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Women in rural households play a key role in agriculture and can be instrumental in upgrading the competitiveness of value chains. However, gendered patterns in generating, allocating, controlling, and spending household income often make it difficult for women to participate in and contribute to upgrading value chains. Social norms further determine how women are able to build the social and commercial networks and relationships necessary to adapt to changing market conditions and/or new markets.
This report, prepared by Jennefer Sebstad and Cristina Manfre, consultants for ACDI/VOCA through the FHI 360-managed FIELD-Support LWA, considers three areas of behavior related directly to upgrading: money management; business practices; and value chain relationships.
For practitioners, this FIELD Report provides a framework to allow for a better understanding of current practices in the context of specific value chains or geographies, which is critical in order to address gender-based constraints to upgrading.
A companion piece, FIELD Report #11, presents a set of tools to help practitioners collect data and better examine how gender affects these three categories of behavior related to upgrading.
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