CGIAR GENDER Platform journal articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/115219

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Measuring women’s empowerment in aquaculture in northwestern Bangladesh using a project level women’s empowerment in fisheries index (pro-WEFI)
(Journal Article) Adam, Rahma; Rajaratnam, Surendran; Sufian, Farha; Njogu, Lucy
Gender equality and women’s empowerment have been increasingly emphasised in food production systems, including fisheries and aquaculture. Accurate assessment and understanding of the state, progress and changes in women’s empowerment in the sub-sectors is required. We applied the project level Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries and Aquaculture Index (pro-WEFI), which is based on the project-level women’s empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI) to standardize the measurement of women’s agency and empowerment in fisheries and aquaculture. Drawing on a survey conducted in north-western Bangladesh, we examined quantitative pro-WEFI data collected from 217 households engaged in aquaculture. Only 33% of the women and 48% of the men in the sample achieved empowerment in aquaculture, attaining scores of 0.75 and above. The mean disempowerment score (1-3DE) revealed that both women and men failed to achieve adequacy on average in nearly 28% of the indicators. Nearly 40% of the dual adult households did not attain gender parity with women achieving lower adequacy scores than men from the same household. Women’s disempowerment was primarily driven by lack of autonomy in their use of income (18.5%), inability to visit important locations (17.4%), and inadequate access to and decision making on financial services (13.4%). Our findings emphasize the significance of conducting comprehensive assessments of women’s empowerment in aquaculture initiatives and its various domains and indicators inform the development of targeted and effective interventions. By identifying domains where gender inequality is most pronounced, projects can better design interventions to create targeted impacts in critical areas.
Calculating the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) using Stata
(Journal Article, 2024-12-24) Dione, Malick; Seymour, Greg; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Malapit, Hazel J.
Uncovering the Intersections of Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality in Climate Adaptive Capacities in Climate Hotspots for Women in Zambia
(Journal Article, 2024-12-16) Kihoro, Esther; Lecoutere, Els; Mishra, Avni
Climate change risks exacerbating gender inequalities in agrifood systems; hence, the importance of understanding how women’s empowerment and gender equality of climate adaptive capacities relate. Using primary gender-disaggregated intrahousehold data collected in climate hotspots in Zambia, this study shows a positive relationship between women’s empowerment in the household and intrahousehold gender equality in access, knowledge and adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Showing that different dimensions of women’s empowerment – gender norms, access to resources and group membership – relate differently with gender-equal adaptive capacities, the study emphasizes the importance of a contextual analysis, unpacking the prevailing key constraints to gender equality, and the need for simultaneous investments in women’s empowerment and gender-equitable access to climate information services and climate-adaptive practices.
Using a sustainable food systems framework to examine gender equality and women’s empowerment in aquatic food systems
(Journal Article) Adam, Rahma; Dam Lam, Rodolfo; Lozano, Denise; McDougall, Cynthia; Rajaratnam, Surendran; Ouko, Kevin; Manyungwa-Pasani, Chikondi; Forsythe, Lora; Rossignoli, Cristiano
This article aims to generate novel insights by examining gender dynamics within aquaculture and small-scale fisheries, employing a gendered agrifood systems conceptual framework to comprehensively analyze gender equality and women’s empowerment in aquatic food systems. To do this, it evaluates 202 articles using a scoping review methodology. Though additional literature from 19 articles was pulled in to provide the context. The findings are that aquatic foods value chains and food environment are negatively impacted by gender disparities in terms of women’s agency, access to and control over resources, gendered social norms, and policies and governance. This hampers the ability of women to engage in and benefit from aquatic food systems. This results in gendered disparities in dietary outcomes, low achievements in relation to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and less adaptive capacity in relation to developing resilient livelihoods. The article acknowledges the importance of developing and leveraging women’s agency and bargaining power, strengthening their access to and control over key aquatic food systems resources, tackling harmful gender norms, developing gender-sensitive data collection and analysis to inform evidence-based policymaking, and implementing gender-responsive and gender-transformative policies and strategies to create an enabling environment for these interventions to succeed. Investment in multi-level, and multi-layered, gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches are needed to co-develop – with women and their organizations – positive, gender-equitable norms to strengthen women’s agency and decision-making at a variety of levels, ranging from individual to policy level.
Disclosure of violence against women and girls in Senegal
(Journal Article, 2024) Peterman, Amber; Dione, Malick; Le Port, Agnes; Briaux, Justine; Lamesse, Fatma; Hidrobo, Melissa
Measures of violence against women and girls (VAWG) are widely collected in surveys, yet estimates are acknowledged to be lower bounds of the true prevalence. This study reports on a survey experiment randomly assigning 3,400 women and girls to either face-to-face interviews or audio computer-assisted self-interviews (ACASI), a modality that increases privacy and confidentiality of responses. Results show the ACASI group discloses higher prevalence of lifetime intimate partner violence by 4 to 7 percentage points compared to face-to-face interviews. Differences in disclosure for nonpartner VAWG are even larger, ranging from 6 to 12 percentage points. Tests for correlates of characteristics that might lead to increased disclosure show few notable patterns. Overall results suggest ACASI are a promising way to encourage disclosure, however trade-offs include limits in the complexity of questions that can be asked and higher time costs associated with development and implementation of surveys. JEL Codes: C83, J12, J16
Climate-resilient aquatic food systems require transformative change to address gender and intersectional inequalities
(Journal Article, 2024) Adam, R.; Amani, A.; Kuijpers, R.; Danielsen, K.; Smits, E.; Kruijssen, F.; Moran, N.; Tigchelaar, M.; Wabnitz, C.; Tilley, A.; Luzzi, M.; Peerzadi, R.H.; Ride, A.; Rossignoli, C.; Allison, Edward H.; Cole, S.M.; Zatti, I.; Ouko, K.; Farnworth, C.R.
The adverse impacts of climate change on aquatic food systems (AFS) and the people who depend on AFS for livelihood security are inequitably distributed between and within countries. People facing the highest risks and experiencing the severest impacts of climate change are those who already experience multidimensional inequalities in their lives, particularly because of their gender, class, age, indigeneity, ethnicity, caste, religion, and the physical and political conditions that can create additional vulnerabilities. In this paper, we conducted a scoping review of the literature that explores the links between climate change, gender, and other social identities, and AFS. The review was complemented by an analysis of representative data on women and men aquaculture farmers in Bangladesh from 2018 to 2019. We also analysed data from the 2019 Illuminating Hidden Harvest project. The study relied on the gendered agrifood system and aquatic food climate risk frameworks to guide on literature search, review, and data analyses. Our findings show that intersecting identities disadvantage certain AFS actors, particularly young women from minority ethnic groups, and create challenge for them to manage and adapt to climate shocks and stresses. Examples of gender-responsive and transformative interventions are highlighted from our review to showcase how such intersectional disadvantages can be addressed to increase women’s empowerment and social and gender equality.
Adolescents’ capabilities and aspirations across gender and generations in Amhara, Ethiopia
(Journal Article, 2022) Gebre, B.; Lecoutere, Els; Jones, N.
Insights into the role of changing historical-political-cultural contexts and social norms in shaping adolescent girls’ and boys’ futures contributes to an understanding of human development at the intersection of gender and youth in low- and middle-income countries. This study investigates the capabilities and aspirations of adolescent girls and boys and their evolution in Amhara against the background of three successive political regimes that governed Ethiopia over the last 90 years, the Haile-Selassie imperial regime (1930–1974), the socialist military Derg regime (1974–1991), and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (1991–2019), each with their own institutions, structures and infrastructure, and gender- and age-related relations and norms. The study adopts a capability approach with a gender and generationing development lens as a framework and relies on qualitative data collected through community- and mixed-generation group discussions. The study illustrates that, even if institutional and structural barriers became less stringent over time, cumulative gender- and age-related obstacles – some rooted in beliefs, norms, traditions and relations – hindered the expansion of adolescents’ capability success, consistently more so for girls than boys. (The threat of) gender-based violence pervasively constrains girls’ capabilities success and aspirations in spite of more formal protective institutions.
Addressing gender inequalities and strengthening women's agency to create more climate-resilient and sustainable food systems
(Journal Article, 2024-03-15) Bryan, Elizabeth; Alvi, Muzna; Huyer, Sophia; Ringler, Claudia
Climate change affects every aspect of the food system, including all nodes along agri-food value chains from production to consumption, the food environments in which people live, and outcomes, such as diets and livelihoods. Men and women often have specific roles and responsibilities within food systems, yet structural inequalities (formal and informal) limit women's access to resources, services, and agency. These inequalities affect the ways in which men and women experience and are affected by climate change. In addition to gender, other social factors are at play, such as age, education, marital status, and health and economic conditions. To date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions do not adequately integrate gender. If climate-smart and climate-resilient interventions do not adequately take gender differences into account, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women's labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power. At the same time, women's contributions are critical to make food systems more resilient to the negative impacts of climate change, given their specialized knowledge, skills and roles in agri-food systems, within the household, at work and in their communities. Increasing the resilience of food systems requires going beyond addressing gendered vulnerabilities to climate change to create an enabling environment that supports gender equality and women's empowerment, by removing structural barriers and rigid gender norms, and building equal power dynamics, as part of a process of gender transformative change. For this to happen, more research is needed to prioritize structural barriers that need to be removed and to identify effective gender transformative approaches.
Supporting women's empowerment by changing intrahousehold decision making: A mixed methods analysis of a field experiment in rural south-west Tanzania
(Journal Article, 2023-11-13) Lecoutere, Els; Lan Chu
In rural sub‐Saharan Africa, patriarchal social norms and customs often lead to unequal resource access, decision‐making power, and intra‐household power relations between women and men co‐heads of smallholder farm households. Household methodologies are gender‐transformative approaches that aim to achieve gender equality and empower women by improving intra‐household gender relations. Evidence of the impact of such approaches on women's empowerment is still scarce.We assess the effects of a programme that introduces participatory intra‐household decision‐making to challenge gender relations within households on women's empowerment. The programme was delivered to monogamous couples who head smallholder coffee‐farming households in rural south‐west Tanzania.We combine (quasi‐)experimental quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the programme's impact on women's empowerment and how that impact fits with women's valued domains of empowerment and individual pathways to empowerment.Awareness‐raising couple seminars, the programme's least intensive intervention, increased women's access to livestock. Intensive coaching in participatory decision‐making increased women's control over household coffee income—a priority for women. Couple seminars increased women's highly valued involvement in strategic farm decisions—intensive coaching increased it further. Access to personal income, however, valued by women for independent decision‐making for their households' wellbeing, did not change.Gender‐transformative approaches that challenge domestic gender relations can increase women's access to household income and resources, and increase their participation in farming decisions. Such approaches need to be complemented by interventions to increase women's human capital, knowledge of enterprises, and personal resources. Catering for women's diverse pathways towards empowerment may increase their effectiveness. Challenging deep gender norms requires long‐term engagement and trust between change agents and communities.
Fostering an enabling environment for equality and empowerment in agri-food systems: An assessment at multiple scales
(Journal Article, 2024-03-15) Lecoutere, Els; Achandi, Esther L.; Ampaire, Edidah L.; Fischer, Gundula; Gumucio, Tatiana; Najjar, Dina; Singaraju, Niyati
Inequalities by gender and intersecting sources of social differentiation in access to resources, exercise of agency, and desirable outcomes persist in agri-food systems in low- and middle-income countries. Despite decades of development and theoretical assessment efforts calling for multiscale approaches to addressing inequalities in agri-food systems, common approaches remain specific to a scale rather than holistic. In this paper, we make the case that achieving lasting equality and empowerment in agri-food systems requires transformative change. This depends on fostering an enabling environment by relaxing ‘deeper’ – often inter-related – institutionalized constraints to equality and empowerment across multiple nested scales of the state, markets, communities, household, and individuals. Based on a review of recent literature focused on agri-food systems in low- and middle-income countries, we present newly emerging thinking and a status update of key structural constraints to equality at different scales – rooted in policy and discriminatory, formal and informal, social and economic institutions, including norms. We give examples that show how structural constraints to equality at different nested scales are interdependent and mutually reinforcing; demonstrating the need for holistic approaches tackling constraints at multiple scales to foster transformative change in agri-food systems. We recommend designing holistic policy and development programs that combine strategies for relaxing constraints to equality and empowerment at multiple scales using inclusive processes of tailoring and prioritizing. To inform the design of such programs, we present recent evidence of effective or promising strategies for addressing structural constraints to equality that relate to policy, market systems, collectives, and norms.
Gender Mainstreaming in Sweetpotato Breeding in Uganda: A Case Study
(Journal Article, 2023-12-15) Ssali, R.T.; Mayanja, S.; Nakitto, M.; Mutiso, J.M.; Tinyiro, S.E.; Bayiyana, I.; Okello, J.J.; Forsythe, L.; Magala, D.; Yada, B.; Mwanga, Robert O.M.; Polar, Vivian
Purpose: In Uganda, sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam) is typically a "woman's crop", grown, processed, stored and also mainly consumed by smallholder farmers for food and income. Farmers value sweetpotato for its early maturity, resilience to stresses, and minimal input requirements. However, productivity remains low despite the effort of breeding programs to introduce new varieties. Low uptake of new varieties is partly attributed to previous focus by breeders on agronomic traits and much less on quality traits and the diverse preferences of men and women in sweetpotato value chains.To address this gap, breeders, food scientists, and social scientists (including gender specialists) systematically mainstreamed gender into the breeding program. This multidisciplinary approach, grounded in examining gender roles and their relationship with varietal and trait preferences, integrated important traits into product profiles.Results: Building on earlier efforts of participatory plant breeding and participatory varietal selection, new interventions showed subtle but important gender differences in preferences. For instance, in a study for the RTBFoods project, women prioritized mealiness, sweetness, firmness and non-fibrous boiled roots. These were further subjected to a rigorous gender analysis using the G+ product profile query tool. The breeding pipelines then incorporated these gender-responsive priority quality traits, prompting the development of standard operating procedures to phenotype these traits. This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article Conclusion: Following an all-inclusive approach coupled with traininig of multidisciplinary teams involving food scientists, breeders, biochemists, gender specialists and social scientists, integration into participatory variety selection in Uganda enabled accentuation of women and men's trait preferences, contributing to clearer breeding targets. The research has positioned sweetpotato breeding to better respond to the varying needs and preferences of the users.
The status of women’s empowerment in the aquaculture sector in Kenya
(Journal Article, 2024-03-21) Adam, Rahma; Subian, Farha; Njogu, Lucy
Purpose Women’s empowerment remains a key development challenge in Kenya. The purpose of this study is to attempt to understand the status of women’s empowerment and the key contributors to their disempowerment in Kenya’s aquaculture sector. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 534 male and female fish farmers from 300 households drawn from six counties in Kenya (Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Kiambu, Meru and Nyeri). The Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) was adapted to Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries and Aquaculture Index (A-WEFI) to suit the aquaculture and fisheries sub-sector. The adapted A-WEFI was then used to estimate and the status of women’s and men’s using five domains of empowerment (5DE) and a gender parity index (GPI). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Cramer’s V and sensitivity analysis as test statistics. Findings About 86% of the men and 80% of the women were classified as empowered. The mean score of the 5DE was 0.93 and 0.95 for women and men, respectively. In addition, 82% of the households achieved gender parity, suggesting that for such households, empowerment of men was no greater than that of women. Overall, the results suggest no major differences between the empowerment of women and men. Findings suggest areas of improvement in empowerment: when observed separately, women report lack of agency in production, resource, time-use and allocation and leadership. Originality/value This paper adapts the A-WEAI to the fisheries and aquaculture context, in bid to bridge the gap in standard women’s empowerment measurement methods in this area. Also, there are limited empirical studies on the multifaceted empowerment of women in aquaculture in Kenya. The findings are meant to serve as a point of reference for policymakers, as they develop gender-responsive intervention programmes, and in implementing gender mainstreaming in Kenya.
Where women in agri-food systems are at highest climate risk: A methodology for mapping climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots
(Journal Article, 2023-11-06) Lecoutere, Els; Mishra, Avni; Singaraju, Niyati; Koo, Jawoo; Azzarri, Carlo; Chanana, Nitya; Nico, Gianluigi; Puskur, Ranjitha
Climate change poses a greater threat for more exposed and vulnerable countries, communities and social groups. People whose livelihood depends on the agriculture and food sector, especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), face significant risk. In contexts with gendered roles in agri-food systems or where structural constraints to gender equality underlie unequal access to resources and services and constrain women's agency, local climate hazards and stressors, such as droughts, floods, or shortened crop-growing seasons, tend to negatively affect women more than men and women's adaptive capacities tend to be more restrained than men's . Transformation towards just and sustainable agri-food systems in the face of climate change will not only depend on reducing but also on averting aggravated gender inequality in agri-food systems. In this paper, we developed and applied an accessible and versatile methodology to identify and map localities where climate change poses high risk especially for women in agri-food systems because of gendered exposure and vulnerability. We label these localities climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots. Applying our methodology to LMICs reveals that the countries at highest risk are majorly situated in Africa and Asia. Applying our methodology for agricultural activity-specific hotspot subnational areas to four focus countries, Mali, Zambia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, for instance, identifies a cluster of districts in Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions in Bangladesh as a hotspot for rice. The relevance and urgency of identifying localities where climate change hits agri-food systems hardest and is likely to negatively affect population groups or sectors that are particularly vulnerable is increasingly acknowledged in the literature and, in the spirit of leaving no one behind, in climate and development policy arenas. Hotspot maps can guide the allocation of scarce resources to most at-risk populations. The climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspot maps show where women involved in agri-food systems are at high climate risk while signaling that reducing this risk requires addressing the structural barriers to gender equality.
Designing for change through “reflecting and doing”: the CGIAR Community of Practice on Gender- Transformative Research Methodologies
(Journal Article, 2023-09) López, Diana E.; Bailey, Arwen; Farnworth, Cathy Rozel; Rietveld, Anne; Gartaula, Hom Nath
Gender-transformative change requires a commitment from everyone involved in agricultural research for development (AR4D) including organizations at international and national level, individual researchers and practitioners, farmers, development agencies, policy-makers and consumers, to transform the existing values, practices and priorities that (re)produce and perpetuate gender biases and inequities in agrifood systems. However, the adoption of a gender transformative agenda can be challenging, especially for AR4D organizations whose primary focus is not necessarily the attainment of gender equality. This paper looks at a collective, bottom-up, transformative effort within the AR4D organization of CGIAR. It advances the emerging CGIAR Community of Practice on Gender Transformative Research Methodologies (GTRM-CoP) as a case study to explore the potential of CoPs as social learning systems that create the conditions for transformation-oriented learning. Driven by an ethos of reflecting and doing anchored in critical and feminist principles and social learning praxis, the GTRM-CoP aims to be a safe space to spur reflexivity, creativity and collaboration to support existing work on gender transformation in CGIAR while re-imagining how gender in AR4D is conceptualized, negotiated and advanced. The paper focuses on the process leading to the development of the CoP, that is, designing for change, which is crucial for sustained transformation.
Measuring women’s empowerment in agriculture: Innovations and evidence
(Journal Article, 2023-09-15) Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Cole, Steven M.; Elias, Marlène; Faas, Simone; Galiè, Alessandra; Malapit, Hazel J.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Myers, Emily; Seymour, Greg; Twyman, Jennifer
This paper addresses women's empowerment in agriculture, innovations in its measurement, and emerging evidence. We discuss the evolution of the conceptualization and measurement of women's empowerment and gender equality since 2010. Using a gender and food systems framework and a standardized measure of women's empowerment, the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), we review the evidence on “what works” to empower women based on impact evaluations of a portfolio of 11 agricultural development projects with empowerment objectives and a scoping review of livestock interventions. We then review the evidence on associations between empowering women and societal benefits--agricultural productivity, incomes, and food security and nutrition. We conclude with recommendations for measurement and policy.
Suitability and Potential Nutrient Contribution of Underutilized Foods in Community-Based Infant Foods in Northern Ghana
(Journal Article, 2023-06-01) Kubuga, C.K.; Bantiu, C.; Low, Jan W.
In rural Ghana, infant feeding is largely home-based or community-based yet less is known about the kinds of community-based infant foods and the ability of families to create a range of recipes for baby feeding using context-specific ingredients particularly in northern Ghana which has a high prevalence of malnutrition. In this explorative study on mothers (15–49 years; n = 46), we investigated community-based infant foods’ food group composition, enrichment, nutrient contribution, and acceptability. The identified community-based infant foods were mainly made of either corn or millet porridges in northern Ghana and had three nutrients with % RNI ≥ 70. We developed 38 recipes of enriched community-based infant foods adding underutilized foods (orange-fleshed sweet potato, pawpaw, cowpea, moringa, groundnut, Bambara beans, and soya beans) to increase the number of nutrients from three to at least five and at most nine nutrients with % RNI ≥ 70 based on the recipe combinations. The enriched community-based infant food recipes provided adequate caloric amounts and modest improvements in micronutrient content for infants (6–12 months). All recipes tested were deemed appropriate and acceptable for infants by mothers. Moringa and pawpaw emerged as the lowest-cost ingredients to add among the underutilized foods. Future research is necessary to assess the effectiveness of the new recipes at promoting linear growth and improving micronutrient status during the complementary feeding period.
Digital ethnography? Our experiences in the use of SenseMaker for understanding gendered climate vulnerabilities amongst marginalized agrarian communities
(Journal Article, 2023-04-26) Joshi, Deepa; Panagiotou, A.; Bisht, Meera; Udalagama, Upandha; Schindler, Alexandra
Digital innovations and interventions can potentially revolutionize agri-food systems, especially in coping with climate challenges. On a similar note, digital research tools and methods are increasingly popular for the efficient collection and analysis of real-time, large-scale data. It is claimed that these methods can also minimize subjective biases that are prevalent in traditional qualitative research. However, given the digital divide, especially affecting women and marginalized communities, these innovations could potentially introduce further disparities. To assess these contradictions, we piloted SenseMaker, a digital ethnography tool designed to capture individual, embodied experiences, biases, and perceptions to map vulnerabilities and resilience to climate impacts in the Gaya District in Bihar. Our research shows that this digital tool allows for a systematic co-design of the research framework, allows for the collection of large volumes of data in a relatively short time, and a co-analysis of the research data by the researchers and the researched. This process allowed us to map and capture the complexities of intersectional inequalities in relation to climate change vulnerability. However, we also noted that the application of the tool is influenced by the prior exposure to technology (digital devices) of both the enumerators and researched groups and requires significant resources when implemented in contexts where there is a need to translate the data from local dialects and languages to more dominant languages (English). Most importantly, perceptions, positionalities, and biases of researchers can significantly impact the design of the tool’s signification framework, reiterating the fact that researcher bias persists regardless of technological innovations in research methodology.
Changes in women’s empowerment in the household, women’s diet diversity, and their relationship against the background of COVID-19 in southern Bangladesh
(Journal Article, 2023-02) Lecoutere, Els; Berg, Marrit van den; de Brauw, Alan
The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people’s reactions were projected to have caused job losses among women, a decline in women’s empowerment and reduced women’s diet diversity. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult female respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, contrary to expectations we find that more women found than lost jobs, and women’s diet diversity increased over the year partly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not find evidence of a decline in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions, nor women’s autonomy over use of household income. The change in women’s outside employment is neither statistically related to changes in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions, changes women’s autonomy over use of household income, nor changes in women’s diet diversity. Change in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions is positively related with change in women’s diet diversity and change in women’s autonomy over income use is negatively related with change in women’s diet diversity.
A One Health approach to plant health
(Journal Article, 2022-09-29) Hoffmann, Vivian; Paul, Birthe K.; Falade, Titilayo D.O.; Moodley, Arshnee; Ramankutty, N.; Olawoye, J.; Djouaka, R.; Lekei, E.; Haan, Nicoline C. de; Ballantyne, Peter G.; Waage, Jeff
One Health has been defined as an approach to the pursuit of public health and well-being that recognizes the interconnections between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. In this opinion piece, based on a webinar of the same name, we argue that a One Health perspective can help optimize net benefits from plant protection, realizing food security and nutrition gains while minimizing unintentional negative impacts of plant health practices on people, animals and ecosystems. We focus on two primary trade-offs that lie at the interface of plant health with animal, ecosystem, and human health: protecting plant health through use of agrochemicals versus minimizing risks to human health and antimicrobial and insecticide resistance; and ensuring food security by prioritizing the health of crops to maximize agricultural production versus protecting environmental systems critical for human health. We discuss challenges and opportunities for advancement associated with each of these, taking into account how the priorities and constraints of stakeholders may vary by gender, and argue that building the capacity of regulatory bodies in low- and middle-income countries to conduct cost–benefit analysis has the potential to improve decision-making in the context of these and other multi-dimensional trade-offs.
Understanding gendered trait preferences: Implications for client-responsive breeding programs
(Journal Article, 2022-08-30) McDougall, Cynthia; Kariuki, Juliet; Lenjiso, Birhanu Mergesa; Marimo, Pricilla; Mehar, Mamta; Murphy, Seamus; Teeken, Béla; Akester, Michael J.; Benzie, John A.H.; Galiè, Alessandra; Kulakow, Peter A.; Mekkawy, Wagdy; Nkengla-Asi, Lilian; Ojango, Julie M.K.; Tumuhimbise, Robooni; Uwimana, Brigitte; Orr, Alastair
Client-responsiveness is a foundation for effectiveness of public sector breeding programs in agriculture, aquaculture and livestock. However, there remains a considerable lack of clarity about what this means, specifically in terms of how programs can be gender-responsive. This study contributes to addressing that need. It does so through sharing higher-level insights emerging from the combined experiences of eight gendered trait preference cases from across nine countries in Asia and Africa. The cases spanned crops, fish and livestock. This study inquires into the nature of gendered trait preference information that can be generated, if there are systematic gendered preference differences and how to understand these, and implications for breeding programs seeking to be more gender-responsive. Key findings include that while not all data are immediately usable by programs, the information that is generated through mixed method, intersectional gender preference assessments usefully deepens and widens programs’ knowledge. The study evidences differences in trait preferences between women and men. It also reveals that these differences are more complex than previously thought. In doing so, it challenges binary or homogenous models of preferences, suggesting instead that preferences are likely to be overlapping and nuanced. The study applies a novel ‘Three models of gendered trait preferences’ framework and sub-framework and finds these useful in that they challenge misconceptions and enable a needed analytical nuance to inform gender-responsive breeding programs. Finally, the study highlights implications and offers a call to action for gender-responsive breeding, proposing ways forward for public breeding programs, teams and funding agencies. These include investments in interdisciplinary capabilities and considerations for navigating trade-offs while orienting to sustainable development goals.

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