Gender and food systems: Avenues for transformation?

1. Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
GENDER AND FOOD SYSTEMS:
Avenues for Transformation?
Agnes Quisumbing

2. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Framing the question
• Approximately 1.23 billion people worldwide involved in agrifood systems
• In Africa, between 2/3 to 4/5 of all jobs are in agrifood systems; non-
agricultural food systems jobs account for a small portion, mostly in urban
areas (Davis et al. 2023)
• Some changes—rapid urbanization, increased commercialization, move to
high-value nodes of the value chain—can increase economy-wide
inequalities, such as exclusion of poor or marginalized farmers
• Inequalities related to gender compound those related to poverty
• Access to key inputs (land, livestock, extension, financial services) highly
gender inequitable (FAO 2011, 2023)
• Women spend 3 x as many hours as men on unpaid work, have higher
total work burden considering both paid and unpaid work (UN 2020)
• Gender inequalities intersect with caste, class, life-cycle stage

3. Can food systems transformation be gender equitable?
Why do we care?
What can policies and interventions do?
Increased
market
orientation
Increase in
rural nonfarm
enterprises
Increase in
non-agricultural
employment
Migration
and
urbanization

4. Women’s agency
(choices, bargaining power, preferences,
capacities, aspirations)
Biophysical and
environmental
Demographic
Sociocultural
Political and
economic
Technology and
infrastructure
Structural gender inequalities
Gendered shocks and vulnerabilities
Value Chains
• Production
• Processing
• Distribution and Storage
• Marketing
Food Environment
• Availability
• Affordability
• Promotion, Advertising, and
Information
• Quality and Safety
Consumer Behavior
Choices on what to eat based upon:
• Price
• Income
• Information
• Preferences
Nutrition, diet
and food
security
outcomes
Gender equality
and women’s
empowerment
Economic and
livelihood
outcomes
Environmental
outcomes
D
R
I
V
E
R
S
O
U
T
C
O
M
E
S
Access to and control over
resources
(information, education, land, finance, technology, etc.)
Gendered social norms
(expectations, traditions, etc.)
Policies and governance
Systemic
Individual
Informal
Formal
Well-being
outcomes
The Gender and Food Systems Framework
Source: Adapted from Njuki et al. 2022

5. • Evidence from a synthetic review (Myers et al.
2023)
• Measures of women’s empowerment and
gender equality based on Women’s
Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
(Alkire et al. 2013; Malapit et al. 2017)
• Outcome measures:
• Nutrition, diet, household food security,
WASH
• Economic and livelihood outcomes
• Measures of life satisfaction and child
schooling
Why should we care?
15%
5%
2%
5%
8%
2%
2%
3%
3%
31%
3%
5%
13%
3%
Distribution of studies by country, global
(n=39)
Ghana Kenya Malawi
Mozambique Niger Rwanda
Tanzania Uganda Zambia
Bangladesh Cambodia India
Nepal Timor Leste

6. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Main findings
• Increasing women’s empowerment
and closing empowerment gaps
contribute to improved food system
outcomes, but household wealth,
gender norms and country-specific
institutions are also critical
• Findings context-specific
• Most papers identified illustrate
associative relationships; need
future research to determine causal
relationships
• Addressing structural and
institutional barriers to gender
equality in policy may enhance
outcomes

7. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Can Food Systems
Interventions be
Designed to
Promote Women’s
Empowerment and
Gender Equality?

8. Findings from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2) Portfolio
and synthesis of UN Joint Program for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JP
RWEE)
Nutrition
Income and
Nutrition
Crops
ANGeL (Bangladesh)
TRAIN (Bangladesh)
WorldVeg (Mali)
AVC (Bangladesh)
iDE (Ghana)
Livestock
Heifer (Nepal)
Maisha Bora (Tanzania)
MoreMilk (Kenya)
SE LEVER (Burkina Faso)
Crops and livestock
FAARM (Bangladesh)
WINGS (India)
JP-RWEE (Ethiopia)
JP-RWEE (Kyrgyzstan)
JP-RWEE (Nepal)
JP-RWEE (Niger)
Grameen Foundation (Burkina Faso)

9. Include women in
program activities
Reaching women
means ensuring that
women have the same
opportunity to access
the program activities
as men.
Increase women’s well-
being (e.g. food
security, economic
empowerment, health).
Requires more than
reaching women:
• Women value the
intervention
• Direct benefits
accrue to women
• Women’s needs,
preferences and
constraints are
considered in the
intervention design
and implementation
arrangements
Strengthen ability of
women to make strategic
life choices and to put
those choices into
action.
Goes beyond reaching
and benefiting women:
• Increases women’s
agency
• Changes gender
attitudes among
participants*
*could be considered
transformative, though
depends on scale
Goes beyond the woman to
change gender norms and
structures on a larger scale
(changing households,
communities and systems).
Goes beyond empowering
individual women:
• Involves men
• Changes gender norms at
the community and
societal levels
• Addresses structural and
institutional barriers
• Mobilizes the power of
the collective
Benefit Empower
Reach Transform
Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform (RBET) Framework
Need strategies and tactics appropriate for each type of objective

10. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Women empower
themselves—
projects and
interventions
provide the
opportunity
Photo: Fada, HKI

11. Distribution of project impacts on women’s and men’s empowerment scores,
empowerment status, and household gender parity, African projects in GAAP2 and JP
RWEE portfolios
1
3
3
1
2
5
5
4
7
12
3
1
2
3
3
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Gender parity
Whether empowered
Empowerment score
Whether empowered
Empowerment score
Hous
ehold
Men
Women
Negative Null Positive
Source: Quisumbing et al. 2022, 2023

12. #2023ReSAKSS #2023ATOR
Can agricultural development projects and food systems interventions empower
women and improve gender equality?
• Even with empowerment objectives, many agricultural development projects do
not achieve significant impacts on empowerment indicators (within the time
frame of the evaluations)
• Regional effects are important, and so are underlying gender norms
• We need to be mindful of potential backlash, which is why collecting data on men
is important
• We need to pay attention to workload. But some projects are successful!

13. What can we learn from successful
projects?
• Successful projects:
oare intentional about
empowerment
otry to address underlying
gender norms and structures
that restrict women
ooften work through women’s
groups
oinvolve men and influential
household and community
members as part of the
solution

14. Implications for the design of (transformative) food systems
interventions
• Intentionality is important for food systems interventions to be
transformative
• Need to pay attention to both project implementation and context
• Intensity of implementation is important. “Light touch” interventions
may not yield expected results. Some base level of empowerment
and complementary resources may be needed (time, material
resources, information, financial resources)
• Sustainability of intervention’s services also important: case of
households that lost access to credit in a rural savings and loan
association project in Ethiopia

15. Guidelines for gender-transformative food systems
programming
• Be mindful of local context and gender norms
• Programs can build on success of group-based approaches (but be
mindful of not overloading groups)
• Be mindful of workload implications for both women and men
• Need to involve men in gender-sensitive programming
• Empowerment is multidimensional: interventions that target only one
aspect may not achieve empowerment objectives
• Make sure that empowerment measures are part of program M&E
and impact assessment.

16. Resources
• Reach, Benefit, Empower video: https://youtu.be/fLGeZBLpaBY
• Johnson, N., M. Balagamwala, C. Pinkstaff, S. Theis, R. Meinzen-Dick, and A. Quisumbing. (2018). How do
agricultural development projects empower women? What hasn’t worked and what might. Journal of Agriculture,
Gender, and Food Security 3(2):1-19. http://agrigender.net/views/agricultural-development-projects-empowering-
women-JGAFS-322018-1.php
• Morgan, M., A.M. Larson, S. Trautman, E. Garner, M. Elias, and R. Meinzen-Dick. (2023). Gender transformative
approaches to strengthen women’s land and resource rights. Bogor, Indonesia: Centre for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR) and Nairobi: World Agroforestry (ICRAF) International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
https://www.cifor-icraf.org/publications/pdf/project-briefs/GTA-Brief.pdf
• Myers, E., J. Heckert, S. Faas, H. Malapit, R. Meinzen-Dick, K. Raghunathan, and A. Quisumbing. 2023. “Is Women’s
Empowerment Bearing Fruit? Mapping Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) Results Using the
Gender and Food Systems Framework.” IFPRI Discussion Paper No. 2190. International Food Policy Research
Institute, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136722
• Quisumbing, A. B. Gerli, S. Faas, J. Heckert, H.J. Malapit, C. McCarron, R. Meinzen-Dick, F. Paz. (2023) Assessing
Multicountry Programs Through a “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform” Lens. Global Food Security 37: 100685.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2023.100685
• Quisumbing, A. R., R.S. Meinzen-Dick, H. J. Malapit, G. Seymour, J. Heckert, C. Doss, N. Johnson, D. Rubin, G. Thai,
G. Ramani, E. Meyers and the GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team (2022). Can agricultural development projects
empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets
project (phase 2) . IFPRI Discussion Paper 2137. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136405

17. WEAI Resource Center
weai.ifpri.info
Guides and Instruments
Pro-WEAI Distance Learning Course
http://elearning.foodsecurityportal.org/
Tool for “Choosing the right WEAI”

18. THANK YOU