Gender Empowerment as a Pathway to Poverty Reduction and Economic Development via Value
Chains
Globally, women are disproportionately affected by poverty,
despite the economic and social contributions they make. Women
represent 60% of the world’s poorest people, while contributing
67% of the world’s working hours.1 In agriculture, women are
pivotal, providing the majority of the labor, particularly for staple
food crops and increasingly cash crops. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
women undertake 60% of all marketing, and at least half of all
tasks related to food storage and raising livestock.2 Research
spanning four decades in the agriculture sector indicates that when
women have access to similar resources and inputs as men, they
tend to achieve equal or higher yields.3 A study of women’s labor
force participation across 61 countries found a positive correlation
with economic growth between 1980 and 1990.4 Therefore,
promoting gender equity5 offers the opportunity to drive economic
growth. Additionally, consistent research confirms that when
women’s incomes increase, there are visible improvements in the
health, education and general welfare of their families. Together
these two trends indicate that a focus on gender in microenterprise
and other economic development programs offers the potential to
pull millions of people out of poverty.
Defining Gender Equity & Empowerment
Gender equity seeks a social order in which
women and men share the same
opportunities and the same constraints on
full participation in both the economic and
the domestic realm.
The importance of gender equality is
underscored by its inclusion Millennium
Development Goal Three. Its achievement
is seen as key to achieving the other seven
goals.
Gender empowerment, takes equity one
step further, by enhancing women’s
individual ability to shape their own lives.
In value chains, gender equity requires
addressing power imbalances between men
and women, while changing the perceptions,
social norms, policies and regulations that
limit women’s economic participation. For
very poor or vulnerable women, gender
empowerment is important to ensure that
women have the ability and confidence to
leverage opportunities at the household and
enterprise levels.
In value chain programming, despite the potential benefits of
addressing gender inequities, analysis of gender issues is
overlooked or added as an afterthought. This, despite the role that
gender plays across the value chains in terms of shaping productive activities and the distribution of
benefits, learning and ultimately opportunities for scaling upgrading and innovation. From production to
processing, gendered patterns of behavior condition the jobs and tasks of men and women, and
ultimately—given the linkages to productivity— the competitiveness of value chains in global markets.
A gender approach to value chain analysis and program design provides an understanding of men’s and
women’s access to productive resources and opportunities to add value, both as individual and group
enterprises; gender-based division of activities; and, how the interaction between gender and power
relations, regulations and trade impact the distribution of value along the value chain.
A focus on gender however, does not preclude working directly with men as agents to realize economic
opportunities and social change in a value chain. Rather, it allows for successful targeting, scale and
maximum efficacy in the interventions undertaken by addressing gender and power balances—ensuring
that the benefits of value chain programs are equitably distributed in terms of gender. In contrast, when
gender roles are not considered, productivity may suffer. A lack of resources and inability to manage risk
results in women being slower to adopt new technologies and practices.6
UNDP. Taking Gender Equality Seriously: Making Progress, Meeting New Challenges. 2006.
Mehra, Rekha. & Hill-Rojas, Mary. Women, Food Security and Agriculture in a Global Marketplace. International Center for Research on
Women (ICRW). 2008.
3 Ibid. ICRW.
4 dTS. Addresssing Gender Issues in Global Value Chain Development. Greater Access to Trade Expansion (GATE) Project. 2009.
5 Bailyn, Lotte. (2006). Breaking the Mold: Redesigning Work for Productive and Satisfying Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
6 Ibid. ICRW.
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To date many initiatives seeking to target women and combat poverty have limited their focus to value
chains in which women already play a predominant role. In some environments, this may be the optimum
response in the short-term, if there are cultural limits on women’s mobility or risks in terms of women’s
personal safety. However, in the long term to ensure that women are not economically marginalized, it is
important to understand the gender dimension across a wide variety of high potential value chains,
including chains that are currently male-dominated. This allows for the identification of incentives that
will promote both women’s participation and accrual of benefits to them—providing a pathway to
transition women from the informal, low value chains in which they tend to be concentrated into higher
value opportunities.
The application of a gender lens to value chain development, and more broadly economic development is
not new. Yet, there is still much to learn in terms of the most effective approaches to address gender
issues and how these can be scaled, particularly in value chains development. Gender equity has been
mainstreamed across the work of USAID, the World Bank and others. However, these agencies in
defining gender as a cross cutting issue, often defecto overlook it, or address inequities at a very cursory
level. In most programs gender is addressed via arbitrary requirements such as percentages of women in
business assocations and their leadership. This overlooks the underlying causes of gender inequity and
often as a result does not address the structural and cultural causes in a economy. Similarly, those
organizations that have prioritized gender, sometimes need to bring a more rigorous economic lens to
their work, particularly in reconciling the rights-based approaches they often employ with the reality of
economic incentives which the value chain approaches leverages to reach scale.7 Additionally, more
documentation is needed of what is working, both to enable a more robust learning agenda around
interventions to promote gender equity in economic development and to produce more evidence as to how
it impacts economic objectives.
Application of Gender Empowerment to Value Chain Development
There are several different frameworks for evaluating gender equity and empowerment, including:
Mayoux and Mackie; XXX and CARE. At their core, all these frameworks essentially evaluate three
factors: agency (the capacity of women as individuals to take action); relations (building relationships,
coalitions and mutual support to expand agency and alter structures); and structure (societal norms and
institutions that codify and reinforce gender relations at every level of society). To achieve
empowerment, individual women build relationships, joint efforts, and mutual support in order to expand
their capacity, while realizing equity and ultimately in the case of value chains, livelihood security across
relations and structure.
Figure 1 provides an example of the framework in use on a critical issue related to women’s participation
in agricultural value chains around the world: namely land rights.8 In many countries, although women
undertake the majority of farm labor, they often do not reap the benefits, since the land and therefore the
production is controlled by their husbands or other male members of the community. CARE for example
has documented examples of when land once used for subsistence farming is converted to cash crops the
women who previously farmed the land are pushed off. An engendered value chain analysis, would
review land use regulations, community and household practices to determine power and decision making
around land use, so as to understand what interventions are needed to enable women to continue
accessing the land, and optimally gain from opportunities to cultivate cash crops. Figure 1 identifies the
opportunities to ensure women’s continued and expanded land access.
Laven, Anna et al. Gender in Value Chains: Emerging Lessons and Questions. Agri-Pro Focus Research. April, 2009. Available online at:
http://www.agriprofocus.nl
8 Hill, Catherine and Khan, Maliha. A Place to Grow: Bringing Women to the Center of CARE’s Agricultural Programs. Conceptual
Underpinnings and Assessment Framework. April, 2008.
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Agency
•Knowledge of land/property laws.
•Access to information.
•Self confidence to claim rights.
Achieving gender
equitable land and
property rights
Relations
•Women’s freedom of mobility to meet with others.
•Acceptance by men for women meeting others outside
the home.
•Freedom to form coalitions and jointly claim rights.
•Access to and knowledge of legal support services.
Structure
•Existence of gender equitable land/property (by)laws.
•Existence of gender equitable social/cultural norms and
beliefs.
• Existence of legal support structures for female
claimants.
Other considerations in relation to each level of the framework, when bringing it to value chain analysis
are as follows:
Agency:
At the most elemental level, women’s participation is often limited by the restrictions their families place
upon their participation. This is particularly true for vulnerable women, due to poverty, restrictions on
their rights, etc, which often limits human capital (e.g. education, productive work) and access to
productive assets. As a result, if and when women are economically active, their husbands maintain
control of the benefits which accrue. Therefore within agency, it is important to understand such
conditions as: the gendered distribution of labor; and gender differential access to, and control over
productive resources and uses of income. This is often at the household and/or microenterprise level.
Relations:
This is where much of the tradition analysis of a value chain is undertaken, in terms of understanding the
constraints and opportunities to increase the productivity and competitiveness of the chain. An
engendered analysis drills down more on the issues of that influence women’s participation in and access
to the productive opportunities within individual small and medium enterprises and in both horizontal and
vertical linkages between enterprises.
Some of the key issues that may be included at this level of the analysis are:
Governance along the value chain: Enables an understanding of the social norms and power balances that
include relationships between firms and between enterprises and labor. A governance analysis would
brings a gender equity lens to issues such as contracting, outsourcing standards and workplace issues.
Gender Division of Labor along the Value Chain: Often within value chains, women’s participation may
diminish as the chain progresses into higher value activities. A analysis of gender roles and
responsibilities at the different steps in value addition and trade, identifies issues that may influence this
access, including ownership of capital goods, sources of information, working conditions and processes
for decision-making.
Management of Key Decisions and Processes for Adding Value: Leadership roles in value chains are
sometimes overemphasized—resulting in superficial interventions that seek to place women in decision
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making positions, resulting in titular leadership. A more nuanced understanding of women’s role in
leadership is needed, as well as the key levers of influence in decision making processes.
Supporting Services: Given the importance of services and inputs to upgrading and management of risk in
value chains, it is important to understand how gender influences assess to such key services as public and
private extension, marketing, financial services, and technology. Additionally, in terms of public
services, such as extension and sometimes technology development, it is critical to understand whether
the key institutions consider and have the capacity to address gender equity.
Structure:
Often change in a value chain is dependent on the structural environment, in terms of policies and
regulatory frameworks that affect the value chain, as well cultural norms. Issues such as rule of law,
policies that are consider gender, social roles for women should be part of a comprehensive value chain
analysis. In addressing structure, donors need to make longer term commitments, given the institutional
structures that need to be addressed—and typical program timeframes of two to three years are often not
sufficient.
Organizational Aspects of Gender Equity Programming
Key to success in engendered value chain programs is the operational aspect. To realize systemic change
in gender equity, requires organizations who observe these same practices in their operations and human
resources. In order to effect positive gender equity change along the chain, organizations should
demonstrate a high level of commitment to the issue, as well as providing support to staff and partner
organizations to build their capacity to address it.
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