Presentation by Kathleen Colverson, Susan MacMillan and Dorine Odongo, 8 March 2014

1. WOMEN AND LIVESTOCK
Why GENDER Matters are BIG Matters
Kathleen Colverson  Susan MacMillan  Dorine Odongo
International Livestock Research Institute
International Women’s Day
8 March 2014

2. Some definitions
• ‘Sex’
Biological, fixed, mostly
unchangeable differences
between males and females
• ‘Gender’
Socially constructed,
changeable, culturally
specific roles for women
and men
• ‘Livestock value chains’
Full range of production,
processing and delivery
activities from farm to fork

3. Why integrate gender into livestock research?
In most of
the world,
women
perform
most of the
work to
produce
most of the
world’s food

4. Why integrate gender into livestock research?
A person’s gender affects:
• a person’s nutritional well• the impacts and
being and livelihood strategies
effectiveness of
(e.g., interests and roles in
livestock interventions
livestock value chains)
• a person’s access to
• household food security
natural resources

5. Why integrate gender into livestock research?
•
Worldwide, women play major
roles in smallholder livestock
systems
•
Women are disproportionately
clustered in small livestock
production systems (poultry,
sheep, goats) and in milking and
milk processing
•
Women-headed and AIDSaffected households are among
the poorest and hungriest

6. Why assess different value chains differently?
• Along livestock value chains
in developing countries,
women and men typically
provide different kinds of
labour and work in different
segments of the chains
• Women and men
obtain different benefits
from this work, with women
receiving significantly fewer
total benefits than men

7. Why women face large hurdles in
benefiting from their (large) livestock labours
Typically, in poor countries:
• Men rather than women own the
most valuable household livestock
assets
• Women may own smaller, less
valuable, livestock species
• Women and children raise and care
for all species of livestock
• Women harvest, process and sell
the livestock products and control
some of the income

8. Why women’s contributions to
livestock value chains are often hidden
• The percentage of ‘economically
active’ women increases
significantly when certain
activities − cultivating a home
garden, raising animals,
gathering firewood − are
recognized as productive
Conventional survey
21%
79%
Economically active
Economically inactive
• The proportion increases
further when certain activities
within the ‘reproductive sphere’
are included, such as meal
preparation and child care
Source: FAO
Dominican
Republic
16%
84%
*including
gardening and raising animals

9. Why gender plays a role in technology transfer
• Women and men
have unequal access to
information and technology
• Women have less access to
agricultural inputs
• Women have specialized
livestock knowledge
• Women and men play different
roles in livestock management
• Women serve as guardians
of livestock diversity

10. Why global food security depends on
reducing gender inequality in agriculture
• Gender relations can
change with introduction
of new livestock technologies
if women have access
to inputs, training and markets
• Evidence confirms that
improving the status of women:
– increases farm productivity
– reduces household poverty
– improves family nutrition
Quoted from Feed the Future 2012

11. Why all the variables matter
• Gender issues must be
viewed in relation to other
variables such as age, assets,
income, education, and
ethnicity of men and women
• Interventions made to
improve livestock value
chains may result in more
work and fewer benefits for
women, or less work and
greater benefits for men

12. Why mainstream gender in livestock value chains?
Optimizing women’s participation
in livestock value chains can lead
to:
• Higher livestock incomes
for poor women
• Improved rural family welfare,
especially for children – better
nutrition, health, educational
opportunities
• Stronger female intrahousehold bargaining power
and voice in decision-making

13. How to integrate gender into R4D projects
• Identify and address
gender-based constraints
• Target gender issues and women
in research and training
• Work with women’s associations
• Collect, analyze and use
sex-disaggregated data
• Increase women’s participation
and benefits in R4D projects
• Employ participatory methods
• Work towards social
as well as technical goals

14. How to mainstream gender in a
livestock value chain project cycle
#1 Map
gender roles
and relations
along the
value chain
Measure the
success of
actions
Take actions to
remove genderbased constraints
Underlying
principles guiding
a strategy for
integrating gender
in a livestock
value chain
Assess the
consequences
of genderbased
constraints
Move from
gender
inequalities to
gender-based
constraints
Adapted from: Rubin et al. 2010,
Mayoux et al. 2010

15. Collect, analyse and use gender disaggregated data
Provide empirical evidence of:
• Division of labour along
livestock and food chains
• Related needs, interests
and knowledge
• Decision-making processes
• Access to and
control of resources
• Access to credit and
control of revenues
• Gender-based performance
of same activities

16. Use participatory research methods
to engage and empower women
• Employ mix of quantitative & qualitative approaches
(e.g. semi-structured interviews, focus groups, journaling)
• Ensure equal numbers of women and men in training / surveys
• Train women in
their priority areas
• Investigate genderspecific issues
in value chains
• Interview women
household heads,
incl. single, divorced,
and widowed women

17. Address women’s priorities and concerns
• Attend to the time of day,
duration of use and location of
the technological interventions
• Give women more time
for activities if needed
• Identify and address
women’s priorities
• Hold separate focus groups
for women and men
• Actively invite women
to meetings and trainings
• Network with women leaders
and gender experts in NGOs

18. Use gender-sensitive indicators to mark changes
in the status and roles of women and men
• Measure successes in removing
gender-based constraints
• Provide consistency and flexibility
• Attend to process and outcomes
• Use quantitative and qualitative tools
• Find the stories behind the numbers
• Avoid assumptions
• Recognize household differences

19. Gender training manual
• Closing the gender gap in
agriculture: A trainer’s manual
• By Kathleen Colverson,
ILRI senior gender scientist
• Published July 2013
• Series: ILRI Manual 9
• Nairobi, Kenya
• International Livestock
Research Institute
• http://bit.ly/Nmtd6i

20. Thank you

21. Art credits
Slide 02: Figure of Woman Shown in Motion, Albrecht Durer, 1528, via Wikipaintings
Slide 03: Reaper, Kazimir Malevich, 1912, via Wikipaintings
Slide 04: Going to the Marketplace (A green cow), David Burliuk (1882−1967), via Wikipaintings
Slide 05: Silhouette of a Peasant Woman Digging Carrots, Vincent van Gogh, 1885, via Wikipaintings
Slide 06: The Spoonful of Milk, Marc Chagall, 1912, via Wikipaintings
Slide 07: The Shepherdness, Franz Marc, 1912, via Wikipaintings
Slide 09: Russian Peasant, David Burliuk, 1928, via Wikipaintings
Slide 10: Woman with a Book, Fernand Leger, 1923, via Wikipaintings
Slide 11: Girl and Goat, Pablo Picasso, 1906, via Wikipaintings
Slide 12: Reading, Pablo Picasso, 1921, via Wikipaintings
Slide 13: Painting by Baya Mahieddine (1931−1998), Algeria, via Algerian Embassy in Rome website
Slide 15: Illustration in 14 Questions People Ask about Hinduism (Hinduism Today), Oct−Dec 2011,
Himalayan Academy Publications, Hawaii, via Wikimedia
Slide 16: Peasant Woman with Red and Green Cows, David Burliuk (1882−1967)
Slide 17: Daphnis and Chloe frontispeice, Marc Chagall, 1961
Slide 18: Salome, Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko, 1910, via RasMarley on Flickr
Slide 19: The Towers of Trebizond cover design by Lindsay Mayer-Beug for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, via Paris Review
Slide 20: [Num and cow], Lowell Herrero (1921− ), via Pinterest

22. better lives through livestock
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