This document outlines a methodology for exploring gender in coffee farming households through co-creation workshops. It describes plans to: 1) Conduct an exploration session with experts to understand current issues and practices regarding gender in coffee farming. 2) Gather insights from target audiences through on-site activities to understand their perceptions. 3) Hold a co-creation workshop with experts and target audiences to generate ideas for addressing problems caused by gender inequality in coffee farming households. The goal is to better understand challenges faced by different personas (young/older women and men) and identify solutions to problems related to issues like access to resources, education, and workload balance. Insights from the expert exploration will inform further user research and

1. EXPLORATION OF THE TOPIC:
GENDER IN COFFEE FARMING
A FIRST STEP IN DESIGNING SOLUTIONS

2. STARTING POINT
IITA wants to explore new opportunities and concepts
around gender relations in the farming household.
IITA wants to understand the reality of coffee farming
households in relation to gender and perceptions around
gender (in)equality better.
IITA wishes to explore new angles around gender relations
in coffee farming and shape new solutions to problems
that farming household experience caused by gender
inequality.

3. METHODOLOGY
Human Centered Design, Design Thinking or Co-creation
Engaging, working with, and empowering people to generate ideas
and to collaboratively create concepts. At its core, co-creation is
literally any process that brings together users, experts and designers
to work toward a shared goal. In practice, this often takes the form of
a collaborative workshop in which stakeholders, researchers,
designers, and end-users explore a problem and generate solutions.
The end goal of co-creation is the same as that of research and
concept design: to identify a solution that provides users with better
experiences, and organizations with improved and innovative services.
A well designed co-creation workshop forces all parties to discuss the
problem and solutions together, and essentially combines the research
period with the discovery and requirements-creation phases of a
project.

4. HUMAN CENTRED DESIGN APPROACH

5. CO-CREATION DESIGN
IITA and Mango Tree designed the following co-creation plan:
1. A comprised exploration session with a wide range of experts to
learn from their experience in the field and understand the
current state of the subject.
2. Activities to gather insights and understanding of the target
audiences in various contexts (sites). Both on perceptions
3. A co-creation session with a selection of experts and
representatives of the target audiences to develop a broad
quantity of ideas: the first half of the first diamond of the double
diamond that represents the design thinking process.

6. EXPERT EXPLORATION
A mixed group of 12-15 experts that have a deep understanding of
current gender sensitization practices and of the living conditions of
farming households (man, women and children), including:
- Gender officers / extension workers
- Researchers
- Private sector
- Gender experts in other sectors
Facilitated by a human centered designer / SBCC developer.
4 steps:
- Defining what we want to discover
- Review of best practices and share learnings
- Empathize
- Problem(s) definition

7. Participants:
OLAM Gender officer East Uganda – Judith Namajja
HRNS Gender officer – Fortunate Paska
University of Wageningen / Gender in Banana value chain – Fleur Kilwinger
ABC / House of Seeds – Anja de Feijter
GIZ Gender and HIV mainstreaming – Maja Opua
UN Women / Economic Empowerment – Alice Kuczkiewicz
Compatible Technology Int / food and climate consultant – Magdalena Kropiwnicka
Ministry of Health / Gender – James Mugisha
IITA Coffee team – Patricia Bamanyaki, Diana Kirungi, Laurenc Jassogne
IITA Communication team – Onno Giller, Faith Okiror
Mango Tree / HCD Facilitator – Ineke Aquarius

8. EMPATHIZE through persona development, empathy mapping

9. PROBLEM DEFINITION starting with developing a problem tree per persona

10. DISCOVER
What the participants want to discover during the Exploration Phase:
- Get a better understanding of how to engage private sector
- Get some innovative ideas and tools of gender
- Participants hope to find inspiration for their own gender programs
- Learn from practical experiences from the field
- Learn new tools to innovate SBCC practices
- Get a framework on how to solve gender related issues
- Understand how to get the most vulnerable people on board
- Understand why we need to include gender

11. SHARING LEARNINGS
Based on the shared experience in the room, what do we want to KEEP
doing:
KEEP
- base interventions on the women’s potential
- the notion that gender mainstreaming work is still needed, due to
the fact that it has not been addressed properly
- focus interventions on joint decision making in household
- joint decision making should start with joint household planning
- focus on the most vulnerable
- interventions should focus on couples rather than the women only
- empower women by skilling them and extending them subsidies
- focus on improving land policies
- integrate leadership / entrepreneurship skills
- connect gender to all aspects of life; farming, health, nutrition,
education and the collaboration with other farmers.

12. SHARING LEARNINGS
Based on the shared experience in the room, what should we STOP
doing:
STOP
- the notion than when empowering women men have to be left
aside as the two have to work together
- focusing on the constraints and not on the women
- working on gender because of donor requirements – for money
- discussing gender without connecting it to other aspects of life
such as nutrition, HIV/AIDS, education, domestic violence etc.
- the notion that women are a homogenous group - diversity is large
- ignoring the fact that women have a knowledge / experience gap in
comparison to their male peers

13. PERSONA : YOUNG WOMAN
Overworked, semi-literate and completely dependent on her husband

15. PROBLEM TREE : YOUNG WOMAN

16. PERSONA : OLDER WOMAN
Overworked, physically abused and dependent on her husband

18. PROBLEM TREE : OLDER WOMAN

19. PERSONA : YOUNG MAN
Struggling to develop family

21. PROBLEM TREE : YOUNG MAN

22. PERSONA : OLDER MAN
Lacking resources to sustain family

24. PROBLEM TREE : OLDER MAN

25. PROBLEM DEFINITION #1
Group 1 advises to focus on the following key problem
Masaba is struggling to develop his family, but he needs access to
finance, in order to increase quality and quantity throughout the
production process. He is poor and lives in the village. His life would
be better he had access to credit.
Furthermore, financial literacy in regards to agronomy would be an
added advantage. Jacob’s situation could be further improved if he
recognized the importance of the work of his wife, acknowledges her
contribution to the quality of the farm’s output.
With access to finance, increased financial literacy skills and raised
awareness / appreciation of his wife’s role, Jacobs is likely to
experience increased farm production and quality. This in turn will
yield access to better markets for both Jacobs and his wife.
This will lead to a sustainable community with a reduced dependence
on donor money.

26. PROBLEM DEFINITION #2
Group 2 advises to focus on the following key problem
Night does not own land and this affects her access to money and
overall control over her life. Her domestic- and farm work
overburdens her and as a result she has limited time for activities
outside the home including accessing information.
Night needs to be empowered with coffee management knowledge,
skills and access to information. She needs help managing her
domestic burden as well as improved technical support on the farm.
All this would be possible if she has access and control of land and
crops to grow on the land. She would also benefit from shared roles
and being able to contribute to household decisions.
She stands to benefit from the above through improved productivity,
better health and better planning.

27. PROBLEM DEFINITION #3
Group 3 advises to focus on the following key problem
Our young rural Ugandan family has problems with healthcare and
stable access to land. In the case of health care, the focus is on family
planning, nutrition and access to medicines.
When it comes to stable access to land, the family want to be more
than labor on a plantation and progress toward land ownership. They
have experienced land grabbing by relatives.
Healthcare extension services and land ownership registration are
solutions to their current problems.
These interventions will lead to increased labour output for their
coffee farming.
A win in terms of investment in sustainable farming practices.

28. COLLECTIVE LEARNINGS
- A key conclusion is that in the core of social change is education: as
soon as people are educated improvement is noticed in terms of:
nutrition, joint decision making, family planning, productivity and
entrepreneurial success.
- A good approach to look at gender is to consider what is acceptable
and not acceptable based on the site (site specificity).
- Also ensure specifity of the system being addressed: gender
approaches in coffee, bananas, etc. at household or community
level. You find very different patterns. There is a need to look at
gender issues along the whole coffee value chain
- Good to think about what would be the effects if gender issues are
not addressed / or when addressed, the opportunities for change,
the sustainable links
- It is also good to look at different women typologies and consider
the specific gender issues for the different typologies of women
- While working on gender issues, it is good to consider the potential
of women besides looking at their challenges alone.

29. COLLECTIVE LEARNINGS
- It is good to look at gender from a basic needs perspective. That is a
great priority that is not yet met and needs attention.
- Other good approaches to empower women is through leadership
training so that they can be able to compete with male farmers in
farmer groups and to also take up leadership positions.
Acknowledge that they lack such skills and experiences.
- Also through encouraging family planning. and linking gender
aspects with activities by other organizations like on HIV, domestic
violence and nutrition and food security.
- Encouraging joint decision making and encouraging men and
women saving together.
- Other approaches that were mentioned included having a
household tool with a checklist on who does what in the
household, incl. access and control of resources, and its effects
- Remembering that gender encompass the entire household young
and old men and women.

30. COLLECTIVE LEARNINGS
- The best starting point to push gender on the agenda is focus on
the benefits of including gender. In coffee, more involvement of
women means more income well distributed in the household and
better food and nutrition security, for the betterment of the entire
household
- There is also a need to devise ways of making women's work easier
such as encouraging the purchase and use of tools that make the
work simpler.
- Also important to address gender from the household level and
build to solutions at community level considering effects and
changes in attitude and then later go back to the implementation
at the household level taking into consideration the nuclear and
polygamous households which may require different gender
strategies.

31. PARTICIPANTS INVOLVEMENT
All participants want to remain involved in the co-creation representing their
organizations:
OLAM Judith Namajja
HRNS Fortunate Paska
University of Wageningen Fleur Kilwinger
ABC Anja de Feijter
GIZ Maja Opua
UN Women Alice Kuczkiewicz
Compatible Technology Int Magdalena Kropiwnicka
Ministry of Health James Mugisha
Organized by:
IITA
Mango Tree

32. USER RESEARCH ON TWO SITES:
GENDER IN COFFEE FARMING
A SECOND STEP IN DESIGNING SOLUTIONS

33. STARTING POINT
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