Women and livestock: Why gender matters are big matters

WOMEN AND LIVESTOCKWhy GENDER Matters are BIG Matters

Kathleen Colverson Susan MacMillan Dorine OdongoI n t e r n a ti o n a l L i v e s t o c k R e s e a r c h I n s ti t u t e

International Women’s Day8 March 2014

Some definitions

• ‘Sex’Biological, fixed, mostly unchangeable differences between males and females

• ‘Gender’Socially constructed, changeable, culturally specific roles for womenand men

• ‘Livestock value chains’Full range of production, processing and delivery activities from farm to fork

Why integrate gender into livestock research?

In most of the world,

women perform

most of the work to produce

most of the world’s food

Why integrate gender into livestock research?

• the impacts and effectiveness oflivestock interventions

• a person’s access tonatural resources

• a person’s nutritional well-being and livelihood strategies (e.g., interests and roles in livestock value chains)

• household food security

A person’s gender affects:

• Worldwide, women play major roles in smallholder livestock systems

• Women are disproportionately clustered in small livestock production systems (poultry, sheep, goats) and in milking and milk processing

• Women-headed and AIDS-affected households are among the poorest and hungriest

Why integrate gender into livestock research?

• Along livestock value chainsin developing countries,women and men typically provide different kinds of labour and work in different segments of the chains

• Women and menobtain different benefitsfrom this work, with women receiving significantly fewer total benefits than men

Why assess different value chains differently?

Typically, in poor countries:

• Men rather than women own the most valuable household livestock assets

• Women may own smaller, less valuable, livestock species

• Women and children raise and care for all species of livestock

• Women harvest, process and sell the livestock products and control some of the income

Why women face large hurdles inbenefiting from their (large) livestock labours

Why women’s contributions tolivestock value chains are often hidden

Conventional surveyEconomically active

Economically inactive

16%

84%

*including gardening and raising animals

21%

79%

Source: FAO

Dominican Republic

• The percentage of ‘economically active’ women increases significantly when certain activities − cultivating a home garden, raising animals, gathering firewood − are recognized as productive

• The proportion increases further when certain activities within the ‘reproductive sphere’ are included, such as meal preparation and child care

Why gender plays a role in technology transfer

• Women and menhave unequal access toinformation and technology

• Women have less access to agricultural inputs

• Women have specialized livestock knowledge

• Women and men play different roles in livestock management

• Women serve as guardiansof livestock diversity

Why global food security depends onreducing gender inequality in agriculture

• Gender relations canchange with introductionof new livestock technologiesif women have accessto inputs, training and markets

• Evidence confirms thatimproving the status of women:

– increases farm productivity

– reduces household poverty

– improves family nutrition

Quoted from Feed the Future 2012

Why all the variables matter

• Gender issues must be viewed in relation to other variables such as age, assets, income, education, and ethnicity of men and women

• Interventions made to improve livestock value chains may result in more work and fewer benefits for women, or less work and greater benefits for men

Why mainstream gender in livestock value chains?

Optimizing women’s participation in livestock value chains can lead to:

• Higher livestock incomesfor poor women

• Improved rural family welfare, especially for children – better nutrition, health, educational opportunities

• Stronger female intra-household bargaining power and voice in decision-making

How to integrate gender into R4D projects

• Identify and addressgender-based constraints

• Target gender issues and womenin research and training

• Work with women’s associations

• Collect, analyze and usesex-disaggregated data

• Increase women’s participationand benefits in R4D projects

• Employ participatory methods

• Work towards socialas well as technical goals

#1 Map gender roles and

relations along the value chain

Move from gender

inequalities to gender-based constraints

Assess the consequences

of gender-based

constraints

Take actions to remove

gender-based constraints

Measure the success of actions

How to mainstream gender in alivestock value chain project cycle

Adapted from: Rubin et al. 2010,Mayoux et al. 2010

Underlyingprinciples guiding

a strategy forintegrating gender

in a livestockvalue chain

Collect, analyse and use gender disaggregated data

Provide empirical evidence of:

• Division of labour alonglivestock and food chains

• Related needs, interestsand knowledge

• Decision-making processes• Access to and

control of resources • Access to credit and

control of revenues

• Gender-based performanceof same activities

Use participatory research methodsto engage and empower women

• Employ mix of quantitative & qualitative approaches(e.g. semi-structured interviews, focus groups, journaling)

• Ensure equal numbers of women and men in training / surveys

• Train women intheir priority areas

• Investigate gender-specific issuesin value chains

• Interview womenhousehold heads,incl. single, divorced,and widowed women

Address women’s priorities and concerns

• Attend to the time of day, duration of use and location of the technological interventions

• Give women more timefor activities if needed

• Identify and addresswomen’s priorities

• Hold separate focus groupsfor women and men

• Actively invite womento meetings and trainings

• Network with women leaders and gender experts in NGOs

Use gender-sensitive indicators to mark changesin the status and roles of women and men

• Measure successes in removing gender-based constraints

• Provide consistency and flexibility

• Attend to process and outcomes

• Use quantitative and qualitative tools

• Find the stories behind the numbers

• Avoid assumptions

• Recognize household differences

Gender training manual

• Closing the gender gap inagriculture: A trainer’s manual

• By Kathleen Colverson,ILRI senior gender scientist

• Published July 2013

• Series: ILRI Manual 9

• Nairobi, Kenya

• International LivestockResearch Institute

• http://bit.ly/Nmtd6i

Thank you

Art credits

Slide 02: Figure of Woman Shown in Motion, Albrecht Durer, 1528, via Wikipaintings

Slide 03: Reaper, Kazimir Malevich, 1912, via Wikipaintings

Slide 04: Going to the Marketplace (A green cow), David Burliuk (1882−1967), via Wikipaintings

Slide 05: Silhouette of a Peasant Woman Digging Carrots, Vincent van Gogh, 1885, via Wikipaintings

Slide 06: The Spoonful of Milk, Marc Chagall, 1912, via Wikipaintings

Slide 07: The Shepherdness, Franz Marc, 1912, via Wikipaintings

Slide 09: Russian Peasant, David Burliuk, 1928, via Wikipaintings

Slide 10: Woman with a Book, Fernand Leger, 1923, via Wikipaintings

Slide 11: Girl and Goat, Pablo Picasso, 1906, via Wikipaintings

Slide 12: Reading, Pablo Picasso, 1921, via Wikipaintings

Slide 13: Painting by Baya Mahieddine (1931−1998), Algeria, via Algerian Embassy in Rome website

Slide 15: Illustration in 14 Questions People Ask about Hinduism (Hinduism Today), Oct−Dec 2011,Himalayan Academy Publications, Hawaii, via Wikimedia

Slide 16: Peasant Woman with Red and Green Cows, David Burliuk (1882−1967)

Slide 17: Daphnis and Chloe frontispeice, Marc Chagall, 1961

Slide 18: Salome, Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko, 1910, via RasMarley on Flickr

Slide 19: The Towers of Trebizond cover design by Lindsay Mayer-Beug for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, via Paris Review

Slide 20: [Num and cow], Lowell Herrero (1921− ), via Pinterest

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