Category Archives: Gendered impact study

Mrs Usha becomes a community leader through aquaculture

Mrs M Usha (center) weighing crabs for market. Photo: Dr B. Shanthi, CIBA, India.

Mrs M Usha (center) weighing crabs for market. Photo: Dr B. Shanthi, CIBA, India.

Mrs. M. Usha belongs to the Indian Scheduled Irular tribal community. She lives in the remote area of Kulathumedu, a Scheduled Tribal village, Palaverkadu (Pulicat) Post, Ponneri Taluk, Tiruvallur dt.,Tamil Nadu, South India.

Reaching her farming site is quiet tedious. Either you need to trek to these remote villages or go in by boat. When the lake becomes dry during the summer season, you need to walk in through slushy waters to reach the ponds.

Irular tribal people are fishers and crab collectors. They fish in Lake Pulicat as well as in the adjacent sea. During the lean fishing season, their income is affected and they are compelled to look for alternative incomes. Thanks to a collaboration with scientists from the Central Institute for brackishwater Aquaculture, they are now able to consider alternative livelihoods through brackishwater aquaculture technologies like mud crab farming, seabass nursery rearing in hapas and polyculture farming of crab and seabass in a scientific way in the tide fed and community brackishwater ponds in Mrs Usha’s village.

Mrs. M. Usha has developed strong expertise in these brackishwater aquaculture technologies. Utilizing the common brackishwater resources and inputs within her village she has adopted all these technologies and has facilitated the tribal families in her village to take up alternative livelihoods for additional income during the lean fishing season.

An in-depth case study was conducted by Dr. B. Shanthi, Principal Scientist, Social Sciences Division, ICAR- Central Institute of Brackish Water Aquaculture, (CIBA, Chennai). On the basis of her study, Dr Shanthi found Mrs. M. Usha to be versatile and self-confident, have good leadership qualities, be a good motivator, and always fast to grasp new ideas. She has led 150 tribal people, both women and men in families, of this village to adopt polyculture farming of crab and seabass in the community ponds. A Women’s Self Help Group (WSHGs) named ‘Marikolunthu’ adopted crab farming in tide fed pond and Asian seabass nursery rearing in hapas.

The brackishwater aquaculture carried out by Mrs. M. Usha and other tribal families have enhanced the group’s savings. From the profit, they grew their bank accounts and reinvested this in farming. Mrs Usha communicated with others in the self-help group and strengthened internal lending among the group members. Polyculture farming has helped Mrs. Usha and other Irular tribal beneficiaries learn a new occupation for the lean fishing season. The developments also provided demonstration and leadership leading to impact among other tribal families who have slowly started adopting the technologies by investing money from their own their savings.

In the village social taboos prevailed, such as that women should not walk in front of men when the men are returning from fishing because this would lead to poor sales that day. In addition, women should not go outside their village to participate in meetings and events, and should not talk out in front of men. After the technical interventions, the tribal men became more aware of the inequalities and gave more power to the women. Actually, the women in the village overcame the taboos and beliefs when they started going outside their villages to do crab marketing. Mrs. Usha contributed her part to this empowerment.

Noticing the interest of Mrs. M. Usha and her tribal WSHGs, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) assisted the Post -Tsunami Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (PTSLP) in Tamil Nadu. Mrs. M. Usha and her groups received funds and subsidy of Rs. 1 – 3 lakhs (I lakh is 100,000) per each group to assist them adopt crab farming. For their work, Mrs. Usha and her SHG group in Kulathumedu village were subsequently awarded the “Best WSHG of Tiruvallur District”.

In addition on the technology front, these were the first tribal families in India to take up the tedious and risky task of rearing Asian sea bass in nursery hapas in brackishwater ponds and creeks. Farm made feeds developed by Mrs. Usha and her groups gave helped nourish the seabass fingerlings.

Mrs. Usha has enhanced her knowledge and skills through training on mud crab aquaculture from the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Aquaculture (a Society under the Indian Marine Products Export Development Authority) and, from CIBA, on fish sampling, packing of seabass fingerlings for marketing and record & account keeping.

The enterprise has developed a systematic marketing strategy that has helped the villagers learn the modern crab marketing. Mrs Usha has her own style in establishing rapport among the tribal families, WSHGs and crab marketing agents. She gains their confidence to stock water (post-moult) crabs for farming in pond and seabass fry in hapas and then to supply the harvested crabs and seabass fingerlings to the retailers and marketing agents. She has helped transfer this approach to other tribal coastal families and WSHGs.

She has strived hard to bring in a diversification of livelihoods among the tribal families by making them understand that they need an alternative livelihood to earn an additional income apart from fishing to improve their standard of living. Every day she walks 4 kms in the water-logged land to reach her work spot. She along with other tribal family members in the village devotes most of her time to improving their farming enterprises.

The adoption spread from, at first, two WSHGs and three families, and later others came forward. At present in the village, 20 families farm 20 crab ponds and 12 SGHs practice crab farming in tide fed ponds. Seeing the success, a total of 150 irular tribal families both men (82) and women (65) including new 5 WSHGs came forward with a new proposal of polyculture trials.

Mrs. M. Usha receiving the award from Hon’ble Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare of India Shri. Radha Mohan Singh and the Hon’ble Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Industries of India Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan. Photo: ICAR

Mrs. M. Usha receiving the award from Hon’ble Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare of India Shri. Radha Mohan Singh and the Hon’ble Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Industries of India Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan. Photo: ICAR

HONOUR RECEIVED
For all her contribution to her society in the adoption of brackishwater aquaculture technologies, Mrs Usha was selected for the “ICAR – INDIAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE – IARI Innovative Farmers Award”- 2016 of India. She received this award from the Hon’ble Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare of India Shri. Radha Mohan Singh and the Hon’ble Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Industries of India Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan. Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi, inaugurated this Mela during the KRISHI UNNATI MELA 2016, 19-21 March 2016 held at New Delhi.

Acknowledgement: Drawn from material prepared by Dr B. Shanthi, Central Institute for Brackishwater Aquaculture, Chennai, India.

New rural technologies and gender

Women in Lake Pulicat building crab fattening cages. Photo: Dr. B. Shanthi, CIBA (ICAR), India.

Women in Lake Pulicat building crab fattening cages. Photo: Dr. B. Shanthi, CIBA (ICAR), India.

A tremendous emphasis in agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture research is given to developing new, more efficient and profitable technologies for farmers and fishers.  Governments all around the world support research and extension institutes, and the private sector also has a huge influence. But how are women faring in having a say in what their priorities are and in getting access to the innovations? Most especially in the agriculture sector, a considerable amount of research has gone into evaluating these questions. Catherine Ragasa and Debdatta Sengupta from IFPRI, and Martha Osorio, Nora OurabahHaddad, and Kirsten Mathieson from FAO recently reviewed what has been learned. Their report – Gender-specific approaches, rural institutions and technological innovations: Identifying demand- and supply-side constraints and opportunities in access, adoption and impact of agricultural technological innovations – is well worth reading. It puts together key findings and good recommendations for integrated and stand-alone action. The integrated actions are particularly important as they stitch together the issues of gender and technology needs, its generation, and its dissemination. In the process, they weave together the central importance of gender in the workforces of research and extension institutions.

Here are key messages

  • Female heads of households and plot-managers are less likely to adopt a wide range of agricultural and rural technologies than male heads and plot-managers. The most commonly-cited reasons are greater time and labor constraints; relatively less access to funds and credit; more limited information, education and training; more limited capacity and opportunity for participation in innovation and decision-making processes; and more limited access to accompanying inputs and services. These are influenced by weak legislation that protect rights and promotes equality and by persistent social biases and cultural norms.
  • Although various labor-saving and energy-saving technologies have huge potential, empirical studies show that their use and adoption among rural women is often low and usually much lower than men. Three reasons for gender differences are common: (1) cultural-appropriateness; (2) physical accessibility; and (3) affordability. In some cases, the adoption of improved productivity-enhancing technologies has increased women’s time burdens. The most common reason is the weaker participation and engagement of women farmers and stakeholders than men in priority-setting and research processes, limiting the opportunity to influence the development of new technologies.
  • In ICT, men are more likely to use the Internet and to have an email address than women. There is a more promising pattern of rural women accessing and using radios for agricultural information, although men still are more likely to own and control their use. The gap between men’s and women’s access use of mobile phones is diminishing, although in rural areas, men are more likely to own and have access to phones than women, who have greater levels of illiteracy, cultural barriers, and less available cash and access to credit.
  • There is increasing attention in the literature that women and men farmers are innovators and doing their own farm experimentation. Innovation funds can provide incentives for farm experimentation for women and men. Rural institutions and innovative producer organizations can succeed in using collective action to address access and liquidity and to reduce gender gaps in technology adoption. Farmer-innovators benefit more if they are linked with research and extension institutes, a conducive rural business climate and are linked to lucrative markets.
  • Most support organizations, including research organizations and their staff have weak capacity and incentives to be more effective and responsive to the needs of both women and men farmers. Numerous attempts of participatory and consultative approaches failed to deliver significant broad-based impact on technology adoption and gender-equitable outcomes. But, women are overwhelmingly under-represented as scientists, educators, graduates, managers and extension agents. Initiatives to increase more women graduates, scientists and extension agents are being implemented, but more need to be done.

Recommendations (in summary)

o Strengthening capacity of women and men farmers as innovators, evaluators of technologies, and key partners in innovation processes.

o Build measurable targets and strengthening the monitoring and evaluation to ensure that (1) planning and innovation processes addresses women and men’s needs, preferences and opportunities; (2) women and men can access and use these technologies; and (3) women and men benefit from these technologies.

o Holistic and integrated approach of looking at constraints to production and marketing and paying close attention to the complementarities of inputs and services.

o Promoting equal playing field:  strengthen women’s land, property and water rights. Affirmative action to ensure that more girls are going to school and more women professionals are getting equal opportunities as men in the area of research, extension, and education systems. Quota systems, focal points, and gender-balanced staffing in research, extension and education organizations do not often work without genuine empowerment among women professionals including confidence-building, greater mobility, decreasing time burden, training and capacity strengthening.

o More attention in research to gender-disaggregated data and gender analysis in mainstream research is needed. More studies are needed that provide nuanced categorization and analysis on gender and addresses the diversity and typologies of women and men farmers.

Download the report.

Women and children first: Gendered and generational change in small scale fisheries in Canada and Norway

Library and Archives, Canada. 1993 postage stamp.

Library and Archives, Canada. 1993 postage stamp.

Barbara Neis, Siri Gerrard and Nicole G. Power have written a reflective paper on the social-ecological systems of cod (Gadus morhua) fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Norway. Their study revealed similarities but also many differences between the ways small scale fishing communities in the two countries have reacted to changes in the fish stocks and the policies that accompanied the changes.

Their paper, “Women and Children First: the Gendered and Generational Socialecology of Smaller-scale Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador and Northern  Norway,” draws from the great depth of excellent sociological and gender research over the last decades, including especially their own. It explores the impacts since the late 1980s and early 1990s of the Canadian cod stock collapse and of the introduction of a new type of quota system in the Norwegian part of the Norwegian-Russian cod fishery.

They found that the ecological trajectories were very different in both fisheries – the Canadian cod stock has not recovered, but some other fisheries have prospered in its place, while the Norwegian cod stocks are at a record high. However, policy differences between the two countries resulted in employment decreasing in both countries, with the Norwegian decrease 10% greater than that in the Canadian fishery. Women’s formal engagement in the two fisheries differ, but is generally low, especially in  Norway where they have been less likely to engage in the catching sector. In both places, young people are not entering the fishery, although modest success has been achieved with youth-oriented initiatives in Norway. The age profile of fish-workers is getting older.  Women and  youth face the hurdle of raising sufficient funds to buy boats, licences and quota. The changes are complex and the social and household impacts have emerged in the face of gender and generational blindness in policy-making.

Download the paper here

ABSTRACT. The resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed and developing countries has been used to provide lessons to conventional managers regarding ways to transition toward a social-ecological approach to understanding and managing fisheries. We contribute to the understanding of the relationship between management and the resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed countries by looking at these dynamics in the wake of the shock of stock collapse and fisheries closures in two contexts: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and northern Norway. We revisit and update previous research on the gendered effects of the collapse and closure of the Newfoundland and Labrador northern cod fishery and the closure of the Norwegian cod fishery in the early 1990s and present new research on young people in fisheries communities in both contexts. We argue that post-closure fishery policy and industry responses that focused on downsizing fisheries through professionalization, the introduction of quotas, and other changes ignored the gendered and intergenerational household basis of small-scale fisheries and its relationship to resilience. Data on ongoing gender inequities within these fisheries and on largely failed recruitment of youth to these fisheries suggest they are currently at a tipping-point that, if not addressed, could lead to their virtual disappearance in the near future.

How to Mainstream Gender in Small Scale Fisheries: Lessons from Experience

Learning better household budgeting, Cambodia. Photo: RFLP

Learning better household budgeting, Cambodia. Photo: RFLP

The FAO-Spain Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme for South and Southeast Asia has taken their more formal gender materials (especially the RFLP gender mainstreaming manual) and their on the ground experience and produced this attractive, easy to read and yet very rich guide to what to do.

Get the guide here: Download

The clear lessons from experience include:

1. Don’t get lost in translation (of technical gender terms)

2. Think gender from the start

3. Study first, then decide

4. Consider quotas for women’s participation

5. Take the time and effort (and get the men involved)

6. Consider participation of women in traditional ‘men’s’ activities

7. Beware the double burden

8. Be flexible (make training convenient for women)

9. Get the right support

10. Alternative fisheries livelihoods are often women’s livelihoods

11. Collect gender-disaggregated data

12. Spread the good word

Planning for Impact in Aquaculture and Fisheries Projects

IFAD strategy on monitoring and evaluation in the project cycle

IFAD strategy on monitoring and evaluation in the project cycle

WorldFish Center and IFAD have released a guide to ex-ante impact evaluation in aquaculture and fisheries. The guide gives good attention to collecting gender disaggregated information.

The guide is:

Crissman, C.C., Abernethy, K., Delaporte, A., Timmers, B. (2013) A Practical Guide for Ex-ante Impact Evaluation in Fisheries and Aquaculture. CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. Penang, Malaysia. Guidelines: AAS-2013-04.

It can be downloaded at:  http://aquaticcommons.org/10943/1/WF_3464.pdf

Abstract: This guide provides a framework for ex-ante evaluation of fisheries and aquaculture projects in developing countries. Ex-ante impact evaluations check the potential of a project or program to deliver benefits from proposed interventions. Providing extensive annotated literature citations, this guide is designed for use by practitioners who may not be fisheries or aquaculture specialists. The guide uses concepts from results-based management, organized into five modules that structure the investigation and provide insights regarding alignment of the proposed intervention with stakeholder interests, feasibility of design, potential constraints to implementation, possible impact pathways and distributional effects of the intervention. Separately published case studies of investments in Bangladesh, Malawi and Ghana illustrate application of the guide.

Women as agents of wellbeing in Northern Ireland’s fishing households

Herring processing, Ardgladd, Ireland 1920s. Source: www.banffshiremaritime.org.uk

Herring processing, Ardgladd, Ireland 1920s. Source: http://www.banffshiremaritime.org.uk

Gendered change in fisheries is starting to emerge as a significant field of research. This new research paper from Easkey Britton, published in Maritime Studies, finds that, over the last century – from the days of the independent “herring lassies” to the days of  fisheries decline and factory closures –  women have become less and less visible, but more and more important to family well-being, often at the expense of subjugating their own needs. The paper is called “Women as agents of wellbeing in Northern Ireland’s Fishing households.”

Abstract
This paper focuses on the gender dimensions of wellbeing in fishing households in Northern Ireland. The impact of change in the fishing industry on women’s wellbeing is outlined and linkages are made between changing access to fish and changing roles of women in fishing households. The paper explores what this change means for how women perceive and pursue their wellbeing needs and aspirations and how they negotiate their needs with the needs of the household. In an occupation as gender biased as fishing it is argued that in order for fisheries management and policy to be successful, a profile of what really matters to people is important. In particular, the paper highlights how such priorities link to the complex and dynamic role of women in fishing households.

The paper is open access and can be downloaded here

Also check out our earlier story on northern UK women in fisheries, covering a previous paper by Easkey and one by Minghua Zhao and colleagues.

https://genderaquafish.org/2012/08/01/new-insights-into-gender-roles-in-uk-fishing-communities/

Insider’s Rapport? Take a Visit to a Philippine Coastal Community with Dr Nelson Turgo, Social Scientist

Dr Nelson Turgo, Cardiff Univ. Photo: Cardiff Univ website

This highly readable account of a social scientist’s experience in returning to his own community to conduct research will make field researchers reflect on, how, as Dr Turgo says, “our identities as researchers are made and remade through the research process”. The gender insights are also revealing, such as what women and men do after a fisheries crisis and how men view fish marketing when it had previously been women’s work.

‘I Know Him So Well’: Contracting/tual ‘Insiderness’, and Maintaining Access and Rapport in a Philippine Fishing Community

by Nelson Turgo
Cardiff University

Abstract: ” ‘Insider’ researchers are generally conceived to have an epistemic privilege in the field over ‘outsider’ researchers, especially around the issues of gaining access and building rapport with research participants. However, access and rapport once secured must be continuously maintained and this poses several methodological challenges to the researcher. This can be a particular problem if the people being researched have an intimate knowledge of the researcher’s life. This intimate knowledge can affect the maintenance of access and rapport with research participants, particularly in a small community characterised by insecure economic prospects and whose members’ survival could be affected by the researcher’s political experience. Based on an ethnographic study of a fishing community in the Philippines, this article is concerned with the various nuances of maintaining access and rapport in one’s own community and its ever-evolving economic and political conditions, which then contribute to the shifting positionality of ‘insider’ researchers’ status in the field.

Download it on Sociological Research Online


Moving the Agenda Forward

Successful woman in coastal fisheries, Thailand. Photo: Cristina Lim

Special Gender Issue  of Asian Fisheries Science journal released for FREE DOWNLOAD

Our Guest Editorial explores how the gender agenda is progressing in aquaculture and fisheries, and then 21 research and technical papers and short reports explore (a) gender roles in widely varying aquaculture and fisheries socio-ecological systems, (b) women’s agency in fish supply chains and ecosystems and (c) inclusion of women in aquaculture and fisheries institutions.

Read and download for free all these papers and the summary of all presentations at the 2011 3rd Global Symposium on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries here. We are grateful to the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for enabling the Asian Fisheries Society to make the journal issue free from the start.

Hard copies can be purchased from the Asian Fisheries Society (www.asianfisheriessociety.org).

Learning from gender research in agriculture

Bangaldesh. Photo: IFPRI, A. Quisumbing

Gender research is still sparse for gender and aquaculture, fisheries and the coasts. Gender studies are a little further advanced in agriculture and natural resource management. Very useful resource materials can be found from the work of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), one of the CGIAR Centers. Here are 5 links to IFPRI resources on gender and development.

  1. Gender Toolbox: http://www.ifpri.org/book-20/ourwork/researcharea/gender/gender-tool-box

Includes links to many valuable and essential analytical tools and sex-disaggregated databases and gender-sensitive databases.

   2.    Gender and collective action: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/CAPRIWP64.pdf

CAPRI working paper, 2007, by Lauren Pandolfelli,  Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Stephan Dohrn

‘This paper presents a framework for investigating the intersection of collective action and gender; i.e. how gender-oriented analysis can foster more effective collective action in the context of agriculture and natural resource management and how collective action can be used as a vehicle for gender equity. We begin with definitions of the key concepts and then present three entry points for a gendered analysis of collective action-motivations, effectiveness, and impact on gender equity- vis-à-vis the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Oakerson 1992; Ostrom 1991). At the heart of this framework is the action arena, which is shaped by a host of initial conditions, including asset endowments, vulnerabilities, and legal and governance systems that influence a range of outcomes. Applying a gender lens to this framework, we present an analysis of how women and men experience the initial set of conditions differently and thus, have different motivations and capacities for engaging in collective action. Next, we look at how the gender composition of groups affects the effectiveness of collective action, and finally, at the impact of collective action on gender equity and women’s empowerment. We conclude with a discussion of how this framework can improve our understanding of gender and collective action in order to facilitate more effective collective action while fostering gender equity.’

    3.   Engendering agriculture and agricultural research: http://www.ifpri.org/publication/engendering-agricultural-research

By Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing, Julia Behrman, Patricia Biermayr-Jenzano, Vicki Wilde, Marco Noordeloos, Catherine Ragasa,  and Nienke Beintema

‘This paper makes a case for gender equity in the agricultural R&D system. It reviews the evidence on exactly why it is important to pay attention to gender issues in agriculture and why it is necessary to recognize women’s distinct food-security roles throughout the entire value chain—for both food and nonfood crops, marketed and nonmarketed commodities. The authors examine whether women are factored into the work of research institutions, and whether research institutions effectively focus on women’s needs. In short, are these institutions conducting research by and for women? The paper’s conceptual framework demonstrates the need to integrate gender into setting agricultural priorities; conducting the research itself; designing, implementing, and adopting extension services; and evaluating their impacts. It concludes with recommendations regarding how to make these suggested changes.’

  4.   Gender and policy blog: http://genderfoodpolicy.wordpress.com/  

‘This blog is a space to share announcements, news items, multimedia, research tools, resources and links to publications on the topic of gender and food policy (including issues such as hunger, food security, nutrition, governance, land, agriculture etc).’  

   4.   IFPRI’s work on gender and development: http://www.ifpri.org/book-20/ourwork/researcharea/gender

IFPIR’s main webpage giving a guide to their gender work and related resources.

   5.   IFPRI’s contributions to the World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality and Development: Gender Equity and Development: http://www.ifpri.org/blog/gender-equality-and-development

 

Bangladesh: women’s aquaculture assets built faster through groups

Bangladesh: fish ponds. Photo: Bread for the World, USAID

Rigorous studies on the effects of introduced fish pond and vegetable technologies in Bangladesh show that “..women’s assets increase more relative to men’s when technologies are disseminated through women’s groups”, indicating that the gendered outcomes of new technologies depend on how they are introduced. This and related studies are reported in papers in the latest edition of the Journal of Development Effectiveness (http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g938482929) and in a publication of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Author’s (Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI) address: a.quisumbing@cgiar.org

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/breadfortheworld/3963781730/

The following IFPRI paper also relates to the same Bangladesh research and is available for free download: Evaluating the long-term impact of antipoverty interventions in Bangladesh: An overview

This is an overview of research on the impact of “three antipoverty interventions in Bangladesh—the introduction of new agricultural technologies, educational transfers, and microfinance—on monetary and nonmonetary measures of well-being. This paper begins by setting out the conceptual framework, methodology, and empirical methods used for the evaluation of long-term impacts. It discusses the context of the evaluations and the longitudinal data used. Key findings from the individual papers are then presented, followed by an indicative analysis of the cost-effectiveness of these interventions. The overview concludes with implications for programs and policy.”

Authors: Quisumbing, Agnes R., Baulch, Bob, Kumar, Neha

Download at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19439342.2011.570447 or

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01077.pdf