On Monday and Tuesday this week, our UN Rep in Nairobi, Alice, was invited to attend a two day workshop on the importance of considering gender issues within the agricultural sector. The purpose of the workshop was to
bring together researchers and practitioners in the agricultural sector and
share information on gender issues, with a vision of having national data on
responsibilities and activities on the agricultural sector, using an appropriate
framework. 

The Workshop was sponsored by Bill
and Melinda Gates and organized by International Centre for Research on Women
(ICRW) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

The underlying factor was
that women, particularly small-scale farmers, are always constrained due to
lack of productive resources, capital, capacity as well as social barriers,
amidst increasing sophistication in the value chains. Despite this fact, research
has shown that women spend 90 percent of their income on their families, while
men spend 30-40 percent only.  On this
basis, if women had the same resources as men, it could increase yields by
20-30 percent and reduce the number of hungry people by 100 – 150 million. 

It was therefore emphasized that
women’s roles, productivity and outcomes need to be increased at the higher and
more lucrative nodes of the value chains. 
It is therefore important to face the underlying challenges which are
responsible for the barriers, such as cultural resistance to change, gender
blind programming (in terms of capacity, inadequate information and data for
gender programming), as well as inadequate political and institutional
commitment.  Some of the solutions
proposed to counter these underlying challenges include:

·       Capacity building at all
levels on gender analysis and planning

·       Defining gender specific
objectives and allocating specific funding to those activities

·       Developing gender specific
Terms of Reference (TORs) and output for all staff

·       Mainstreaming gender
issues and activities in all programme activities

·       Putting in place a gender
sensitive monitoring and evaluation programme (better data collection and
analysis)

·       Enabling technology is
required

·       Women need to influence
their environment and change the value chain, particularly in the marketing and
transport systems

·       Increase the proportion of
women in shareholding/economic participation as well as leadership, whereby,
representation is not confused by participation

·       Advocacy and education programmes aimed at men

·       Women should be included
in contracts for services and benefits

·       Sponsoring of women in
research and integrating gender education at all levels, from certificates, to
diploma and to degree certificates.

A number of frameworks for Gender
Analysis in Agricultural Value Chains (GAAVCs) were given, and it was concluded
that several frameworks need to be integrated for better precision.

SI needs to
participate actively in advocacy, to widen women’s choices in value chains,
with emphasis on access rights to productive resources.