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Designing options to narrow gender gaps in agricultural value chains using a resilience lens: Evidence from the Tahoua region of Niger
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This presentation was given by Caitleen Nordehn (Cultural Practice), as part of the Annual Scientific Conference hosted by the University of Canberra and co-sponsored by the University of Canberra, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research. The event took place on April 2-4, 2019 in Canberra, Australia. Read more: https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/aisc/seeds-of-change and https://gender.cgiar.org/annual-conference-2019/
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Designing options to narrow gender gaps in agricultural value chains using a resilience lens: Evidence from the Tahoua region of Niger
- DESIGNING OPTIONS TO NARROW GENDER GAPS IN AGRICULTURAL VALUE CHAINS USING A RESILIENCE LENS: EVIDENCE FROM THE TAHOUA REGION OF NIGER April 4, 2019 Seeds of Change Conference Canberra, Australia Caitlin Nordehn, Technical Associate Cultural Practice, LLC Designing practical options for social change
- CP finds it is necessary to understand the incentives, motivations, and needs of individuals, both men and women, and at the same time, to analyze the institutional structures that shape people’s choices. 2
- 3 Objectives • Overview of challenges women and men experience in complex contexts affected by multiple shocks and stresses • Relationship between gender issues and resilience, conceptual to practical • Evidence from gender and AVC assessment in Niger
- • Contexts with diverse and sensitive environmental and political “fault lines” are sites of development interventions • Women and men have different: • vulnerability and exposure to disturbances • access to and use of resources • abilities to make strategic choices prepare for and respond to disturbances • Friction between disturbances and gender relations
- Gender-responsive and Transformative Strategies Source: The reach, benefit, empower framework was developed by IFPRI. See Johnson et al. 2017. https://www.ifpri.org/cdmref/p15738coll2/id/131074/filename/131285.pdf.This graphic was developed by Cultural Practice, LLC.
- Resilience Building Approach Source: Tabaj et al. 2017, Frankenberger et al. 2013 the ability to minimize exposure to shocks and stresses through preventative measures and appropriate coping strategies to avoid permanent, negative impacts making proactive and informed choices about alternative livelihood strategies based on an understanding of changing conditions the governance mechanisms, policies/regulations, infrastructure, community networks, and formal and informal social protection mechanisms that constitute the enabling environment for systemic change
- 7
- Conceptual Links between Gender and Resilience Gender Integration in Existing Resilience Frameworks (Semi-linear) E.g., Bryan et al. 2017, Tabaj et al. 2017, Gender and Resilience Working Group 2018 8 Gender Equality and Resilience (Reciprocal) E.g., Masson et al. n.d., Nordehn and Rubin 2017 Empowerment and Resilience as Inter-related Iterative Process (Iterative Spiral) E.g., Brodsky and Cattaneo 2013
- 12/12 Alliance Resilience Program in Niger Strengthen year-round resilience for of 12,760 households and 102,080 people, including Tahoua and Maradi regions (50% women and girls) • Diversify agricultural actors’ livelihood strategies through crop diversification and transform the enabling environment • Expansion of value chains with both government and private sector investment • Increasing farmer association capacity to sustainably meet members’ needs Gender and Value Chain Assessment • Onion, cowpea, millet, wheat, and sheep VCs • Integrating Gender Issues into Agricultural Value Chains (INGIA-VC) approach (Rubin, Manfre, and Nichols Barrett 2009) • Gender-based constraints: Participation, Performance, and Benefits
- Overarching gender-based constraint linked to participation, performance, and benefits Women participated in nearly all the tasks in onion, millet, cowpea, and sheep production. In Konni, of the over 4,000 members of the agricultural union, through which members access technical assistance, technology, marketing opportunities, only 3 percent were women. Women were constrained from joining the unions because they were not perceived to be “real farmers” and were discouraged from forming farming groups. 10
- Bundle of Cross-cutting Gender-Based Constraints, Bundle of Responses 11 1. Strengthen women’s access and control over key productive resources to participate in VCs 2. Improve women’s ability to become members of the unions and access to services and inputs that allow them to participate and enhance their performance in VCs 3. Increase women’s control over income from the sale of agricultural products to enable them to make strategic decisions to cope and prepare for shocks and ongoing stresses. Sources: Buvinic, M. and M. O’Donnell 2016; Nordehn 2017 Sizeable and quality land Income/savings Labor Technology Mobility (sale of products/purchases) Income decision making Enabling Environment
- Relationship between gender-responsive and transformative activities and resilience capacities 12 Activities Participation Performance Benefits Bonding and Bridging Social Capital Forming women into groups: Learn from existing women’s groups Join unions Exchange labor Pool savings Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Absorptive Bonding and Linking Social Capital Work with existing women’s groups: Invest in PH enterprises Credit/Financial literacy Marketing Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Absorptive Bonding Social Capital Work with men leaders of unions: Sensitization, women’s rights Delivering inclusive services Review and change bylaws Model behavior Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Absorptive Transformative Bonding Social Capital Work with women and men at HH level: Participation in groups/unions Agricultural practices Financial decision making/planning Shock preparedness Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Absorptive Transformative
- Key Takeaways From the field – Building social capital to close gender gaps in VCs and build resilience – Integrate GT activities into planned activities/meetings From the frameworks – Key Areas of Inquiry for gender analysis – Theory of change – Learning questions on sequence of resilience strengthening and empowerment, goal revision Going forward – Increased dialogue among gender experts (across disciplines), resilience and climate change experts, and donors – Consider “seeds of Change” in dynamic environments and communities constantly in flux 13
- References 14 Arora-Jonsson, S. (2011). Virtue and vulnerability: Discourses on women, gender and climate change. Global Environmental Change, 21, 744–751 Béné, C., R.G. Wood, A. Newsham, and M. Davies. 2012. Resilience: new utopia or new tyranny? Reflection about the potentials and limits of the concept of resilience in relation to vulnerability reduction programmes. IDS Working Paper, Volume 2012, Number 405. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2040-0209.2012.00405.x Bradshaw, S. and M. Fordham. 2013. Women, Girls and Disasters: A review for DFID. http://gsdrc.org/document-library/women-girls-and-disasters-a-review-for-dfid/ Carr, E. and M. Thompson. 2013. Gender and Climate Change in Agrarian Settings. Technical Report. Prepared for USAID, under the Climate Change Resilient Development Task Order No. AID-OAA-TO-11-0040, under the Integrated Water and Coastal Resources Management Indefinite Quantity Contract (WATER IQC II). https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/gender-and-climate-change-adaptation-agrarian-settings-research-and-implementation Colfer, C.J.P., B. Sijapati Basnett, M. Ihalainen. 2018. Making sense of ‘intersectionality’: A manual for lovers of people and forests. Bogor: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Available at: https://www.cifor.org/library/6793/making-sense-of-intersectionality-a-manual-for-lovers-of-people-and-forests Frankenberger, T., M. Mueller, T.Spangler, and S. Alexander. 2013. Community Resilience: Conceptual Framework and Measurement Feed the Future Learning Agenda. Rockville: Westat. https://www.agrilinks.org/sites/default/files/resource/files/FTF%20Learning_Agenda_Community_Resilience_Oct%202013.pdf Goh, A.H.X. 2012. A literature review of the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change on women’s and men’s assets and well-being in developing countries. CAPRi Working Paper No. 106. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute. http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/CAPRiWP106. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment. Development and Change, 30, 435-464. Leder, S.2016.Linking Women’s Empowerment and their Resilience. CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE).27p. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/72489 Manfre, C., D. Rubin, C. Nordehn. 2017. Assessing how Agricultural Technologies can change Gender Dynamics and Food Security Outcomes: A Toolkit. Washington, DC: USAID. http://www.culturalpractice.com/resources/technology-assessment-toolkit/ Masson, V. 2016. Gender and Resilience from Theory to Practice. BRACED Working Paper. London: Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED). https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/10224.pdf Masson, V., A. Norton, and E. Wilkonson. Gender and Resilience. BRACED Working Paper. London: Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED). https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9890.pdf
- References Morchain, D., G. Prati, F. Kelsey, and L. Ravon. 2015. “What if gender became an essential, standard element of Vulnerability Assessments?” Gender and Development, 23 (3): 481 - 496. Nordehn, C. 2017. 12/12 Alliance: Gender and Value Chain Assessment. Prepared for Lutheran World Relief, USAID-funded 12/12/ Alliance Project. Internal Document. Nordehn, C. and D. Rubin. 2017. Gender Equality in Pathways to Resilience in Semi-Arid Economies (PRISE): A mid-term learning review. Commissioned by ODI. Internal Document. Nordehn, C. and D. Rubin. 2018. Analytical Synthesis on IDRC’s Gender and Climate Change Research. Prepared for International Development Research Centre. Internal Report. O'Sullivan, M., A. Rao, R. Banerjee, K. Gulati, and M Vinez. 2014. Levelling the field: improving opportunities for women farmers in Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/579161468007198488/Levelling-the-field-improving- opportunities-for-women-farmers-in-Africa Rao, N., E. Lawson, W. Raditloaneng, D. Solomon, M. Angula. 2017. Gendered vulnerabilities to climate change: insights from the semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia, Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2017.1372266 Rubin, D. and C. Manfre. 2014. “Promoting Gender-equitable Agricultural Value Chains: Issues, Opportunities, and Next Steps.” In A. Quisumbing, R. Meinzen-Dick, T. Raney, A. Croppenstedt, J. A. Behrman, and A. Peterman (eds.) Gender in Agriculture and Food Security: Closing the Knowledge Gap. Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-017-8616-4_12 Rubin, D., C. Manfre, and K. Nichols Barrett. 2009. Promoting Gender Equitable Opportunities in Agricultural Value Chains: A Handbook. USAID GATE Project, Arlington, VA: dTS. http://www.culturalpractice.com/wp-content/downloads/4-2009-16.pdf Tabaj, K., T. Spangler, L. Starr, A. Anderson, K. Garnier, and T. Griffin. 2017. Integrating Gender into Resilience Analysis: A Conceptual Overview. TOPS Resilience Evaluation, Analysis, and Learning (REAL) Award. https://www.fsnnetwork.org/integrating-gender-resilience-analysis- conceptual-overview Theis, S., E. Bryan, J. Choufani, C. Ringler, and R. Meinzen-Dick. 2018. Building Resilience for All: The Gender and Social Dynamics of Resilience. Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative Policy Note 11, November. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI. http://gcan.ifpri.info/files/2018/11/GCAN-Note-11_Resilience_finalDraft_web-1.pdf Johnson, N. L. et al. 2017. How do agricultural development projects aim to empower women? IFPRI Discussion Paper 1609. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://www.ifpri.org/cdmref/p15738coll2/id/131074/filename/131285.pdf. 15
- www.culturalpractice.com 16 cnordehn@culturalpractice.com
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for the introduction. It is a pleasure to be part of this panel.
- At Cultural Practice we work with international NGO partners, donors, and government agencies to integrate gender into their work. The approach that we take is to understand the incentives, motivations, and the needs of the individuals they are serving, including women, men, boys and girls. Equally important to this process is understanding the institutional structures that shape people’s ability to make choices. These include social norms as well as informal and formal laws or policies. Often times these can impede women’s ability to make strategic life choices to improve their wellbeing.
- While it is not uncommon to hear terms like “empowerment” and “resilience” in the same breath, contributing to the buzz of international development discourse, these terms are not always used very precisely and are often conflated. These terms hold some power, even if just sprinkled throughout proposals to respond to donor requests, to be competitive for grants or contracts. However, they hold even more potential power if they are understood and used synergistically to design better programming. The theoretical and practical examples highlighted in this paper build on existing work done by scholars and development practitioners working in this “gender and resilience space” as well as my work with Cultural Practice, supporting IDRC’s Climate Change Programme to design gender-responsive and transformative strategies (Nordehn and Rubin 2018), a mid-term learning review with ODI-led Pathways to Resilient Economies in Semi-Aris Lands (PRISE) under the DFID and IDRC funded CARIAA program (Nordehn and Rubin 2017), support to the 12/12 Alliance in Niger led by Lutheran World Relief (Nordehn 2017), and ongoing work in Nepal and India with transboundary flood-prone agricultural communities. How we can take that learning and apply it to designing programs with some examples with my work in Niger supporting a resilience project.
- Contexts with diverse and sensitive environmental and political fault lines frequently triggered by climatic events and conflict are common throughout the world. These places, such as Bangladesh, Nepal, or Niger, are often the site of development interventions, including those focused on strengthening communities’ economic growth and food security through investments in agriculture and food systems. Women and men, households and communities in these contexts have different vulnerabilities to shocks like floods, droughts, and earthquakes and stresses such as political instability. There are also differences in women’s and men’s capacities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a single or even concurrent disturbances. Women’s and men’s differential exposure to disturbances, access and use of resources, and ability to make strategic choices to curb the harmful effects of disturbances, or even transform their situations, is rooted in social norms. Social norms, reinforced by institutional structures, can be just as strong as flood waters in influencing women’s and men’s trajectories in these volatile environments.
- Projects can be designed with different intention for considering and addressing gender inequalities along a gender integration continuum. Project can also be evaluated along that continuum. Projects that do not consider gender issues at all are categorized as gender blind or even gender exploitative, taking advantage of gender inequalities and stereotypes in pursuit of project goals. Levels of attention to gender issues in projects move from gender-responsive to gender-transformative. Gender-responsive approaches consider gender issues in the rationale, design, and methodology and they are rigorously analyzed to inform implementation, communication, and influence strategies, but do not yet address structural power relations that lead to gender inequalities (IDRC 2017). Gender-transformative approaches go several steps further by addressing transforming gender roles and relations to support the dual goals of gender equality and sustainable growth. Often the latter is tied to approaches that not only reach, benefit women, but also empower them to make strategic life choices (Johnson 2017).
- absorptive capacity – the ability to minimize exposure to shocks and stresses through preventative measures and appropriate coping strategies to avoid permanent, negative impacts; adaptive capacity – making proactive and informed choices about alternative livelihood strategies based on an understanding of changing conditions; and transformative capacity – the governance mechanisms, policies/regulations, infrastructure, community networks, and formal and informal social protection mechanisms that constitute the enabling environment for systemic change” Source: Frankenberger et al. 2013) In the vast number of existing resilience frameworks used by practitioners, resilience is conceptualized as a set of capacities (ODI 2016: 25). Initially introduced by Béné et al. 2012, a common set of capacities described in resilience frameworks are absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities (See Box 1). These capacities are often presented in order of time investment, with absorptive abilities requiring less time through short-term emergency responses, such as community members being warned about a floods and being reached in time to find safe shelter. Adaptive capacities require access and control of assets to make strategic choices to adapt their livelihood strategies, which is carried out by women and men over a longer period of time. And then lastly transformative capacities require more long-term systemic changes in the enabling environment, both through applying pressures to change institutional structures, embedded in laws, policies, as well as social norms. There are a few different ways that we can integrate gender and resilience which I’ll share next.
- There are several frameworks that integrate attention to gender issues within different variations of existing resilience framework (Bryan et al 2017, Tabaj et al. 2017, Gender and Resilience Working Group 2018). These frameworks demonstrate that women and men are differently exposed to disturbances and have different types of abilities to respond to shocks and stresses through coping, adaptive, and more transformative practices by using the resources each has access and control over. These frameworks are illustrated in a semi-linear fashion, beginning with a shock and ending with outcomes and tradeoffs, and some showing feedback loops that affect women’s vulnerabilities and capacities. They illustrate how there are differences in women’s and men’s wellbeing outcomes and tradeoffs, shaped by their differential exposure to shocks and capacities to take action to prepare, respond, and recover from disturbances. These actions are mediated through limitations or restrictions to access to resources based on gender roles or responsibilities. As outlined in the GCAN framework (Bryan et al. 2017) these resources tapped into fall into seven (7) categories: food production (and consumption), income, labor, assets, NRM, cooperation, and human capital.
- The DFID-funded Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes (BRACED) Gender and Resilience working paper explores a “two-way causal relationship” between women’s empowerment and community and household resilience. It describes this causal relationship as a “mechanism through which community level resilience building might act to strengthen gender equality; and the ways in which gender equality / women’s empowerment might act to strengthen community level resilience” (Masson et al. n.d.: 47). In Cultural Practice’s mid-term gender learning review of the DFID and IDRC funded PRISE consortium developed a similar framework that highlighted the friction between gender roles, relations and inequalities, climate change induced disturbances, and resilience strategies, highlighting how these dynamic forces interact and affect different outcomes, but not necessarily one that leads to gender equality or resilience. Community psychologists, who often work with marginalized communities coping or recovering from different shocks and stresses, found that resilience and empowerment, defined in a similar way to development, are often conflated in their field, not totally dissimilar to the international development space. The work of Brodsky and Cattaneo (2013) focuses on untangling these concepts by examining their “convergence and divergence” in an effort for these ideas to be used more effectively by others in their field. Their “Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience” model considers resilience as a process where new situations, or disturbances, create new conundrums that women and men respond in different ways based on their social context resources thus sending them down yet another pathway toward building their resilience. Actions that lead to “meaningful shifts in power,” between women and men, at different levels can be instrumental in enabling people to navigate their resilience pathway as well as achieve their longer-term aspirations. On this iterative and spiraling pathway toward resilience though, women and men can also take coping or adaptive actions to maintain stability or the status quo. However, shifts in power relations between women and men, facilitated by interventions at different levels, can enable women, in particular, to take actions to achieve a “status quake” and meet their personal goals (Brodsky and Catteneo 2013).
- In Niger, a resilience approach is necessary, as climate-related shocks have significant impacts on the economy and farmers’ livelihoods. Rainfall variance and degraded soil quality are two of the biggest challenges farmers face, reducing the quantity and quality of yields. They are further affected by shocks like drought, locusts, livestock diseases, crop pests and diseases, floods, windstorms, and bushfires. Political disturbances and security challenges along Niger’s porous border also complicate people’s lives. These disturbances affect rural populations’ livelihoods and food security (World Bank 2013). These shocks reduce yields, translating into less food and income available from the sale of crops. Resilience programs, like the 12/12 Alliance, often aim to diversify agricultural actors’ livelihood strategies through crop diversification and transform the enabling environment to support the expansion of value chains with both government and private sector investment. Both strategies have the potential to strengthen women’s and men’s adaptive capacities when living in a contexts with changing climatic conditions. The 12/12 Alliance project, implemented by Lutheran World Relief, in Niger was designed to implement the two strategies described above to strengthen year-round resilience for of 12,760 households and 102,080 people, including Tahoua and Maradi regions. A third thrust, increasing farmer association capacity to sustainably meet members’ needs, program supports the other thrusts of this approach to diversify agricultural livelihoods and expand the value chain. Overall, this project aimed to develop community members absorptive and adaptive capacities and also transform the enabling environment to support sustained growth.
- The main gender-based constraints women experienced across onion, cowpea, and sheep value chains in the Tahoua region coalesce around constraints to access sizeable and quality land; access to labor for specific tasks, either due to lack of technical knowledge/skill or social norms ; access and control of income; ability to travel outside the home to sell products and purchase inputs; and being overlooked as clients by extension providers. These findings align with national-level statistic that show on women-managed plots, when accounting for difference in plot size, are 66 percent less productive than men’s. That gap is more than 20 percent greater compared to men’s and women’s plots in bordering northern Nigeria. Women’s comparatively lower access to inputs like labor and returns on that labor is a main driver of this productivity gap (O’Sullivan et al. 2014). The activities were recommended to address these gender-based constraints to meet the overall objectives of this resilience project and meet three broad gender equality objectives linked to the INGIA framework: 1. Strengthen women’s access and control over key productive resources to participate in targeted value chains; 2. Improve women’s ability to become members of the unions and access to services and inputs that allow them to participate and enhance their performance in targeted value chains; 3. Increase women’s control over income from the sale of agricultural products to enable them to make strategic decisions to cope with shocks and ongoing stresses.
- A set of activities were recommended, set upon the foundation of women’s group formation, as well as further developing existing women’s groups performance and benefits from their enterprises. Strengthening women’s bonding social capital or strengthening the relationships and trust between women builds their collective power or “power with”. This s a necessary first step in this context for women to 1. join agricultural unions, 2. through which they could access the information, tools, and inputs they need to participate, 3. use those resources enhance their performance in agriculture value chains and possibly access credit, and 4. broaden their options for diversifying their livelihoods, strengthening their adaptive capacities. Group formation is an important first step in the “project of women’s empowerment.” As Naila Kabeer said “Women’s organization and social movement in particular have an important role to play in creating the conditions for change and in reducing the cost to the individual” (Kabeer 1999: 23). Women’s farmer groups, a bonding social capital, plays an important role in that movement in volatile contexts giving women more resources including their network to tap into to navigate their iterative pathway toward resilience and achievement of personal goals. It supports the development of not only their “power with”, but potentially their “power within ” to make strategic actions by increasing their participation, performance and benefits in agricultural value chains to cope with shocks, strengthen their adaptive capacity through diversifying livelihoods, or even make strategic choices to meet personal or collective group goals. To close this participation, performance, and benefit gaps the project must also work with men. Working with union leadership during regularly scheduled meetings to sensitize them to women’s right to participate in unions, work with them to identify strategies for delivering more inclusive services, and make more transformative changes by updating bylaws to enable women’s groups to more easily join the unions. For example, onion production committees are setting transparent prices by negotiation with buyers on members’ behalf, including women. This mechanism may help women and men get more equitable prices for their products. This is a critical first step to strengthening bridging social capacities between men and women who operate in different networks typically. Its important to work with men leaders, because they shape social norms around men’s attitudes toward women. This can have cascading effects in the pathway toward resilience and women’s economic empowerment by potentially increasing women’s mobility and interactions with men buyers, truly shifting power relations. However, to achieve those kinds of outcomes at the end of a five-year project might be optimistic. Monitoring, drawing on some of the approaches linked to the different approaches to measure gender issues in resilience project can be used to understand changes in attitudes, for example, about decision making of assets within the household at points prior to and after shocks. This can be used to better understand if in general communities attitudes about gender roles and relations are shifting, either reinforcing existing roles, or shifting them toward “status quake” where not only are women and men able to better absorb and adapt after shocks and stresses, but transform power relations to increase women’s participation, enhance their performance, and increase benefits they can make strategic decisions about to achieve their aspirations for themselves, their families, and communities.
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