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This blog was originally published on Agrilinks. 

How women, gender equality, and social norms are critical to recovering from the COVID19 crisis — and building back better.

The World Food Program says that the number of people facing food crisis will likely double as a result of COVID19. A combination of disrupted markets, lack of international trade, lower travel, and mobility restrictions are going to impact people’s ability to grow, buy, sell, or prepare the food they need to stay healthy. By the end of 2020, 265 million people are likely to face starvation.

These numbers are dire, and the picture for women is worse. Women already bear the brunt of hunger. 60% of the hungry people and 76% of displaced people in the world are women and girls. Women-headed households are the most likely to suffer from food crisis. Add that to the incredible burden COVID19 is putting on women, rising rates of GBV, and the other gender implications of COVID19, and the potential impacts are staggering.

Women are also a core part of the solution. They are leaders, innovators, farmers, caretakers, and saleswomen who can help solve this problem. Investing in women works. CARE’s research shows that every $1 we invest in a woman farmer turns into $31 of benefits to herself, her family, and her community.

For women to further unleash their leadership, we need to transform the social norms and barriers that stand in their way as they respond to crises, feed their families, influence markets, and negotiate a better future. Laws, assumptions, data gaps, and traditional gender roles all put additional barriers on women’s ability to respond to crisis. If global responses to COVID19 perpetuate those inequalities—such as by releasing gender blind data about food security and COVID19—we will lose the chance to build back inclusively and equitably.

This review examines how COVID19 will especially challenge women and their food and nutrition security. It also shows women can be a part of the solution if they have a seat at the table and a greater voice in decisions.

Women grow food

Women are a key—and yet often invisible—part of our food systems. Women are 43 % of the farming workforce in developing countries. More than 60% of employed women in sub-Saharan Africa are working in agriculture—for half the wages men make. How is COVID19 challenging women growing food?

• Increasing the burden of care: Even in a regular year, women are already working 1.5 times more hours a day than men are. Caring for children, collecting water, preparing food, cleaning house—women do 76% of that unpaid care work. COVID19 is increasing women’s caregiving burdens because children and the elderly are at home more and women are much more likely to be caring for the sick. That extra time makes it challenging to spend the time they need on farming, and productivity will suffer. All guidance must aim to reduce burdens on women’s time and encourage men to share the caregiving burden.
• Reducing access to information: Many women rely on informal, person-to-person networks to get access to information. COVID19-related mobility restrictions and social distancing are compromising this kind of information sharing. As agriculture extension services move to digital platforms to accommodate social distancing, women will get left behind in the widening digital divide. Globally, 327 million fewer women have access to smartphones than men. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 58% of women own a mobile phone compared to 71% of men. Men are more likely to control radios and other means of communication. Access to technology is not gender neutral, and we must not assume this in guidance, advisories, and response plans.
• Closing access to markets: Normally, women’s lower access to resources means they produce 20-30% less than men do. COVID19 is likely to widen that gap. As markets close and cross border trade deteriorates with COVID19 quarantines, women struggle to access the seeds, tools, and fertilizer they need to plant crops this year. In addition to the challenges men face, mobility restrictions and caregiving burdens make it harder for women. When input prices rise, women—who already have lower incomes—will get priced out of the market for seeds, tools, and labor before men do. It is imperative that our guidance, investments, and technical support do not neglect this reality.

Women buy, sell and prepare food

Globally women do 85 – 90% of the cooking. They also do most of the grocery shopping. Women invest more of their money in buying food than men do. In most contexts, women are also almost entirely responsible for child nutrition. Cooking and feeding the family are often considered to be a profound part of a woman’s worth; that’s why standard questionnaires about GBV ask if it is acceptable to hit a woman who has burned the food. How is COVID19’s impact on food systems likely to have a bigger impact on women?

• Lowering mobility: In many countries, women already have lower mobility than men, often requiring permission to leave the house. Some policy decisions in the COVID19 crisis restrict women more than men. Malaysia famously only allowed heads of household to leave the home. Caregiving burdens also keep more women at home.
• Decreasing immunity: When a crisis hits, women are usually the first to start eating less, or eating last, to make sure that the rest of their families can get enough to eat. They are also 3 times more likely to be anemic than men. Not only does this mean more women than men are likely to go hungry when the COVID19-related “hunger pandemic” hits, it also means that women will have fewer of the nutrients so vital for boosting the immune system to fight disease. High rates of anemia for pregnant women and children increase these risks.
• Raising risk: Women are also facing higher risk of Gender-Based Violence and sexual exploitation as food quantity and quality decreases and stress goes up—especially when many men consider inadequate food preparation a justifiable reason to abuse their wives. Where women can be more mobile and continue their role of buying food for the household, that may put them at higher risk of exposure to COVID19. Women are spending more time collecting water to meet higher handwashing needs, which increases women’s and girls’ risk of COVID19 exposure and GBV.

Women face social barriers and harmful norms

The COVID19 crisis risks rolling back women’s rights and economic gains, as so many crises have before. CARE’s research in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe nutrition programs showed that gains in women’s decision-making power at home regressed when crisis hit. In Mali and Niger, women are the first to lose access to land and income when crisis puts pressure on resources. The Arab Spring was catastrophic for women’s rights in the Middle East, as people seized a moment of crisis to roll back social progress—a pattern that is already repeating in COVID19.

The 2008 financial crisis rolled back women’s rights and employment. In the wake of COVID19, millions of women are losing their jobs in female-dominated industries like garment factories in Asia or domestic work in Latin America. Women who own small businesses in West Africa are now putting all of their capital into buying food for their families. For the poorest and most vulnerable women, losing these economic gains may also risk the empowerment and decision-making roles that women have been able to claim for themselves.

Women are not at the table when key decisions are made and are often invisible in the datasets leaders use to guide decisions. The current data around COVID19 and food crisis is replicating this pattern, putting women at risk of losing the gains they had made around rights, agriculture, financial inclusion, and decision-making.

Women are an essential part of the solution

COVID19 is putting unprecedented pressure on women, their rights, and their food security. But women can also be powerful actors to solve the problem. Their ingenuity, solidarity, adaptive capacity, and key role in food systems means that if we keep women at the core of COVID19 response, we may see better results. How can we work with women to mitigate the coming food crisis?

• Treat women and girls as leaders: CARE Zimbabwe’s Masvingo El Nino Recovery Project, funded by USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, encouraged women to be in leadership roles during crises to ensure that women’s needs are met, and that women have a voice in community decision-making on crisis response, to find long-term solutions to agro-input market disruptions. Women have different needs in a crisis and need to be a part of shaping the solutions.
• Build all guidance, data, and policies with reference to women’s rights and needs.  As development and humanitarian actors adjust plans and programs, it is imperative that all plans address different needs and vulnerabilities of women. Much current technical and policy guidance in the food and nutrition security arena is gender-blind. These omissions risk reinforcing existing biases in the way services, incentives, and information are delivered to women—further eroding women’s rights.
• Ask women and girls what they need: All data collected in COVID19 should be sex-disaggregated, and include specific questions that ask women themselves what they need because women, men, and youth have specific needs. The current data on COVID19 and food crisis has a significant gap around the experiences and needs of women and girls—a gap we should urgently fill. Understanding how this shock is affecting women’s food security is key to finding solutions to the looming food crisis.
• Work with women’s groups: Women’s groups—savings groups, farmer groups, producer groups, and social groups—exist all over the world. With savings groups alone, CARE reaches 10.3 million women. These groups are already taking steps to react to COVID19. In Niger, women savings groups negotiated with a local energy company to get handwashing equipment they could install in their community. In the 2012 crisis in Mali, savings groups took charge of helping refugee families get access to resources.
• Get women cash and food now: Because of quarantines during Ebola, 60% of people in Sierra Leone ate their entire seed reserve and could not plant crops the following year. 26% of people sold off all their livestock, and 40% had used up all their savings. Depleting assets this way can depress agricultural production when farmers—especially women—can’t afford to buy seeds, fertilizer, or other tools they need to grow food. The effects can last for years, with below average production as families struggle to rebound. A combination of seed vouchers, cash transfers, and support to savings groups helped keep Sierra Leone’s crops growing, and 84% of people were eating more meals.
• Recognize women as farmers and producers: Any COVID19 agricultural support, programs, and subsidies should explicitly target women producers. That means not only setting specific targets for at least 50% of support to reach women farmers, but also designing interventions that meet women’s needs. When we aim to keep inputs flowing, we need to consider what women need. One example from Ethiopia includes packaging inputs in smaller bags so women can afford and carry them.
• Think of women as market players: Women are critical players in many markets and help keep economies flowing. In Haiti, 43% of female vendors in the social safety net program hired additional labor to help with their businesses. Women entrepreneurs in Rwanda created nearly 100,000 jobs and increased business profitability by 75%. Every COVID19 food security response should explicitly consider how to support women in markets, agricultural value chains, and business to support recovery.
• Support women to build connections to markets: In Bangladesh in 2014, political unrest shut down markets in some areas for several weeks at a time. Communities were not able to tap into normal market activities. Women who had built links with market buyers bounced back from crisis faster. They saw production drop by 3.8% and were able to return to pre-crisis levels in 2 weeks compared to 7 weeks and 7.1% drop for disconnected women. Connecting these women to markets was only possible by convincing private sector actors to change the way they thought about women as market players.
• Enable women (and men) to access information: In Ghana, Talking Books and radio were used to convey seasonally appropriate key recorded messages. As one male Gender Champion put it, “The talking book was a very powerful gender tool. (…) Women would bring the talking book home and play it. The talking book had a significant impact on hard to reach men in the village.” Radio programs and WhatsApp groups are also used to broadcast shows and information on nutrition, agriculture, and child health. When conflict and insecurity in Mali made it difficult to reach farmers, CARE worked with in partnership with Farm Radio International and local radio stations to host shows on nutrition, agriculture, and child health, and the intersections between them.
• Allow as much mobility as possible: Social distancing is a critical tool to contain the spread of COVID19, and quarantine measures are designed to support that. These measures should still allow as much mobility as possible, and particularly support women’s mobility. Restricting travel between communities while ensuring that small-scale women farmers can get to their fields, encouraging men to take on child care responsibilities while women leave the house, keeping markets open with adequate social distancing measures, and investing heavily in public handwashing facilities can reduce the spread of COVID19 without crippling markets or making it impossible for women to access food.
• Engage men to support women: Working with male leaders who can advocate for women’s rights and speak out against GBV is one key to success. Another is getting men to support women with caregiving work, household chores, fetching water, and other traditional roles for women. This gives women time to tend their crops and ensure food security in the long run. Men should also ensure women get equal access to food.

Build back equal

We must consider women’s rights and empowerment as an essential element of the COVID19 response and long-term resilience—not a trade-off between immediate crisis response and a longer-term goal of women’s rights. Women and their rights are at risk in the COVID19 crisis. Gender-blind policies now will risk not only women’s rights now, but also our global food and economic systems where women are critical actors. Women have the skills and abilities to lead in crisis, and our programs must empower them to do so. It is only by leveraging every resource available in the world—including the incredible, often ignored and oppressed—skills women bring that we can overcome the crisis we all face.

Zambia’s protected area system is home to abundant wildlife, including species like elephant, giraffe, lion, leopard, and rhino. Zambia’s wildlife brings millions of dollars from the tourism sector each year into the country, some of which trickles down into the extremely poor rural communities adjacent to the protected areas. These investments can help to incentivize the protection of species and habitat that would otherwise be susceptible to poaching or conversion to agriculture. Wildlife law enforcement offers one of the few employment opportunities for young people in these rural communities and is an important benefit of conservation. For many young women, however, social and cultural norms make these employment opportunities largely out of reach. Wildlife law enforcement is a male-dominated field, and society  perceives women as lacking the ability and skills to be employed in positions that require being away from home for extended periods of time. Few women are employed in the sector, even in entry level positions such as community scouts. Presently, women make up only 14 percent of community scouts employed nationally.

But perceptions are beginning to shift with Zambia’s first ever all-women team of community scouts, who are mostly under 25 years old. The USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) worked with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) and Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) to recruit and train a cadre of female scouts working in the communities surrounding Lower Zambezi National Park, and encouraged other conservation partners to increase the number of women recruits they support. This initiative is demonstrating that women excel in wildlife protection when offered the chance. With formal employment comes increased status, independence, and confidence, as well as cultural acceptance for these women to decide if and when they would like to start a family. It shows that formal employment in the wildlife law enforcement sector can change the lives of young women for the better, and it impacts the perceptions of the broader communities on the value of conservation and the role of women in its protection. The women who have participated note the family and cultural pressure to get married and start families once they have finished with formal school. But with employment, the women are able to chart their own paths and take control of their futures.

    

Breaking these social barriers requires a range of support mechanisms and review of business as usual. To encourage women to apply, USAID partners disseminated messages about this career opportunity in secondary schools, clinics, churches, and by word of mouth. Recruitment is a competitive and physically demanding process. When the young women arrived at the co-ed training, many had never participated in endurance tests or even run in heavy boots. To address gender biases in the recruitment process, physical endurance standards were adapted for the women and men recruits.

Rosemary Chimeza, 21, was one of the 46 people recruited for the intensive three-month residential training at the Chunga Wildlife Training School in Kafue National Park.

Half of the cohort was female, which was the highest ever proportion of women recruited in a single selection. USAID ILRG supported the adaptation of the curriculum so that training was women-inclusive and gender-responsive. An eight-hour gender-specific session was held during training, covering both the challenges and benefits of women’s participation in natural resource management, and the prevention and response of gender-based violence (GBV). Women and men trainees also received training on socio-emotional skills like assertiveness, self-confidence, and leadership.

Training was physically and mentally demanding.  It was the first time many young women were away from home. Building physical fitness and learning wildlife field operation also required perseverance and endurance. Rosemary and her colleagues recounted their experiences, “Every day there was a new physical activity for us to train in. We would be woken up unexpectedly in the middle of the night to start a long run through the rain. It was difficult but we supported each other. This made the training less stressful and actually it became a fun challenge. After the first few weeks, we knew that we could complete this course.”

Rosemary still remembers with joy the day she returned to her village following her graduation as a community scout. She says she was received “like a chief” by everyone. “People look at me differently, I look at myself differently,” she said. “The young men of the village show me respect, and others now fear me, because I’ve been trained in handling firearms. They call me ‘officer.’”

Breaking gender barriers

On patrol, the all-women team of community scouts are doing everything their male counterparts do. Young women still face challenges though, as deep-seated gender norms and traditional beliefs persist in the local communities. When they patrol remote areas, community scouts must spend extended periods of time away from their homes and families, which is often socially perceived as incompatible with women’s reproductive roles and with their disproportionate share of unpaid caring responsibilities.

On the other hand, the community scout job offers a well-respected employment pathway for young women and supports gradual shifts in gender norms. The women community scouts said that many of their female friends in their villages are already married, while the scouts feel they could wait more years to get married and spend their time investing in their careers and future. In many ways, the work of community scouts is redefining the role of young women in conservation and raising their value within the community. 

“We had accepted that the scout job is too tough for women but these young women have shown us that it’s not,” explained Chimusambo, the village Head Person from Rosemary’s village.

As the only woman in her village with a job that is typically reserved for men, Rosemary feels like she is  inspiring young women and men in her community. “They see my life as serious and focused, and they want to join and become community scouts. Even some parents now think they can send their girls to join,” said Rosemary.

Originally published on the International Institute for Environment and Development blog.  

By Patricia Malasha

Across much of Africa, land is not allocated and inherited under statutory law but through customary practices rooted in kinship. In patrilineal systems, land belongs to men’s families and is inherited through the paternal line.

In Zambia, many ethnic groups follow a matrilineal system, where women own land and pass it down the maternal line.

But ownership does not necessarily translate into access, use and control of land. Even in matrilineal societies, social and gender norms undermine women’s decision-making power. Traditionally – regardless of patrilineal or matrilineal systems − men have authority over household resources, including land − so when it comes to land rights, women are left out.

In Zambia’s customary systems chiefs and their advisors – known as indunas – and village headpersons allocate land. These customary leaders are usually men and, as custodians of tradition and culture, heavily influence whether harmful gender norms and practices persist or change.

Recognizing their influence, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded ‘Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG)‘ program piloted an approach to engage these traditional leaders in shifting harmful gender norms and strengthening women’s land rights in Zambia’s Eastern province, to support a parallel systematic land documentation process. Ninety-six indunas and village headpersons (32% women) from seven chiefdoms participated in a year-long three-part dialogue series.

The dialogues provided indunas with a safe space to reflect and take positive action. The first session analyzed gender inequalities in ownership, access and control of land. The second session envisioned the change indunas wanted and their role to bring about that change. In the final session, indunas discussed achievements and challenges over the year.

Dialogue Leads to Action

Through the dialogues, the indunas made promising steps to shift gender norms that hinder women’s land rights. In five chiefdoms, indunas facilitated local discussions about harmful traditions, such as sending divorcees and widows away from the villages.

These discussion forums triggered an upsurge in the number of women bringing their cases to the chief’s attention. In four chiefdoms, indunas drafted by-laws supporting women’s land rights and banning property grabbing.

Some indunas who now support changing land records to reflect land given to women reached out to traditional courts to raise awareness about the shift. In the patrilineal Nzamane chiefdom, a woman – for the first time in history – was appointed as village headperson with full authority and decision-making power.

A woman headperson in the Nyamphande chiefdom addressed a pressing form of gender-based violence related to land: the use of traditional funeral rites to deny widows’ access to their deceased spouse’s land.

Indunas and village headpersons who participated in the dialogues encouraged men in their communities to include their wives in land documentation. And the indunas led by example, committing to share their own land with their wives and children, both boys and girls.

Induna Jacob Phiri, from Mnukwa chiefdom, was the first to share his land after the first dialogue session, saying “My wife had access to my land and planted crops of her own choice, but I never thought about what could happen to her if I died. I knew I needed to act while I was still alive, so I gave her a portion of land to be her own. After that, I felt empowered to tell people in my village to do the same.”

Not All Indunas Embrace Change

Despite promising shifts in behaviors and gender norms, many indunas did not support change − taking a backseat or even attempting to block and discourage those willing to drive it forward.

Although bringing together indunas from different chiefdoms intended to foster collaboration, the pilot initiative found that individual action by the indunas was much more successful than collective action.

Some of the indunas resisted changes in social norms, and it is important to invest more time in supporting the indunas and headpersons to have a deeper understanding of existing gender norms that should be changed before moving to planning and implementation.

Change Starts with Community

The pilot showed that shifting harmful gender norms at the community level is crucial in supporting women to access land rights. Given their role in regulating local culture and advising the traditional authority on land administration, customary leaders like indunas and village headpersons are a key entry point for that shift.

Change can be slow. But spaces for dialogue, critical reflection, and support for action-planning enabled the indunas to not only change their own beliefs, but also begin to see their role and their communities in a different light.

A Q&A with PepsiCo and USAID on making the business case for women’s empowerment and combating climate change in West Bengal, India

Cross-posted from the USAID Medium blog

Climate change is not gender neutral. It impacts women and girls — in all their diversity — more severely. USAID works with global companies like PepsiCo to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality while combating the climate crisis.

Launched in 2019, a USAID-PepsiCo partnership is empowering women farmers with new skills and knowledge under PepsiCo’s Sustainable Farming Program in the potato value chain in West Bengal, India.

Margaret Henry, PepsiCo’s Director of Sustainable Agriculture; Sarah Lowery, Economist & Public-Private Finance Specialist in USAID’s Land and Resource Governance Division; and Corinne Hart, Senior Gender Advisor for Energy and Environment at USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub, discuss how USAID and PepsiCo are working together to equip women farmers with skills to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Why did PepsiCo and USAID partner in India?

Margaret: PepsiCo and USAID came together in West Bengal, India, to form a partnership to demonstrate the business case for women’s empowerment. PepsiCo has had a long-standing commitment to sustainability and to farmer livelihoods, but we knew we couldn’t solve all the problems alone. We partnered with USAID to expand our ability to influence and benefit the women of West Bengal, who are an integral part of our farming communities.

Sarah: USAID is increasingly focused on developing private sector partnerships in order to scale up development results, and we were excited that PepsiCo was interested in understanding how women’s empowerment can advance its business goals.

Women are often ignored in the agricultural sector. How can the USAID-PepsiCo partnership change that?

Sarah: Women produce 60 to 80 percent of food across the world, but they own a mere fraction of the land that they farm. They are also less likely to control resources, receive technical training, and enjoy the financial benefits from commercial farming. In West Bengal, women have important roles throughout the potato supply chain, and this partnership ensures that women have access to land and the knowledge and skills they need to excel in these roles.

Margaret: By making sure that the women in our supply chains are able to benefit from the support that we provide our farming communities, we can ensure that the productivity and resilience of all of our farms can increase.

What are some of the results you have seen from this partnership for women farmers and PepsiCo?

Corinne: In addition to greater access to land and productive resources, the partnership in West Bengal is engaging all members of household and local champions like potato aggregators to shift gender norms that limit women’s participation and benefit sharing. Over the past two years we have seen women gain mobility, decision-making power over farming decisions and household income, and confidence as lead farmers and community agronomists. Women’s families and communities increasingly acknowledge their roles and the skills they bring to potato farming.

Margaret: We are working with women farmers to ensure that they are recognized as our farmers, laborers, partners, and everything in between. We are seeing that empowering women in our supply chain can lead to improved business performance in productivity, quality, profitability, loyalty, and sustainability.

How can empowering women increase productivity and mitigate the effects of climate change on agricultural supply chains?

Margaret: Every day, farmers face critical challenges from climate change, and we want to work with them to not only reduce the impact of agriculture on climate change, but to help them adapt to the changes that are coming. By empowering women, we empower our supply chains to do better. Not only in terms of productivity, but with environmental performance and adaptation to the kinds of events associated with climate change.

Corinne: Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, and they play a crucial role in climate change adaptation, mitigation, and resilience-building for whole communities. Since women are engaged in so many farm tasks, they have the capacity to track what a farm is doing and understand how to help it to adapt and ensure sustainable approaches are utilized. By putting the right tools and resources in the hands of women farmers, they can help their families and communities get ready for the changes that the climate crisis is bringing.

How are USAID and PepsiCo scaling this partnership in West Bengal to meet global gender equality and climate goals?

Corinne: In 2020 USAID and PepsiCo began a Global Development Alliance, a five-year, $20 million co-funded partnership to demonstrate that investing in women in PepsiCo’s supply chains can lead to greater profitability and sustainability, as well as development outcomes, like gender equality and economic growth. Evidence-based approaches to improve women’s access to resources, land, skills, and employment, alongside robust data collection, will make a compelling business case for scaling to additional PepsiCo markets and influencing other global companies sourcing from rural communities. By integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment into PepsiCo’s global sustainable agriculture strategy, the GDA is directly contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts throughout their agricultural supply chains around the world.

Margaret: PepsiCo is working with farmers in the 60 different countries that we source from to improve farming livelihoods, promote women’s empowerment, work on regenerative agriculture farming practices, reduce their vulnerability to climate change, reduce the emissions that are coming from those farms, and improve the watershed health and biodiversity on those farms. PepsiCo’s Sustainable Farming Program helps farmers understand how to make progress on the most critical social and environmental issues that they face, while ensuring that they remain economically viable.

A USAID-PepsiCo partnership is demonstrating how governments can leverage the private sector to empower women while advancing climate change goals

Arati Besra had been planting rice and raising small animals for her family’s subsistence since she got married at the age of 15. She had never thought about farming for profit until she heard of a partnership between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and PepsiCo, Inc., the U.S.-based multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation, which empowers women in PepsiCo’s potato supply chain in West Bengal.

Arati was eager to take part in the partnership’s in-depth potato farming training program, where she learned about land preparation, seed treatment, soil health, pest and disease control, harvest, and record-keeping, expanding her skills as a farmer. Empowered with new knowledge and skills, she led the 12 women in the Self-Help Group she founded in 2005 to produce potatoes independently and enter the PepsiCo potato supply chain. With assistance from USAID and PepsiCo aggregators to identify and negotiate land available for leasing, the women leased a plot of land as a group and managed the farming operations throughout the growing season. Following the harvest, the women reported above-average yields for the area.

This innovative partnership between USAID and PepsiCo is demonstrating that women’s empowerment can increase the potato supplier base for PepsiCo, improve yields and profitability for rural farmers and PepsiCo, and promote the adoption of sustainable and regenerative farming practices that advance USAID’s and PepsiCo’s global climate change commitments. Working in partnership with women, USAID and PepsiCo are learning from women in the community about the constraints and opportunities for their increased participation in the PepsiCo potato supply chain.

“By empowering women, we are empowering our supply chains to do better every day. Not only with productivity, but with environmental performance and adaptation to the challenges associated with climate change,” said Margaret Henry, PepsiCo’s Director of Sustainable Agriculture.

Over the past two years, USAID and PepsiCo have provided gender awareness training to all PepsiCo staff in West Bengal and agricultural extension services to over 1,000 women potato farmers. Training on sustainable farming practices like composting, reducing crop residue burning, soil testing, responsible pest control, and using drip irrigation contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts by maintaining soil carbon levels, reducing air pollution and CO2 emissions, and reducing pesticide runoff and water contamination. In addition, the partnership is increasing women’s access to productive resources, information, and income diversification, reducing women’s vulnerability and increasing household resilience.

Participating in extension training and producing potatoes independently for the first time increased the women’s ability to become change-makers in their communities and champions for women’s empowerment and sustainable farming. The partnership is also working with male champions such as aggregators and sub-vendors in the supply chain to understand and value women empowerment. These male champions have increased their outreach to women farmers and played a key role in convincing other men in the communities to support women’s efforts.  

After attending training, leading her women’s land leasing group, and overcoming skepticism from men in her family and community, Arati has been selected by the partnership to serve as a part-time Community Agronomist. In the role, she provides support and advice to PepsiCo farmers in her village and has developed innovative farm waste disposal mechanisms with locally available resources.

Arati now sees herself as a successful farmer and local leader. “I was able to prove that I can do this. The knowledge gained through training has helped me guide the farmers. Now I have acceptance and respect from other women and male farmers too. I am learning many new things and I am trying to apply those lessons at a personal level and also reach out to other women like me.”

Cross-posted from USAID Medium

In his leadership role, John Zimba, Chief Sandwe of the Nsenga People of Zambia’s Eastern Province has personally taken steps to help his people, particularly women, formally secure the rights to their land and the forests within their communities. The chief and his constituents are already seeing the benefits from protecting habitat and wildlife.

Located in the southern end of Zambia’s flagship national park, South Luangwa, the chiefdom has traditionally been home to abundant wildlife and dense forests; however, there are new pressures threatening this delicate ecosystem.

The chiefdom has recently been declared a new district with a new municipal town currently under development. In recent years a large-scale mining concession was awarded, and people from both within and outside the community have begun invading the forest to engage in small-scale, off-grid gold mining. All of these are occurring right next to habitat where an NGO manages a forest carbon project and companies maintain legal, regulated hunting concessions. Both of these provide income generating activities for the community.

Despite the role of forests in combating climate change, until recently

Zambia had few ways to incentivize conservation. Without legal rights to the forest land, communities and residents could only benefit from forests by converting them into charcoal or agriculture. This lack of rights is one of a number of reasons that Zambia has had one of the highest rates of deforestation in Africa over the past decade.

“Even though we are in a very rural area, there are many interests in Sandwe. It is my job to organize, manage, govern and harmonize people and resources across the chiefdom,” says the chief. “We think this work on documenting land rights and forest rights will encourage development. With USAID’s support, we have gone through the effort to document the land rights of 10,000 agricultural parcels and to apply for community forest management rights.”

Land access and ownership for women remains severely unequal compared to men despite the fact that women are active participants in the agricultural sector and provide the majority of agricultural labor in much of sub-Saharan Africa. A recent USAID gender analysis of customary land allocations found that female-headed households in Ethiopia and Zambia not only receive less land in customary systems, but also less productive land. Land of lesser quality was more commonly received through gifts or loans than through inheritance, purchase or rent. The study also found that younger women received the least productive land, and that female heads of household often face higher levels of disputes over their land. In addition, women have less access to land rental markets compared to men, which means that women who do not receive a sufficient amount of land to meet their needs through allocation are less able than men to obtain more land through the market.

While gender biases in customary land allocation systems are well-documented, there have been no rigorous empirical analyses to characterize the extent and nature of these biases. This study is the first post-evaluation analysis of quantitative data to investigate gender bias in customary land allocation systems. It provides an important contribution to our shared knowledge and understanding of women’s land rights. This rigorous approach was made possible by utilizing USAID’s land tenure impact evaluation datasets and illustrates the value of these data to advancing future research in topics related to land tenure.

The study provides several key lessons for future land sector programming by USAID and other donors:

1. Donors supporting formalization programs must identify and address gender biases where they exist in customary systems. Efforts to title, certify and/or register land rights within customary systems often crystalize existing allocation patterns. If women have fewer or poorer-quality plots of land to begin with, land programming may deepen these inequities by making them more formal and durable over time. To reduce risks, donors can take steps to: (a) understand patterns of gender inequity in land allocations prior to initial project design phases; (b) develop a strategy to address these inequities and proactively integrate it into project design and implementation; and (c) monitor and evaluate outcomes through the course of the project to ensure that risks are effectively addressed. 
2. Land quality matters. Donors who do take stock of existing gender biases in the design, monitoring or evaluation of land sector programs often only consider inequities in the quantity of land held. Placing additional focus on land quality will help donors to identify systematic gender inequities and the best approaches to addressing these. The quality of a plot importantly determines its immediate productive value for food security and income generation as well as its longer-term value as a transferable asset. Project evaluations—including baseline and endline data collection, should collect data about land quality to determine the net effect on gender equality.
3. Women have less access to formal land sales and lease markets compared to men, and therefore are limited in their ability to optimize their land holding. Findings from Ethiopia and Zambia underscore the importance of land allocations for women, as they may not be able to gain access to additional or better-quality land through rental or sales markets (albeit informal ones) in the same way that men can. Additional research would help us to understand why this is so, and what steps could be taken to address this gender gap.
4. Spatial analysis enables estimations of land quality, key to understanding and addressing gender inequities in land allocation. Geospatial data can contribute to the development of effective land quality indices that can assist in the evaluation of gender inequities. This study linked georeferenced household survey data to spatial data on agro-ecological conditions and proximity to roads (as a proxy for market access). This enabled the research team to construct more accurate land quality indices that incorporated both geospatial variables and other factors related to land productivity, providing a critical new lens for land sector gender equality outcomes.

Our findings provide empirical evidence that customary land allocation systems can introduce gender bias in access to land. The appropriate policy response to such gender bias in any particular case will depend on a range of contextual factors. Options may include outreach and sensitization efforts with customary authorities and local communities to influence social norms related to gender, or implementation of programs to help women access land outside of the customary system. Our findings caution that formalization alone may be insufficient to empower women to use land markets to access land, and thus complementary interventions may be needed.

Read the full research paper here.

Authors: Jennifer Duncan, Senior Land Tenure Specialist, and Benjamin Linkow, Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor, on USAID’s Communications Evidence and Learning project

Good governance is a critical threshold condition for environmental stewardship. USAID’s land and resource governance programming incorporates environmental conservation from the bottom up.  In the context of climate change, growing land and resource scarcity and concerns over resource conflict, secure tenure rights and effective governance of these rights have become all the more important. A growing body of evidence shows the extent to which land and resource governance is connected  to environmental outcomes. (See the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land and IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration.) Human decisions over land and resource use can lead to land degradation, desertification and climate-induced disasters; conditions that in turn cause human suffering including food loss, malnutrition, and displacement.

Clear rights and good governance provide a starting point for change. Providing safe, long-term tenure rights encourages people living and depending on land to invest in sustainable practices, and can reduce incentives to exploit resources or encroach into new areas. Decentralizing land and resource governance to communities is a critical step toward improved environmental outcomes, and even more so when this transfer empowers traditional resource users.  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s recent synthesis report, which reviewed over 300 studies completed over two decades, indicates that transferring land and resource rights to Indigenous and Tribal Peoples can cut deforestation rates in half. Transparent and inclusive land and resource governance also helps to reduce conflict and ensure broad-based benefits from the use of common resources.

USAID’s land and resource governance programming:

1)      Strengthens tenure rights to increase climate smart investments and reduce pressure on forests. By supporting secure land tenure through land rights formalization projects and improved governance, USAID encourages long-term investments in environmental stewardship, such as soil conservation and tree planting. When rights are recognized and recorded, it is also easier for governments and communities themselves to monitor uses and promote accountability. USAID is working on land rights formalization programs in several countries rich in environmental resources, such as Colombia, Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, and  Zambia. In Ghana, USAID will be evaluating impacts of land tenure efforts on carbon emissions.

2)      Promotes women’s land and resource rights and gender equal resource governance. Women are underrepresented in land and resource governance at almost every level in many countries, and often face additional gender bias at the local level under decentralized systems. Tackling the challenges of resource scarcity and changing climate conditions will require  vibrant participation of diverse voices in the community, including both women and men. Gender inclusive land and resource governance also provides the foundation for successful and equitable climate change adaptation programs, and mitigation programs entailing Payment for Environmental Services  (such as REDD+). USAID is working with the government of Zambia on a breakthrough program to bolster women’s participation in the governance of wildlife resources through Community Resource Boards, and training women as community wildlife scouts.

3)      Supports strong local resource governance bodies to ensure effective environmental stewardship.  The transfer of land and resource governance to local communities is taking place in many countries around the world. USAID’s 2020 Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reinforces the central role that Indigenous Peoples play in the Agency’s programming for land and resource governance. USAID programs supporting formalization of land and resource rights for Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Peru, for example, demonstrate  that communities  who live in and depend on forest and other ecosystems  do the best job  taking care of these resources. For over 20 years, USAID has worked to support Indigenous land and resource rights in Bolivia; from 2000 to 2012, formal recognition of these lands resulted in an average deforestation decrease of 286 percent. The carbon emissions reduction associated with this result was equivalent to removing over 1.6 million cars from the roads for one year. In Peru, USAID supported more than 1,200 Indigenous communities to secure titles to their land and resources; when communities received titles, deforestation decreased by 97 percent.

4)      Builds stability in fragile and post-conflict states. By focusing on land tenure security in post-conflict states, USAID helps to ensure political stability that will, in turn, enable good stewardship of environmental resources over time, and help to reduce the chance of violent conflict and war that wreaks havoc on the natural environment. Insecure land rights can lead to displacement and grievance, which contribute to conflicts large and small. Secure and equitable land rights can be a pillar of political stability and broad-based economic development. USAID has a historically strong land and resource governance focus in fragile and post-conflict states, and currently has programs in Colombia, Liberia, and Mozambique.

5)      Reforms artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) to reduce conflict and improve environmental impact. By partnering with countries to formalize and regulate artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), USAID fosters ASM supply chains that are not only legal, but also environmentally and socially responsible. USAID is working closely with the U.S. Departments of State, Labor, and Commerce; the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); and the Environmental Protection Agency to tackle the complex array of ASM-related development challenges.