In Sierra Leone, women, in general, lead very difficult lives. There are limited laws to protect them from sexual and gender-based violence, cavernous pay gaps, illiteracy, or allow them access to assets like land, economic independence and participation in the electoral process. Social and cultural norms put women at a massive disadvantage, which perpetuates wide gender disparities across multiple sectors, including the agriculture industry.
Investing in family farms to bolster food production and market access is an important tactic for helping increase global food and economic security, especially in underdeveloped countries. However, many of these investments are amplifying gender disparities.
Men, in certain locales, are reaping the reward when family farms become more profitable while women are left on the sidelines. This is a systemic problem in countries like Sierra Leone where women are often shut out of opportunities for economic and technological advancement and limited in their ability to make financial decisions, ultimately leading to a marginalized lifestyle with poor nutrition, the risk of gender-based violence, and myriad other adverse effects.
Catalyzing transformative change by farmers and communities to uproot a problem like gender disparity is a lofty goal, but at the University of Maryland, Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Extension Education, Colby Silvert in partnership with Fatmata Binta Jalloh, a gender and youth expert with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, is up for the challenge.
As part of a global network of changemakers, he has set out to reverse an entrenched power structure, male dominance and gender inequality in for-profit family farm systems in international low-income communities. To do this, he will uncover the types of changes project leaders, managers, and coordinators should target in the design and implementation of family farm commercialization interventions to promote gender equality using gender transformative approaches. His work is representative of AGNR’s dedication to community- based Extension work, which is ramping up on the international stage.
The Need for Solutions
According to the World Food Programme, 57% of Sierra Leone’s population is food insecure. Additionally, the International Trade Administration states that the nation’s agriculture sector employs about two-thirds of the labor force and contributes more than 50 percent of the country’s GDP. Women comprise 70% of the labor force in the agricultural sector, but they are receiving substantially less return from their labor.
“Men do not allow women to participate in technical skill training, such as operating a tractor and other machines, or training to be a mechanic, which has been perceived as masculine, especially in rural settings,” said Jollah. “This limits their knowledge and skills to use these technologies and ultimately restricts their employment opportunities, increasing their farming costs as they are tied to making payments for the services provided by the operators of these machines.”
As value from agricultural products increases, men tend to assert control over the marketing and commercialization. They have more access to information, technology and drive farm management decisions.
“If you look at freshwater fish production as an example, women do a lot of the labor: the harvesting, and a lot of post-harvest activity as well,” said Silvert. “If you go to a farmer’s market in Sierra Leone, you’ll see a lot of women selling, but they are often excluded from income use decisions. Women also may be left out of income-decision making about paying for children’s school fees, household nutrition, or new farming investments.”
On the nutritional side, women are expected to share daily meals in a way that favors men, especially in terms of consuming most of the proteins (fish, meat), leaving children, lactating mothers, pregnant women, and teenage girls with little to eat, leading to nutrient deficiencies for these groups of women and girls.
Time to Intervene
Silvert’s foray into this issue began in Sierra Leone in 2016 as part of two USAID funded Feed the Future initiatives, both multi-million dollar projects at the intersection of helping commercialize family farms and promoting gender equality.
His experience in Sierra Leone primed him for his graduate research at the University of Florida (UF) from 2018 to 2023 where he began today’s iteration of this research with a deep dive into complex gender issues that arise when smallholder farms shift their operations towards commercialization. At UF, he worked with 23 gender and agricultural development experts across 17 global organizations to better design interventions that are gender transformative.
Silvert best describes the framework of a gender transformative approach by contrasting it to the gender accommodative approach. “With gender accommodative, you go around the deeply entrenched system structures that create inequalities, and you only address the easy issue. Take ‘gender quotas’ as an example. This puts in place a policy for a project or group (e.g. farmer association) to include a certain percentage of women and men. This can check a box and, in some cases, help promote opportunities for women, but often this doesn’t address underlying disparities and relational issues that are part of Sierra Leone’s culture. Led by communities themselves as a bottom- up approach, gender transformative change is deeper, assessing the power structures, the relations and the norms that are so disenfranchising for women, and then working to tackle those.”
He deployed the Delphi Model, a multi-stage process designed to come to consensus on a difficult issue. His expert group submitted open-ended, conceptual ideas on potential solutions and barriers to gender transformative approaches, which Silvert analyzed and put into survey form. Each of the 23 experts ranked the best ideas, which ultimately became their long-term playbook for action. They did not always agree, but this exercise did yield some consistency in opinion.
Moving Forward
“Our process has led us to believe that power inequalities along the agricultural value chain, economic systems, and project timeframes too short to close gender gaps are some of the major barriers to a gender transformative approach with family farmers,” said Silvert. “A lot of data support the benefit of women and men working together.”
Silvert believes that addressing gender has to be really relational, that men and women must engage together to determine their own vision for transformation. This process must engage the whole family; there must be trust rather than polarization. He’s passionate about working with his Delphi experts and other stakeholders to start putting some elements into action. They need to validate collective expert endorsed findings with actual farmers and women. They have taken some early steps by engaging with partners in Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Uganda.
“If gender-based barriers are reduced and women are supported with adequate capacity development, access to finance and creating the enabling environment, Sierra Leonean Women cannot only bring food to the table but also engage in sustainable agricultural investments that will create jobs, improve livelihood and transform the country’s economy,” said Jalloh.
Change may be hard, particularly when dealing with gender dynamics, but with faculty like Silvert involved in reversing socio-cultural norms and the power structures that define them, the gap to equality may soon be narrowed.
by Graham Binder : Momentum Magazine Summer 2024
