Characteristics of women’s collective action for enabling women's participation in agricultural...

Characteristics of Women’s Collective Action for Enabling Women's Participation in Agricultural Markets: Preliminary Findings from Ethiopia

Presented by Carine Pionetti, Berhanu Adenew, and Zewdi Abadi AlemuGender and Market Oriented Agriculture (AgriGender 2011) Workshop

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 31st January–2nd February 2011

Outline

Background and rationale

Study methods

Some results

Summary, lessons and implications

Next steps

Background and rationale

The need to strengthen agricultural marketing networks and to promote value-chain development in Ethiopia has received increasing attention in recent years.

Both public and non-public actors (CSOs and the private sector) are recognizing the importance of market and value-chain approaches in addressing the problems of agricultural production and marketing.

Background and rationale ……

Women play a very important role in the agricultural sector value-chains in Ethiopia in:

• production, value addition and marketing of products. • however, their contributions to agricultural value chains as individuals and as groups engaging in collective activities are neither well-documented, nor adequately acknowledged by other players in the agricultural development sector.

This paper is based on • research done by Oxfam GB in partnership with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) during the period January to June 2010. • the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a grant to Oxfam to support this research work.


Significance of such a study:

In sub-Saharan Africa, women account for up to 80 per cent of the food produced, processed, stored and marketed (FAO 2007).

Yet, this important role of women does not always translate into increased income for women or improved decision-making capacity (Elson 1999).

Women smallholder farmers generally produce for more localized spot markets and in smaller volumes than men.


Where they are active in trading in agricultural markets, women tend to be concentrated at lower levels of the supply chain or value chain, in perishable or low value products (Baden 1998).

As agricultural activities become more commercialized, the relative position of women often weakens such that they are under-represented in or excluded from more profitable markets in the sub-sector.


An additional challenge is that, where collective action appears to provide women with clear economic benefits, these can often be a target of male encroachment.

With growing urban market demand for foods, including higher value products, a critical challenge for development actors is how to ensure that women smallholders are able to access these markets to ensure improved livelihoods for themselves and their families.


The potential role of collective actions (CA):

Under certain conditions, collective action can promote women’s livelihoods and empowerment (Charman, 2008).

The pooling of labour, resources and assets can overcome some of the gender-specific barriers women face, such as time poverty.


CA around production, processing and/or marketing enables group members to specialize in certain skills, access knowledge and resources, and to develop mechanisms to smooth income, manage risks or extraordinary costs.

CA can also enable women to access directly markets and services to improve their livelihoods, for example by travelling together or organizing secure transport which may otherwise be difficult or costly (Penrose-Buckley, 2007).

Origin of the project and main research questions

The ‘Researching Women’s Collective Action’ project

was launched in December 2009 with the aim of gathering rigorous evidence (quantitative as well as qualitative) on what type of collective action ‘works for women’ in agricultural markets.

builds on the existing body of research on collective action among smallholder producer groups, and

will bridge the recognized gap where more rigorous evidence is needed to effectively address the challenges faced by rural women smallholders through collective action in market and value chains.


the research aims to gathering comparative evidence

on the incomes, assets, and empowerment benefits to women smallholders of their engagement in collective action across different sectors in three focus countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania).

it also aims to build knowledge around women's collective action, but also to provide examples of what kinds of development interventions can best support ‘effective collective action’ for women in different contexts.


Some of the key research questions include:

Do women organise in formal or informal groups for growing, selling and processing products? Are these (CAs) common practices? In which sub-sectors do we find more instances of women's collective action and why? At which level of the value chain are women most likely to organise and benefit? What forms of support and interventions are likely to strengthen women's collective action and enable women to capture more benefits from agricultural markets?

Concepts

What is collective action?

Concept: voluntary action by a group to achieve common interests.

Formal: registered group, has official name, written policies, defined membership

Informal: collaboration on a regular basis to do certain functions or access services, not incidental

buying inputs together, storage, or organising transportation for product

Concepts

Subsector: A term used across the three study countries

A group of closely–related products e.g. maize for people, maize flour, corn-based drinks, corn flakes, animal feed.

Linked by key raw material e.g. milk

Scope depends on range of sub-products and complexity in the study region/zone e.g. vegetables – fewer sub-products per vegetable type

Not too broad (cereals) not too narrow...(fruit juice)

Concepts

Women’s Participation in Sub-sector

Women’s contribution in production, processing and/or marketing activities in terms of labour Women’s benefit in terms of income (beyond ‘unpaid family labour’)

Market size – importance

Size in terms of volume of productionImportance for smallholder farmers ’ livelihoods in the zoneRecent trend of growth in consumptionExtent of establishment and widespread in the zone

Methods ….

The on-going research consists of three main steps:

a)selection of sub-sectors supported by inputs from the stakeholders dialogue (SD)

b)preparation of gendered market maps and supply chain analysis for six sub-sectors

c)collection of primary data (inventory) in order to characterize existing forms of collective action and assess the types of interventions needed to improve market access for women farmers. only the first two steps are partly complete: the third step is on-going, but has already yielded significant results.

Methods …..

Selection of sub-sectors through a participatory process

The first task in the research consisted in selecting two regions that play a central role in agricultural production in Ethiopia, feature some differences in their agro-ecological characters and others,

the Amhara region and the Oromia region. in the two regions, two areas where Oxfam has a history of involvement in food security programmes were selected:

West Gojam zone of Amhara region, and Jimma zone of Oromia region.

Methods …..

Selection of sub-sectors through a participatory process… After reviewing the existing data on various agricultural sectors, an exhaustive list of crops was prepared and presented during regional stakeholders' dialogue held in the first half of 2010.

Participants in the stakeholder dialogue (farmers, representatives of farmers' unions and women's associations, researchers, NGOs, etc.) were then asked to rank sub-sectors based on two major criteria:

level of women's participation in marketing, and market size potential.

A similar participatory ranking exercise was facilitated during a national stakeholders' workshop held in Addis Ababa in April 2010.

Methods ….

The ranking process led to the identification of six sub-sectorsTable 1: List of selected agric sub-sectors for two regions

The sub-sectors were further classified under four categories: Categories of Agricultural Markets.ppt

staple crop, traditional bulk commodity, traditional high value products, and non-traditional (new) high value products.

It is ensured that each category was represented to capture differences in WCA for different types of commodity.

West Gojam (Amhara region) Jimma (Oromia region):

1. Dairy: milk, butter, aib (traditional ricotta cheese) 2. Garden Vegetables: tomato, potato, onion, red pepper 3. Honey

1. Coffee 2. Maize 3. Spices (including ginger)

Methods …

Preparing gendered market maps of value chains Gendered market maps are useful tools

in visualising opportunities and constraints for women at various stages of the value chain. these maps may reveal, for instance, that women producers are highly involved in processing, but that they only access a very small fraction of the market for a given product, such as fresh vegetables or coffee (sold in the local market). Example,

The gendered market map for vegetables in wets Gojam indicates that women only market 25% of vegetables produced in irrigated fields, but up to 75% of vegetables produced in home gardens.

Methods ….

The gender analysis of a value chain Also entails looking at how the overall environment (services, input markets, national agriculture policy, technology, supporting agencies, trade regulations, quality standards, etc...) contributes to shape women's involvement in a given sector by creating opportunities

Methods ….

Annex - Figure 1: Gendered Market Mapping for Vegetates sub-sector in West Gojam Zone

Producers

Collectors

Retailer & consumer

Women Participation

Production: 25% (irrigated) 50% (garden)

Women CA in purchase and resale: bulk purchase, share transport cost (but individual retails)

Both Irrigated and rain-fed production systems

Producing districts: Bure, Jabitanan, Mecha, Bahir Dar Zuria, South Achefer

Local traders, Cooperative (beginner)

Wholesalers

Marketing: 25% (irrigated), 75% (garden) Volume: 80 - 100% of amount produced

Retailers/consumers in nearby towns

Urban consumer/ Hotels/ Retailers in Bahir Dar, Gonder, Mekele National markets Supermarkets: Addis, Mekele

Traders (on-farm purchase)

Traders

Women’s Collective action in urban areas: Purchase and resale - bulk purchase (but individual retails)

Women’s Collective Action in sales: share transport cost (but individual retails)

Access to Services Transport: own/public transport, local (carts, draft animal) Finance: own, microfinance (group), local money lenders Extension advice: not known /not available Storage: not known /not available

Some results

1) The stakeholder dialogue resulted in the selection of six sub-sectors and provided in-depth information on the involvement of women in producing, processing and

marketing certain products. In West Gojam, women were found to take an active part in

selling: poultry, dairy products, vegetables, spices, fish, fodder crops, fuel wood and small quantities of cereals and coffee.

In Jimma area, women are distinctly involved in the sale of: avocado, banana, corn, fruit (citrus, guava, mango, orange, papaya, peach, and pineapple), herbs, milk, yam, peanuts, red pepper (berbere), poultry, rapeseed, ginger, turmeric, teff, vegetables, baro, fuel wood and small quantities of coffee.

Some results …

2) The list of products sold by women is quite large, but economic magnitude of this activity may be quite limited due to two main factors:women tend to sell small quantities of vegetables, fruit, coffee, and only rarely sell bulk or wholesale (which account for the bulk of farming incomes) women most frequently sell their products in the nearby local market (organising for transportation to take products to more distant markets or traders is largely done by men).

3) This observations call for further investigation in order to establish with more precision the extent and scope of women's collective action in relation to markets.

4) While women's involvement in formal groups remains limited, there appears to be a practical logic driving women to act collectively at the informal level.

Some results

5) Low involvement of women in formal collective action

The study result indicates a relatively low level of involvement of women in formal groups, such as cooperatives and unions,

the highest figure was found in the milk and milk products sub-sector, considered to be a “women's domain”.

In West Gojam area, women account for 16% of all cooperative members. Some of these cooperatives, like the ones near Bahir Dar town (zonal and regional capital), collect milk from producers and supply it to processing plants.

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Some results …

6) The study also reveals that when processing equipment was introduced in the Bahir Dar area, women received technical support to learn to run the operations and manage the cooperative. This gender-sensitive approach to agricultural development

is likely to have created a conducive environment for women to join the cooperatives (although 16% is still a low figure).

7) In the vegetable sector, women's involvement in formal cooperatives is around 13%. Vegetables are produced either in irrigated fields, which

require infrastructure and significant investment, or in home gardens, with little or no investment.

Some results…

8) Cooperatives largely deal with the high-value, high-volume vegetables produced in irrigated fields for the market – a sector from which women have largely been excluded. This trend provides an explanation for their low participation

in formal vegetable cooperatives. However, women do organise informally in this sector.

9) The case of honey is interesting. With the introduction of modern

beehives, which are more accessible to women than traditional ones (hung in/on trees), women have entered into this sector, and some of them have become active in the 36 cooperatives that have been created in West Gojam area. Female membership is around 10%.

Some results…

Further investigation is required to assess which women are in the cooperatives.

For example, whether the women registered in the cooperatives are female heads of households, or whether they are married women who have received support to play such a role (another hypothesis is that some women might be formally registered, but in practice, it is their husbands who attend meetings).

10)Several factors have been invoked to explain the low participation of women in most formal collective action.

First, membership in rural producer organizations tends to be closely tied to land ownership, which in most contexts is patriarchal. Despite recent changes following the introduction of a title certification programme in Ethiopia, land access remains very limited for women.

Some results…

Secondly, gender roles in Ethiopian agriculture assign, broadly speaking, important roles to women in production and processing, but the sale of agricultural products is typically under men's responsibility:

with exceptions in some sectors like dairy and spices. thus, compared to men, women lack a good understanding of traders' association, pricing mechanisms and markets.

Other barriers include social status (e.g. household headship) and the time and social capital required to participate in decision-making processes.

Women typically lack access to credit, transport and marketing information and their heavy workload cuts into the time available to attend meetings and do collective planning around marketing.

Some results…

Socio-cultural and religious factors may also constrain open communication between men and women in certain contexts.

Women may attend meetings or community gatherings, but lack the self-confidence to speak up or raise issues.

Even when women are registered as cooperative members, they are strikingly absent from leadership positions.

This observation applies across sectors, and virtually no exceptions have been documented to date. This means that women's influence on decision-making is very limited in formal cooperatives.

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Some findings

11) In the vegetable sector, there are instances of women organising informally to buy vegetables in bulk, share transport costs, and then individually sell in the market. Those women in such small-scale trade may be farmers (who

buy and sell to supplement their income), or women from landless households. Given that vegetables play an important role in home

gardens, further investigation is needed to identify instances of collective action by women to cooperate in home garden production (sharing inputs like local seeds or organic manure) and to market surplus from their home garden production, which is likely to happen (at least on a seasonal basis).

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Some findings

12) In the milk sector, women informally collaborate to collect milk from individual producers, and take it to either to the market, or to the cooperatives. This arrangement enables women to save on time and transport

cost (by handling a higher volume of milk). 13) In Jimma zone, women's collectively act in sales of maize: share

transport cost, collect the produce together, look for markets, negotiate prices, etc.

14) Women are highly involved in harvesting, drying and storing coffee, but men are almost solely responsible for selling coffee as a bulk commodity. women collect second-grade coffee grains from the fields and

sell them in the market. Informal collective action may take place at this stage: women may do the collection as a group, and then share the harvest amongst themselves.

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Some results…

16) A finding from the overall study is that women's (informal) collective action seems to yield very marginal economic outcomes. In the coffee and vegetable sectors, women sell products 'on

the margins', away from the main market, and from the main profit. In the case of coffee, it is quite clear that women are only entitled to sell low-grade and low value beans in the local market.

17) If further investigation confirms this trend, a important question

will be whether development interventions should aim to strengthen such activities, or to encourage and enable collective action by women in sectors that may be more economically rewarding (like vegetables, spices, or organic coffee).

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Some results….

18) The preliminary evidence on women's collective action in Ethiopia seems to suggest four main motives for cooperation:

i. saving time by doing activities as a group (like milk collection

on a rotating basis) ii. saving on transportation costs and improved coordination

(buying vegetable in bulk as a group) iii. sharing technical and market knowledge (information about

input costs, processing facilities, quality standards) iv. pooling resources to maximize access to assets such as land (as

in the case of coffee grains collection, where all coffee fields are 'scrutinised' collectively in search of left-over grains).

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Some results….

19) Lack of proper attention by development players to women's collective action in marketing

Despite the existence of informal collective activities by women in production, processing and marketing activities, and their significance in terms of livelihood, there is a notable gap in the documentation of these activities (locations, prevalence, operations, etc.).

The official data and statistics appear to completely by-pass women's informal group activities.

As depicted during the regional stakeholders dialogue conducted in this study, experts and development workers (including those working at the community level) are largely unaware of the existence of women's informal collective actions in certain sub-sectors.

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Some results…

This illustrates the existence of an institutional bias (reflected in public policy, outreach programmes and extension services) towards women as farmers.

Development programmes need to build on women's spontaneous initiatives and existing small-scale strategies in relation to markets

NGOs and government-led interventions can play a crucial role in enabling women and women's groups to gain prominence as market players..

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Summary, lessons and implications

This on-going research on women's collective action has already yielded a number of significant findings

1)The groups that have been reviewed attempt to access markets in various ways, but they lack a clear and well-developed marketing strategy, which is a key dimension of success. 2)Technology intersects in contrasting ways with women's empowerment, leading to various forms of exclusion or inclusion, depending on how it is conceived from the onset.3)Preliminary evidence seems to indicate that vertical integration in value chains leaves little room for women's groups to enter the market, as vertically integrated chains rely on channels and players that tend to be male-dominated. ..

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Summary and lessons …

4) Women smallholders would benefit from collective action in marketing, particularly concerted efforts to increase their market knowledge in order to be better able to identify niche markets, develop new products and obtain better prices for their produce.

5) Moreover, it may worthwhile to explore market opportunities linked to the home garden, which is essentially the domain of women in Ethiopia (as in many parts of the world).

6) Two sectors – milk and vegetables – that have undergone technological changes in recent years provide two contrasting examples of women's exclusion or inclusion in these changes.

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Summary and lessons …

7) The introduction of irrigation infrastructure has intensified the production of vegetables in various parts of Ethiopia but overall, women's participation in irrigation-related developments have been very low (Tafesse 2003).

8) As vertical integration of value chain proceeds, especially towards high-level markets and more processed goods, the level of involvement of women appears to diminish considerably.

9) The findings from this study confirms that the intersections between collective action and gender is relevant from a development perspective, but also in fostering greater equality in access to agricultural markets in Ethiopia.

10) Finally, more attention needs to be paid to “women's crops”, as this is where women may be most inclined to invest in collective action.

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Next steps of the research

Further research is needed to study and understand:

a)the pre-existing social ties that enable collective action in and across local communitiesb)the organisational form that develops once a collective group comes togetherc)the conditions under which women can benefit from the opportunities presented by collective actiond)the roles that development actors can play in supporting women's leadership in collective action.

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Next steps …

The next step in the research process will consist in developing a more detailed picture of women's collective action (through mapping), and characterizing the different forms of collective action existing in each sub-sector and in each zone.

This inventory is expected to provide more concrete information about the scope and extent of collective action (in producing, processing and/or selling), whether women-only or mixed groups are more prevalent, process of decision-making and leadership within the group, scope for growth and expansion of activities.

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