The Gender Asset Gap and Its Implications for Agricultural and Rural Development

Meinzen‐Dick, Ruth; Johnson, Nancy L.; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Njuki, Jemimah; Behrman, Julia A.; Rubin, Deborah; Peterman, Amber; Waithanji, Elizabeth M.

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8616-4_5

Cited by 79 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Assets help manage vulnerability, provide collateral, help accumulate wealth, and increase social empowerment and political engagement . For Bebbington (1999), assets are a means for empowerment because they are necessary to build livelihoods, to make living meaningful and to act and challenge the structures affecting a living (cited in Meinzen-Dick et al 2014). At the same time, gender dynamics affect how different individuals value, own, accumulate, control, and use different assets .…”

Section: Dimensions Of Empowerment In the Welimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

et al. 2018

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The empowerment of women in the livestock sector is fundamental to achieve gender equality. It also is instrumental for increased household productivity and improved household health and nutrition. Diverse strategies exist to empower women, yet these strategies are difficult to prioritize without a reliable and adapted means to measure women's empowerment. One quantitative measure is the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). Despite its reliability in certain agricultural contexts, the WEAI requires adaptation in settings where livestock farming is the dominant form of livelihood. Using the WEAI as a starting point, a multidisciplinary team of researchers developed the Women's Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), a new index to assess the empowerment of women in the livestock sector. This paper presents the WELI and the dimensions of empowerment it includes: (1) decisions about agricultural production; (2) decisions related to nutrition; (3) access to and control over resources; (4) control and use of income; (5) access to and control of opportunities; and (6) workload and control over own time. The paper illustrates the use of the WELI by introducing pilot findings from dairy smallholders in four districts of northern Tanzania. The paper addresses considerations for the appropriate use and adaptation of the WELI to balance the needs for context specificity and crosscultural comparisons; it also discusses its limitations. The paper recommends participatory and qualitative methods that are complementary to the WELI to provide context-specific insights on the processes of women's empowerment in the livestock sector.

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Section: Dimensions Of Empowerment In the Welimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

et al. 2018

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“…Finally, looking at the economic category, on the basis of the main constraints normally faced by women in agriculture [71,72], we focused the attention on two main collected variables: the capacity of the famer organization to sell its agricultural products and the ability to carry out activities aimed to acquire productive inputs (such as fertilizers, etc. ).…”

Section: The Water Gender Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Gender Indicators in Agriculture: A Study of Horticultural Farmer Organizations in Senegal

Centrone

Mosso

Busato

et al. 2017

Water

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This paper intends to contribute to the debate on gender equality and water within the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs 5 and 6. Farmers organizations are often considered key stakeholders whose participation should be fostered to achieve a good water governance in agriculture and irrigation programs. Nonetheless, many water management interventions tackle participation as an instrumental and formal process. A common assumption is that granting sufficient space for women in water management will automatically ensure a greater gender empowerment. Nevertheless, often low importance is given to assessing who really actively participates and benefits from water development projects, favoring the technical aspects. This paper addresses the articulation between gender, water management and indicators, using male, female and mixed farmer organizations as touchstones in three regions of Senegal. The authors defines a system of water gender indicators grouped into five sections. The first results show more similarities between mixed and female organizations, while the main gender inequalities are visible in the water technique and economic domains. Thanks to this study, we can see how a gender-based analysis may allow to more deeply understand some more or less "hidden" water governance mechanisms and their related implications in terms of project management and policy making.

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“…This gender norm of men's customary land inheritance rights further positions them at the center of farming, thereby "legitimizing" the patriarchal image of farming in rural Ethiopia. Unequal gendered resource ownership and asset distribution is common in developing economies (Doss, Kieran, and Kilic 2017;Meinzen-Dick et al 2014), and it exacerbates unequal gendered production relations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Benefits from Production Outcomes? Gendered Production Relations among Climate‐Smart Agriculture Technology Users in Rural Ethiopia

Tsige

2019

Rural Sociology

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The use of agricultural technologies is generally expected to increase production and household incomes. Gendered disparities in making use of agricultural outcomes could result in inequitable agricultural development. However, too little is known about whether the use of agricultural technologies improves gendered production relations, particularly in the Global South. This study investigates the question of gender‐equitable production relations by drawing on empirical data from women and men smallholders involved in conservation agriculture and small‐scale irrigation schemes in three study areas in Ethiopia. Findings show that the use of agricultural technologies does not improve unequal gendered production relations; rather, gender norms that exist within patriarchal social structures continue to influence production relations in at least three ways. First, societal norms restrict women from asserting their self‐interest in gendered bargaining. Second, there is a customary law in all the study areas that allows men (but not women) to inherit land—thus providing men with better bargaining and decision‐making positions over production outcomes, as they bring land to the marriage. Third, the restricted access of women to rural institutional services further contributes to unequal gendered production relations, as these services support men more than women in the use of agricultural technologies for enhanced production.

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The Gender Asset Gap and Its Implications for Agricultural and Rural Development

Cited by 79 publications

References 29 publications

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index

Water Gender Indicators in Agriculture: A Study of Horticultural Farmer Organizations in Senegal

Who Benefits from Production Outcomes? Gendered Production Relations among Climate‐Smart Agriculture Technology Users in Rural Ethiopia

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