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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Projects

Applying New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment (ANEW)

ANEW is a portfolio project that will develop and validate measures of women’s empowerment for use by projects engaged in marketing agricultural products using collective-based organizations. The new set of metrics will build on the project-level WEAI for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) and will expand the existing metrics in two ways –

  1. To sharpen the focus on marketable agricultural products, and
  2. To develop measures of collective empowerment, including at the group level.

In addition to this set of metrics, ANEW will also develop and validate a short monitoring and evaluation (M&E) version of the tool to be used by implementing organizations to track aspects of women’s empowerment as part of their existing M&E systems.

The ANEW portfolio consists of four projects supported by the Walmart Foundation, based in India, Mexico and Guatemala. These projects represent a diverse range of agricultural products, farmer-producer collectives, and innovative program designs. Two of these—PRADAN in India and TechnoServe in Guatemala—will partner with IFPRI to conduct rigorous impact evaluations. The other two—Root Capital in Mexico and Grameen Foundation in India—join the portfolio with an existing research partner.

ANEW will use quantitative and qualitative methods to determine what works to empower women in these contexts, and our commitment to cross-disciplinary and mixed-methods work is reflected in the composition of our team. All four projects in the portfolio will implement the new metrics as part of their baseline and endline surveys, and the data collected will be used to validate and modify the tools. Formative qualitative work is planned with the portfolio projects and others in similar geographies that use comparable approaches. In addition, we will collect qualitative data over the course of ANEW to help contextualize and refine the metrics further.

Metrics developed under ANEW will be made publicly available for use by the broader community of practice. Our team will develop manuals and guides to help projects adopt these metrics. We will also provide training workshops in 2022, and regular helpdesk assistance for technical questions. In doing so, we hope to build and strengthen the capacities of implementing organizations to track changes in women’s empowerment over the course of their interventions.

Find below tabs to learn more about the ANEW partner projects
 
Strengthening the Measurement Tools and Evidence Base for Collective Approaches to Smallholder Livelihoods: The Impact of Coffee Collectives on Women’s Empowerment in Mexico
  • Geography: Mexico
  • Collectives: Farmer-member cooperatives (coffee collectives)
  • Commodities: Coffee
  • Implementing organization(s): Root Capital Root Capital
  • Evaluating organization(s): Root Capital in partnership with External Advisor Erin Fletcher, PhD
  • Project description: Root Capital supports agricultural collectives so they can strengthen rural communities. Root Capital 1) provides these collectives with the working capital they need to purchase crop from farmers, on-time, at higher prices; and 2) offers highly customized training to strengthen financial management, governance, and agronomic capacity as well as gender equity within the collective. Root Capital’s ANEW project focuses on its work with coffee collectives in Mexico, where it has supported 107 coffee enterprises with lending and advisory services since 1999, each reaching approximately 180 women smallholders. The main research questions this evaluation seeks to answer is: “How does affiliation with a cooperative that is a Root Capital client influence the production, agricultural practices, income, and economic empowerment of farmer-members, and do these outcomes differ by gender?”

Photo credit: Root Capital

MANDI: Market Access eNabled by Digital Innovation in India
  • Geography: India
  • Collectives: Farmer producer organizations (FPOs)
  • Commodities: Wheat, rice, vegetables, pulses and millets, oilseeds, medicinal and aromatic plants, horticulture, and floriculture
  • Implementing organization: Grameen Foundation India
  • Evaluating organization: Grameen Foundation USA, Grameen Foundation India, and Brigham Young University
  • Project description: MANDI is a Grameen Foundation USA and Grameen Foundation India’s 24-month initiative that aims to strengthen the capacities of FPOs in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, India to connect smallholder farmers (SHFs), especially women, to market and finance, to improve farmers’ incomes and resilience. Through this program, Grameen will implement interventions with 40 FPOs. The project aims to support 10,000 SHFs, including at least 4,000 female farmers, working across several value chains such as wheat, paddy, vegetables, and other crops to improve their access to extension services, market opportunities, and financial services. The evaluation will test three questions: (1) does digital technology adoption strengthen market linkages and improve financial access for SHFs, (2) does improved intra-household bargaining lead to better SHF market orientation and greater women’s engagement and empowerment, and (3) whether broadening the suite of financial products available can improve SHF resilience and enhance their gains.

Photo credit: Grameen Foundation

Smallholder Market Access in Central America
  • Geography: Guatemala
  • Collectives: Farmer producer organizations (FPOs)
  • Commodities: Horticultural crops, export vegetables (sugar snap peas, snow peas, green beans, mini carrots, and broccoli), avocado, and banana
  • Implementing organization: TechnoServe
  • Evaluating organization: IFPRI
  • Project description: TechnoServe is working to increase revenues for fresh produce smallholder farmers (SHFs) in Guatemala and Nicaragua by integrating the farmers into a more inclusive and profitable market system. The Smallholder Market Access Program in Central America is a 32-month intervention that began in 2019 to sustainably increase the revenue of up to 5,000 SHFs in this region (at least 30% of whom are women), by at least 20%. The main interventions include training SHFs on agronomy and farm management, enhancing FPO capacity around gender equitable practices, business management and postharvest practices, strengthening linkages between the buyers of produce and the SHFs, and improving SHF and FPO access to financial tools. The interventions have a specific focus on women SHFs, and seek to answer the question: “What is the impact of the women’s empowerment-focused interventions at two levels—individual farmers (improving the participation and performance of women farmers) and FPOs (addressing their gender gaps)—on the empowerment of women SHFs, particularly their ability to make and act on economic decisions?”

Photo credit: TechnoServe

LEAP – Livelihoods Enhancement through market Access and women emPowerment
  • Geography: India
  • Collectives: Women’s self-help groups (SHGs), producer groups and women’s farmer producer organizations (FPOs)
  • Commodities: Vegetables, cereals, horticulture crops, and livestock (goat and poultry)
  • Implementing organization: PRADAN
  • Evaluating organization: IFPRI
  • Project description: PRADAN promotes sustainable livelihoods which are integrated with gender, governance, and access to rights and entitlements. The goal of the LEAP project is to create livelihood opportunities for 45,000 women from smallholder households to sustainably double their income over four years and take them irreversibly above the poverty line. The project will facilitate women’s access to services, resources, and markets by adopting a livelihoods graduation approach. It will also help women SHG members to be enrolled into formal FPOs and strengthen their capacity to gainfully engage with other market players. Under ANEW, the impact evaluation will study whether these interventions improve economic outcomes, such as profit and yield, as well as women’s empowerment outcomes, such as women’s agency within the household and their participation in decision-making.

Photo credit: PRADAN

Project duration: 2021-2023

Contact

Jessica Heckert

Kalyani Raghunathan

Donors and funders

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Walmart Foundation

Project partners

Cultural Practice L.L.C.

Grameen Foundation India

Grameen Foundation USA

Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN)

Root Capital

TechnoServe

Publications

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Working Paper

Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India

2024Bhanjdeo, Arundhita
Details

Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India

Over the last decade in India, farmer producer organizations (FPOs) have emerged as a means of collectivizing smallholder farmers and providing them access to extension, innovation, and market services. FPOs that center women farmers, traditionally at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their male counterparts in access to resources and extension, can serve to enhance women’s agency and collective action in agricultural value chains. We used 59 key informant interviews and nine focus group discussions to examine the constraints to, and facilitators of, women’s and men’s participation in three women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, an eastern Indian state. Additionally, we study the gender and power dynamics in such FPOs and the potential of collective efficacy to enhance agricultural and empowerment outcomes. The FPO intervention we evaluated was supported by an NGO that provides FPO members with both agricultural and gender-based inputs to improve agronomic practices, market linkages, agricultural yields and profits, and the role of women both within the FPO and within their households and communities. In this paper, we provide contextual insights on ‘what works’ to empower women in this context. Women’s perceptions of the benefits from FPO membership were heterogeneous. Our qualitative analysis suggests a nuanced picture of women’s autonomy and decision-making within and outside their household, further shaped by women’s and men’s perception of shifts in women’s access to resources and services. The emerging lessons provide inputs for development implementers and policymakers to recognize diverse contextual barriers in designing FPO interventions to enable and enhance women empowerment outcomes. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge on local gender norms and understanding of empowerment.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bhanjdeo, Arundhita

Citation

Bhanjdeo, Arundhita. 2024. Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2259. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/145187

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agricultural Value Chains; Collectivization; Extension; Gender; Innovation; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment in coffee cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico

2024Eissler, Sarah; Rubin, Deborah; de Anda, Victoria
Details

A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment in coffee cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico

This study presents findings from a qualitative research study conducted in Chiapas, Mexico that is one component of a larger activity funded by the Walmart Foundation and implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), titled Applying New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment (ANEW). ANEW seeks to generate evidence from mixed-methods evaluations of women’s empowerment in production and other entrepreneurial efforts at different nodes of agricultural value chains and aims to develop and validate measures of women’s empowerment that focus on agricultural marketing and collective empowerment at the group level, both of which build upon the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI). In this report, we present findings of a qualitative study of coffee cooperatives supported by Root Capital in Chiapas, Mexico and how Root Capital engages with them to advance women’s economic empowerment, among other objectives. As part of this study, we aimed to describe the gender dynamics and roles and responsibilities of men and women in the coffee value chain in Chiapas, and the opportunities and barriers faced as a result of these dynamics. This study employed qualitative methods to collect primary data from types of respondents using individual and group interviews. Two coffee cooperatives in Chiapas that work with Root Capital were selected to participate in this study. From June to July 2023, 21 individual interviews and 9 group interviews were conducted with market actors, men and women coffee cooperative leaders, men and women cooperative members and their wives, and Root Capital staff from two municipalities in Chiapas. The data were transcribed into Spanish and then translated into English. These transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis in NVivo software. A codebook inclusive of inductive and deductive themes was developed to guide the thematic analysis. This study design adhered to best practices for ethical research and received approval from IFPRI’s IRB. Several limitations should be considered when reviewing the findings and conclusions of this study. There exist defined gender roles and divisions of labor at each node of the coffee value chain in Chiapas, and participants often described these roles as expected given social norms or perceived gender-specific limitations of natural abilities that would shape how men or women could engage in different activities. Men and women indicated that while men are in charge of coffee production activities, women do spend time contributing to cleaning and management activities, and that women are heavily involved in the coffee harvest. Both men and women explained that women are responsible for processing activities, which can be time consuming and laborious, but often occur close to the home. Although the coffee harvest activities require physical labor in picking and carrying the baskets of ripened cherries, there is a perception that women cannot participate in other post-harvesting activities, such as transporting bags of coffee, because the lifting is too physically heavy of a task for women. Men are responsible for managing the sale of coffee and directly negotiating with the buyer to the extent that a negotiation happens. In instances when buyers travel to the household as the point of sale, women can participate in sales, typically facilitating the sale under the direction of her husband. However, women still do not lift the coffee bags nor transport the bags for sale. And many coffee producing households prefer to or sometimes need to hire labor to help with coffee harvest activities; they tend to hire men as laborers more out of preference or their availability compared to women. Men and women interviewed for this study also described their perceptions and understanding of empowerment and elements of an empowered person with relation to engaging in the coffee value chain. Overall, while the concept of an empowered person was difficult for both men and women to relate to, they shared perceptions of how relations between men and women had changed over the years. Respecting women’s rights or the perception of respecting women’s rights was more acknowledged at the time of the interviews than in previous years, and it was more common to see men and women both generating incomes for the household. Men and women shared different perspectives regarding attitudes toward intimate partner violence, whereas both acknowledged men often mistreated their wives, but women discussed it as a private matter where men shared concerns over women’s reaction to the mistreatment rather than the mistreatment itself. Varying access to resources limited both men and women farmer’s ability to advance in the coffee value chain, particularly access to credit, which was limited for both men and women in the study areas. Limited access to credit with favorable or reasonable terms limited men’s and women’s ability to hire additional labor on their coffee farm or to purchase machines that would reduce specifically women’s time burdens within the household. Women’s time use is constrained by expectations and normative tasks in ways that men are not constrained. Future research is needed and discussed to better understand these dynamics of gendered roles and relations and elements of empowerment in the coffee value chain in Chiapas. Men and women members of the two respective cooperatives shared differences in how they were able to participate in and benefit from their participation in each cooperative. One cooperative provided more opportunities for members to directly engage in meetings, social activities, and capacity building opportunities whereas the other operated through a more decentralized structure and did not offer opportunities for members to directly participate in decision-making or meetings beyond the representation of their delegate. Members of both cooperatives perceived their cooperatives to be consistent and reliable coffee buyers offering stable prices. The former cooperative was also perceived as a source of support and community for members to advance their coffee production and post-harvesting activities. Both cooperatives also addressed key barriers faced by members, such as providing consistent and reliable pricing. Some members reported that cooperatives offered higher prices than those offered by non-cooperative buyers. Cooperatives also provided transportation options for producers to sell their coffee, which also enables women to have more engagement in coffee sales. However, normative barriers, such as women’s existing time burdens and their need for their husbands’ permission, limits women’s full participation in the cooperatives. Finally, we explored the extent to which Root Capital’s engagement with the cooperatives had supported activities or changes that strengthen women’s empowerment by understanding members and leaders’ perceptions of this engagement. Overall, cooperative members were generally unaware of Root Capital and its engagement with the cooperative. Since Root Capital does not provide direct services to farmers or cooperative members, it was not surprising that many cooperative members were generally unaware of Root Capital and its engagement with the cooperative. However, a few were aware of Root Capital, knowing it had provided their cooperative a loan to purchase and maintain a truck, which was used to reduce barriers faced by producers to bring their coffee to the point of sale and had implications for shifting gender roles to manage coffee sales. Cooperative leaders reflected on the loan that facilitated increased transportation capacity, as well as other benefits from working with Root Capital. However, as Root Capital operates with a client-driven approach, adoption of the Gender Equity Advisory services was limited as these services only became recently available in 2021 and cooperatives opted not to prioritize these until 2023. Therefore, there was limited data to understand how these activities may be influencing cooperative operations, gender dynamics and roles, and perception of women engaged in the coffee value chain at the time of this study. We present several recommendations for areas of future research and considerations for Root Capital to strengthen its approach to gender equity programming.

Year published

2024

Authors

Eissler, Sarah; Rubin, Deborah; de Anda, Victoria

Citation

Eissler, Sarah; Rubin, Deborah; and de Anda, Victoria. 2024. A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment in coffee cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2248. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Mexico

Keywords

Americas; Northern America; Coffee; Cooperatives; Research Methods; Value Chains; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Collective Behaviour; Qualitative Analysis

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Exploring gender roles and women’s empowerment in the coffee value chain and coffee cooperatives: Evidence from Mexico
IFPRI Blog
 | 
April 29, 2024

Exploring gender roles and women’s empowerment in the coffee value chain and coffee cooperatives: Evidence from Mexico

By Sarah Eissler and Deborah Rubin

Women in rural coffee production face opportunities and obstacles.

ANEW way forward: Strategies to promote women’s empowerment in farmer producer organizations
IFPRI Blog
 | 
February 21, 2024

ANEW way forward: Strategies to promote women’s empowerment in farmer producer organizations

By Jessica Heckert, Kalyani Raghunathan, Agnes Quisumbing, Emma Fawcett, Emily Myers, Flor Paz, and Soumyajit Ray

Examining a promising avenue for development programs.

Donors

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI
Walmart Foundation

Team members

Hazel Malapit

Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Neha Kumar

Neha Kumar

Senior Research Fellow, Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

Greg Seymour

Greg Seymour

Research Fellow, Natural
Resources and Resilience

Emily Myers

Emily Myers

Senior Research Analyst, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Flor Paz

Flor Paz

Senior Research Analyst, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Ara Go

Ara Go

Senior Program Manager, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Other

Related Projects

Topics/Countries

External Resources

External blogs

by Deborah S. Rubin, Emily C. Myers, Ruth Meinzen-Dick | July 22, 2022


by Florencia Paz, Deborah Rubin, Jessica Heckert, Kalyani Raghunathan | November 9, 2021