Women's participation in high value agricultural commodity chains in Kenya: Strategies for closing the gender gap (original) (raw)
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and the authors would like to thank everyone who contributed to the preparation of this report and completion of the entire study on Improving Participation in Agricultural Markets for Smallholder Farmers in Kenya: Assessing Growth Opportunities for Marginalized Groups. We acknowledge the partnership between researchers from the Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) whose collaborative effort resulted in the successful completion of the project. We appreciate the support from the FORD Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to carry out the study. We acknowledge technical contributions from other Tegemeo and ICRAF colleagues during the study design, data collection, analysis and report writing, and support during preparation of the dissemination workshop. In addition, we appreciate the valuable contribution from various stakeholders who provided the data and also participated in the workshop, including farmers and other actors along the selected value chains. We would also like to acknowledge cooperation and support accorded to us by the administration of Egerton University, without which the completion of this study would have been difficult.
Gender disparity is a phenomenon that rises above most of the world's societies, religions, countries and wage gatherings. In many social orders, the distinctions and disparities are show in the obligations each are relegated, in the exercises they embrace, in their entrance to and control over assets and in basic leadership openings. This study examined to gender inequalities in women's land use in Agricultural Value Chains in Ainabkoi Sub County, Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The study was guided by Sen's Entitlement Theory. The study adopted mixed research design. Descriptive research methodology was used to design data collection instruments. The researchers used questionnaire, interview schedule guide, focus group discussion and document analysis to collect data. A sample of 153 was drawn from a population of 1,224 using random and purposive sampling. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected. Quantitative data was analyzed using Statistical Packages of Social Sciences generating descriptive statistics which included percentages, mean and standard deviation. Qualitative data was analyzed by highlighting significant statements and coming up with themes which were used to develop descriptions of the participant experiences and descriptions of the context or settings that influence the experience. These descriptions were unified into structural and textural description giving a unified descriptive account of the quantitative data. The findings showed that gender inequalities were prevalent in land use, financial use and access to extension services among men and women that affect Agricultural Value Chains. The findings of this study will be useful to policy makers in formulating policies that will ensure gender equity in Agricultural Value Chains. The researchers recommend that service providers should foster equitable participation, recognize these gender inequalities as well as activities that meet the needs of both gender with considerations to the customary will. Practitioners should adopt effective communication channels to offer agricultural information. Further studies are required in other counties in this area to determine the inequalities in Agricultural land use and the best way to address them to enable women farmers participate in Agricultural Value Chains.
Global Value Chains and Empowerment Value Chains: Insights from Women Workers in Kenyan Floriculture
Paper Presented at ‘Integrating Labour and Skills into Global Value Chains’ Workshop, Birmingham University Business School, 2013
The growth in agricultural exports from Africa has been associated with an increase in female employment, a process that is often claimed to enhance women’s empowerment. However, empowerment is a contested concept and several studies have highlighted that far from empowering workers, employment in GVCs can often be precarious, exploitative and harmful. To counteract this potential negative impact of employment within their value chains, retailers keen to protect their reputations, as well as other private sector actors and NGOs, have responded with the development and implementation of standards and labels, including labour codes of practice and Fairtrade. Nonetheless, recent impact studies have highlighted that while codes may enhance output rights (e.g. working hours), they rarely facilitate process rights (e.g. freedom of association and absence of discrimination), which are crucial in fostering empowerment through employment. Drawing on and extending an institutionally inflected form of global value chain analysis, we use material from two empirical studies of floriculture value chains emanating from Kenya to examine the potential for empowerment, particularly for women workers. Our analysis is undertaken at two interconnected levels: the mechanisms associated with standards at the local and farm level and also the experiences and aspirations of women workers. This paper contributes to debates surrounding employment within export agri-food chains by examining how these chains ‘touch ground’ at the local level and by incorporating the often excluded perspectives of workers in value chain related discussions. In so doing we raise questions about both the meaning(s) and form of empowerment that is associated with employment in value chains, as well as challenges for standards implementation and design.
Gender inequalities are said to be a stumbling block to development efforts. Conversely inequalities are reported in many agricultural value chains. Therefore, understanding of gender participation differences within Sunflower Value Chain (SVC) is important in promoting sustainable and equitable opportunities in the agricultural value chain. This study was set to map the sunflower value chain and analyse the levels and determinants of gender participation along the chain. A cross-sectional research design was adopted and the combination of systematic and random sampling techniques was used to select 132 respondents. The questionnaire and checklist of questions for key informants’ interviews were the main instruments used for data collection. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to compute the characteristics and distribution of respondents. Conventional mapping was used to map SVC based on flow of products along the chain, and content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data collected from key informants’ interviews. The study found that gender inequalities exist in the SVC nodes in Mvomero District. The differences are attributable to differences in power relations with regard to access to and control over resources between women and men. The most lucrative nodes such as processing and marketing were dominated by men while women dominated less paying activities such as bird scaring and winnowing. Ordinal logistic regression was used to establish the determinants of participation in the SVC. Findings revealed more male than female farmers were categorized in the medium level of participation. Furthermore, the ordinal regression model revealed that the smallholder farmers’ levels of participation in SVC among males were significant and negatively influenced by land ownership at (P<0.05). Therefore, the study recommends to government, non-governmental organizations and gender activists to continue advocating for the mainstreaming gender along the SVC to ensure more women participation. The intervention such as strengthening rural women’s organizations and networks, increasing women’s knowledge of agriculture into programmes and projects to ensure gender equity and equality among the actors in the chain so that women and men benefit equally due to their engagement in the SVC. Furthermore, sunflower stakeholders such as government and non-governmental organizations should assist farmers to overcome factors such as means of land acquisition, farming experience and access to market information which negatively affect their levels of participation and benefit in the sunflower value chain.
Food Security
Women play important roles at different nodes of both agricultural and off-farm value chains, but in many countries their contributions are either underestimated or limited by prevailing societal norms or gender-specific barriers. We use primary data collected in Asia (Bangladesh, Philippines) and Africa (Benin, Malawi) to examine the relationships between women’s empowerment, gender equality, and participation in a variety of local agricultural value chains that comprise the food system. We find that the value chain and the specific node of engagement matter, as do other individual and household characteristics, but in different ways depending on country context. Entrepreneurship—often engaged in by wealthier households with greater ability to take risks—is not necessarily empowering for women; nor is household wealth, as proxied by their asset ownership. Increased involvement in the market is not necessarily correlated with greater gender equality. Education is positively correlat...
International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, 2018
The study investigated the economics of productive gender roles in smallholder soya bean value-addition (processing) in Western Kenya. Multistage sampling technique was applied. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 370 interviewees using a semi-structured, pre-tested questionnaire in 2011/2012. Data analyses encompassed gender, descriptive and inferential statistics/stochastic frontier modelling. Results showed women dominated (74.0%) the soya bean value-adding activities; men (17.0%); women D. Nyongesa et al. and men (4.0%); women and children (4.0%) and children alone (1.0%). The value-adding firms/farms were technically-inefficient with a mean of 46.0% and efficiencies of 8.0%-24.0% due to many negatively-signed and statistically-significant coefficients (p < 0.05). The values-added/kilogram ranged from KES 30-290 and were profitable amidst constraints faced. Most factors/costs that significantly affected profitability/returns to soya bean value-adding were significant (p-value ≤ 0.05) at either 1%/5%/10%. County governments/other stakeholders' interventions would positively impact processors' efficiency for increased profitability.
2011
The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are entirely those of the authors and/or the results from workshop meetings and exchanges; they do not necessarily represent the official positions and/ or endorsement of FAO.
African indigenous vegetables, gender, and the political economy of commercialization in Kenya
Agriculture and Human Values
This study investigates the increased commercialization of African indigenous vegetables (AIV)—former subsistence crops such as African nightshade, cowpea leaves and amaranth species grown mainly by women—from a feminist economics perspective. The study aims to answer the following research question: How does AIV commercialization affect the gendered division of labor, women’s participation in agricultural labor, their decision-making power, and their access to resources? We analyze commercialization’s effects on gender relations in labor and decision-making power and also highlight women’s agency. Based on a mixed method design and analyzing household-level panel data and qualitative focus groups from Kenya, we observe an economic empowerment of women that we relate to women’s individual and collective strategies as well as their retention of control over AIV selling and profits. Yet, while we see economic empowerment of women through commercialization—how they broaden their scope ...
Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualising gendered agricultural value chains
The Geographical Journal, 2017
In order to address food insecurity, the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) promotes tighter integration of African smallholder farmers, especially women, into formal markets via value chains to improve farmers’ input access and to encourage the sale of crop surpluses. This commentary offers a theoretical and practical critique of the GR4A model, drawing on early findings from a five‐year study of value chain initiatives in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Mozambique. It highlights the limitations of a model that views heightened market interactions as uniformly beneficial for smallholder farmers. We challenge the notion that there is a broadly similar and replicable process for the construction of markets and the development of gender‐sensitive value chains in all recipient countries. Instead we build upon the feminist network political ecology and coproduction literatures to conceptualise value chains as complex assemblages co‐produced by a broad set of actors, including s...
International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology
This study aimed at Analyzing gender disaggregated vegetables value chain in Yayu and Hurumu districts of Illuababora zone, south west Ethiopia with specific objectives of examining the role of men and women in the vegetables value chain and assessing distribution of benefit among actors in vegetable value chain. The primary data for this study were collected from 117 cabbage and onion farmers, 37 traders and 31 consumers through appropriate statistical procedures. The study shows that both men and women are involved in vegetables production and marketing activities through 88% of the marketing of vegetables were done by women. The value chain analysis reveals that the major actors in the districts are input problem and lack of government support as the major problems. The reason could be low production habit and small land allocation for vegetables and institutional weakness. Average shares of profit of local collectors, wholesalers and retailers were 29.3%, 42.5% and 12.7% and 23.5%,34%, 10.1% in male and female actors, respectively, from the sales of one kilogram cabbage. This reveals that wholesalers benefited more than other actors. Average shares of profit of wholesalers and retailers were 18.8% and 29.6% and 18.2%, 28.6% in male and female actors, respectively, from the sales of one kilogram onion. This asserts that retailers benefit more than other actors. Therefore, policy aiming at improving actors access to improved extension service and empower women to enhance vegetable value chain in study area is crucial empower women to enhance vegetable value chain in study area is crucial.