This document summarizes the key findings from several gender analyses of an agri-practice project aimed at improving staple crop production. The analyses identified several gender constraints including social norms that prevent women from joining groups or attending trainings, unequal access to resources like land, and the burden of both cash crop and subsistence farming placed on women and children. The project is working to address these issues through single-sex meetings and trainings, reviewing publications from a gender perspective, establishing bylaws promoting gender equality, and collecting gender-sensitive monitoring data.

1. Improving agri-practice: Adding
value for women in staple crops
Lydia Mbevi Nderitu
Youth & Gender Associate
ACDI/VOCA
23rd & 24th May 2011

2. Project design
Increased
productivity
Increased access to
markets and trade
Increased access to
Business Support
Services
Increased efficiency
of producer
organizations

3. Gender analysis of the VC
1. Volunteer Consultant from ACDI/VOCA
Martha A. Denney
Director, International Education
Colorado State University
FGD with farmers and KMDP staff (2004)
2. USAID Gender Consultant Charity
Kabutha
FGD on value chains (2005)

4. Gender analysis of the VC
3. USAID GATE project integrating gender into
the maize value chain
Deborah Rubin, Christina Manfre & Kara Nichols
Barrett
FGD with members of the VC (2008)
4. Gender analysis & Baseline of new
geography – Consultant Charity Kabutha
FGD with farmers for KMDP II (2011)
Interviewed Makueni, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kitale,
Bungoma and Siaya

5. Assessment of gender constraints
Social change agenda
Not just technical fixes
but also labor
Family communication
patterns
Project geography
variation of language,
culture, socialization,
education and resources
available to the farmers

6. Assessment of gender constraints
Women are not
necessarily members of
groups
Few women are leaders
in groups
Few women attend
meetings, trainings,
exposure visits
Demonstration plots
Deception – nobody
wins
Donkey cart

7. Gender constraints
Gender issues
treated with a lot
of defensiveness,
suspicion and
inability to hear
what is being said
by both sexes

8. Interventions
Partners and gender
Single sex meetings (leadership)
Review of publications
Farming as a Family Business
By laws at group level
Technical fixes
Chemical/Biological interventions

9. Gender related bottlenecks
Gender myths
Culture
Language
Access to resources
Land
Capital
Cash crop verses
subsistence farming
Over loading
women and children

10. KMDP II
Male team members
taking an active role
in gender issues
Gender sensitive
deliverables
Women’s
inequitable access
to factors of
production

11. KMDP II
Gender sensitive indicators
Number of women with
effective control of productive
assets
Whether they are the decision
makers

12. Thank you!
lmbevi@acdivoca-kenya.or.ke