Gender dimensions in agrobiodiversity management

1. Gender dimensions in
agrobiodiversity
management
Pricilla Marimo
Associate Scientist
Marlène Elias
Gender Specialist
7 August, 2020
Science for Resilient Food, Nutrition and
Livelihoods: Contemporary Challenges

2. What is GENDER?
“Gender is a socially constructed definition of women and men. It is not
the same as sex (biological characteristics of women and men) and it is not
the same as women. Gender is determined by the conception of tasks,
functions and roles attributed to women and men in society and in public
and private life.”
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2003

3. Gender equality and
equity on the global
agenda
• As a fundamental
human right
• As a means to
achieving sustainable
development (SDGs)
• In international
conventions (UNFCCC,
UNCCD, CBD),
agreements

4. Why gender (lens) in agrobiodiversity?
• ACCESS, USE, PREFERENCES, KNOWLEDGE, PERCEPTIONS OFTEN GENDERED
• need gender analysis at each stage of program/policy development
 consider social, economic, cultural, political dynamics
 sex-disaggregated data, participatory approaches
• various social grps (men, women, youth, elderly, marginalised)-who to target?
• to identify differences, similarities, challenges, capacities, gaps
• to ensure equal results
• to identify potential impact of a program/policy
- intersectionality (age, ethnicity, religion, income…,)
- levels (individual, household, community, national, regional, global)
- gender aware, gender responsive, gender transformative

5. Gender dimensions of biodiversity management
Gender norms ascribe women and men distinct and often unequal:
• roles and responsibilities
• rights to access and control of resources
• knowledge and priorities
• capacities to participate in and influence
decisions
• access to benefits
 Patterns change across time and place, and
with other factors of social differentiation
 Need for a nuanced, context-specific
understanding of gender-biodiversity
relationship

6. Gendered roles, responsibilities
• In agriculture and food production; water and energy provision;
natural resource management and conservation; household and
care responsibilities; …
 E.g. women play key roles in
seed management, collection of
wild foods and medicinals, food
processing and preparation;
unpaid care work
• Conservation initiatives, if not
gender-responsive, can augment
women’s work burdens
• Loss of biodiversity affects
women and men differently

7. Gendered rights to resources
• Inequalities in rights to access and control natural resources,
including land, embedded in customary and formal institutions
 E.g. OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (2019) – laws or
customary practices in 123 countries restrict women’s access to land
• Unequal access to agricultural
services, information, capital,
credit, labour and markets –
different vulnerabilities
• Lack of secure rights to
resources affects conservation
incentives and capacities

8. Gendered agroecological knowledge
• Gendered sets of knowledge about ecosystems, plant and
animal species, their use, and how to manage them
• Intergenerational passing of knowledge, indigenous knowledge
• “In many cultural and economic contexts […] women are […] seen as
‘minor’ actors, secondary to men who are presumed to be the
knowledge holders, managers and preservers of most plant
resources that are thought to be ‘valuable’, particularly to outsiders.”
(Howard 2003)
• This reinforces women’s exclusion from natural resource
management policy and practice and results in a biased
understanding of natural resource management systems

9. Gendered priorities
• Gendered valuation and priorities in the management of
biodiversity
 E.g. criteria for choosing certain food crop seeds or in terms of
most valued tree ethnovarieties vary by gender

10. Gendered participation and decision-making
• Unequal access to decision-making
 E.g. women under-represented in forest user
groups
• Exclusions shaped by gender norms
 E.g. division of labor, mobility constraints,
formal education, men’s dominance in public
spaces
• Different types and degrees of participation
• Positive relationship between women’s participation
and resource management outcomes
• Exclusions reproduced across levels
 E.g. women lag behind men as leaders of
environmental ministries
Nominal/
passive
participation
Empowered
participation
(Agarwal 2001)

11. Gendered benefit-sharing
• Elite capture of benefits from biodiversity and related initiatives
 E.g. forest co-management program in Malawi raised forest income
for women and low-income participants, but men and richer
participants captured more benefits
• Inequalities among women
• A gender-responsive approach
to benefit-sharing requires
opportunities for women to
participate in the design,
negotiation and distribution of
benefits

12. Enhancing gender equality through biodiversity
management
Recognition
RepresentationDistribution
Knowledge, roles,
responsibilities
Valuation, priorities
Costs (e.g. labour)
& benefits (e.g. income,
capacities)
Access to resources,
tenure
Active participation,
decision-making
Land-based actions to
promote CC
adaptation and
mitigation

13. Thank you!
Pricilla Marimo
p.marimo@cgiar.org
References and additional examples:
Discussion Paper: Towards a Gender-Responsive
Implementation of the Convention on Biological
Diversity
Examples of projects achieving positive
biodiversity and gender equality outcomes:
http://bit.ly/biodiversityandgender
Alliance gender page:
https://www.bioversityinternational.org/gender-in-
our-research/
Marlène Elias
marlene.elias@cgiar.org