Failure to sufficiently consider gender will bring only partial success to SARD-SC’s efforts to transform sub-Saharan Africa’s wheat sector. Without properly considering the role of gender issues in technology design, for instance, the benefits of subsequent technologies may be limited in their abilities to equitably benefit men and women, and may even exacerbate inequalities and the workload of women.
Considering gender issues in technology dissemination is equally important – this process needs to respond adequately to gender specific limitations, roles, and opportunities to help increase adoption and impact.
Acknowledging this, SARD-SC (Wheat) recently held a workshop in Sudan – an effort to ensure the initiative gives gender issues the highest priority, and the needs and requirements of women producers are adequately reflected in on-going activities.
Incorporating gender
Reflecting the initiative’s multi-disciplinary nature, the workshop brought together some 50 participants from 12 countries, including wheat breeders, socio-economists, agronomists, and monitoring and evaluation specialists – in addition to gender experts.
Discussions focused on opportunities for integrating gender into the projects’ three main components: generating agricultural technologies and innovations; the sustainable dissemination and adoption of agricultural technologies and innovation; and capacity strengthening.
Other issues were also highlighted: strengthening the role of women in postharvest and processing; access to technologies and innovations in different cultural and social contexts; the limited number of female extension agents – and the difficulty this presents in terms of promoting and disseminating new innovations to women farmers; and land ownership, overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Solutions to these problems were discussed and potential interventions identified. These included sensitizing male extension agents on the importance of involving women in their knowledge and technology dissemination strategies, and a focus on land management rather than land ownership, which would help create a space for women's inclusion. In many countries across sub-Saharan Africa some areas of land are jointly managed by women and men; while others are managed by men or women exclusively such as kitchen gardens.
The demonstration of wheat varieties and related technologies on joint plots - rather than plots managed exclsuively by men - would therefore benefit both men and women and allow for the dissemination of technologies to both.
The workshop also provided an opportunity to reflect on the status of women farmers across some of the countries where SARD-SC is working, and included presentations on experiences in Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
The presentations provided an update on SARD-SC impacts. In Sudan, where 43 percent of participants are female, women have been successfully incorporated into value-additional activities, for instance. Similar achievements have also been accomplished in Nigeria, where women have initiated small-scale enterprises to produce bread and other baked goods.
Click here to read more.
No comments:
Post a Comment