Realizing Women’s Potential in Agri-Food Systems

Vemireddy, V. and Puskur, R. 2024. Realizing Women’s Potential in Agri-Food Systems. Nairobi, Kenya: CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform.

A stakeholder dialogue on “Realizing Women’s Potential in Agri-Food Systems’ was organized by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) in collaboration with CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform and International Rice Research Institute on September 19, 2024. Experts across academia, civil society and international organizations working at the intersection of agri-food systems and gender were invited to participate in the discussions, which were helmed by Dr Vidya Vemireddy, Assistant Professor at IIMA and Dr Ranjitha Puskur, Lead, Evidence Module, CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform.

The dialogue was conceptualized to: ● Identify the key sticky challenges and policy barriers that women in agri-food systems face and remain unaddressed despite years of R&D efforts. ● Map the data and evidence we have at present and identify the black boxes. ● Build a problem prioritization matrix to identify challenges that require immediate attention. ● Explore solutions, strategies, and good practices to address structural barriers faced by women. ● Chart a collaborative pathway forward and work towards building a coalition of actors in the ecosystem of women in agri-food systems.

The discussions revealed rich insights and enabled sharing of ideas, with consensus on several challenges to women realizing their potential in agri-food systems, beyond the often-discussed narrative on lack of access to resources. These included access to extension services, inability to articulate and document their concerns and solutions, gender and socio-cultural norms, policy gaps such as a lack of a co-designed approach to design as well as institutional bottlenecks. However, there was an acknowledgement that access to financial institutions, collectivization, grassroot level organizational interventions, political participation, skill mapping and the creation of a multistakeholder stakeholder platform were effective short and medium-term solutions to mitigate barriers faced by women in agri-food systems with high feasibility of implementation.

Finally, the stakeholders deliberated on the idea of creating a coalition/group to integrate evidence and data across academia, civil society and the private sector and generate research and policy traction to realize women’s potential in agri-food systems in a systematic manner. Following this dialogue, the suggested three-point action plan includes; ● Mapping the contributions and recognition of women’s vital roles in the agricultural value chain, from production to marketing. ● Defining the institutional contours of a coalition/group for women in agri-food systems including objectives, core members, membership tenets, etc. ● Creation of a portal to compile good practices, evidence, and learnings from what has worked and what has not to facilitate development of strategies for scaling across contexts.