Tools for the Field

Tools for the Field
Author: Hilary Sims Feldstein
Publisher: UADY
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1994
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781565490284

Learning about the system and initial diagnosis (managing bias - farmer selection; wealth ranking; participatory methodologies for analyzing household activities, resources, and benefits; structured interviewing in Ecuador - incorporating gender into diagnostic field research; using open exploratory surveys to identify local cassava varieties and practices; workshops for gathering information; using focus groups with rural women; incoporating gender in conceptual diagrams of households; investigating contradictions and mysteries; addressing full-family dynamics in rural development; obtaining data on gender and intrahousehold issues); Research planning, on-farm experimentation, and trials assessment (productivity profiles of women agricultural producers; gender-disaggregated activity calendar; community approach to selection for on-farm trials; women and trials management in botswana - experiences with farmer groups; influence of the Aramachay Women's Production Committee on trial design; Respecting the culture in cultural practices - gender in on-farm trials; integrating farmer experts into on-station research; value of participant observation and experimentation; evaluation of bean varieties by men and women in small farm systems); On-going diagnosis and special studies (community approach to identifying household variables influencing farming decisions; household record keeping as a means of understanding farmers'decision making; time allocation studies - methodological note; selecting methods of time allocation research; juego de registro; evaluating the acceptability of crop varieties prior to introduction; dry bean utilization and fueldwood conservation); Extension, training, and institutionalization (extension feedback and communication - case from Ecuador; evaluation and transfer of new food crop varieties by home economics groups; application of an analysis of full-family dynamics in egypt; bridging the information gap in integrated pest management; training in gender analysis in agricultural research - use of case studies; training in integrating a gender perspective into farming systems research; national workshop on research methodology on the role of women in rice farming systems; using local case material; practical considerations for improving gender-based research; women's agricultural production committees and the participative-research-action approach; integrating a women's program into the mali farming systems project volet-OHV; incorporating gender into a national program of farming systems research; letter from the field - reflections on gender-sensitive research).

Advancing gender equality through agricultural and environmental research: Past, present, and future

Advancing gender equality through agricultural and environmental research: Past, present, and future
Author: Pyburn, Rhiannon, ed.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0896293912

Over the past decade, interest in gender equality and women’s empowerment has grown rapidly, creating a unique opportunity to institutionalize gender research within agricultural research for development. This book, edited by researchers from the CGIAR Gender Platform, reviews and reflects on the growing body of evidence from gender research. It marks a shift a way from a traditional focus on how gender analysis can contribute to improved productivity, flipping the question to ask, How does agricultural and environmental research and development contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment? Chapters synthesize the wide range of CGIAR and other research in this area, covering breeding research and seed systems, value chain participation, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, natural resources, climate adaptation and mitigation, the “feminization” of agriculture, women’s role in agricultural research, and emerging gender transformative approaches.

Gender-transformative approaches to address inequalities in food, nutrition and economic outcomes in aquatic agricultural systems

Gender-transformative approaches to address inequalities in food, nutrition and economic outcomes in aquatic agricultural systems
Author: Cole, S.M.
Publisher: WorldFish
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre:
ISBN:

ÿOver the past few decades, scholars and practitioners working on gender and development issues have advocated for more in-depth analyses that explore and foster change in the social institutions that create and perpetuate gender inequalities. Gender integration approaches in a research and development context are thus not something new. However, mainstream agricultural research and development programs often apply a rather simple understanding of gender to the design of such approaches, resulting in poor implementation. The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems uses gender-transformative approaches to help achieve the goal of enhancing development outcomes of resource-poor women and men and their families in a sustainable manner. This paper details the approaches the program utilizes and is beginning to implement in its five learning hubs, which are located in areas where dependence on aquatic agricultural systems is high. The paper provides guidance on how other programs could prepare themselves to design and operationalize gender-transformative approaches and highlights some early learning on their application.

Qualitative methods for gender research in agricultural development

Qualitative methods for gender research in agricultural development
Author: Rubin, Deborah
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2016-05-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The rise of mixed methods approaches to development-oriented research has brought new attention to qualitative research methods. This paper describes the use of qualitative approaches to illuminate gender relations in agricultural development research and project implementation. For gender research, qualitative methods can be particularly helpful in illuminating how men and women view their lives. Drawing on literature about social science methods and linking it to recent examples of qualitative methods employed in research and development projects, the paper argues for greater precision in key concepts of gender research, starting with sex and gender. From the many possible qualitative methods used in development work, the paper focuses on several common observational (both direct and participatory) and interview techniques, the latter including key informant and group interviews and focus group discussions. Researchers use various techniques to gather different types of information, for example, mapping techniques to understand men’s and women’s different types of knowledge about their environment and eliciting in-depth information on a single topic with key informants. In a brief discussion of the analysis of qualitative data, the paper notes that informant responses are not “the truth” but need to be assessed against other sources of data. Finally, there is a short discussion of how qualitative data have been used in comparative work. The paper concludes that the results of good qualitative research on gender relations can help identify the locally specific pathways needed to achieve gender-transformative development approaches.

The Gender Variable in Agricultural Research

The Gender Variable in Agricultural Research
Author: Hilary Sims Feldstein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 68
Release: 1989
Genre: Agriculture
ISBN:

The report provides a checklist of questions for agricultural researchers which will enable them to design gender-sensitive research projects. Although it is recognized that research in agriculture, the nature and extent of women's participation in agriculture varies immensely from one part of the world to another, this report has been prepared in such a way as to achieve maximum applicability in differing geographical settings

Gender in Agriculture

Gender in Agriculture
Author: Agnes R. Quisumbing
Publisher: Springer Science & Business
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 940178616X

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) produced a 2011 report on women in agriculture with a clear and urgent message: agriculture underperforms because half of all farmers—women—lack equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. This book builds on the report’s conclusions by providing, for a non-specialist audience, a compendium of what we know now about gender gaps in agriculture.

Gender dynamics in value chains

Gender dynamics in value chains
Author: Pyburn, Rhiannon
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Over the past 20 years, value chain development (VCD) initiatives and value chain research have increasingly integrated gender dimensions to allow for gender-differentiated employment and income opportunities and other benefits for women and men, and to address the exploitation of women’s labor (Pyburn and Kruijssen 2021). This research often addresses constraints to women’s participation in specific value chains, such as administrative procedures in transboundary fish trade (Ratner et al. 2018) or disproportionate harassment of women food traders by authorities in Nigeria (Resnick et al. 2019). This brief draws on research conducted under the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) to illustrate how VCD supports and constrains progress toward gender equality and women’s empowerment. In particular, the brief summarizes work from a portfolio of six PIM co-funded projects (2020–2021) on gender dynamics in value chains beyond the production node and single commodity analysis (Box 1), a book chapter in a CGIAR-wide gender publication (Pyburn and van Eerdewijk 2021), the Pro-WEAI (project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index) for Market Inclusion, and other gender-integrated value chain work within PIM (Crimi 2018; Vos and Pyburn 2021), and provides an outlook for future research.

Methodologies for researching feminisation of agriculture what do they tell us?

Methodologies for researching feminisation of agriculture what do they tell us?
Author: Farnworth, Cathy Rozel
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 33
Release: 2021-12-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is “feminizing” in many low and middle-income countries. Definitions of feminisation of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why feminisation of agriculture is occurring, and finding ways to properly understand and document this process, requires effective research methodologies capable of producing nuanced data. This article builds on five research projects that set out to deepen narratives of feminisation of agriculture by empirically exploring the dynamics and impacts of diverse processes of feminisation—or masculinisation—of agriculture on gender relations in agriculture and food systems. To contribute to the development of effective research methodologies, the researchers working on these projects associate the insights they have derived in their empirical research with the methodologies they have used. They reflect on how their methodological innovations enabled them to obtain new, or more nuanced, insights into processes of feminisation of agriculture. A first insight is that the definition of ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is a decisive factor in determining the evidence we produce on the process. Second, the feminisation of agriculture should be understood as a nonlinear continuum. Research methodologies need to be capable of capturing dynamics, complexity, as well as multiple and diverse context—and time—specific drivers. Third, bias in data can arise from gender norms which mediate whether women are acknowledged by wider society as farmers in their own right. Such norms may result in significant underestimations of women’s roles in agriculture. This observation warrants a critical awareness that data used to measure or proxy aspects of feminisation of agriculture may reflect such biases. Finally, some research methodologies can be useful to identify and leverage entry points to support women’s agency and empowerment in processes of feminisation of agriculture.

Gender, Agriculture and Agrarian Transformations

Gender, Agriculture and Agrarian Transformations
Author: Carolyn E. Sachs
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0429763816

This book presents research from across the globe on how gender relationships in agriculture are changing. In many regions of the world, agricultural transformations are occurring through increased commodification, new value-chains, technological innovations introduced by CGIAR and other development interventions, declining viability of small-holder agriculture livelihoods, male out-migration from rural areas, and climate change. This book addresses how these changes involve fluctuations in gendered labour and decision making on farms and in agriculture and, in many places, have resulted in the feminization of agriculture at a time of unprecedented climate change. Chapters uncover both how women successfully innovate and how they remain disadvantaged when compared to men in terms of access to land, labor, capital and markets that would enable them to succeed in agriculture. Building on case studies from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book interrogates how new agricultural innovations from agricultural research, new technologies and value chains reshape gender relations. Using new methodological approaches and intersectional analyses, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agriculture, gender, sustainable development and environmental studies more generally.