Nairobi — Women farmers face structural issues that prevent them from realizing their full potential, from societal perceptions that dictate their limitations to poor land.
However, CGIAR's Gender Impact Platform Director, Nicoline de Haan, argues that leaning into a "victim" narrative does not serve them, especially when women are demonstrably more involved in agriculture.
De Haan says researchers need to be bolder in examining the gender impact in the agricultural sector to assess the key concerns that women farmers face in the field. The limited tools and resources in developing countries challenge both men and women farmers.
"We have made a lot of gains on gender, and if we fall back now, it'll take another 30 years before we get back to where we were," De Haan told IPS. "So we also need to be bold, and we need to be proud of what we have done."
Even though women make up 62 percent of working farmers, they face more challenges than men. Among these are the major issues: access to knowledge, farming techniques, and quality equipment. Structural barriers also need overcoming.
Among rural communities across Africa, women and girls are raised with a particular perception of what their role and responsibility is in the household, such as being delegated as the primary child caregiver. However, the Gender Impact Platform has found in their research that women are far more involved in farming duties -- and they shouldn't be blamed for taking on what is considered a traditionally male occupation.
Land ownership is vital for farmers, especially women who work on but often don't own the land. Certain perceptions of women's roles in farming even influence the kind of livestock that women can have, De Haan explained. Goats, sheep, and especially chickens are seen as 'socially acceptable' livestock, as they can be raised in the homestead, traditionally considered the 'woman's place.' With cattle, even if women are more involved in their care, men are more likely to own them, given that they are considered a huge investment.
Women that are able to use farmland for themselves find the quality of the land to be much poorer, according to CGIAR. Even seeds and manure may be degraded when passed down to women. Women also cannot own property in parts of Africa and Asia, and while their farms and livestock may be their only sources of income, their access to the land could be complicated.
However, to simply challenge the norms or declare them wrong would do little to make progress, so De Haan calls for nuance when considering the best course of action. When dialogue between men and women farmers is held over a technical issue first, such as animal disease, it encourages men to recognize and respect how active women are outside the household and therefore consider the gender issue. "We are trying to change society and systems, but we're trying to make it better for everyone. We're not out there to burn down the patriarchy. But we are there to make sure that women can actually function better."
She also says that more research and effort should be made to ask women farmers what they want and where they need help, whether that be financial support or equipment. More can be done to ask them directly and demand their needs. Further research into women's participation in the sector revealed that women were far more involved in farming and perfectly capable of self-sufficiency.
"We ask the wrong questions sometimes. We ask by default that they're victims; we ask by default that they have no agency. We don't look past the defaults of what agency they do have and how amazing they get things done in a patriarchal society," said De Haan. "But they have their way. I'm a sociologist; I always say people do things for a reason. We might not understand it, we might not agree, but they do it for a reason and we need to understand that reason."
Women's participation in agriculture is only part of a wider problem of poverty and rural areas not getting enough investment. In Kenya, men are not getting enough opportunities for stable employment, especially in agriculture. Agriculture jobs do not pay enough to make a living wage, which for young people seeking jobs, is a key factor in deciding their lives. There is not enough of a livelihood to be made in farm work at present.
"We've talked to a lot to youth and basically they said, 'we'll stay in agriculture, but make it pay,"' said De Haan.
While urbanization has drawn millions of youth to big cities to seek work opportunities, many young people are finding that jobs in urban areas require different skill sets than labor-intensive field jobs.
CGIAR's focus is on finding technical solutions and impactful change through data-driven evidence that illustrates women's lived experience in rural communities and in agricultural spaces. The research makes sure that people "have the mental support and frameworks" that help them.
CGIAR Gender recognizes that technology should be part of those technical solutions rather than another problem for women farmers to overcome. Time and resources need to be invested into equipping women with the technology itself, along with teaching them how to apply it to their work. Rather than the end, technology is the means to economic empowerment, De Haan said.
However, a potential pitfall of rapid digitalization is that structural barriers are reinforced even within digital technology, especially when the digital gap between men and women in East Africa is so stark. Owning a smartphone is not as ubiquitous for rural communities, especially for women. In a 2018 survey, it was shown that only 10 percent of Kenyan women used a mobile phone for information compared to 22 percent of men.
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With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), CGIAR Gender is also looking into its presence in the sector, especially given the limitations. The group has been working with large language models and training them to consider gender in their responses. "If we don't do it now, we will continue putting in those structural barriers, those inequities... If [ChatGPT] gets the wrong answer, we need to train it to get the right answer," De Haan said. De Haan believes that research must address the issue of gender-blind training in AI.
CGIAR Gender is pushing for wider research that aims to inform the decision-makers and policymakers on the best course of action to serve the farmers who will be impacted by those decisions, de Haan said. "We might not be able to directly influence that one little farmer in the field, but we can influence the model that is deciding what policies are coming to her table."
IPS UN Bureau Report,
