Gender

Market-based development programmes can help people living in poverty benefit from markets and lift themselves out of poverty. However, many such approaches do not pay attention to power imbalances that perpetuate marginalisation and poverty. To reach their fullest potential, market-based programmes should actively strengthen the power of marginalised smallholders and women.

Major events in the market system, induced by changes in policy, regulation, social movements or business models can provide opportunities to intervene and rebalance power. Market-based programmes should also be complemented by non-market interventions that address poverty and sustainability issues in household and environmental systems.

Through its work, Oxfam has encountered some of the challenges and limitations of market-based approaches. This paper is intended to raise these challenges with the broader community of development practitioners employing market-based approaches and share approaches Oxfam has taken to addressing them. The most conspicuous of these challenges is a need to address power imbalances between smallholders and larger businesses, as well as between women and men.

The attached presentation and media are products of the "Understanding Gender and Culture and Market Systems" session of USAID's Meeting the Challenges of Value Chain Development: A Learning Event.

Session Description:

Many of the interventions needed to make value chains competitive and to facilitate broad-based growth are rooted in catalyzing behavior and social change in communities and among value chain players.  In addition, changes in market systems can affect socio-cultural practices by shifting control over resources. How can projects understand socio-cultural dynamics, and how can they turn that understanding into activities and approaches that facilitate behavior and social change that leads to increased incomes, well-being and equity? This session looked at the interconnection of social dimensions, including gender, with market systems, and encouraged discussion around how development stakeholders can best respond to these social dimensions.

A perfect storm of factors converged in late 2007 to create upward pressure on global food prices which took much of the world by surprise and which negatively impacted billions of people already living precariously. The food price crisis particularly affected populations who were already food insecure and dependent on resource transfer programs as well as those living ‘on the edge’ and vulnerable to slight shocks to their fragile livelihoods.

This summary report documents some of the ways different countries have tried to mitigate the effects of the food crisis in the short term. In the longer term, the MENA countries will need to find ways to coordinate an overall food security strategy able to address many of the structural difficulties the regions faces, such as critical water shortage and inefficient agriculture.

Conflict and displacement destroy livelihoods and force people to adopt new strategies to support themselves. New livelihood strategies can increase the risk of gender-based violence (GBV). Women often have no safety net; they usually flee with few resources and little preparation and may become separated from or lose family members. A lack of access to economic opportunities while displaced often forces women and girls to resort to harmful measures to survive.

Women often face a trade-off between their protection and their livelihood. Most women in crisis situations actively seek to earn money, despite knowing the risks that having or earning money may bring. They need to make informed livelihood choices and to shape their livelihood options. Programs need to involve women throughout the project lifecycle—assessment and design; implementation; and monitoring and evaluation.

To facilitate practice the Women's Refuge Commission has collected lessons learned from workshop participants, conducted site visits to refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia and completed desk research. The result is guidance and draft tools to help livelihood and gender-based violence practitioners design safe economic programs: "Preventing Gender-based Violence, Building Livelihoods: Guidance and Tools for Improved Programming."

The successful integration of women into wealth-creating activities requires an understanding of the degree to which gender defines constraints to participation in and benefits from activities throughout the value chain, as well as commitment by communities and private and public institutions to overcoming these constraints. Gendered patterns of participation in value chains result in fewer options for women and place them at a disadvantage in the value chain—to participate equitably, to cooperate, to compete, and to benefit. Effective value chain programming requires a gender lens that can provide an understanding of how people respond to different kinds of incentives in value chains and how gender affects this response. 

In 2010, FIELD-Support partner ACDI/VOCA launched an initiative to explore these behavior change perspectives on gender and value chain development, and develop a framework for analysis. The purpose of this framework would be to identify practical strategies that reduce constraints and expand opportunities for women in agricultural value chains. Building on the research and consultations conducted for this activity, this FIELD Report presents tools that are designed to study how gender affects the three categories of behavior related to upgrading: money management, business practices, and value chain relationships. They include focus group discussion guides, individual interview guides, a research plan outline and example, and a facilitation guide for consultative workshop with field partners. These tools can be drawn upon to design future research on gendered behaviors in value chains.