This document summarizes experiences from various projects in Bangladesh aimed at making seed systems and varietal promotion more gender-responsive. It discusses common assumptions about women's roles in agriculture and why considering gender is important. It then outlines several projects conducted by IRRI in Bangladesh since 1999, including their goals, outcomes related to women farmers, and lessons learned about including women. Key recommendations emphasize making extension services and new technologies more gender-sensitive, improving women's access to information, markets, and financial resources, and developing local women extension agents and seed producers. The document proposes a gender-responsive framework for seed development and dissemination involving various stakeholders.

1. WELCOME
TO
AGGRI WORKSHOP
DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER-RESPONSIVE VARIETAL
PROMOTION APPROACHES AND SEED SYSTEMS
Muhammad Ashraful Habib and Md. Sahed Khan
11-12 June 2019
ISARC, Varanasi

2. Presentation on
■ Experiences and learning of IRRI in Bangladesh
– Reaching women farmers with quality seed
– Engaging women farmers as seed producers

3. Gender and Seed Systems in
Bangladesh
Critical Stages in Seed System Key intervention & innovations
1.Varietal development • Multi-location evaluation
• Identification of suitable varieties for different groups of people
2. Pre-release promotion • Awareness creation through gender-responsive demos and seed mini-kits distribution
3. Seed Multiplication • Information flow on gendered preferences between private seed producers and research institutions
• Gender based capacity building of public and private seed sectors for quality seed production,
processing and storage
• Technical assistance for quality seed production, facilitate linkage of SMSP with SCA
5. Seed Production &
Dissemination
• Encourage gender-responsive seed production, processing and storage
• Capacity building among different farmer groups, seed growers, dealers and distributors
6. Awareness creation to
generate seed demand
• Seed production cum adaptive trials, Seed mini-kits distribution
• Gender-responsive demos and fields days, distribution of information brochures, pamphlets & so on
• Involvement of SMSPs, seed dealers and distributors in awareness creation
8. Tracking, impact assessment
& gender issues
• Re-visiting and re-addressing gender issues
• Development of system for real time tracking of varietal dissemination
• Impact assessment of informal and formal seed systems
•Seed
Defined as a living grain
Every seed is a grain but every grain is not a seed.
•Quality seed
Pure, clean and viable
Ensured by preserving and maintaining physical and genetic quality
Use can increase rice yield by 5-20%

4. Women farmers in Bangladesh: Common assumptions
Assumption 1: Women are more involved in home-based agricultural activities
Assumption 2: Women are more in charge of small-scale vegetable, poultry and livestock
production
Assumption 3: Women are more engaged in production of perishable, but often nutrition dense
foods
Assumption 4: Women are more involved in production for own consumption rather than for
the market.
Assumption 5: Women are usually not involved at all in marketing of agricultural products
Assumption 6: Women are not supposed to own productive assets like land, seed or pond
Assumption 7: Women’s involvement in field agriculture is still linked to loss of honor (man
shomman)

5. Why gender responsive?
5
■ Gender matters because development stalls if it is ignored
■ Ignoring women’s role in agriculture has consequences
 Less productive households
■ Women’s better access to productive inputs translates into increased yields
as much as 30% per household
■ Improving women’s access to land, information, improved seed and
resources would enable women to increase yields on their farms by 20-30%
(FAO, 2017)
 Less adoption of new technologies and practices
■ Women’s lack of access to education or information results in less adoption
 Nutrition is not prioritized
■ Women's increased income and influence translate into more household
investment in childhood nutrition

6. Programs of IRRI in Bangladesh since
1999
Poverty
Elimination
Through Rice
Research
Assistance
(PETRRA) (
1999 - 2004)
Stress Tolerant
Rice for Africa
and South Asia
(STRASA)
(2007 - 2019)
Cereal Systems
Initiative for
South Asia in
Bangladesh”
(CSISA-BD)
(2011 - 2016)
Cereal Systems
Initiative for
South Asia in
Seed” (CSISA-
SEED)
(2011 - 2013)

7. Poverty Elimination Through Rice Research
Assistance (PETRRA:1999 - 2004)
■ Gender equity as guiding principle
■ Assessment and constraints analysis
■ Identification of technology options and opportunities to solve constraints
■ Capacity enhancement of various stakeholders (farmers, NGOs and government extension
agents)
■ Farmer’s participatory on-farm experiments
■ Monitoring and evaluation
■ Testing innovative extension approaches
■ Establishment of support mechanisms to sustain adoption of innovations; and
■ impact assessment
■ Established federation-based women seed producer groups
■ By incorporating gender concerns, PETRRA helped improve women's welfare
From researchers idea for a rice seed drying table, women and their husbands
came up with a range of designs of inexpensive tables that also met other needs of
the household, such as threshing rice or storing kitchen pots

8. Clash of gender and community participation
■ The seed health improvement (SHIP) sub-project focused on seed;
– Even though preserving seed is a women's activity, only one of the 28 field
researchers was a woman.
– In a SHIP workshop for farmers at the end of year one, no women clients
attended.
– Some male farmers asked for women to be included in training. But other village
men disagreed, even after the second year of training.
– Women were being included, but on the edge.
■ A message began to emerge:
– 'Include women in all your activities, not just the ones in which they work
directly.'
– This message also became a guiding principle for PETRRA

9. Seed, women and extension approaches:
PETRRA
Extension approach /
Learning tools
Women's role in disseminating
innovations
Outcomes
Women-led group
extension on seed drying
and storage
Women promoted seed drying tables using
pictures, village fairs and folk songs
Technologies were widely adopted and
further promoted by village women
extension agents, beyond the project
area
Family approach to
extension on rice and
seed production
Women trainers taught women-only or
mixed groups; women shared learning
more readily with the wider community
than men did
Training husband and wife together
improved decision-making, adoption of
technologies and rice provisioning ability
Farmer-to-farmer
extension on seed health
improvement
Women and men trainers taught other
farmers how to improve the quality of farm-
saved seeds
Seed management improved from the
field until post-harvest, resulting in 10-
12% yield increase
Photographs on seed
drying
Female project staff and later also village
women extension agents used laminated
photographs to support their group
discussions
The visual support gave women
confidence that the technology was
easy; more than 60% of women made
their own drying table
Cultural shows on rice
and seed production
Women used popular mass culture (folk
songs, drama and dance) to carry
agricultural messages; women acted as
demo farmers and extension agents
The NGO can hardly keep up with
demand to perform shows with various
messages; women became successful
demo farmers

10. Outcome of PETRRA
■ PETRRA sub-projects trained village women on;
– Technologies in which they were actively engaged such as post-harvest
– Overall rice production so that they can contribute more in decision-making
■ In 3 year period (2000 - 2003), women in extension activities of PETRRA sub-projects
increased from 10% to 41%
■ PETRRA started reaching both male and female farmers embracing the principles of
‘learning by doing’ and 'seeing is believing’
■ CABI Bioscience helped the SHIP sub-project to validate local skills
– Women were invited to rate three batches of seed with different moisture content.
Results of the voting test came mainly as a surprise to local scientists. "We are
confident," laughed the women, "we were born in the rice”

11. Stress Tolerant Rice for Africa and South
Asia (STRASA) (2007 - 2019)
■ Goal:
– To reduce poverty and hunger and increase food and income security of resource-
poor farm families through promotion of stress tolerant rice varieties
■ Outcome:
– Participants in field days cum training: 38% female & 62% male
– Many women like Beauty Begum transformed their life by skill orientation through
training to cultivate flood tolerant variety in flood affected lands which was never in
the expectations of local farmers and later evolved as seed entrepreneur in the
areas

12. Expansion of the Cereal Systems Initiative for
South Asia” (CSISA) (2011 - 2016)
■ Goal:
– Mainstream women’s participation to reduce the gender gap by enabling women
and men farmers to innovate and adopt improved technologies
– Designed to target women farmers in specific agricultural activities
■ Outcome:
– A good number of women farmers have received direct training and support for
rice seed & technology
■ Participatory farmer trials and adaptive trials: 3,092 woman farmers
participated in adaptive trials and 95,000+ woman farmers received seed of
new rice varieties
■ Short-term agricultural sector productivity or food security training:
Provided training to 22,582 women farmers (8,977 directly and 13,583
indirectly

13. Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Seed”
(CSISA-SEED) (2011 - 2013)
■ Goal :
– to improve national and household food security through enhanced and sustained productivity
achieved
■ Targets:
■ To benefit 1 million household in 20 districts in Southern Bangladesh
■ Outcomes:
■ Benefitted 9,99,517 farm households (covering 0.215 million hectares) through direct interventions
■ Benefitted 10,463 women farmers directly
■ Out of 333 small and medium seed producers, 38 were women.
■ Out of 76,750 farmers participated in field days and got trained in quality seed production, 26% were
women.
■ Out of 692 participants in ToT, 42 were women seed growers.

14. Gender and agriculture in Bangladesh
■ Literature affirms the fact that ‘Feminization of Agriculture’ is happening
– Swift male out-migration (due to rapid Industrialization and Urbanization)
– Increase in non-farm employment opportunities
■ Allowed women to contribute to their family in more productive ways and attain better
agency
■ High time to question,
– Why do the women farmers opt for farmer to farmer seed exchange?
– Why not connect with organizations to negotiate better terms and have social
recognition?
■ Need to put more emphasis
– In developing strategies to fit the seed map on women farmer’s head
– In bringing determination for the women farmers to be evolved as women seed
entrepreneurs

15. Recommendations based on major lessons
learned
■ Biological scientists should listen to women's opinions, assess attitudes towards certain
practices and consider their criteria in the design and dissemination of rice technologies
■ Target should be small and marginal farm households
■ Women need to be linked to market chain and need to be enabled to access and control
own income
■ Make extension services must be more gender sensitive by focusing, specially on areas
of agriculture, where women are involved and on women’s needs
– Training of extension workers on gender
– Recruitment of female extension workers
– Active engagement with women
– Considering convenience of women in mix of sex in training, training venue and
timing
■ Develop financial literacy of women and link women with market through mobile phones
■ Incorporate gender consideration in development of new agricultural technology

16. Recommendations based on major lessons
learned
■ Must be committed to include women and partnership can be an important means
■ Access to all agricultural information [not just on post-harvest] must be given to women
■ Women demo farmers must follow the “Learning by doing” principle
■ Women local extension agents must have the credibility to disseminate technologies to
other women
■ Village meetings may start with mixed groups, followed by single sex groups to keep men
from dominating the floor
■ Agricultural topics should be given to husbands and wives jointly (family approach in
extension)

17. Gender-responsive and inclusive seed development
and dissemination framework
17
Planning
Seed demand
Information assessment
and adoption
Gender-based
Perspective
transformation
Capacity building
at community level
Seed Development
Centre
Gender-responsive seed
development and
dissemination
Out of Man
Box thinking
Women’s groups
Governmen
t agency
(DAE,
BADC)
Private
Seed
producer
agency
NGO
partners
Research
Institutes
(BRRI,
BINA,
Universities)

18. THANK YOU
?