Gender in Agriculture

Based on a recommendation at GCARD1 for specific actions to strengthen the value of agricultural knowledge and innovation for rural women, GFAR initiated an open and inclusive Global Partnership Program, the Gender in Agriculture Partnership (GAP). The GAP is a collective movement bringing together wide range of institutions at national, regional and global level in all sectors mobilized through individual catalysts.
 
The GAP has set in motion a dynamic coalition of stakeholders to empower women and influence institutions, policies, and the Agricultural Research for Development agenda. We aim to help transform and strengthen agricultural innovation to more directly benefit women farmers and householders and enable effective access to knowledge, credit and sustainable and appropriate inputs and resources. Partners’ actions  underway include a policy paper on women and innovation prepared by IFPRI and FAO and a joint information platform established by the World Bank.
 
In Sub-Saharan Africa, GFAR is piloting work through FAO, FARA and DIMITRA to re-examine agricultural innovation priorities and knowledge access systems through the eyes of women farmers and householders themselves and so influence national agendas to more directly meet their needs. In the Near-East and North Africa region, AARINENA has carried out  an important study of women farmers needs across several countries, which  identified key areas of intervention.
 
  • The Global Conference on Women in Agriculture (New Delhi,13-15 March,2012) co-organized with ICAR, APAARI and a number of bilateral and multilateral organizations, was a landmark event bringing together key organizations from around the world, taking stock of their work and triggering specific actions on the road to the GCARD 2012 and beyond. The GCWA identified solid further steps and brought a clear collective call for action and investment to enable the power of agricultural innovation to change the lives of rural women worldwide. The Conference provided the venue for the official launch of GAP.
  • As a result of the Conference, the Government of India (through ICAR) committed  to reorient India’s agri-research agenda to include a greater emphasis on gender, investing a further 1.84 M US$ in this agenda over five years, with the Directorate of Research on Women in Agriculture (DRWA) playing a key role, and operating a hub to leverage the Government commitment to catalyze GAP activities in South Asia and link with partners in other countries. FARA has offered to organize the second Global Conference on Women in Agriculture (GCWA2) in Africa in 2015.
GAP’s Operation, Mission and Vision
 
An agreed Concept Note, derived from GCWA And an electronic survey of partners needs and priorities provide the framework for GAP’s development and decisions on Advocacy strategy, Priorities and Collective Activities at programme, regional and national levels, and Working mechanisms.
 
GAP operates through interlinked mechanisms:
 
  • an international group of “Catalysts” drawn from a wide range of different partners, inspiring change and collective actions within their own organizations,
  • regional hubs linked vertically and horizontally,
  • national actors from all sectors, public, private and civil
  • advocacy through a group of GAP “Patrons” of eminent persons
GAP’s mission:
 
To place gender equity and women’s empowerment at the heart of agricultural policy, research and development, capacity-development and institutional-building agendas. This means re-conceptualizing agriculture not only as a vehicle to produce food, other agricultural products and income, but also to ensure household and community well-being.
 
Our shared vision:
 
A transformed agriculture where gender equity enables food, nutrition and income security for the rural poor.
 
The GAP Mission and Vision were strongly endorsed by all involved in January 2013.
 
Recent activities by GAP partners include:
 
(a) A High level Plenary Policy Forum on Agricultural Innovation for Rural Women at the GFAR-organized Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2, Punta del Este, Uruguay, 29 October – 1 November 2012) which represented a sea change in recognition of gender equity among AR4D institutions from that in GCARD1. GCARD2 included:
 
  • thematic sessions on collective actions in empowerment of women and youth; nutrition; and capacity development (which all addressed gender),
  • two pre-GCARD sessions on agriculture-gender-nutrition issues with GDPRD and the CGIAR CRP on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health (A4NH) which offered rich opportunities for networking and discussions, strengthening the sense of shared concern and commitment to work together in GAP
(b) An e-survey (between October-November 2012), expanded the consultative process initiated at the GCWA to a wider range of stakeholders, to identify needs and priorities for collective actions through GAP.[1] 97 percent of the 150+ respondents, (from over 100 organizations), agreed on the need for GAP and to concentrate actions around the five initial priority areas suggested in the October 2012 version of the GAP Note. An overwhelming majority of respondents (84.1, 80.5 and 70 percent, respectively), considered it vital that GAP fulfils the following roles, for which no comparable partnership platform exists:
 
  • facilitating dialogue and debate among agricultural and gender professionals
  • bringing GAP partners together to plan and coordinate collective advocacy  and activities on women/gender in agricultural research for development and
  • identifying gender-based needs in agriculture and developing policies, strategies, programmes and determining plans for collective action
(c) Specific studies commissioned via GAP
 
  • financial and technical support for a GFAR/FAO consultant study with FARA-SSA-CP and FAO-ESW/DIMITRA, of rural women’s knowledge networks through community clubs and local language radio and gender-differentiated needs in Niger,
  • publication of a GFAR-supported FAO-IFPRI paper on engendering agricultural research,
  • 2012 AARINENA report on Women’s Empowerment for Improved Research in Agricultural Development, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in the West Asia/North Africa Region by E. Augustin with R. Assad and D. Jaziri, also supported by GFAR
(d) Coordinated international actions
 
  • a gender session mobilized through GAP at the Agricultural Research and Rural Development Day at Rio+20, included presentations from FAO, APAARI, CIAT and the Jordanian Women Farmers’ Association. This redressed the limited attention to gender issues in the report of the International Commission on Sustainability and Climate Change that framed the meeting and ensured effective mention of gender issues and women farmers in the final RIO+20 Declaration, described as an important focus by the report’s principal author, UK Chief Scientist Prof. Sir John Beddington
  • specific advocacy from WFP also helped ensure gender received prominence in the Rio+20 and G-20 intergovernmental discussions
  • Active participation by GFAR and FAO/ESW in the UN Women/UNRISD workshop on gender research in the UN system (Geneva, Nov 2012), engaged GAP with gender specialists across the UN, to link GAP partners to actions on more broad-based gender equity constraints, coordinated via UN Women, in health, women’s rights and exploitation, land and labour rights issues etc. that are very complementary to the specific agricultural focus of existing GAP partners
  • GFAR and others provided financial and technical support for GFRAS’ core activities to strengthen advisory services, including a new focus on advisory services for women
  • GFAR/GAP provided direct comments on FAO’s draft State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2013, Food Systems for Food Security and Better Nutrition, with regard to gender-agriculture-nutrition linkages
  • GAP partners inputs to the development of the CGIAR equity and gender strategy to bring a stronger gender focus in CGIAR new Research-for-Development Programmes (CRPs)
  • Specific support to the development of gender strategies and their implementation in the CGIAR CRPs, in particular CRP1.1 Dryland Systems and support to planning processes among the CGIAR gender specialists group
  • GAP Partners are now exploring ways to help support gender-based research actions of the CRPs in their countries of focus, based around the intended impacts of each programme
  • GAP Partners are providing the core review paper analysing links between gender and nutrition for the Committee on Food Security’s meeting in October and towards the International Conference on Nutrition events in 2014 and 2015.
Responding to country demands
 
Building on GAP’s first achievements, synergies, and value-addition of working through an open, collective partnership, a number of regional organizations and national governments have expressed requests for technical support by GAP partners and are helping to develop initial contacts with potential donors.
 
GFAR Secretariat and GAP partners, are linking nationally driven agendas with GAP partner’s support for integrated actions and programmes towards greater impacts for rural women. We are also fostering regional scale-out via Regional and Sub-Regional Fora wherever feasible:
 
Africa
 
Countries involved in the UN Women - Rome-based Agencies programme Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (EERW) are Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia and Niger, and elsewhere Kyrgyzstan, Guatemala and Nepal.  In each of these countries, GAP is tailoring similar multi-partner actions, building international action to support national partners in their programmes addressing women’s development, gender equity and access to new technologies or practices in agricultural and nutrition contexts.
 
Sierra Leone has been added to this list in response to a direct Ministerial request made to GFAR at the Africa Agriculture Science Week in Ghana, in July 2013. The government of Sierra Leone is seeking support from GAP in developing an effective national agenda for rural women. GAP is helping to mobilize partners and external funding to bring international support to this programme through the expertise of GAP partners.
 
GFAR and GAP partners, with the African Union and a range of African public, private and civil organizations and Regional and Sub-Regional For a, are facilitating the planning in Africa of actions supporting young women in developing entrepreneurial skills and enterprise opportunities from agricultural innovation.
 
South Asia
 
In Nepal, a focus country of EERW, the Nepalese Agricultural Research Council (NARC) has directly approached GAP to help re-orient their R&D system to better meet the needs of women. In response and in association with the EERW programme, GFAR is facilitating collaboration between the Nepal programmes of a range of GAP partners from international agencies, UN Women, local providers, local NGO, the ICAR Indian  Directorate for Research on Women in Agriculture and the research programmes of the CGIAR (CRPs), as providers of technical expertise.
 
Middle East
 
GAP partners are also being mobilized to help develop the gender strategies of the CGIAR CRPs, most recently through the Montpellier gender workshop and now through direct assistance via consultant inputs to help develop the gender strategy for the Dryland Systems programme. AARINENA, the Regional Forum for the Middle East, has taken up gender issues as a major focus for their work. The AARINENA study on gender shows the huge scale of need in the region. AARINENA anticipates promoting gender equity issues such as recognition of women’s rights in farmers unions, land tenure and development of women-to-women extension services.
 
Latin America
 
FORAGRO have prioritized the need for a study on engendered agricultural innovation needs in Latin America and require further support for this to commence. This would include countries of particular development need such as Guatemala, also an EERW focus.
 
The GAP is growing rapidly with great commitment and enthusiasm among the rapidly growing number of partners involved. We welcome the participation of new partners and financial support for the further growth of this exciting partnership, which is open and inclusive of all who share our vision of a transformed agriculture where gender equity enables food, nutrition and income security for the rural poor.
 
[1] Initiated prior to GCARD2, the survey was extended after, and received a good number of over 150 responses.