervention project in Naivasha and Malindi (by KARI); a dairy value chain intervention project in Nandi and Bomet (by EADD) and a livestock microcredit project in Trans Nzoia (by Juhudi Kilimo).

The pilot used the adapted WEAI methodology to measure women’s empowerment and gender parity in empowerment between women and men in terms of livelihood indicators and rights.

The adaptation entailed adding a sixth dimension, health, to the traditionally five dimension WEAI in order to integrate rights into the index.

“The health domain focused on individuals’ attitudes towards gender-based violence and their ability to make decisions over their own reproductive health,” said Waithanji.

The WEAI is made up of two sub-indices. One measures the extent of women’s empowerment within five domains, namely, production, resources, income, leadership and time. The other measures gender parity in empowerment between women and men within dual-adult households and demonstrates the proportion of women who are as empowered as the men.

Using the 5-domain WEAI, a woman is considered empowered if she has adequate achievements in four of the five domains or in some combination of the weighted indicators that reflect 80% total adequacy.

With the adapted 6-domain WEAI, a woman was considered empowered if she had adequate achievements in four of the six domains or 64% adequacy from weighted indicators.

The 6-domain index made it possible to identify how much rights contributed to inadequacy among disempowered women and men. The domains that contributed most to women’s disempowerment were resources and health.

Because gendered empowerment patterns were found to vary with the context, the findings from this study should not be generalized beyond the specific study contexts.

Following the presentations and plenary discussions, participants worked in groups to identify how best to integrate livelihoods and rights in projects aimed at empowering women.

ILRI agricultural economist Isabelle Baltenweck (standing) summarizes notes during a group discussion on identifying strategies to integrate rights into livestock microcredit and value chain development programs for empowering women (photo credit: ILRI/Tezira Lore).

The rich diversity of partner organizations present at the meeting generated interest in future collaboration through the regional network on gender and rural livelihoods currently being hosted by FAO Somalia.

“The regional gender and livelihoods network will be a useful platform for partners to continue sharing information and resources,” said one of the participants who is also a member of the network.

Group discussion to identify strategies for integrating rights into livestock microcredit and value chain development programs for empowering women (photo credit: ILRI/Tezira Lore).

Similar sentiments were also echoed by Maurice Makoloo, the Ford Foundation representative for eastern Africa, in his brief message to the workshop participants.

“The Ford Foundation is interested in inter-initiative collaboration towards ensuring women’s rights, building assets that improve the livelihoods of rural women, and strengthening community rights related to access to land,” said Makoloo.

Ford Foundation provided funding for the pilot.

Read about the background to the workshop

Read the workshop report

Florence Chepkirui, a blind dairy farmer in Saoset village in Kenya’s Bomet County (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

On 25 February 2013, some 25 gender researchers, development practitioners and women’s rights advocates will meet at the Nairobi campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for a day-long workshop to discuss practical ways of simultaneously integrating economic development and rights in programs aimed at empowering women.

This integrated approach will improve the impacts – at both individual and household level – of livelihood and rights programs that target women.

Development interventions aimed at enhancing women’s empowerment often do not combine women’s economic opportunities and women’s rights.

However, researchers have recently recognized that providing women with economic opportunities does not necessarily result in their empowerment. Similarly, women’s awareness of their rights without the financial resources to exercise those rights often does not lead to empowerment.

The upcoming workshop therefore seeks to develop strategies to simultaneously integrate livelihoods and rights in development interventions aimed at enhancing women’s empowerment through livestock microcredit and value chains.

The participants will share their experiences of simultaneously integrating livelihoods and rights in programs that target women.

They will also discuss the findings of a pilot study in Kenya to measure impacts of livelihood projects on women’s empowerment, including rights, using the adapted Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI).

Representatives of the following organizations are expected to attend the workshop: CARE International, the East Africa Dairy Development project, the Ford Foundation, ILRI, Juhudi Kilimo, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, Kenya Women Holding, Moi University and the University of Nairobi.

For more information, please visit the workshop web page.

Reblogged from ILRI Clippings:

Yulita Cosmas, a chicken farmer in central Malawi, with one of her hens (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

A publication, 'Understanding and Integrating Gender Issues into Livestock Projects and Programmes: A Checklist for Practitioners', from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is due to be published soon. It is being produced by Francesca Distefano, FAO's gender and development specialist, with main technical inputs from Raffaele Mattioli, senior officer from FAO’s Animal Production and Health (AGA) Division, and Regina Laub, senior officer from FAO’s Gender, Equity and Rural Employment (ESW) Division.

Read more… 318 more words

 What was this gender and agriculture workshop about?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been funding IFPRI and ILRI to implement the Gender, Agriculture and Assets project (GAAP) with the objective to improve the impact of research and development programs on gender equality. The project focused particularly on gender and assets because we know that the ownership and distribution of assets across men and women are central to influencing various development outcomes (nutrition, education etc.)

On this project, we are working with nine different projects from the research and development spectrum such as Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), Land O’Lakes,  the East Africa Dairy Development project, Landessa amongst others to assess the impacts of their programs on reducing the gender asset gap and to build their capacity to collect sex disaggregated data and use this data to inform the development of programs and strategies with potential to reduce asset disparities between men and women.

We held a  kick-off workshop in Nairobi in November 2010 and brought together researchers, donors and practitioners. It was during this workshop that we selected the nine projects. Since then we have worked with the projects to collect and analyze data to allow them to see what kinds of impacts their projects are having on men and on women. In October 2011 we had a mid-term workshop in Bangladesh to review progress. The workshop this week is the final technical workshop where we have brought together the nine project teams, and an external advisory committee to reflect on:

• What was the impact on gender equality around assets?
• What were best practices in those projects that had positive impacts on women’s assets?
• What could we do better, in evaluation and in programming?

In the workshop we wanted to identify best practices about how to collect data but we were also interested in lessons learnt from implementation.

Have you achieved what you planned?

It was great to see the results and to find out that projects delivered results that showed the importance of paying attention to gender. In terms of collecting sex disaggregated data, we have realized that we need to use both qualitative and quantitative methods. The projects that used a mix of these methods have much deeper insights about the factors behind the findings – they provide beneficiary information about what assets are important for men and for women, what do men/women think about their spouse acquiring assets and so on.

We also found out that we need to do much more. The scale of the collection of such disaggregated data is not large enough if we want to see this work be used at national level. We had technical discussions about ownership of assets by women and we recognized that it’s a  complex issue.  A desired outcome in many cases is that there is joint decision-making as well as decision making by women alone.  There are assets that women or men explicitly own alone, but there could also be some assets they could own together. There has been quite some recognition of the importance of joint asset ownership and joint decision-making.

Another finding from this work is that if projects that do not have specific interventions around gender, they cannot expect gender equality as a project outcome. Specific gender interventions are crucial, even around technical projects around e.g. technology transfer. Gender is a key issue in many fields, from nutrition to value chains, to technology adoption and so on. The projects that were originally gender-blind came a long way. In these projects we saw some of the biggest institutional changes happen.

What are the next steps for this project, beyond this workshop?

The plan from here is to take some of these lessons to develop a practitioner’s guide to go out to other organizations. These were just nine projects. We have to figure out ways to reach more projects  The ultimate goal is for programs and organizations to take gender into account and collect information that will help track impacts on gender. There is still some work to be done as these are the preliminary results, then we will receive the final results (over the next few months) and, based on these, we will develop the practical guide. The same group of people will be involved in developing it and the IFPRI-ILRI synthesis team will particularly look at lessons learnt across projects. The project runs until June 2014.

What is your view about ILRI’s current approach to gender?

There has been a lot of momentum for gender at ILRI. When the Poverty Gender and Innovation team was formed in 2009 there was not much happening in gender work and what was happening was scattered. There were projects that didn’t seem to see the relevance of gender. There has been a  gradual building up of the momentum leading to the gender strategy,  and there is much more awareness about gender in various ILRI teams.  Gender is also important for the CGIAR Research Programs, and ILRI is  recognized for being at the forefront of ensuring gender is in the research programs. On top of the work that has been carried out, ILRI has to keep up with the network built around this gender work. ILRI is also recruiting more gender specialists and that is a good development. Recently the gender work in ILRI has taken several forms:

• Capacity building: gender is not going to happen until everyone is aware, has skills, shows behavior change and understands how gender relates to livestock research.
• Gender also has to be a subject of research in its own right. Research projects have to be generating data on gender in livestock.

The balance between these two dimensions is crucial, otherwise gender might lose momentum. This is going to require commitment from management and everyone in the institute. A lot of what we achieved in the past was thanks to support by the management and we anticipate that this will continue.

Are you going to remain involved in any gender work that relates to ILRI?

(Jemimah Njuki) I am to a small extent still involved with ILRI. I am a member of the science and partnership advisory committee for CGIAR research program on ‘Livestock and Fish’ and are having discussions with the team working on gender and am hopeful these will continue.

(Nancy Johnson) I will be working on the CGIAR Research Program on agriculture for nutrition and health in which ILRI plays a big part.

Do you have any final advice for ILRI on its gender work?

Keep up the good work!

Bailey holds a Masters’ degree in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include gender and social change, pastoral livelihoods, social inequality and ethnography. Julia’s doctoral research examines Maasai women’s social networks and how they are used to access key cultural, economic and political resources.

Specifically Bailey looks at how pastoral women access and manage money to meet their household needs, including food security during periods of drought. Julia is affiliated with the Mainyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization (MPIDO) and is a member of the Centre for Society, Technology and Development (STANND) at McGill University. She is also a visiting research fellow with the Poverty, Gender and Impact team of the Markets, Gender and Livelihoods theme at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi.

All ILRI staff and other interested parties are welcome to attend the seminar at Sierra meeting room, Mara house from 9am-10am.

Women and men delivering milk at the Buruj milk collection point, left image above. Mr Shariful Islam, the milk machine operator, takes about one cc of each farmer’s milk and measures the butter fat content and pours the milk in the urn, which is sitting on a weighing scale. The piece of cloth on top of the urn is used to strain the milk as well as prevent flies from getting into the bulked milk. The machine on the  right picture above  records the weight of the milk added to the urn and the machine to the left records the butterfat content and calculates the monetary value of the milk delivered in terms of its weight and butter fat content.The farmer is then issued with a receipt stating the date and time, quantity of milk collected and the price the farmer will be paid for that batch. Farmers are paid once a week.

The lady in red in the picture above is a village milk collector. She collects milk from farmers who are not able to deliver milk to the collection point, weighs it and pays them according to weight but not butter fat content. She then delivers the milk she has bulked to the collection centre and provides a subsample (in the green bottle) for butterfat testing. She is then paid according to the weight and butterfat content. She loves her job, but her children are embarrassed because other children taunt them that their mother is a “village milk collector”, which is demeaning in a society where female seclusion or non-involvement in “outside” work is valued. On the right hand image above, is copy of a receipt issued to a farmer after a milk sale.

Left hand side image above is a focus group discussants from an SDVC group Bogra. One of the tools used at this group discussion was the access control matrix. The image above shows that women from this group believed that they had little access to, and no control of, the assets and resources from which they derived their livelihoods as shown in the table. Men had full access and control of the same assets/resources.

Left hand side image above is a table that presents the results of a pair-wise ranking conducted at the FGD with another SDVC Bogra women’s group photographed above (with Liz at the back row). The “value awarded” row indicates that being powerful was a most important achievement for these women. One discussant explained, “If we have power, we can achieve all other things, but without it, we cannot achieve anything.” The group members continued to explain that they are trying to build their own assets by saving money from milk so that members can borrow it to buy cows. The members at the bottom of the beneficiary list will receive heifer calves from those who receive cows.

Although there are many microfinance programs operating in these villages, as in much of rural Bangladesh, all three groups from Bogra said that those microcredit schemes had high interest rates and unfair repayment terms. Those who had loans were working hard to pay them off as they found the debt enslaving them. Those who had no loans were not interested in borrowing money and were happy to build their lending capital piecemeal.