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This post is written by the Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) team and originally published in Agrilinks. 

On March 8, 2021, International Women’s Day (IWD) marks a day where people across the world celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness against bias, and take action to forge a more gender-inclusive world. USAID and PepsiCo recently partnered in West Bengal, India to support women in the PepsiCo potato supply chain in an effort to equalize their access to essential resources as their male counterparts, which is critical to agricultural success.

The USAID-PepsiCo partnership is designed to engage women as critical partners by empowering them, and thus challenging and transforming prevailing gender norms in the region, to build greater resilience in these rural farming communities and improve yields and performance in agricultural supply chains.

In West Bengal, India women are rarely seen as farmers, even though they typically spend as much time as their husbands working on the farm: preparing fields, planting seeds, harvesting crops, and managing animals.

When Anwara Begam and her women’s group, Eid Mubarak, were approached in October 2019 by the staff of a new joint initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and PepsiCo to participate in potato farming as lead farmers, the group enthusiastically jumped at the chance. This was the first time many of these women had the opportunity to participate in agricultural extension; they received training and knowledge on a broad range of topics to apply to their agricultural practices to increase their yields and productivity. Through the support of this partnership, the group participated in a land-leasing activity to identify land and negotiate leasing terms; it was the first time many of these women had ever accessed farmland on their own.

With reliable land access, Anwara Begam and the women in the group attended agronomy training, improved their skills in potato farming and financial literacy, and became formal contributors to the PepsiCo potato value chain. During extension training sessions, Anwara learned how to improve her crop yields through land preparation, seed treatment, soil health and nutrition management, and pest and disease control. In its first year, the USAID-PepsiCo initiative conducted technical training with 48 women’s groups, bringing over 500 women into PepsiCo’s supply chain.

Using information from the agronomy training, Anwara recently recognized the signs of potato blight on her family’s farm and knew what measures to take to prevent it from spreading; however, her husband initially did not believe her. While he questioned her knowledge, she advocated that their family take swift action, and her initiative ended up saving her family’s crop.

Empowered with her enhanced skills and knowledge, Anwara is currently talking with other women about the positive benefits of improving women’s knowledge in agricultural practices, and at the same time, her bolstered ability to advocate and influence others has built her personal confidence and leadership skills.

Invaluable Women

The partnership’s initial success shows that empowering women with the knowledge, land, and access to PepsiCo’s value chain directly benefits the women and their families, while also meeting PepsiCo’s business goals to expand their supplier network and increase productivity.

PepsiCo agronomist Abdul Alim attended gender sensitization workshops and discussions on the role of women in agriculture alongside over 30 other PepsiCo staff. In his native village of Bhagaldighi, West Bengal, Abdul and PepsiCo aggregators have already hired women to sort and grade potatoes—jobs typically done by men.

Since Abdul’s training, seven women with experience growing PepsiCo potatoes participated in sorting and grading opportunities, where each worker can earn up to $4 per day. This pay is more than twice what a woman makes in an eight-hour day as an agricultural laborer, and the job offers women more flexibility to work around their household responsibilities, as they are paid on output rather than the number of hours worked.

Since the partnership began in mid-2019, USAID and PepsiCo have provided potato agronomy training for more than 1,000 women, as well as gender equality and women’s empowerment training to all PepsiCo local staff in West Bengal. From the partnership’s initial gender assessment, it was clear that economically empowering women requires more than teaching improved farming practices. Building on the success of the first year, the partnership will begin implementing household and community level dialogues on gender norms that hinder women’s access to and control over resources and income and further recognition of their role as farmers. Interventions that aim to change harmful gender norms, strategically engage men and community leaders, and increase women’s personal agency and empowerment are critical to mitigating unintended consequences, including gender-based violence.

Reporting from the field has shown that for Anwara Begam and the women of the Eid Mubarak group, access to land and knowledge provided by the USAID PepsiCo partnership led to increased self-confidence and recognition from their community, and they now see themselves as valuable potato farmers who contribute to their families’ livelihoods and the PepsiCo supply chain. This demonstrates that empowering women makes social and economic sense both for businesses and for rural communities.

Scaling through PepsiCo Agricultural Value Chains

Building on this initial success in West Bengal, PepsiCo and USAID are expanding the partnership through a Global Development Alliance (GDA) focused on proving the business case for women’s economic empowerment in Colombia, Pakistan, and Vietnam, and further into India in Uttar Pradesh.

The GDA will target PepsiCo farming communities with a gender-transformative approach that tests and pilots women’s economic empowerment solutions on PepsiCo demonstration farms, as well as scales up promising practices demonstrated in the initial project in West Bengal. The partnership aims to ensure that women farmers and workers benefit from being directly or indirectly involved within PepsiCo’s supply chains while also being empowered within their households and communities. Integrating women’s economic empowerment into PepsiCo’s sustainable agriculture approach will strengthen livelihoods and community resilience while improving the performance and sustainability of the supply chain.

PepsiCo will use data and insights from this partnership with USAID to show that investing in women makes business sense and should be scaled within PepsiCo’s supply chains and adopted by other leading companies. Read more about our work in West Bengal here and the GDA here.

 

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This blog was originally published in USAID Medium.

With a seat at the table, women contribute to decision making on natural resources and climate solutions

One of the greatest threats to our global community is climate change, and research shows women are more vulnerable than men to its consequences. Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die due to climate disasters such as droughts and floods, and they make up 80 percent of those displaced by climate change. Climate change can also exacerbate gender-based violence, including early and forced child marriage.

But women and girls are not just victims of climate change ― they are leading the way in designing and implementing climate change solutions, and their valuable and unique knowledge on natural resource management and adaptation strategies are critical. The tools we use to combat climate change are more effective when women are meaningfully empowered at the household, community, national, and international levels. Fueled by a women’s economic empowerment fund at USAID, here are five ways we are empowering women in the fight against climate change:

1-Advancing Gender in the Environment

The Advancing Gender in the Environment (AGENT) partnership between USAID and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has recognized women as agents of change in the climate change sector for nearly a decade. Through AGENT, we conduct research and publish our findings on how climate change affects women, and help countries develop climate change gender action plans to ensure climate solutions are more effective and inclusive. One of our recent studies found that climate change, state fragility, and gender inequality are interconnected issues and that USAID and other development partners should approach these issues together so solutions are more effective and can have impact in all three areas.

With USAID’s support, AGENT is working to increase gender equality and women’s empowerment in the fisheries sector, where women make up nearly half the workforce, but their ability to advance economically is limited. This exclusion holds women back from earning income and reaching new markets, and can thwart efforts to increase the sustainability of the fishery overall.

Through this partnership, USAID has supported knowledge and tools that have helped build the capacities of over 25,000 women and men policy makers and practitioners around the world on how gender and environment are linked, so they can create more sustainable and equitable policies and programs to fight climate change.

2-SERVIR

A 16-year partnership between USAID and NASA, SERVIR supports local decision-makers across the developing world to use geospatial technology to manage the effects of climate change. SERVIR’s data helps countries anticipate droughts, floods and forest fires, so officials can respond quickly before lives are lost.

Since 2019, USAID has worked to ensure SERVIR’s geospatial services consider the ways climate change affects women in particular and design solutions that specifically meet their needs, such as ensuring that disaster information is shared through communication channels that women are able to easily access. We also have created opportunities for women to work and grow their careers in the geospatial sciences workforce by providing technical and leadership skills training and mentorship opportunities. A more diverse and well-equipped workforce can better tackle the problems and priorities of different types of community members that SERVIR and its partners serve.

3-Clean Cities, Blue Ocean

Plastic waste pollution doesn’t just spread microplastics around the globe — it contributes to climate change by clogging mangroves that help regulate the ecosystem, and releasing high quantities of carbon dioxide when incinerated.

USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program halts ocean plastic pollution in rapidly urbanizing areas of Asia and Latin America that contribute to the estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic that flow into the ocean each year. As part of this program, we are investing in new business approaches led by women entrepreneurs that reduce single-use plastics, and we are supporting the economic advancement of women who work as informal waste collectors.

4-Engendering Utilities

Effective and high-functioning utilities are critical to achieving climate change goals, particularly by introducing clean and renewable energy to reduce emissions and encouraging the efficient use of resources in the communities they serve.

USAID’s Engendering Utilities program creates economic opportunities for women working in traditionally male-dominated energy and water utilities, ultimately strengthening utility performance. The program has trained over 6,000 women to advance their careers, and over 1,000 women have been hired in the energy and water sectors, including in management and technical positions.

5-Women’s Land Rights

When women have secure land rights, their resilience to climate change increases, as does their communities’ resilience overall. But women who rely on customary land tenure systems that disadvantage them are the most impacted by climate change, especially as forest and water sources are depleted and soil on land degrades. Without secure land rights, they are less able to prevent overgrazing of pastureland and deforestation, which worsen greenhouse gas emissions.

USAID works to implement practices such as joint titling and land registration to ensure women have secure land rights. USAID works in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and India to support legal and land resource governance reforms around women’s land rights.

The climate crisis is acute and shows no sign of abating. Economically empowering women leverages their innovation and expertise and enables their transformational power to increase climate resilience. With a seat at the table, women contribute to decision making on natural resources and advocate for climate solutions that meet their needs and are more likely to be adopted by all people — benefiting our shared planet and our global community.

About the Authors

Corinne Hart is the Senior Gender Advisor for Energy and Environment and Georgia Hartman is a Technical Advisor for Gender and Environment, both in USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation.

 

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By Jennifer Duncan

Secure land and resource rights are critical for household wellbeing and livelihoods in many developing countries, where land is the principal asset for the rural poor. Despite women’s vital role in food production, they are less likely than men to own and control land. Forty percent of the world’s economies limit women’s property rights, and 44 of 191 countries do not provide female and male surviving spouses with equal rights to inherit assets.

In 2020 one in five women  globally–upward of 480 million women–felt insecure about their land and property rights, and in some regions like Sub-Saharan Africa nearly one in every two women feared losing her land in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.

The same gender biases that prevent women from holding secure land rights also exclude them from having an equal voice in decision-making about land at all levels. When women’s and men’s voices are both well-represented, on the other hand, strategies for land and resource use reflect the needs and collective wisdom of the whole community. This is especially important in the face of growing resource scarcity, and the kinds of crises spurred by climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHY WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS MATTER

Ownership and control over assets that support income are central to women’s economic and social empowerment and their ability to contribute to their communities and countries. For many women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources they depend on to make a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. If women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm output would increase by 20 to 30 percent.

USAID, through the Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program and the Communications, Evidence and Learning (CEL) project, is strengthening women’s rights to land and resources so that women may leverage these rights toward concrete economic, social, and political opportunities.

In honor of International Women’s Day, here are six ways USAID is moving forward with our partners to strengthen women’s land and resource rights:

1. SUPPORTING LAW AND POLICY REFORMS. Reforming legal frameworks to establish women’s rights to land and natural resources is one of the most effective ways to empower women at scale. USAID is working with governments and customary leaders at the national and local levels to adopt and implement laws and policies that promote women’s land rights. USAID is also raising awareness and providing legal literacy and access to justice for women, so they are better able to claim and benefit from existing rights.
2. GENDER INTEGRATION IN LAND DOCUMENTATION. USAID is promoting gender integration in systematic land documentation processes led by governments, civil society, and private sector actors, ensuring that women’s land rights are considered in all steps, from planning to final documentation of individual or community land. Awareness-raising and communications activities are encouraging women to register their rights.
3. GENDER NORMS CHANGE. USAID is providing training and promoting dialogues with customary leaders and communities on harmful gender norms and biases that hinder women from gaining rights and control over land and natural resources. USAID is also promoting gender norms change within households to enhance women’s participation in decision-making, promote collaboration within families, and reduce gender-based violence.
4. AGENCY-BASED EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN. USAID is providing women with the skills, knowledge, and resources to meaningfully participate in decision-making and governance related to land and natural resources and to engage in agricultural value chains. Increased agency enables women to leverage secure land rights to access financing, agricultural extension, and employment in the wildlife and forestry sectors.
5. PRIVATE SECTOR ENGAGEMENT. USAID is partnering with national and multinational companies to develop policies for gender-responsive land-based investment and business practices that reach, benefit, and empower women in different agricultural value chains. USAID is contributing to the growing evidence base on the business case for women’s economic empowerment, which shows that including women in value chains has positive impacts not only for women, their families, and communities, but also for key business performance indicators like agricultural yield, productivity, and quality of production.
6. GATHERING AND DISSEMINATING EVIDENCE, BEST PRACTICES, AND LESSONS LEARNED. USAID’s extensive impact and performance evaluations of past and ongoing projects are producing a rich body of evidence to inform governments, donors, and other stakeholders in developing new policies and programs to effectively strengthen women’s rights and translate them into sustainable social and economic empowerment. USAID will continue to share its research widely through new communications and learnings platforms, so as to be readily accessible by partners and stakeholders working toward better land and resource rights for women.

For more information about USAID’s work on women’s land rights, check out these key resources and more at https://www.land-links.org/issue/gender-equality/

• Women’s Land Rights and Women’s Economic Empowerment overview
• Women’s Land Rights and Women’s Economic Empowerment activities in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia
• For more information on the positive impact of access to land and natural resources on women’s economic empowerment, see: USAID (2016) Fact Sheet: Land Tenure and Women’s Empowerment; PRINDEX (2019) Women’s Perceptions of Tenure Security: Evidence from 33 Countries; UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs/Relief Web (2019) Gender Inequalities and Food Insecurity: Ten Years after the Food Price Crisis, Why are Women Farmers Still Food Insecure?; Landesa (2014) Women’s Land Rights Infographic.

About the author: Jennifer Duncan is the Senior Land Tenure Specialist on the USAID Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Empowerment (LEVERAGE) Activity. 

 

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By Patricia Malasha

In Zambia, women and men are making the choice to challenge cultural and social barriers to women’s participation in natural resource management

When it comes to Zambia’s natural resource governance structures, the cultural perception that ‘only men can be the leaders’ excludes many capable women from leadership roles. Women’s interests and priorities are under-represented, and women can do little to change this from the sidelines. Due to gender norms, most of the work and decision-making tends to be assigned to men, who are the only ones thought to have the competencies required for wildlife operations.

Zambia’s wildlife policy entrusts power to communities to establish Community Resource Boards (CRBs) to manage their natural resources in Game Management Areas, which are protected areas buffering national parks; but with no gender focus, women community leaders continue to be ignored within community management and governance structures. To be elected to the CRB, women have to compete with men on an uneven playing field. Few are willing to stand for election, but when they do, they face many barriers limiting their chances of success, such as lack of resources for campaigns, lack of acceptance, time constraints to campaign, and risks of gender-based violence (GBV). If they succeed, the same challenges continue to impact their meaningful participation. Asserting themselves within traditionally male-dominated structures exposes them further to the risks of GBV within their family and communities.

In Zambia, there are 77 CRBs nationwide, and only a few have ever elected women to leadership positions. A similar scenario exists in the forestry sector with Community Forest Management Groups.

Strategies to increase women’s participation

In 2020, USAID partners Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Zambia CRB Association tested a pilot to use the CRB elections as an entry point to increase women’s participation in four CRBs located in the North Luangwa ecosystem: Mukungule, Nabwalya, Chikwa and Chifunda. Turns out women make really great candidates for leadership positions. Today, one out of four CRB leadership positions in the target CRBs is occupied by a woman, and the Village Action Groups (VAGs) that support CRBs increased women’s participation to 50%. Just three years ago, women barely had any representation at either level. Read more about this pilot in the Outcomes and Lessons Learned Report and Brief.

To observe International Women’s Day, USAID is profiling the community voices of those individuals who stood up to challenge existing structural barriers and gender norms to increase women’s involvement in wildlife community governance leadership roles.

Inspiring New Leaders

Nancy Mutemba, Community Liaison Assistant and Gender Focal Person, Frankfurt Zoological Society
“It seemed a difficult task to convince headpersons and women to do something that they did not believe in, and I was scared to preach to them something that seems to go against their culture. I worried about how they would receive the message and how it was going to impact our relationship going forward.”

Read More

 

Harriet Mupeta – Mukungule CRB Board Secretary

“Before the meeting I knew very little about the role of the CRBs and that as a woman I could be involved. When I heard that Chief Mukungule was asking women to join the CRB, I decided to try because I knew the Chief’s word is respected.”

Read More

 

Unwilling to buy votes, Catherine Chatata – Nabwalya CRB

“I now believe that even as a woman who has no money for campaigning, I can be voted for. I will work even harder to convince people in the next round of elections and my achievements in the VAG will campaign for me.”

Read More

 

 

Without Women there is no Tradition, Chief Chikwa – Chikwa CRB Patron

“Our history and our tradition are not without women. Women have held honorable positions in our tradition system, including that of a chief; before me there were women. Discriminating against women is not from our tradition but individual selfishness. Women deserve to be leaders of our communities,” he says.

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Agnes Chavula – Chikwa CRB Chairperson

“Men want to lead over you and find it difficult to respect women in top positions. If not careful, you spend time dealing with unnecessary conflicts rather than serving the people. I just have to be tactical to maintain unity,” she says.

Read More

 

 

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