This paper introduces value chain analysis and development as tools for addressing gender inequities in markets. It describes how factors such as access to assets, gendered education differentials and the nature and value of economic activities affect the way in which men and women participate and gain in value chains, distinguishing among household, institutional and chain levels of analysis.
Seven action research teams were commissioned in Africa and Asia to identify gender issues in a variety of natural resource based value chains and then to design, implement and measure the impacts of upgrading strategies on gender outcomes. In addition, a systematic review and synthesis was conducted of literature that describes interventions designed to improve gender related outcomes for rural, poor target groups.
The paper illustrates that unsound gender analyses can miss the point, resulting in flawed understanding of the real issues and ineffective or even damaging interventions. It concludes that the universal application of packages of generic ‘default’ interventions risk doing harm and that upgrading strategies should be applied on a case by case basis and only after a thorough and robust analysis of causal factors. It outlines for practitioners what a robust analysis should look like and present a menu of policy options for acting to promote gender equity and reduce poverty using the value chain analysis and development approach.
Key Findings:
- Improvements in processes, products and functional distribution in value chains can improve chain-level outcomes leading to women’s empowerment and, ultimately, to improved household poverty outcomes.
- Where both sexes play a role in decision-making, generic interventions, or even those applied to men only, can benefit both sexes. Where women do not participate in spending decisions a more gender-specific approach that targets underlying gender issues in households and institutions is required.
- Interventions do not necessarily have to be exogenous (that is, from outside the value chain); indeed, the best example of an iterative monitoring, learning and revision process in the reviewed literature came from a private sector actor within a value chain. Generic value chain level interventions targeting nodes in which women participate are of limited effectiveness if issues at the institutional and household levels are not addressed.
Recommendations:
- Development interventions in agricultural value chains risk being, at best, ineffective and, at worst, highly disruptive and damaging without a robust analysis of: a) the chain level dynamics of participation and gain by men and women; b) the household level management of income and expenditure; and c) the intermediate horizontal institutions in which households are arranged.
- Measure and evaluate impact at three levels: Value chain activities (yield, production, prices, number of participants); Intermediate impacts ( male and female empowerment, individual income, individual ownership of assets, intra-household power dynamics); and Household and community outcomes ( men and women’s health and mortality, food security, quality of life, well-being, investment in education, men and women’s roles). This is particularly important because if monitoring ends with chain level or intermediate impacts we cannot know whether interventions and policies have resulted in fundamental changes to people’s lives.
- Some underlying issues driving gender dynamics in value chains are beyond the scope of a single value chain analysis and development programme. In these cases the initiating institutions will need to find ways of working with others to coordinate and scale up their impact.
