INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Conceptual Framework

Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Nancy Johnson, Agnes Quisumbing, Jemimah Njuki, Julia Behrman, Deborah Rubin, Amber Peterman, and Elizabeth Waithanji

INTERNATIONAL LIVESTOCK RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Unpacking the “Gender Box”

Photo credit: Agnes Quisumbing 2

Helps identify HOW:

• Gendered asset distribution affects outcomes

• Outcome of agricultural programs differs by gender

• Building assets takes place in a way that is gendered

Guides attention to key processes for evaluation

Provides basis for comparison and learning across different case studies

Makes a meaningful synthesis much easier!

Why have a conceptual framework?

Project Synthesis

Project

RESULTS SYNTHESIZED ACROSS PROJECTS

Livelihood

Strategies Full Incomes

Consumption

Savings/

Investment

Well-being

Shocks

Context: Ecological, Social, Economic, Political factors, etc.

Women Joint Men

Assets

Legend:

Women and men have separate assets, activities, consumption, etc.

Households also have some joint assets, activities, consumption, etc.

Shading of each component as a reminder that we need to consider gender—separation and jointness in each

Women’s Men’s JOINT

Each component is gendered

♀ ♂ Context

Agroecology

Location

Institutions

Markets

Gender relations

etc.

♀ ♂ Assets

•Natural

•Physical

•Financial

•Human

•Social

•Political

•Enable livelihoods

•Resist shocks

•Direct effect on well-being

♀ ♂ Livelihood Strategies

•What are the livelihood options available to

women and men?

•What assets do those livelihoods require?

•Are women (or men) precluded from good

livelihoods by lack of assets?

♀ ♂ Shocks

•What are the major shocks that affect

women, men, and households?

•How do women, men respond to shocks?

•What role do assets play in responding to

shocks?

♀ ♂ Full Income

• Includes cash and direct consumption

• What affects the income women and men

earn?

• What affects the control of income within

the household?

♀ ♂ Consumption

• Includes food and nonfood

• How are women’s, men’s, and joint

income used for different types of

consumption by different family members?

• What affects decisions on consumption?

(Does control of assets play a role?)

♀ ♂ Savings/Investment

• This feeds back to + or – asset

accumulation

•How are women’s, men’s, and joint

income used for different types of

investment by different family members?

• What affects decisions on investment?

• Are there enough mechanisms for women

to build assets?

♀ ♂ Well-Being

•Health

•Nutritional status

•Time use

•Stress

•Empowerment

•etc.

Example:

Bangladesh Homestead Vegetable Project

Homestead Vegetable Production

Page 16

Project intervention

•Flood-prone area, 1.5 hrs from Dhaka, lots of NGO

activity

•Technology transferred with micro-finance and training by

small local NGO

•Targeted to women in near landless hhs with some

homestead land

Impact assessment •Census 1996

•HH panel survey 1996/1997 with anthropometrics

•Qualitative, quantitative studies of empowerment

•Qualitative data collected in same villages in 2001

•Resurveyed 2010

Livelihood

Strategies Full Incomes

Consumption

Savings/

Investment

Well-being

Shocks

Context: Ecological, Social, Economic, Political factors, etc.

Women Joint Men

Assets

Legend:

♀ ♂ Context

Market access (close to Dhaka, easier for men than women)

Norms of social seclusion

NGO operating in area (women more likely to participate)

Focus groups showed importance of wider range of aspects

- vulnerability to fluctuating markets

- lack of access to justice (access to land by the poor)

- law and order problems

- low level of trust of government and NGO services

- lack of technical knowledge increases risk

- female dependence subordination (permission to undertake

prod. activities; access to profits)

♀ ♂ Assets needed to participate

•Land: poor women unlikely to own land, but more

control over homestead

•Social capital: used group-based approach to build

financial capital (savings) and human capital

(training) needed for adoption

NGO membership weighted towards poor, but physical assets

allow many non-poor to join.

Very poor excluded from NGO membership (& hence adoption of

technologies) by:

-lack of physical assets

-lack of social connections, leading to isolation and inability to

form groups

-lack of education, which undermines confidence

♀ ♂ Livelihood Strategies

•Vegetable cultivation for market

•Women restricted from going to market, so

got traders to buy from homestead -Adoption said to contribute to somewhat heavier workloads,

trade-off described favorably: ‘Though we work harder,

we wear better clothes.’ (FP)

-Wide variations within and between sites in social attitudes

toward adoption (I.e., women’s involvement) as a

livelihood strategy. Some men feel undermined; others

value female contribution of income and increased

social networks.

♀ ♂ Shocks

•Market fluctuations

•Family illness (women have prime

responsibility)

•Does project intervention increase or

decrease likelihood of these shocks?

♀ ♂ Full Income

+Cash income from vegetable sales

-Loss of income from women in wage labor

Net income gains not large

BUT also consider

•Direct vegetable consumption by household

•Gifts to neighbors

Consumption

♀ ♂ Consumption

Total monthly per capita income & expenditures do not

differ by adoption status, though sources do slightly

-Health and nutrition improvements for selected types of

individuals in adopter hhs:

-school-aged, adolescents, and elderly more non-

staple plant consumption

-adolescent girls consume more total calories

-school-aged and adolescents had better nutritional

outcomes (height)

-preschoolers and elderly have lower morbidity

♀ ♂ Savings/Investment

• Financial

savings

• Schooling

• Trees

• Hand pumps

• Electric pumps

• Jewelry

Impacts of project on overall well-being -

Focus groups

Page 27

-Exchange of vegetables said to be major tool

of women for increasing social networks

(horizontal and vertical), thus reducing

vulnerability.

-Better nutrition seen as a result of adoption.

-Children’s educational attainment may be

improving: ‘If I didn’t grow fish, I could not

educate my children.’

♀ ♂ Empowerment—Focus Group Results

-Women have gained direct access to cash (esp. in

vegetable site), greater understanding of ‘money

matters’, and higher status at home: “Now women

give money to their husbands from their own

earnings. Once husbands would have been angry

about this, but now they don’t say anything.”

-Some women report changing community norms as a

result of adoption: if women go outside the home

in pairs or groups “no one complains nowadays”

Empowerment—Survey Results

Page 29

All differences significant at 5% level or better

Women’s empowerment Adopter Control

Visited friends/relatives outside

village in past year

95 90

Attended NGO training or

programs in past year

31 17

Husband/family member beat year

in past year

23 33

Knows name of UP chairman 82 74

Knows name of prime minister 88 81