Gender

Smart made even smarter: Gender addressed in new brief on climate smart agriculture

Submitted by Cecilia on 8th May 2013
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by Kristi Foster

Livelihood- and climate focused agricultural practices help farmers to sustainably increase their farm productivity and build resilience to climate change, while contributing to mitigation. But how does this type of farming — commonly known as climate-smart agriculture or CSA — interact with gender in real-life communities?

In the newly released policy brief, Addressing Gender in Climate-Smart Smallholder Agriculture researchers from CARE International, the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) share their insights on gender. The brief highlights the importance of a flexible learning approach in advancing gender equity goals and improving outcomes for farmers and projects.

The Sustainable Agriculture in a Changing Climate (SACC) project, on which the policy brief is based, has gleaned several important insights into gender and CSA: Read more »

Is gender being considered within climate services?

Submitted by Cecilia on 24th April 2013
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Gender matters when it comes to farmers accessing climate information

by Sarah McKune and Chesney McOmber

In a world that is rapidly becoming more connected through the internet, mobile phones and other Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), climate information has a new potential to reach farmers in rural communities worldwide and make a significant difference in their ability to successfully adapt to their changing environment.

However, despite the great potential of emerging communication technologies, the question remains whether those farmers who are most vulnerable to environmental shocks are able to access and utilize the tools to effectively manage the associated risk.   Read more »

Smallholders need a hand-up not a hand-out

Submitted by Lucy on 18th April 2013
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By Lucy Holt

What does empowerment mean? How do you empower people? And which people do you empower? These were some of the questions tackled by a specially convened learning circle at this week's Dublin Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice.

We were there to celebrate Ireland's EU Presidency and we were there to inform the post-2015 development agenda, but mostly we were there to learn from each other: to share our experiences and take home practical ideas that we could implement.

In the room were smallholder farmers from Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, and Columbia; development practitioners from the ground and from head-offices; researchers from the social and natural sciences; as well as local and national politicians. Read more »

What does "taking a gender transformative approach" really mean?

Submitted by Cecilia on 17th April 2013
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Gender inequality can in fact affect the success of a project

by Miranda Morgan

I had just arrived at our training venue in Dhaka and watched as the manager stood at the top of the stairs, violently screaming orders at the woman rushing around to help me. When I expressed my distaste for his behavior, especially on my behalf, he smiled and explained why he felt he could treat her like that. “Don’t worry”, he said, “she’s just the cleaning lady”.

A few days later, the research assistants we are working with to implement the study were struggling to learn one particular research tool. One of the few women in the group bravely attempted to facilitate the session but it was not an easy task. Smirking, one of the men observing the exercise pointedly said to us, “this is what you get as a result of affirmative action”, as if the failure of the exercise was her fault and an obvious consequence of involving women in the research.

The irony that both of these incidents occurred as we conducted training for a study investigating power relations between and among men and women was not lost on me. Read more »

Gender attitudes and practices investigated in Bangladesh

Submitted by Cecilia on 9th April 2013
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Project in Bangladesh assess gender attitudes and practices

by Doug Beare

“Why should we bother with gender and equality within the science of poverty reduction and improved nutrition?” asked Doug Beare during a session at the Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture in Davis, California. The special session discussed ways to increase the likelihood that research will influence changes in policies, institutions and technologies.

The answer is right in front of us. We should bother because evidence shows that by increasing female ‘agency’, food production can increase, which in turn leads to better nutritional and health outcomes. Therefore, tackling gender, social injustice and related barriers can have a profound impact on the society as a whole, Doug continued.

People need to understand the importance of gender and be willing to create capacity and competencies, and recognize that gender, does in fact matter.

So where do we go from this conviction? Doug emphasized, that what we now need is to think about how to make sure gender analysis is included in the research we conduct, and also what the challenges around this will be.

Read more »

New paper outlines gender strategy for pro-poor mitigation research

Submitted by Cecilia on 5th April 2013
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Carbon initiatives might burden women additionally

By Emily Boone and Cecilia Schubert

CCAFS is currently exploring ways to improve women’s role in climate change mitigation activities and decisions. In the light of this, our Pro-poor mitigation research theme has released a Working Paper, “A Gender Strategy for Pro-Poor Climate Change Mitigation”, which examines gender-related problems and opportunities associated with low emissions agricultural development. Read more »

Participatory videos in Nepal: Voicing women’s perceptions on climate change

Submitted by Cecilia on 7th March 2013
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Video project in Nepal showcasing women's reality dealing with climate change

by Floriane Clement

International climate change debates are often based upon simplistic assumptions of how men and women perceive and address risks and uncertainty. For instance, women are commonly portrayed as a homogenous group who are always more vulnerable than men to climate change simply because they are women. Yet the relationship between gender, poverty and vulnerability is neither straightforward, nor universal (Arora-Jonsson, 2011).

Just to illustrate, in some areas of Nepal it was found that poor women from landless households are more likely to attend community meetings and speak up because they feel less constrained by social norms than women from higher class and caste (Agarwal, 2010). They have therefore a higher capability to influence community decisions that might affect their vulnerability. Read more »

Live video seminar: who has the right to climate change adaptation, 18 February

Submitted by Lucy on 7th February 2013
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Climate change brings unprecedented challenges for livelihoods in developing cou

Save the date! On Monday February 18, 10:00AM Central European Time (Convert Time Zone), we will broadcast our first online science seminar for 2013.

VIEW THE LIVE STREAMED BROADCAST ON THE DAY HERE.

The seminar will explore the social dimensions of climate change: how development programming needs to embrace resilience, the transformative cornerstones of social science research for climate change, and gender and social differentiation in building agricultural climate resilience.

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is very proud to be organising this seminar in partnership with both the Danish Institute of International Studies and Copenhagen University. With three short presentations, a panel discussion, and an open discussion during which the online audience can ask questions over chat, the seminar promises to be a dynamic start to your working week. Join in the discussion on twitter using #climaterights

Click here to read the full programme and

Sign up here to be notified when the videostreamning begins!

Hundreds of Bihar women get trained on climate change and food security

Submitted by Deepshikha on 29th January 2013
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Farmer weeding maize field in Bihar, India.

By Aditi Kapoor

I was apprehensive. The training of trainers (ToT) had gone off well, and our partner organisation, the Bihar Mahila Samakhya, was well versed in carrying out training programmes, boasted good training facilities, had demonstrative experience of mobilising rural elected women and enjoyed a certain degree of acceptance by the district administration. The State Panchyati Raj Department had circulated a letter to all District Administration heads to ensure that elected women leaders would be able to attend the training workshops. Yet, I was nervous.

There were many questions in my mind: Would the trainers be able to bring to the fore the complex links between ‘Gender, Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security,’ the topic for training? Would the trainers remember what they had learnt from the many presentations at the ToT?? Would they be able to use the training manual effectively? Would they be able to link the subject matter of the training to the lives of their trainees? Would the elected women trainers really participate in the roll out of the trainings across 17 districts?

Read more »

How farmers' gender-based differences hamper climate adaptation

Submitted by Cecilia on 23rd August 2012
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In Uganda, women riding bicycles is seen as a taboo

by Cecilia Schubert

Women in rural areas in developing countries are not equally vulnerable to climate change. A woman's resilience to the various impacts of climate change depends on her social status, her access to resources, and involvement in social networks. In some cases, one woman can be more resilient than her neighbour, and even be more resilient than some men in her village. Women are also not necessarily victims of climate change but can contribute to finding solutions on how to cope with climate change. The same applies for men. But in order to adress the gender-based needs and differences that exist, more information from the ground is required.

The newly released Working Paper Participatory gender-sensitive approaches for addressing key climate change-related research issues moves from theory to practice through the testing of pre-prepared participatory research tools in Bangladesh, Ghana and Uganda. The tools were first developed in the gender-manual ”Gender and Climate Change Research in Agriculture and Food Security for Rural Development” (PDF) released earlier this year, together with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The rationale behind the manual and the field tests was to get a better understanding of the reality female and male farmers face, and find gender-differences that impede climate change adaptation in developing countries. Read more »

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