promoting gender equitable opportunities in agricultural ... - weman

PHASE FOUR: TAKING ACTIONS TOREMOVE GENDER-BASED CONSTRAINTSAfter determining the most critical GbCs to address, Phase Four focuses on brainstorming possible actions toremove these constraints and take advantage of opportunities to support women’s economic empowerment.This is an iterative and creative process that encourages practitioners to think innovatively and to evaluate thedifferent opportunities of action against the economic and social realities of the program and its objectives. Thetemptation may be to think conservatively about the possible actions. A fear of “changing culture” often casts ashadow on brainstorming efforts, but practitioners should consider all possible actions and then determine howthey can be appropriately implemented in the specific socioeconomic context.Addressing gender issues in value chains seeks to identify relationships and actions that enhance value chainefficiency and competitiveness while supporting gender equality goals. This makes it possible for USAID-fundedprograms to meet the dual objectives of achieving programmatic targets, as well as supporting USAID policy ongender integration. In this way, it identifies leverage points at which value chain interventions generate positivegender outcomes or gender interventions generate broader positive value chain outcomes.Cascading factors refer to situations in which multiple factors build on one another to create gender inequalities. Forexample, women’s lack of finance may be the result of their lack of access to collateral such as land. Women’s lack ofaccess to land may be the product of inheritance practices or legal institutions that do not grant them the right to land.Addressing the gender-based constraint therefore can happen at multiple levels or at levels within the manageable interestsof the project.Step 1. Take stock of gender-based constraints.Having selected a number of GbCs to address, now is the time to reexamine these constraints. As has beenexplained previously, GbCs are the result of multiple factors that create the gendered condition of inequality. Toidentify the range of possible actions, it is important to return to the GbC statement and examine those factors.Using a constraints analysis tree, 75 practitioners can dissect the different factors embedded within the GbC. Thisis illustrated in Figure 4. The GbC used in this example has multiple levels of factors. The first-level factors includethe exclusive membership criteria to the producer associations and the lack of access to services. Although thesetwo are related, as indicated by the arrow connecting the two boxes, they have been separated into two separateboxes because they refer to different dimensions of the GDF: Membership criteria are related to Practices andParticipation; Access to services is related to Access to Assets. This also implies that there may be different areasof action required to address those factors.*The Gender Continuum and definitions used here are an adaptation of work conducted by the InterAgency Working Group on Women that addresses gender issues inhealth and HIV/AIDS programs. Many explanations of the continuum have been developed. The version presented above is drawn from the forthcoming revision of theGender Integration into HIV/AIDS program manual by Debbie Caro, published by PRB for the HPI project101