Dear friends,
This ACIAR project on integrating gender in agricultural value-chain research was completed in 2018 but we continue to share information and update our publication in 2019 through this website.
Best Regards,
Nozomi Kawarazuka
International Potato Centre
The regional gender workshop was held on 15-16 Nov with 123 participants from Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Philippines. We had 15 group sessions with various topics such as talking with farmers, learning from ethnic minority university students, sharing insights from recent gender integration activities, discussing masculinities, influencing policies and challenges of interdisciplinary research. We thank all participants for their contributions. Let’s continue to think about gender in agricultural research. Presentations (PDF) are available from here. (Please scroll down to the workshop event). Participants’ evaluation results as of 25 Nov is available from here. The workshop report from here.
This week, research on gender, youth and agriculture were conducted in a Thai ethnic minority village in Dien Bien, Vietnam. As part of this study, male and female young farmers made a short film on young women and men respectively.
The films contain real voices of young women and men farmers from their gender perspectives, providing very rich insights of rural lives and livelihoods. The videos are available from the links: Men https://youtu.be/KNIKgqudXeQ and women https://youtu.be/HRGjNTSNGBw
We made a small movie theatre in the village and organised a video showing event. 38 people villagers including children and one commune officer participated in this event.
This gender project has been working on gender-responsive participatory videos and photos, some of which will be presented by the farmers during the forthcoming regional gender workshop on 15-16 November in Hanoi (see details: https://genderinagr.wordpress.com/event/)
Written by Nozomi Kawarazuka, International Potato Center (CIP)
*This study was conducted in collaboration with Institute for Social Development Studies (ISDS) and National Institute for Animal Sciences (NIAS).
Photo credit: Nozomi Kawarazuka
Nowadays we try to take gender-responsive approaches everywhere in agricultural research and interventions. Unlike chickens, pigs and sweet potatoes, where women play significant roles in production, beef cattle hold a strong masculine image. To explore gender dimensions in beef cattle production at the village level, the gender SRA team (ISDS and CIP) in collaboration with National Institute for Animal Sciences (NIAS) conducted fieldwork in a Thai ethnic minority village in Dien Bien.
Three key findings are briefly presented here. First, many parts of the everyday practices of beef cattle production are done by women. Such everyday work includes feeding, grazing, cleaning cattle sheds and covering sheds in the winter. In the study site, many of the young men (both unmarried and married) are working in Hanoi, and so the women are more and more responsible for cattle. Beef cattle production is thus no longer a masculine activity. On the other hand, unlike chickens and pigs, which women can handle alone from production to selling, men’s hands are required for grazing on the hill areas, disease control, calving, and decisions on selling and purchasing. In this respect, men’s roles are more easily noticeable. We therefore need to challenge our own bias that cattle are a male domain. In reality, they are associated with both men and women but women have more roles in the everyday practices.
Second, although women play the main everyday role, their perceived knowledge of cattle production is relatively low. Many women utilize knowledge and practices learnt from their parents based on their own experiences. In contrast, men’s perceived knowledge is high and they also perceive that they play important technical roles in cattle production. Without carefully considering women’s actual roles, their ways of learning and levels of confidence, women can be easily ignored during any training.
Third, in the study site, gender relations are relatively relaxed. Men support domestic work including cooking, and women are involved in household decision-making. However, in public, women are very shy and unused to speaking with outsiders in Vietnamese. When it comes to the training for beef cattle, women may have double barriers: their own perceptions that they have limited knowledge of cattle, and their lack of confidence and experience of being exposed to the trainings and languages used therein.
During the fieldwork, we saw middle-aged women grazing a group of cattle and buffalo. As gender roles are changing, beef cattle research needs to change to a more feminine way of thinking appropriate to women farmers. This should include having female trainers for trainees, reviewing training languages and collecting information from women in addition to men.
Written by Nozomi Kawarazuka, International Potato Center
The ACIAT vegetable project in MạcChâu supports farmers’ vegetable groups, providing technology and information to help improve production and incomes. In the group activities, the project team has observed clear gender dimensions. A vegetable group in a Hmong ethnic group community is dominated by male farmers and their wives do not participate in group activities, while a Mung ethnic group community has some active female members in the group. Furthermore, the quality of vegetable collected by men farmers are sometime better than those of women farmers. The project team was interested in: what are Hmong and Mung women’s and men’s roles in vegetable value-chain; who have decision-making power in input, selling and household expenditure from incomes of vegetable; and how men and women perceive vegetable production.
A fieldwork was conducted in late August in a Hmong and Mung community respectively by the gender team (CARE International) with a collaboration with the project team members. The findings show that both Hmong and Mung women are very positive about vegetable production because: it keeps their husbands busy with farming, effectively using male labours which were previously under-utilized; it provides a small income everyday which could be controlled by women for daily expenses. This is a big difference from annual crops such as maize that brings a large amount of money at once. Both Hmong and Mung women are involved in vegetable production processes including spraying pesticide. Mung women have relatively equal decision-making power to their husbands about what types of vegetables they should grow, how much and what kinds of input they invest in and when they sell. On the other hand, Hmong women are not involved in decision-making, and they have limited knowledge because they do not attend the trainings and group activities. More importantly, both Hmong women and men perceive that women do not have capacity and knowledge to make decisions.
![IMG_20180827_144058_HDR[2]](https://i0.wp.com/genderinagr.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_20180827_144058_hdr2.jpg?w=313&h=235&ssl=1 "IMG_20180827_144058_HDR[2]")
![IMG_20180827_153344[3]](https://i0.wp.com/genderinagr.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_20180827_1533443.jpg?w=313&h=234&ssl=1 "IMG_20180827_153344[3]")
There are two recommendations for the project team. First, given that Hmong women are fully involved in vegetable production, they need to participate in group activities. If they attend group activities (e.g. planning for production, trainings and exchanging market information), vegetable production can be much more efficient, and both quantity and quality of production can be improved. To facilitate women’s participation, gender-based constraints should be considered (e.g. language, time and venue). Second, while women are involved in agricultural production more or less equally to men, domestic work is managed mostly by women for both the Mung and the Hmong. The busiest time for vegetable production and harvest are two hours in early morning and another two hours in early evening, which overlaps with women’s peak busy time for domestic work. Without their husbands’ understandings and support for domestic work, women cannot focus on vegetable production and harvest. CARE International proposes organizing a community event with fun activities through which gender is visualized and the importance of domestic work is recognized by both men and women. The action plan will be developed soon.
Written by Nozomi Kawarazuka, International Potato Center
Photo credit: Bui Van Tung
The 6thGender Seminar was held on 31 August by inviting Dr Anna-Klara Lindeborg, a human geographer from Uppsala University in Sweden. She presented her Ph.D research in a Hmong ethnic minority village in Northern Laos, near the borders of China and Myanmar. In Laos, rubber was a boom commodity at that time and its production increased from 900 ha in 2003 to 300,000ha in 2012. Rubber requires a long-term investment, waiting for 8 years to get incomes. It also requires specific skills and knowledge which initially perceived that only men can do. Men in the study site learned how to grow and maintain it from their male relatives in China, which was very successful. Once the rubber became a main income source, gender divisions of labour changed along with the seasonality of rubber: women were more involved in some domains which were previously considered as male tasks. The presence of women in male domains, however, does not necessarily mean that women join in decision-making. While rubber contributed to increasing incomes, it also increased dependency on Chinese economy and vulnerability to international rubber market.
Her presentation has implications for the ACIAR agricultural projects that care about gender and social inclusion. First, informal social networks were so powerful, enabling male farmers to quickly adopt a new commodity and acquire new knowledge and skills. We often say that Hmong farmers are conservative and reluctant to adopt new technologies, but it may be because information comes from formal institutions which often lack trust. Informal social networks were, however, highly gendered and women were often excluded from the male networks that exchange very important information, knowledge and skills. We need to find hybrid approaches that utilize the advantages of informal and formal networks for scaling up new technologies and information to ethnic minorities, especially for women. Second, while boom commodities often change gender roles, women’s increased involvement in agricultural production does not necessarily increase their involvement in decision-making over livelihood strategies and household expenditure. In this case, women are simply overburdened, not empowered. In order to support women’s involvement in decision-making, gender-responsive agricultural interventions are needed, and this is what our gender project has been trying, although it is not easy and context-specific.
25 people participated in the seminar and we thank Anna-Klara and all participants for coming to the seminar and contributing to the discussion. Her presentation slides are available from the link: here
Written by Nozomi Kawarazuka (CIP)
The 5thGender Seminar was held on 18thJuly, 2018. Dr. Colman Patrick Ross presented his research on adult basic education for ethnic minorities in remote communities in the Northern uplands. The capacity to use Vietnamese is important for ethnic minorities to increase their access to external markets and the resources provided by the government. However, it remains as a challenge, in particular, for women in remote areas.
In his presentation, Colman highlighted the importance in agricultural research and interventions of understanding the literacy levels of men and women, as it influences farmers’understandings of development concepts, their communications with donors and researchers,and their access to external resources. Without identifying appropriate communication means for men and women, agricultural research and interventions run the risk of engaging only educated farmers who are often men, while excludingmany women farmers with limited education.
Colman also suggested having project staff who are from the ethnic minority group in the targeted community. Nowadays, there are young ethnic minority university graduates, and they can bridge relationships between local farmers and outsiders (e.g. Vietnamese and foreigners). Their presence in the project can bring very positive impacts on both sides: farmers can have more clear understandings of what development/research projects want to do; and researchers can understand the underlying social and cultural factors of the agricultural challenges faced by women and men farmers.
Lastly, Colman emphasised the importance of acknowledging social diversity within the community. Ethnographic approaches have a strength of illuminating diversity and differences instead of generalizing information and reinforcing the existing stereotypes. This may be a first step for agricultural research in understanding the specific needs of targeted social groups within the community, and to evaluate who are benefitting from agricultural interventions.
In the discussion session, we talked about the many different issues around qualitative studies such as: how to build good researcher-researched relationships, which affect the quality of data; how to challenge stereotypical images of ethnic minority men and women; and how to translate rich qualitative data into agricultural research for development.
15 people participated in this seminar, many of whom are from ACIAR partner organizations, and we were very happy to catch up with some people who participated in the gender trainings last year. We thank the GREAT project for hosting the seminar.
Written by Nozomi Kawarazuka, International Potato Center.
Agricultural research often takes little account of gender, and many agricultural researchers find it difficult to understand the importance and position of gender in their own research areas. The Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) is a leading donor with a strong gender policy and strategies in their institutional structures and their project implementation processes. Many agricultural research projects funded by ACIAR have now started integrating the gender lens into their research and interventions. An example of this is the gender awareness workshop, which was held in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on 12-13 June 2018, to facilitate this movement toward gender equity in agricultural research for development. The 43 participants came from various organizations, and included government officers, national and international university researchers, CGIAR researchers, NGOs and farmers.
The workshop was carefully organized in such a way that all participants, regardless of their gender, age or social position, could feel comfortable speaking. During the two-day workshop, all participants were actively involved in discussions and contributed to knowledge sharing and action planning. There are four key insights that showed us areas to work on.
First, increasing the uptake of agricultural technologies is a challenge. For example, the overuse or inappropriate use of pesticides, antibiotics and fertilizers are frequently mentioned. Viewing this issue through the gender lens is essential to understand why farmers do not follow the proper procedures. Qualitative social science research can help explore men’s and women’s different perceptions, gender-based labour and time constraints, and their access to information and knowledge.
Second, working with NGOs as ACIAR partners is a very effective way to achieve not only increased uptake of technologies and scaling, but also empowering women. While it is very clear from this workshop that women have fewer opportunities to learn new agricultural technologies and knowledge, simply increasing the number of female participants is not a solution as women face gender-based constraints rooted in existing gender norms. Gender focussed training sessions for men and women, as well as developing women’s skills, including leadership skills, are essential. In this respect, working with NGOs can bring synergy. Two female farmers in this workshop shared their experiences of being female lead farmers. Their real stories and powerful messages convinced us of how empowering women can change their lives and livelihoods.
Third, around one third of participants had no ideas about how gender matters in their agricultural research and how their research and interventions can bring positive social impacts or unintended consequences. During the two-day workshop, however, they were able to relate gender to their own work. Their participation and thoughts were very important as they can influence policy and interventions in the sectors where they work. The workplans of livestock and vegetable teams were developed by those participants who had no previous training in gender issues. This is a great achievement, but follow-up support should be provided to those groups in order toimplement theirworkplan and move further to integrate the gender lens.
Fourth, policy change was identified as one of the key challenges in Myanmar. While gender can be addressed at the grass-root level, our activities are very limited if policy-making remains gender-blinded or simply lip service. We therefore discussed how we could better influence policies. Although there are many challenges, networks built on this workshop can be a first step to influence policies. We seek further opportunities to work together to find ways in which our research findings related to gender can more effectively contribute to influencing policies at the national level.
Lastly, we recognize this workshop as a first starting point for ACIAR Myanmar to integrate the gender lens. Some challenges were discussed and documented in this report, and we hope to have further opportunities to continue to work together in near future.
The Workshop Report is available: Here
Nozomi Kawarazuka1; Nguyen Thi Van Anh2and Vu Xuan Thai2; and Pham Huu Thuong3
1International Potato Center, 2Institute for Social Development Studies, 3World Agroforestry Center
Young people’s perspectives in agriculture are often ignored in agricultural development policies and interventions. In many parts of rural Vietnam, young people are leaving agriculture to seek better income earning opportunities in urban areas. This makes understanding theirspecific constraints, interests and opportunities based on gender, age and ethnicity very important for agricultural development, as it can help provide more appropriate, hence more effective support.
This study explored young people’s gendered aspirations, interests, and changing norms and social values. A case study was conducted in a Hmong ethnic minority village in Dien Bien province where farmers mainly grow coffee, maize, and fruit. Its conceptual basis was drawn from social theories of gender relations and intersectionality to understand the complex situation of male and female youth in the ethnic minority context.
Before conducting in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, we suggested farmers made a short film about the youth in their village, as a brainstorming activity.
Photos: during the video training, a village leader and farmers’ and women’s union leaders were invited so that they are aware of and can support the youth’s film making activities. Farmers took a short video as a test and viewed those on a computer screen.
The Hmong women in the study site are not get used to speaking in public, and at the beginning, it was very difficult for their group to find young women who were willing to speak in front of the video camera. The men’s group appeared to have a better understanding of making stories, formulating questions and using a camera. However, the women had a good plan and they eventually managed very well. They filmedscenes with theirchildren around, cooking in the kitchen and standing in front of water facilities, all reflecting their highly gendered everyday roles and responsibilities.
We organized a video screening event by inviting the villagers and some district and commune officers. All the participants enjoyed watching their videos. Ms Quang Thi Huong, the leader of the women’s union in Tuan Diao district said, “It is a great initiative that young people are recognized as farmers. Empowering the youth in agriculture is very important as it means they do not have to go far away fromtheir families to earn incomes. Making such nice videos in a short period of time is already a great achievement.” Through the video activity and the video screening event, young farmers, in particular women, gained self-confidence, and we believe that women’s participation in the film making helped to challenge the gender-biased assumptions that Hmong women cannot do it. The videos show youngmen and women’s different and common interests, thoughts and desires.
Photos: a temporary cinema was made in a village leader’s house. 32 people participated in the screening event including young people, district officers and commune officers.
After the video activity, we conducted 2 focus group discussions and 8 in-depth interviews for men and women respectively. Although the data has not fully been analysed yet, it seems that both young men and women are more open than the old generation to adopting new things from outside their village including fashion, music and agricultural innovation. They are also keen on entrepreneur activities. On the other hand, the family and having a son are central to their life value. Manual labour tasks were assigned to young wives. Although they are nowadays better educated, their gender roles remain and social expectations of Hmong wives remain similar to those of the older generation. Young married men have very limited power and autonomy as they are often economically dependent on their parents. As a result, young men cannot risk investing in agriculture despite being better educated than the old generation and having new ideas to improve agriculture. Some young women are very creative and engage in small business, which significantly leads to their increased power and self-confidence. Addressing their needs and supporting young women and men’s involvement in agricultural interventions will help overall agricultural development in the region as they have capacity and motivations. The technical report will be published when all data have been analysed.
The videos with English and Vietnamese subtitles are available at: women – https://youtu.be/i5I8i0dAGqoand men- https://youtu.be/gKhqMooZHpY
We thank the local authority for their support in the youth’s participation in film making and organizing the screening event. The study was funded by ACIAR.
Nozomi Kawarazuka1, Nguyen Thi Van Anh2and Vu Xuan Thai2and Pham Huu Thuong3
1International Potato Center, 2Institute for Social Development Studies, 3World Agroforestry Center
Agricultural mechanization has been developed from men’s perspectives, especially large-scale, lowland farmers with relatively expensive machines such as cultivators, transplanting machines and threshers. This trend reinforces the current social power structures in the agricultural sector in which the poor smallholders in mountainous areas, especially women farmers, remain dependent on their own manual labour, limiting the scale of agricultural production. Mechanization is defined in this article as labour- and/or time-saving tools and machines. What machines and tools are used in the uplands and who has access to them? This study was focused on understanding men’s and women’s access to and needs of labour- and/or time-saving tools and machines.
A case study was conducted in a Hmong ethnic minority village in the Northern uplands of Vietnam. Gender-responsive participatory tools were developed and applied in this study including a village walk and a photo-taking activity. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were also conducted. We collected data on the existing tools and machines used by men and women, when they were introduced, how many households own, and the gender-based challenges in using them. We also identified time- and/or labour-consuming activities, and men and women’s different needs and interests for mechanization. Women’s domestic activities are included in this study to have a full picture of the gendered mechanization processes.
Photos:six male and female farmers were invited as co-researchers to investigate what machines and tools men and women use in this village. Scenes of using machines and tools were recorded as photos and a short video. A mapping exercise was done with those photos to collect more detailed information.
Photos:Machines mainly used by men. While women can also ride motorbikes, manual motorbikes for carrying crops from the field are mainly used by men. In those domains of work where men use machines, women do manual labour such as weeding,ploughing, cutting firewood and carrying harvested crops.
Photos:Women feel a notion of ownership for domestic machines and tools. Animal feeding is identified as one of the most time/labour consuming work that remains manual. Water facilities (a tank and pipe) are considered as very important for women. The photo (left) is illustrates that water is directly connected to the kitchen, which helps women to save labour and time.
After collecting the data, a validation meeting was organized by inviting 32 farmers and commune and district officers. In this meeting, those male and female farmers who participated in our study as co-researchers presented their key findings about the machines and tools used by men and women respectively. This was an opportunity for men to realize that women’s interests and needs for tools and machines are different from those of men. In the discussion session, both men and women expressed their interests in having labour- and time-saving technologies for weeding to respond to the increasing market demand for safe, unsprayed food.
During the validation meeting, a woman farmer presents key findings.
There are three key findings. First, men and women have very different access to labour- and time-saving equipment as shown in the above photos. Interestingly, manual labour is considered women’s work and once a manual task is mechanized, the men share it with the women. For example, chopping grass for animals was previously women’s work but when the chopping machine was introduced, men began to help women do this task. In other words, mechanization in the women’s domain is essential to more sharing of responsibilities, thereby reducing women’s burden. Second, there is a huge gap between the poor and better-off in access to labour- and time-saving equipment. Poor families have few domestic machines in their houses and their agricultural work remains manual, constraining their labour and time to invest in agriculture. While lack of access to machines is an outcome of poverty, the limited access further widens the gap between the poor and the better-off. Third, given the study site is located in a mountainous area, farmers are more interested in small, light machines that can easily be carried to their fields. Some improvement in the existing machines, such as making smaller and lighter spraying containers, and simpler and safer chopping machines can help not only women but also men. Needs assessment and development of machines from the perspectives of women and men in the uplands is an area where further research is required.
The technical report will be published soon. We thank the local authority for their support in the youth’s participation in making the film and organizing the screening event. The study was funded by ACIAR.
Gender in agriculture 