Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture (Routledge Handbooks) 2020020062, 2020020063, 9780367190019, 9780429199752

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ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF GENDER AND AGRICULTURE

The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture covers major theoretical issues as well as critical empirical shifts in gender and agriculture. Gender relations in agriculture are shifting in most regions of the world with changes in the structure of agriculture, the organization of production, international restructuring of value chains, climate change, the global pandemic, and national and multinational policy changes.This book provides a cutting-edge assessment of the feld of gender and agriculture, with contributions from both leading scholars and up-and-coming academics as well as policymakers and practitioners. The handbook is organized into four parts: part 1, institutions, markets, and policies; part 2, land, labor, and agrarian transformations; part 3, knowledge, methods, and access to information; and part 4, farming people and identities. The last chapter is an epilogue from many of the contributors focusing on gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems during the coronavirus pandemic. The chapters address both historical subjects as well as ground-breaking work on gender and agriculture, which will help to chart the future of the feld.The handbook has an international focus with contributions examining issues at both the global and local levels with contributors from across the world. With contributions from leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners, and with a global outlook, the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture is an essential reference volume for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in gender and agriculture. Carolyn E. Sachs is Professor Emerita of Rural Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Leif Jensen is Distinguished Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Pennsylvania State University. Paige Castellanos is currently an Assistant Research Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the College of Agricultural Sciences’ International Programs and Rural Sociology. Kathleen Sexsmith is Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF GENDER AND AGRICULTURE

Edited by Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos, and Kathleen Sexsmith

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos, and Kathleen Sexsmith; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos, and Kathleen Sexsmith to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. With the exception of Chapter 13, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 13 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual productpage at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sachs, Carolyn E., 1950- editor. | Jensen, Leif, editor. | Castellanos, Paige, editor. Title: Routledge handbook of gender and agriculture/edited by Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos and Kathleen Sexsmith. Identifiers: LCCN 2020020062 (print) | LCCN 2020020063 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367190019 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429199752 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Agriculture–Economic aspects–Case studies. | Land use–Planning–Case studies. | Women in agriculture–Case studies. Classification: LCC HD1415 .R68 2020 (print) | LCC HD1415 (ebook) | DDC 338.1082–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020062 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020063 ISBN: 978-0-367-19001-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-19975-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishign Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of contributors Acknowledgments

ix xvii

Introduction Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos, and Kathleen Sexsmith

1

PART 1

Institutions, markets, and policies for gender and agriculture 1 Gender mainstreaming in agricultural and forestry institutions Seema Arora-Jonsson and Stephanie Leder 2 Gender dynamics in agricultural value chain development: foundations and gaps Rhiannon Pyburn and Froukje Kruijssen

13 15

32

3 Gender inequalities in food standards Carmen Bain

46

4 Food sovereignty and gender equity Anne Portman

57

5 Gender integration in international agricultural research for development Margreet van der Burg

69

6 Gender, nutrition, and food system approaches: what can be learned from the past? Julie Newton v

85

Contents PART 2

Land, labor, and agrarian transformation

101

7 Women’s rights to their land: when property does not equal power Peggy Petrzelka

103

8 Gender and land grabbing Youjin B. Chung

114

9 Gender and livestock production Elizabeth Ransom and Forrest Stagner

126

10 Gendered vulnerabilities and adaptation to climate change Margaret Alston

137

11 Gender and sustainable intensifcation Cornelia Flora

149

12 The role of mobile phones in empowering women in agriculture Surabhi Mittal

160

13 Gender and the political economy of fsh agri-food systems in the global South Surendran Rajaratnam, Molly Ahern, and Cynthia McDougall

170

14 Gender, race, and transgenic crops Amanda Shaw

185

15 Gender dimensions in climate-smart agricultural technology uptake Mamta Mehar

200

16 Gender and urban agriculture Hannah Whitley

212

PART 3

Knowledge, methods, and access to information

223

17 Gender and agricultural extension Mary Barbercheck

225

18 Feminist methods and methodology in agricultural research Ann R.Tickamyer

239

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Contents

19 Empowering women through farmer feld schools Afrina Choudhury and Paige Castellanos

251

20 Gender violence and food-service workers: bending toward justice Patricia Allen and Whitney Shervey

263

21 Women’s farm organizations in the United States: protecting and transforming agricultural power Angie Carter

275

22 Gendered farming organizations: the value of North/South comparisons Sally Shortall and Margaret Adesugba

287

23 The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index Elena M. Martinez, Emily C. Myers, and Audrey Pereira

298

PART 4

Farming people and identities

313

24 Farm household livelihood strategies Margaret Adesugba, Elizabeth Oughton, and Sally Shortall

315

25 Gender and precarious work in agriculture Kathleen Sexsmith and Megan A. M. Griffn

326

26 Indigenous women in agriculture: focus on Latin America Diana Gabriela Lope-Alzina

336

27 Queer farmers: Sexuality on the farm Michaela Hoffelmeyer

348

28 Women farmers and women farmer’s identities Hannah Whitley and Kathryn Brasier

360

29 Health and farm households Nari Senanayake and Celia Ritter

370

30 Embodied work in agriculture Berit Brandth

383

31 Men’s and women’s migration in relation to agriculture Emily M.L. Southard and Leif Jensen

394

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Contents

32 Rematriating to the wombs of the world: toward Black feminist agrarian ideologies Shakara Tyler 33 Farming, gender, and mental health Lia Bryant

410 421

Epilogue: gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems under coronavirus global pandemic Index

435 453

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CONTRIBUTORS

Margaret Adesugba is a Commonwealth Scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University. She also holds an MSc. in Agricultural Development Economics with distinction from the University of Reading, UK, as a Diageo Foundation Scholar and a BSc. (Agriculture) with frst-class honors from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Her research focuses on gender and agriculture in the Global South and North, specifcally, gender inequality, agricultural and rural development policies and programs, sustainable livelihoods in rural geographies, rural institutions, and institutional arrangements, the infuence of community-based cooperatives, collective action, vulnerabilities, and resilience. Molly Ahern is a Food Security and Nutrition Consultant with experience working with WorldFish and Bioversity International, where she worked on nutrition-sensitive value chains for fsh, dietary assessments, and participatory rural appraisal of food system methodologies in Africa. Currently, she is a Food Security and Nutrition Consultant in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Patricia Allen is the founder of the Master of Science program in Food Systems and Society at Oregon Health & Science University. She directed the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she created a research and education program on social justice in food systems and wrote Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. Her academic commitments are motivated by her experiences of race, class, and gender working in farm labor, food service, food processing, and academia. Margaret Alston is Professor of Social Work at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she heads up the Gender, Leadership, and Social Sustainability (GLASS) research unit. She has published widely in the feld of gender, climate changes, and environmental disasters. Seema Arora-Jonsson is Professor and Chair for Rural Development at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Communication, Culture, and Society at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland.

ix

Contributors

Carmen Bain is a Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the governance of agricultural and food systems; gender, agriculture, and international development; and the social dimensions of agricultural biotechnologies. Her research has examined development efforts aimed at empowering women smallholder dairy farmers in Uganda and its effect on gender relations and food security. Her work has been published in Agriculture and Human Values, Food Policy, Gender & Society, Journal of Rural Studies, Rural Sociology, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Mary Barbercheck is a Professor and Extension Specialist of Sustainable Agriculture in the Department of Entomology at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research program focuses on soil entomology and ecology, the effects of agricultural production practices on soil-dwelling insect pathogens, soil arthropod diversity, and soil function as related to system sustainability. She also has research and extension interests in the area of organic agriculture and women and gender in agriculture, science, and technology. Her extension programs focus on the soil food web, soil health, and integrated pest management in organic production systems. She is a founding member and steering committee member of the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN). Since 2003, PA-WAgN has encouraged and supported women in agriculture, provided educational and mentoring opportunities, raised community awareness of agriculturerelated issues and concerns, and sustained farming livelihoods for women in agriculture. Berit Brandth is Professor Emerita at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. A long-lasting research interest has been gender and work-family issues, including gender and rurality, where publications focus on masculinities and femininities in agriculture-related areas such as technology, organization, family, commercial homes, farm tourism, and embodiment. Publications include Feminisms and Ruralities, co-edited with Barbara Pini and Jo Little (2015) and “Fathers framing fatherhood” (Agriculture and Human Values, 2019). Kathryn Brasier is Professor of Rural Sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Pennsylvania State University. Her research and teaching programs focus generally on environment-society interactions, stakeholder engagement processes, collective action related to agricultural and environmental issues, and gender and agriculture. She previously was part of Penn State Extension Economic and Community Development and Marcellus Education Teams, and currently teaches in the Community, Environment, and Development major and Rural Sociology graduate program. Dr. Brasier received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2002. Lia Bryant is a Professor of Sociology at the University of South Australia and was on sabbatical when writing this chapter as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham, United Kingdom. She has published extensively on gender and rural society and her books include Gender and Rurality (2011, Routledge); Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography (2013); Women Supervising and Writing Doctoral Theses:Walking on the Grass (2015); Critical and Creative Research Methodologies in Social Work (2015, Routledge), and Water and Rural Communities, Local Meanings, Politics and Place (2016, Routledge). Margreet van der Burg is senior university lecturer and researcher gender studies, focusing on food, agricultural and rural research and development,Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Angie Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI. Her work focuses on agriculture, social justice, and social change. x

Contributors

Paige Castellanos is currently an Assistant Research Professor at Penn State in the College of Agricultural Sciences’ International Programs. She received her Ph.D. in Rural Sociology and International Agriculture and Development from Penn State. She is currently the program manager for the Penn State’s Gender Equity through Agricultural Research and Education (GEARE) Initiative. Castellanos focuses her research on gender and social inequities, primarily in Latin America. Afrina Choudhury is Research Fellow (Senior Gender Specialist) for WorldFish, Bangladesh, where she is responsible for the design and implementation of pro-poor gender-responsive strategies. Working in the feld of aquatic agriculture, her research has revolved around the integration of gender into technical interventions in ways that are sustainable and transformative. In particular, she has been focusing on building the evidence for gender transformative approaches as a way to break systemic inequalities in enhancing equitable development efforts. She also co-created and chairs the Bangladesh National Gender Working Group, which brings together gender and equity work in Bangladesh. She holds a Masters’ degree in Development Studies from BRAC University and is currently pursuing a sandwich Ph.D. between WorldFish and Wageningen University with a focus on inclusive business development and women’s entrepreneurship in aquaculture. Youjin Chung is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Equity at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Her research draws from the political economy of development, historical and feminist political ecology, critical agrarian and food studies, and African studies to examine the relationship between gender, intersectionality, development, and socio-ecological change in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Tanzania. Cornelia Flora has worked in integrating women into development projects since 1967, frst in the US and Latin America and then in Asia, Africa, and Europe. She received her BA in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and her MS and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She was Director of the Population Research Laboratory at Kansas State University, organizer of the annual international Farming Systems Research and Extension Conference held at Kansas State University, Program Offcer for Agriculture and Rural Development for the Andean Region and Southern Cone of Latin America for the Ford Foundation, Head of the Department of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development at Iowa State University, and is now the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology Emerita. She has served a number of professional societies as president and in other roles and is the recipient of a number of awards for teaching, leadership, and research. Megan A.M. Griffn is an MS/Ph.D. student in Rural Sociology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her work pulls from critical development studies, feminist critiques of science and technology, food and seed sovereignty, and decoloniality in an effort to re-articulate the epistemological engagements that agricultural research and extension projects have with other(ed) communities and other(ed) ways of knowing, and to co-construct transformative food imaginaries. Michaela Hoffelmeyer is a Ph.D. student in Rural Sociology at Pennsylvania State University. Her masters’ thesis involved a qualitative study of queer sustainable farmers in the northeastern US. xi

Contributors

Leif Jensen is a Distinguished Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University. His research is found within social stratifcation, demography, and the sociology of economic change, all with an emphasis on rural people and places. Froukje Kruijssen is a Senior Advisor on Sustainable Economic Development at KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. She holds an MSc degree in Agricultural Development Economics from Wageningen University and has over 15 years of work experience in applied research on agro-food value chains, international trade, food and nutrition security, sustainable development, and gender. Stephanie Leder is a Researcher at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala and currently a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK. Prior to this, she held a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Nepal within the Consultative Group of International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) Research Program, “Water, Land, and Ecosystems.” She holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Cologne, Germany. Diana Gabriela Lope-Alzina is a Research Professor at Tecnológico Nacional de México, an Honorary Research Fellow for “Gender, Youth, and Agrobiodiversity” at the Alliance Bioversity–CIAT and the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR), and an international consultant for the UN system. She has been involved in inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary research concerning gender analysis and management of agrobiodiversity for more than 20 years, with a special interest in traditional agricultural systems in Latin America. In 2020, she was appointed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to be part of the group of experts to carry out the thematic assessment on “the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, determinants of transformative change and options for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity.” Elena Martinez is a doctoral student at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Her research focuses on connections between agriculture, nutrition, and gender. Prior to studying at Tufts, she was a research analyst in the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and a senior research analyst at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP). She hold a Master of Science in nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and a Master of Public Health in epidemiology and biostatistics from the Tufts University School of Medicine. Cynthia McDougall is the Gender Research Leader for WorldFish and the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agrifood Systems (FISH). She is an interdisciplinary social scientist with over 20 years of experience in food security, gender and social equity, and natural resource governance. In her current role, she leads gender strategic research as well as the integration of gender in aquaculture, fsheries, and nutrition research in Asia,Africa, and the Pacifc. Mamta Mehar has gained expertise in clientele-responsive agriculture and aquaculture innovative technologies, seed systems, digital agriculture, and gender and climate change themes, interdisciplinary approaches, innovative methods, and tools to analyze and interpret data. In the past ten years, she has worked with different CGIAR organizations and hence different food crops and programs.Within these roles, and others, she has explored solutions for the inequalities embedded within gender roles and norms that often result in the inequitable distribution xii

Contributors

of resources and hinders sustainable farm intensifcation. In 2017, she was awarded a Borlaug Fellowship by the US Department of Agriculture. She has also undergone extensive training sessions on Gender and Research Integrated Training (GRIT) organized by Pennsylvania State University (2017 and 2018), US. Surabhi Mittal is an independent consultant on agricultural economics. At present, she is working with the Population Council on monitoring and process evaluation of a project related to women’s empowerment and livestock. Dr. Mittal was the Senior Economist and Coordinator of the Centre of Excellence based in New Delhi. Prior to joining the TARINA leadership team, she worked for six years as the Senior Agricultural Economist with the socioeconomics program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT-CGIAR). She has also worked at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), the Economics Division at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), and the National Center for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). She is the joint secretary of the Agriculture Economics Research Association (India) and is a core member of the organizing team of the International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE) 2021. Emily Myers is a research analyst in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Since joining IFPRI three years ago, she has worked on qualitative studies across sub-Saharan Africa and in Bangladesh. She uses qualitative methods to examine gender, women’s empowerment, and participation in agricultural value chains. She also facilitates IFPRI’s Gender Task Force, a cross-institutional group that supports researchers incorporating gender into their work and disseminates IFPRI’s gender research. She earned a Master in Public Health from Emory University in 2017. Julie Newton is a senior social development and gender equity advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam and has worked in development research, policy and practice for 15 years, specialising in food and nutrition security, social protection, child rights, women’s labour rights, wellbeing and sustainable livelihoods. Prior to this she has worked in Bangladesh on women’s rights in the shrimp sector and child rights in food and nutrition security programming. Before this she worked in various research and government positions exploring sustainable communities and the links to wellbeing and how you measure it. As KIT gender advisor she works at the boundary of research, practice and policy to support gender integration with different stakeholders including international and bilateral development organizations, government institutions, NGOs, research organizations as well as private sector. Her PhD thesis is entitled “Gender responsive approaches to natural resource management in Namibia” (2004). Julie’s research interests focus on feminist approaches to monitoring evaluation and learning in the sectors of food and nutrition security, labour rights, child rights and social protection. Elizabeth Oughton is a Principal Research Associate at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests focus upon the relationships within rural households and the ways in which these relate to the creation of livelihoods. Audrey Pereira is a senior research analyst in the Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Her work focuses on understanding socio-economic pathways to improve gender and health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Prior to joining IFPRI, she worked at the UNICEF Offce of Research – Innocenti, the World Bank, and Jhpiego. She has a Master of Science in Public Health, concentrating in health systems and economics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. xiii

Contributors

Peggy Petrzelka is a Professor of Sociology at Utah State University. Her research interests focus on the interrelationships between the physical and social environment in a number of settings—from rural Utah communities experiencing fghts over public land use, to Midwestern farm communities experiencing power struggles over agricultural land, to rural migrant communities in Spain and Morocco experiencing agricultural worker tensions. She focuses, in particular, on groups in the above settings who are being marginalized and deemed invisible by policymakers and researchers. Anne Portman is currently an independent scholar who writes, mothers, gardens, and eats in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Georgia in 2016. Her work is situated at the intersection of feminist politics, environmental ethics, and food studies. Rhiannon Pyburn is a Senior Advisor on Gender and Agriculture at KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, and a Senior Expert in the CGIAR-NL Partnership for the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) supported through a grant from the Dutch government. Rhiannon has over 20 years of work experience in social learning, innovation systems, and gender research in agriculture and natural resource management, including agricultural value chains, standards, and certifcation. Surendran Rajaratnam is a Senior Gender Research Analyst at WorldFish, where he conducts and contributes to a range of gender strategic studies in Asia and Africa.Among these, Surendran has examined constraining and enabling gender norms and their infuence on innovation processes in Bangladesh and the Philippines and is currently working on integrating gender into technical aquaculture and fsheries work with the Government of Assam, India, as part of the Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (APART) Project. Elizabeth Ransom is an Associate Professor of International Affairs in the School of International Affairs and a Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania State University. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology and has conducted research for the past 20 years in Southern and Eastern Africa on livestock, international and regional trade, gender empowerment, and changing environmental contexts. Celia Ritter is a student who is currently completing a Master’s of Public Health. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Environmental and Sustainability Studies and Biology from the University of Kentucky. Carolyn E. Sachs is Emerita Professor of Rural Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Her research focuses on gender and agriculture and gender and environment. Her most recent book is Gender, Agriculture, and Agrarian Transformations: Changing Relations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia (2019). Her other books include The Rise of Women Farmers in Sustainable Agriculture (2016, co-authored), Gendered Fields: Women, Agriculture, Environment (1991), and Invisible Farmers:Women in Agriculture (1983). Nari Senanayake is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research bridges geographic work on health/disease, agrarian environments, and scholarship on the politics of knowledge, science, and expertise. In particular, her current research project focuses on everyday encounters with a severe and mysterious form of chronic kidney disease (CKDu) in Sri Lanka’s dry zone. Kathleen Sexsmith is Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Her research interests include migrant farmworkxiv

Contributors

ers in North American agriculture and the gendered impacts of sustainability standards in the Global South. She holds a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University, an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Economics from the University of Manitoba. Amanda Shaw is lecturer and researcher on the gendered politics of food, agriculture and international development. She has written on the gendered dimensions of anti-GMO activism and the intersections of racial capitalism and contemporary philanthropic programs in agriculture. Her research interests include analyses of settler colonialism and feminist political economy. As a researcher and advocate, Amanda has worked on resourcing feminist movements and in bringing gender and social perspectives to the felds of economic development, trade and agriculture. Amanda was raised and lives on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi and traces her family origins back to the UK and Europe via Appalachia and the Ozark mountains. She currently teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Whitney Shervey is a professional cook from Portland, OR where she has worked in food work for 20 years. She is a queer culinary educator who has a passion for building power within her community through food from seed to plate.After years of working in the restaurant industry, she is committed to using labor organizing to transform the food industry to be more equitable. Sally Shortall is the Duke of Northumberland Professor of Rural Economy, Newcastle University in the UK. She is interested in the role of women in agriculture and has carried out research on this topic for the European Parliament, the European Commission, the FAO, and the Scottish Government. Emily M.L. Southard is an MS/Ph.D. student in Rural Sociology and International Agriculture and Development at Pennsylvania State University. She is interested in women’s empowerment in agriculture, climate change and gender in agriculture, and gender and migration. Her current work focuses on Cambodia. Forrest Stagner is a dual-title Ph.D. candidate in Rural Sociology and International Agriculture and Development at Pennsylvania State University. He holds a BA in Political Science and a Master of International Studies from North Carolina State University. He completed a 27-month Peace Corps service in rural Zambia, then later went on to complete an 11-month service with Peace Corps Response at the University of Makeni in Sierra Leone. His research interests are in the areas of smallholder agriculture and climate change resiliency with a special emphasis on livestock as a climate change adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ann R. Tickamyer is Professor Emerita of Rural Sociology and Demography with affliations in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. She specializes in gender and development, rural poverty and livelihoods, and gender, disaster, and climate change. Shakara Tyler is received her doctorate from Michigan State University (MSU) studying Black agrarianism and agroeoclogical education in the Department of Community Sustainability. She has served as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the MSU Department of Philosophy exploring the histories and contemporary formations of Afro-Indigenous Ecologies. She currently explores participatory and decolonial research methodologies and community-centered pedagogies in the food justice and food sovereignty movements. xv

Contributors

Hannah Whitley (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Penn State. Her Master’s work explores how socially constructed identities complicate barriers and opportunities for agriculturalists and connect to broader institutional inequities that perpetuate these problems. To learn more about Hannah’s thesis, visit www.thefemalefarmerphotovoiceproject.org.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Deanna Behring,Assistant Dean and Director of International Programs at Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. She and her offce staff have provided tremendous support for this project, with a special acknowledgment to Ty Butler and his work in organizing the workshop for the book.We would also like to thank CGIAR for their support of the Gender Research Intensive Training for gender post-doctoral scholars at Penn State and their support for the workshop for the book. Jacqueline Ashby spawned the original idea for this training, which has enabled us to bring together a dynamic group of interdisciplinary scholars at Penn State. Since that time, we have formed Gender Equity in Agricultural Research and Education (GEARE).This dynamic and growing network supports new research on innovative and sustainable gender-integrated development practices and works to build gender-focused capacity among scholars, practitioners, and producers.We also acknowledge the support of the Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program and Gary Thompson in the Offce of Research and Graduate Education at Penn State’s College of Agriculture. We would also like to deeply thank all of the women and men (or people) across the world who work hard, often under trying circumstances, to produce food for us all.

xvii

INTRODUCTION Carolyn E. Sachs, Leif Jensen, Paige Castellanos, and Kathleen Sexsmith

Academics and development practitioners are increasingly recognizing the importance of gender issues in agriculture and food security. Beginning with Ester Boserup’s formative work on women in agricultural development in 1970, the feld of gender and agriculture has grown over the past several decades with important studies and insights from across the world. Gender relations in agriculture are shifting globally along with changes in production practices in agriculture, the organization of production, the structure of value chains, climate, the global pandemic, and national and multinational policy. In some regions, this has compounded the ongoing feminization of agriculture, as women assume more of the labor on family farms and in corporate agriculture. Nevertheless, women, compared to men, often experience limited access to land, labor, capital, credit, and extension services in agriculture (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2011). Women also often fll precarious wage employment positions in agriculture in which they are vulnerable to harsh labor practices and inequitable compensation. Moreover, the increasing control of the corporate sector in agriculture in both the North and South creates new stresses and pressures on men and their ability to fulfll masculinity norms in agricultural communities. Many scholars in the US and Europe focus on changing gender relations on family farms, including shifts in who identifes as a “farmer,” changing gender divisions of labor, and the connection between gender and sustainable and organic agriculture. At the global level, priorities as refected in the United Nations’ sustainable and millennium development goals (SDGs and MDGs, respectively) emphasize the importance of gender equity and women’s empowerment in obtaining food security and ending hunger.As a result, research and development policies and practices have been implemented to understand gender inequities in agriculture and to increase women’s empowerment on farms and in agricultural value chains. Some emerging, innovative research and policies look at transformations of gender identities and efforts to achieve more equitable and satisfying agricultural livelihoods for both women and men. Data collection methods emphasize the importance of collecting sex-disaggregated data, ethnographic insights, and developing more nuanced tools to better understand women’s position and role in agriculture and inform more equitable policies.

1

Introduction

Organization and topics This handbook on gender and agriculture provides a useful reference for both scholars and practitioners interested in the feld. The volume also helps to chart the future of the feld by providing the latest theoretical and empirical innovations by leading and upcoming scholars. Chapters cover major theoretical issues as well as critical empirical shifts in gender and agriculture.We selected topics of both historical and emerging importance to capture groundbreaking work on gender and agriculture by scholars and policymakers. We attempted to cover issues of gender and agriculture in most regions of the world and to recruit contributors from those regions as well. Most of the chapters provide an overview of the topic on a global scale, and some chapters focus on the particular region where the author works. The book is organized into four parts that represent issues at different scales, from the global to the levels of the community and individual identities. Part 1,“Institutions, markets, and policies for gender and agriculture,” covers the gender dimensions of agricultural policies, the organization of agriculture, and different trade regimes. Part 2,“Land, labor, and agrarian transformations,” deals with gendered access to land, labor, and technology. In addition, the part covers how agricultural transformations, such as climate change and sustainability, impact gender relations. Part 3,“Knowledge, methods, and access to information,” addresses gendered access to critical agricultural knowledge and technical information as well as advances in gender research methods. Part 4,“Farming people and identities,” concerns issues of farmer identities, femininity, and sexuality, as well as farmworkers and farm families. The parts are inclusive of diverse regions, topics, and approaches in order to cover the breadth of each thematic area. There are other emerging topics, such as gender and agrobiodiversity, men and masculinities, and women’s leadership, that we were not able to include in this volume as separate chapters, but many of these issues are addressed in other chapters.

Refection on the process The institutional and intellectual context within which this volume emerged has shaped its form and approach.We describe that context here and refect on the process followed to produce this handbook to provide readers with a fuller understanding of the collaborative effort involved. This work is rooted in the Gender Equity through Agricultural Research and Education (GEARE) initiative of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, USA. GEARE consists of a highly interdisciplinary cluster of faculty and graduate students who seek to initiate and respond to new opportunities for research, instruction, and evidence-based outreach that address the intersections of gender with agricultural and environmental sciences. Broadly, this dynamic and growing network supports new research on innovative and sustainable gender-integrated development practices and works to help build gender-focused capacity among scholars, practitioners, and producers. On the research side, GEARE has been anchored around a suite of projects that have brought social and natural scientists together to study gender and agriculture in Honduras, Cambodia, Ghana, the United States, and elsewhere.With respect to capacity building, GEARE’s efforts have been rooted in intensive training in gender-attentive social science research methods designed for agricultural scientists from all disciplines. Known as the Gender Research and Integrated Training (GRIT) program, made possible with generous funding from the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), our team has been able to reach successive cohorts of CGIAR gender scholars who work in over 20 different countries with our intensive training. Several co-authors in this volume were involved in the GRIT program as instructors or participants. 2

Introduction

GEARE and GRIT provided the substantive foundation, intellectual motivation, and core network of scholars that served as the point of departure for this volume.This and other professional networks provided an important basis to recruit scholars from around the world.The editors, in consultation with other GEARE colleagues, inventoried critical topics within gender and agriculture. For each topic, we sought leading scholars from within the GEARE and GRIT networks and beyond to craft the chapters of this handbook. Once authors were identifed and had written their initial drafts, Penn State hosted and CGIAR supported a workshop in June 2019 at which many of the chapters were thoroughly vetted and discussed. It is noteworthy that presentations of the chapters were not given by the authors themselves, but by primary and secondary reviewers who had read the papers in advance.The authors were then given a chance to respond.This proved to be a highly effective mechanism to build a collaborative spirit among all authors who attended and to identify emergent themes and commonalities across chapters. We discussed the challenges of bridging and encompassing a global perspective on a topic, how much of the author’s voice and identity to include, and how to adequately cover large topics in short chapters. As a group, we developed and discussed these challenges, refecting on the process of putting together a chapter of this nature, and hopefully strengthening the fnal products. Ample time was set aside at the conference for authors to rework their chapters. Finally, the workshop also featured panel discussions on gender and agriculture research that focused on bridging North–South intellectual divides and on emerging research topics.These panel discussions generated ideas that appear throughout this volume.

Part 1: Institutions, markets, and policies for gender and agriculture At the structural level, institutions at the global, national, and local levels impact gender and agriculture, including who has access to land, resources, and knowledge. National governments, markets, and women’s farm organizations institute various policies and strategies to address issues of gender in agriculture and food security. This part begins with a chapter by AroraJonsson and Leder exploring gender mainstreaming in agricultural organizations. They use examples from the North and South to illustrate themes in the literature on gender mainstreaming, including the focus on entrepreneurship, lack of acknowledgment of women’s unpaid work, the gap between policy rhetoric and practice, the lack of women in decision-making, as well as the sometimes problematic championing of men as leaders in gender mainstreaming. A major critique of the gender mainstreaming efforts in agriculture is the failure to confront structural inequities, such as land ownership. Pyburn and Kruijssen’s chapter addresses gender and agricultural value chains.They explain that the bulk of studies on women, gender, and value chains show how agricultural value chains can be particularly exploitative of women. Efforts to enhance women’s participation in value chains focus on multiple and sometimes conficting goals of achieving gender equality and enhancing value chain performance. While recognizing the conundrum of trying to improve gender relations within a neoliberal market system, they argue that transforming gender relations within these structures is important at this time. Bain looks specifcally at how private voluntary food standards (PVS) that address gender equity can improve working conditions for women. Wage employment in agriculture is low paid, insecure, part-time, and has few benefts for both men and women, but gender discrimination is rampant with women often working in the lowest-paid and most precarious positions. Nevertheless, many companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are attempting to establish standards that enhance the position of women and move toward more gender equity. Research does show that in some instances, PVS can improve women’s working conditions 3

Introduction

in agriculture in terms of wages, work hours, and health and safety. Bain asserts that women’s primary responsibility for reproductive and household labor is never addressed by private frms which they see as outside their purview. Portman focuses on gender and food sovereignty.The concept of food sovereignty emerged largely through the work of La Vía Campesina as a critique of the corporate food system and FAO’s defnition of food security. She argues that gender equity and women’s empowerment were part of the food sovereignty movement’s agenda from the beginning. However, she worries that the other goals of the food sovereignty movement may confict with gender equity and that certain solutions, such as honoring the family farm or maintaining cultural traditions, may reproduce gender inequity. Van der Burg presents the most recent advancements of gender integration in international agricultural research and also research that is in development. She argues that institutions, in promoting their work on agriculture-related sciences as “science for impacts”, implicitly acknowledge their societal contexts, but in-depth cooperation of life and social scientists has proven to be diffcult. She shows how fve distinct research orientations largely overlap and can be linked in their common societal context.With recent examples she highlights how this has led to fruitful ways to further explore the integration of a gender dimension as intersecting with other social dimensions while aiming at improving both gender equality as well as agricultural livelihoods. Finally, Newton’s chapter focuses on the gender, agriculture, and nutrition nexus. She argues that many previous approaches to studying gender and nutrition focused on women as household providers of food and caregivers and therefore places the responsibility of ensuring household nutrition on women without understanding the gender and power relations in the household. She suggests using a food systems model and incorporating an intersectional perspective and new measures of empowerment to understand and deliver appropriate gender, agriculture, and nutrition efforts.

Further research questions and approaches The fndings from the chapters in part 1 point to the following list of questions and possible approaches to future research: •

•

• •

Intersectional approaches ensure that the different social categories studied (age, ethnicity, sex, race, socioeconomic standing, citizenship, etc.) are the “right” ones to meet the intervention or study objectives. Such an approach would include disaggregated analysis of different types of food system outcomes compared across different groups and multiple intersections of marginalization. Examine institutions rather than focusing solely on women’s capacities and gender norms. What structural and institutional elements support women’s empowerment and create space for the transformation of gender dynamics? Such an approach will help alleviate the pressure for transformation that is placed on women when they become the sole objective of study and development programming. Analyze gender differences in food system outcomes across different food system typologies to understand the consequences of food system archetypes on different types of women and men. Studies of gender and agriculture should look beyond production to processing, marketing, and post-harvest activities, in which women are more likely to be involved. Studying gender and agriculture requires consideration of the societal context of agriculture widely;

4

Introduction

•

both how gender in agriculture is impacted in sector-specifc ways but also how alternatives can contribute to the common society beyond food supply. Include analyses of sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Sexual harassment is pervasive in many agricultural work contexts, and gender-based violence is widespread in the household, community, and workplace. However, these topics are under-studied, perhaps because they relate to the reproductive sphere rather than agricultural production itself, and deserve more attention.

Policy and implementation Part 1 also points toward the following set of possible policy and programming actions: • • • • • •

Be careful of solutions that reinscribe women’s traditional and undervalued roles in agriculture, food systems, and nutrition. Efforts to enhance women’s participation in the formal market and value chains must also address domestic labor. The state could play a greater role in support of women’s unpaid care labor. More women, and particularly minority women, should be sitting at the decision-making tables of agricultural institutions, such as national research institutions, policymaking agencies, and international research centers. Policy needs to address the gap between rhetoric and practice in gender mainstreaming within institutions. Further change of agricultural organizations is needed as they reimagine agriculture to be inclusive of not only women, but all genders, sexualities, and expressions of gender, and of the heterogeneities existing among women and among men. Remember that gender is about women and men and how they relate. While some projects come a long way in reframing initiatives using a gender lens, this remains a challenge. Much work still focuses mostly on women and reaching women rather than transforming gender relations.

Part 2: Land, labor, and agrarian transformations This part addresses gendered access to land and other agricultural and natural resources in the context of agrarian transformation. Petrzelka focuses on women farmland owners, particularly in the Midwest of the United States, who do not operate their farms. She fnds that women often do not exercise decision-making power on how their land is farmed and managed, even when they own the land. Moreover, women often cede power over their land because they are viewed as placeholders between farming generations, they might not have experience farming, and they are involved in complex social and community relations with the person renting and farming their land. She gives examples of positive experiences for women who join groups that have encouraged them to participate in farming decisions. Chung’s chapter on gender and land-grabbing demonstrates how gender is central but often neglected in the land-grab debate. She focuses on fve areas where gender is essential in understanding land-grabbing, including 1) consultation and negotiation, 2) access to land and livelihoods, 3) compensation and resettlement, 4) labor relations, and 5) political reactions from below and above. She argues that land-grabbing involves processes of displacement, dispossession, and exploitation that are deeply gendered.

5

Introduction

In their chapter, Ransom and Stagner provide evidence that women and men beneft differentially from different animals and animal products.They discuss how two livestock systems have evolved, including the industrial livestock system typical of the Global North and the smallholder livestock system that characterizes animal production in the Global South. They focus on gender and livestock production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where many smallholder households depend on animal products for their incomes, savings, and consumption.They identify three gendered aspects of livestock, including 1) income and markets, 2) health and nutrition, and 3) risk and vulnerability. Alston’s chapter addresses the gender impacts of climate change. She expresses concern that when gender issues are addressed in policy discourses, there is a tendency to essentialize and assume homogeneity among women’s experiences, depicting them as helpless victims, especially in the Global South. She discusses international and national policies that could address the gender dynamics of climate change. Flora’s chapter investigates sustainable intensifcation as a strategy to improve conservation agriculture and social sustainability. She examines the gendered dimensions of sustainable intensifcation by using a community capitals approach that examines natural, cultural, human, social, fnancial, political, and built capital. Mittal argues that information and communication technologies (ICTs) and particularly mobile phones open up opportunities for bridging the gender gaps in access to information in agriculture. She cites examples from India, Bangladesh, and many African countries in which access to mobile phones empowers women by giving them access to current information about agricultural production strategies, climate change, and markets. However, she cautions that although women feel empowered with access to information, they still must be able to have the resources to convert this information into action. Rajaratnam, Ahern, and McDougall’s chapter uses a gender political economy approach to understand the gender dynamics of fsheries and aquaculture.They explore the gendered tensions between and within the industrial fshing industry and the small-scale fsheries sector. In both sectors, exploitation of labor is common and gender inequities exist. In their review, they highlight how gendered engagement in small-scale fsheries and aquaculture varies by context as well as in relation to intersectional factors, such as class or caste. Shaw highlights the intersection of gender and race as they relate to genetically modifed organisms (GMOs), and specifcally, transgenic crops. She provides an overview of the controversies surrounding transgenic technologies and concludes that they have proved neither as disastrous nor as miraculous as people on both sides of the controversies have proposed. She asks why there has been so little attention to gender and GMOs and poses a fascinating and comprehensive research agenda. Mehar’s chapter discusses the importance of including gender in climate-smart agriculture (CSA)—a set of technologies and tools to reduce the impacts of climate change in agriculture while also promoting agricultural productivity. Mehar notes that most CSA efforts have not adequately dealt with gender, and when they do, they focus solely on women and ignore intersectional analysis. She offers a series of tools and training on gender and CSA and goes on to provide a detailed analysis of how the technologies of CSA differentially impact men and women. Finally,Whitley’s chapter on gender and urban agriculture reveals that women comprise the majority of urban agriculturalists across the globe. She explains that women predominate in urban agriculture for a number of reasons, including their responsibility for household nutrition, diffculty fnding wage employment, connection to community, and self-fulfllment. As in rural agriculture, the main barrier for urban agriculturalists is access to land and land tenure. They also encounter other barriers, many of which are similar to other women farmers, including 6

Introduction

lack of access to resources, lack of an agricultural background, limited mentorship, household responsibilities, and isolation.

Further research questions and approaches The fndings from the chapters in part 2 point to the following list of questions and possible approaches to future research: • • • • • • • •

What role does competition for farmland, including land-grabbing, play in women’s rights on their land and women’s access to land? We should consider how the coloniality of gender and its differential confgurations across time and space results in different experiences of and responses to competition over land in diverse agrarian contexts. How do community pressures and rural contexts impact women’s rights on their land? There need to be deeper engagements with capitalist agrarian transition and the kinds of politics and struggles it generates for different groups of rural people, including by race and ethnicity. How do gender, race, ethnicity, and other aspects of difference relate to the politics of GMO regulation and resistance movements across sites? How do various anti-GMO movements frame gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, and other differences, and what forms of support, participation, and activist subjectivities do these framings produce, sustain, and constrain? How do biotechnologies shape gender relations within and beyond farms, including in seed and agrochemical organizations? How do different intersectional identities, such as different confgurations of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender, infuence the sustainability of urban agriculture operations and offer suggestions for improvements needed to make urban agriculture institutional and social spaces more equitable?

Policy and implementation Part 2 also points toward the following set of possible policy and programming actions: • •

•

• •

Implementing serious gender mainstreaming, not merely lip service, in institutions and organizations that focus on climate change should be central to any climate change planning for the future. Alternative networks have served as an avenue to help women in the face of bias and discrimination related to land. Governments need to step up to address institutional discrimination, building on the work established through global policy initiatives, including the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings, and our expanding understanding of climate changes. As gender-, race-, and ethnically rooted coalitions rise from urban agriculture spaces, public and private offcials should support and encourage such organizations through representation on committees, task forces, and leadership positions, and via resource, fnance, and labor provisions. There is a need for increased geographical and demographic representation of women landowners. Widespread policy changes at all levels are necessary for long-term impact. 7

Introduction

Part 3: Knowledge, methods, and access to information This part covers access to agricultural information and strategies for studying women’s involvement in agriculture. Gaining knowledge about agriculture information is critical for success in agriculture. Numerous strategies exist for both women and men to learn about new agricultural technologies and innovations. The most common approach in the Global North and South is the use of agricultural extension services. In her chapter, Barbercheck provides a brief history of agricultural extension. She reveals that the three major barriers for women’s access to extension are that they are not recognized as farmers, lack access to information provided to farmers’ groups, and have limited time to attend training and meetings. Using the best ft model, she discusses the example of the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) extension program as one model for reaching women farmers. Tickamyer’s chapter summarizes feminist approaches to agricultural research, especially in the Global South. She analyzes and compares different research designs, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, participatory, and case studies. She then discusses the dilemmas that researchers face in real-world practice. Choudhury and Castellanos track the implementation of farmer feld schools and identify opportunities for gender integration and transformation through participatory educational methods.They argue that targeted efforts in agricultural development programming need to be made in order to address gender inequities. Structural barriers and broader societal norms also infuence women’s ability to participate successfully in agricultural production and need to be taken into consideration. Allen and Shervey address gendered violence in the food service industry, focusing on the US. This gender violence takes three forms: direct, cultural, and structural. They argue that unions, worker centers, and consumer-worker alliances can begin to address gendered violence and injustice for food service workers. Two chapters investigate women’s involvement in farm organizations. Carter focuses on women and farm organizations in the United States. She uses Ely and Meyerson’s typology to discuss the different approaches of women farmer organizations to addressing gender equity, which include “Fix the Woman, Value the Feminine, Create Equal Opportunity, and Assess and Revise Work Culture.” She then details Iowa’s Women Food and Agriculture Network. Shortall and Adesugba compare women’s involvement in farm organizations in the Global North and South focusing primarily on Europe and Africa. They fnd that despite drastic differences in agricultural practices and conditions, the patterns of women’s participation in agriculture organizations are quite similar across these regions. Women in both the North and South have formed women-only organizations that focus on networking, skill-building, and leadership development. However, these organizations are often sidelined by more mainstream farming organizations. Women’s participation, not to mention leadership in mainstream farming organizations, remains extremely limited in both the North and South. Martinez et al. share the latest updated methods from the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFRPI’s) Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), including the project level version that increases opportunities for application in diverse contexts. This now widespread tool for data collection is based on scholarship on empowerment and provides a quantitative tool for many development projects to implement, allowing for cross-cultural and multinational comparisons. 8

Introduction

Further research questions and approaches The fndings from the chapters in part 3 point to the following list of questions and possible approaches to future research: • •

• • •

How can structural barriers be changed to encourage more equitable access to resources, including production inputs, knowledge, and land? We need ongoing data collection and research to best understand gender equality issues and transforming gender roles related to agriculture. New and innovative methods must be able to uncover rigorous evidence of women’s and men’s conditions, livelihoods, and norms that infuence issues of agriculture and food security. How can delivery methods related to agricultural knowledge and training best serve smallholder farmers, taking into consideration gender norms? We need to continue to develop our understanding of gender-transformative projects and identifying the best mechanisms for addressing changing gender roles. Future research should explore additional sectors and aspects of the food system to uncover gender inequities and injustices.

Policy and implementation Part 3 also points toward the following set of possible policy and programming actions: • • • • • • • •

Extension practices in the developing and developed world can inform each other to beneft historically underserved populations. Extension educators need to gain skills and attitudes to empower themselves to assess gender dynamics and use approaches that foster women’s participation and meet the educational needs of men and women. Social structure and process should be integrated into all agricultural research, with gender a central but by no means the only social component. As greater recognition of the impact of intersectional identities and social locations become more standard, the methodology should incorporate greater attention to salient variables and seek to erase misplaced binary constructions. Alliances are needed between unions, worker centers, and consumer-worker groups to prevent gendered violence in the food service industry. Mainstreaming gender, or including a gender perspective, in all stages of extension program development, delivery, and evaluation, can raise the visibility and awareness of women’s contributions to agriculture and the constraints that impede their success and productivity. Fostering more gender-aware, -inclusive, and -responsive programming can improve women’s access to information and other critical resources, help build women’s participation and leadership, and improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods worldwide. More mobile phone access and agricultural information can reduce gender disparities in agricultural extension.

Part 4: Farming people and identities A wide diversity of people work in farming and agriculture across many regions and in different types of agriculture, with gender an infuential factor in who does the work, who has access to resources, and who makes decisions.While gender acts as the overarching framework for all of 9

Introduction

the chapters in this part, many of the chapters look at intersectional identities, including race, class, indigeneity, citizenship, and sexuality. Signifcant scholarship has focused on gender and agriculture, examining and explaining differences between men and women. Recently, feminist scholarship used the concept and theories of intersectionality to examine multiple identities as well as overlapping systems of oppression. The concept of intersectionality emerged from the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), who explained how legal discrimination against African American women in the US was based on both their race and their gender and that the two categories could not be analyzed separately. The concept of intersectionality has expanded to reference the confuence of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender identity, ability, age, nationality, and citizenship in shaping systems of oppression as well as individual identities. In agriculture, an intersectional approach helps us to understand labor, decision-making, household strategies, and the health of workers (Leder and Sachs, 2019). Adesugba, Oughton, and Shortall compare the livelihood strategies of families involved in agriculture in the Global North and South with a focus on Europe and Africa.They fnd that gender shapes household and individual decisions about migration, off-farm employment, and diversifcation differently in the Global South than the North. However, one commonality is the continued responsibility of women for caring and reproductive activities. Sexsmith and Griffn utilize a reproductive justice framework to understand the gendered forms of labor control that keep women farmworkers vulnerable and their labor cheap. They show how sexual violence functions to discipline women migrant farmworkers in US agriculture into conforming to precarious forms of work, including non-permanent, low-wage, and unsafe work. Also, patriarchal norms in Latin American cultures intersect with the social and economic vulnerabilities that place farmworkers in precarious labor conditions, making it diffcult for women to respond to incidents of abuse. Lope-Alzina focuses on indigenous women in Latin America and their contribution to traditional agricultural systems. She argues that women are often the keepers of seed diversity and knowledge about traditional agricultural systems. The signifcance of their contributions has been ignored because they are viewed as engaged only in reproductive work. The situation is changing as women are increasingly recognized as conservers of biodiversity and are beginning to organize as activists in agriculture. Hoffelmeyer’s chapter on queer farmers shows how the rhetoric of the family farm reinforces heteronormativity. She argues that the widespread promotion of the family farm is a heterosexist tool that erases the visibility of queer farmers. In their chapter on farm women’s identities, Whitley and Brasier explore how women on farms take different identities and how those identities are shifting.While men continue to dominate agricultural production and the identity of “farmer” is often tied to men, more women in the US and Europe are identifying as farmers rather than as farmwives. Senanayake and Ritter explore the literature on gender, health, and farming.They fnd three key areas of research, including how women’s empowerment is related to food security and household nutrition, gender differences in agricultural chemical exposure, and the differential impacts of emerging infectious diseases in agrarian spaces.They argue that the limitation of most of this scholarship comes from the focus on gender binaries and spatial binaries of production (the feld) and reproduction (the kitchen).They clearly articulate how recent feminist theories that focus on intersectionality and social reproduction can result in better understandings as well as policies related to gender, health, and agriculture. Brandth notes that embodiment—the physical experiences, impacts, and emotions associated with work—has not been an explicit focus of most studies of gender and agriculture. She shows how embodiment is important in understanding the organization of the family farm through 10

Introduction

emotional and sexual relationships between husbands and wives. Men’s bodies are defned as the agricultural worker, while women on farms are often assumed to be relegated to care work. She also points out how the gendering of technology is tied to embodiment in agriculture in ways that favor men’s bodies and farmer identities. Southard and Jensen present an analysis of gender, agriculture, and migration. They fnd that most migrants out of and into agriculture are men, but more women are now migrating.They examine the gender of the out-migrant in order to interrogate how gender affects household division of labor, decision-making, gender norms, access to key resources, and emotional well-being. Tyler situates Black feminist agrarian ideologies within the developing world and decolonial feminisms. She examines Black womxn’s relationship to land ownership in the US and calls for a rematriation process as a way forward. Bryant’s chapter on gender, farming, and mental health argues that male farmer suicide remains a concerning and persistent complex problem in many societies, which requires extensive interventions at multiple scales. However, the focus on male farmer suicides ignores the higher rates of attempted suicide and self-harm among farm women. She argues that the concepts of mental health or mental ill-health are limiting and that the term “distressed sociobodies” better accounts for distress and suicide for those engaged in farming.

Further research questions and approaches The fndings from the chapters in part 4 point to the following list of questions and possible approaches to future research: • • • • •

• • • •

The nuances and similarities between the North and South about farming livelihood strategies from a gendered perspective also call for new thinking on how gender roles can be better understood to ensure equality among household members. Future work on gender and agriculture would beneft from taking an intersectional approach that looks at complex and multiple identities rather than focusing on simple gender binaries of male/female. The limited research on queer farmers focuses on those performing sustainable agriculture in Europe and the US. More research is needed on queer farmers and farmworkers in conventional agriculture and other parts of the world. We need to explore how farming women manage their performances and identities related to the lack of approval from family members, other farmers, other women, and agricultural service providers. Researchers and practitioners should refect upon their own internalized heteronormativity in constructing research instruments and analyzing households. Using multiple gender response categories in surveys and allowing for emergent topics through qualitative research approaches are steps toward allowing queerness to emerge as an object of academic inquiry. How does gender affect who migrates out of and into agricultural work, and how are migration decisions made? What is the impact of migration on left-behind men when women migrate? Longitudinal studies are needed to provide an understanding of the gender dynamics of migration before, during, and after migration. How do farming masculinities intersect with age, ethnicities, race, and sexuality to shape distress and risks for male farmer suicide? We need to explore diverse localities and diverse migrant experiences of working on farms. Are inequalities spread unevenly across intersectional categories? What are some of the 11

Introduction

• •

success stories of farmworkers and farmers working collaboratively to support farmworker well-being in rural areas? To explore emotional aspects of people’s lives in farming, research needs to move beyond traditional methods of inquiry, like surveys, and include arts-based methods, like photography or writing fction, that may evoke deep feelings about distress. Use intersectionality theory to analyze how gender inequality and interlocking experiences of social difference shape lives, health, and well-being in agrarian environments.

Policy and implementation Part 4 also points toward the following set of possible policy and programming actions: • • • • • • •

Agricultural institutions must recognize how using the family farm rhetoric reinforces heteronormativity and discriminates against queer farmers. More organizing in agriculture across intersecting identities is needed. In Latin America and elsewhere, indigenous women are organizing to empower and recognize their contributions to agriculture and biodiversity. To overcome gender inequalities, programs and policies implemented by intergovernmental platforms must ensure the involvement and participation of different groups of stakeholders, from grass-root organizations to national governments. Knowledge of the multiple roles women perform on farms and their related educational and technical assistance needs could enhance how service providers and support organizations market to and aid women farmers. Efforts to outline the paths and processes by which farmwomen’s identities are formed must continue, placing emphasis on the alignment between farming women’s identities and the specifc roles and behaviors performed by women. Moving toward Black feminist agrarian ideologies primes all of us for rematriation, where we can more readily engage in dialectical coalition building and renewing cultural kinships with the land and her stewards. Queer people can offer alternative visions for a truly sustainable agriculture.

References Crenshaw, K. (1989). “Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1(1):139–167. Leder, S. and C. Sachs. (2019). “Intersctionality at the gender-agriculture nexus.” 75–92 in Sachs, C. (ed.) Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia. London: Routledge.

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PART 1

Institutions, markets, and policies for gender and agriculture

1 GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN AGRICULTURAL AND FORESTRY INSTITUTIONS Seema Arora-Jonsson and Stephanie Leder

Gender mainstreaming in agricultural and forestry institutions Gender mainstreaming, as a necessity, comes up frequently in the realm of development and environmental governance and often in different places at different times.The push came frst when feminists at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 made it an essential part of all national strategies. Since then, gender mainstreaming has come to mean many different things. In the world of agricultural institutions though, most meanings have hinged on the persons of “women” and their inclusion into mainstream programs and projects. Critics have argued that gender mainstreaming policies have served to bureaucratize gender and that adding women to existing programs underwrites their previous invisibility by reducing them to a tick mark on required forms. Such bureaucratic approaches, according to many, have absolved organizations from doing anything substantive about gender discrimination that arises out of inequalities in power relations. Some have, in fact, argued for doing away with the idea of gender mainstreaming altogether (see Arora-Jonsson, 2014, for an overview of this debate). In this chapter, we take up the question of gender mainstreaming with an eye to how it has been undertaken in the global North and South, the obvious connections in the ways in which it is conceived in transnational spaces and institutions, but also some interesting disjunctures that make themselves apparent when seen in a North–South perspective.1 At the core of the debates on mainstreaming has been that gender (read women) needs to be mainstreamed and brought into the fold—the fold being markets. And yet, research has also shown how women often choose to keep outside or negotiate their presence in markets in novel ways (e.g.,Arora-Jonsson, 2013, p. 224; Newman, 2013). In the following sections, we examine the issue of gender mainstreaming in agriculture and forestry in the North and South. There has been relatively less research on large agricultural and forestry organizations from a gender perspective, especially those based in the global South. Here, we take two examples of gender mainstreaming and draw upon existing research to illustrate some of the major dilemmas as well as parallels and disjunctures in gender mainstreaming across the North and South. The examples span cases from a global context: the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to one of its organizations at a national level, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Nepal, and the Lantbrukarnas Riksförbund or Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF)’s Gender Equality Academy in Sweden 15

Seema Arora-Jonsson and Stephanie Leder

that was set up to mainstream gender among the members of the federation.We begin with a brief context of rural areas where gender is meant to be mainstreamed and go on to describe the cases briefy.We then take up four cross-cutting themes that emerge from the literature on gender mainstreaming2 that we contextualize in relation to the three cases: 1) from gender mainstreaming being added on as an afterthought to the neoliberal critique and the focus on markets, 2) the lack of acknowledgment of women in on-farm and off-farm work (unpaid work), 3) the gap between policy rhetoric and practice and differences in top-down and culturally responsive gender mainstreaming, and 4) women’s presence in decision-making and men’s championship of gender mainstreaming. The examples above are different, and gender mainstreaming attempts take place differently in the three contexts we study. CGIAR is a consortium of 15 organizations working on various aspects of agriculture, forestry, and livestock.These organizations work in the global South with international and national researchers in country offces.They carry out transdisciplinary research and work in close collaboration with partners responsible for project implementation. Among their many tasks, they also carry out training for CGIAR partners and villagers. Gender mainstreaming in the CGIAR involves discussions at a transnational level, and mainstreaming attempts on the ground are mediated by a range of actors from the global to the local level, with potentially different understandings of gender equality.These differences in conceptualizations of gender mainstreaming also recur at the LRF, although the LRF is somewhat different as its Gender Academy is seen as a thinktank to promote gender mainstreaming/integration among its members and is not as close to project implementation on the ground. Furthermore, the Gender Academy commissions academics and consultants to produce research reports on given topics and does not have the staff that do so themselves.

Methods This chapter builds on a review of the literature on gender mainstreaming, primarily from English language journals and books and mainly from the late 1990s onwards when critiques of gender mainstreaming picked up in the literature.The discussion on the LRF is based on two interviews with a former and current employee at the LRF, a desk study of their documents, websites, and press releases,3 as well as Arora-Jonsson’s brief work for them as the co-author of the Academy’s frst report. Both authors have been involved with the CGIAR institutions; Arora-Jonsson was invited to CGIAR gender meetings and to hold talks by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), one of the CGIAR organizations working with forests. Leder was employed as a postdoctoral fellow for gender, youth, and inclusive development at the CGIAR research program,Water, Land, and Ecosystems (WLE), at IWMI for three years as an effort by the organization to promote gender research and mainstreaming within the organization. During that time, she also developed a gender training for NGOs, government offcials, and villagers in Nepal and India (Leder, Shrestha, and Das, 2019, for details on the process). The material on CGIAR also builds on reports, participant observation at the organization/s, and experiences of Leder’s frst-hand work on gender mainstreaming at IWMI.

Mainstreaming in a context of gendered agrarian change Gender mainstreaming is set within rapid agrarian change marked by rural out-migration, urbanization, technological change, market integration of rural areas, as well the falling status of farming, both in the global North and South, though it has taken place at different scales, times, and to different extents in the two contexts (Agarwal and Agrawal, 2017; Arora-Jonsson, 16

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2013). In large parts of the global North, employment in farming has consistently declined (e.g., see Hedlund and Lundholm (2015) for Sweden). In many parts of the global South, non-farm employment has grown much slower, and vast numbers are confned to agriculture not out of choice but from a lack of alternatives (see Agarwal and Agrawal, 2017, for India). Farming is also largely a family enterprise with family farming prevalent across the world, although in different ways. Both in the rural North and South, the effects of out-migration on agricultural institutions and gender relations show that these processes have been associated with new challenges for those “left behind.” Researchers have pointed to the extra burden on women when men migrate, especially in the absence of security of land tenure and ownership, as well as their marginalization from community-related political decision-making (see Matysiak, 2015, for such an argument in Poland and Giri and Darnhofer, 2010, in Nepal). Formal ownership of agricultural land across the globe is by and large vested in men. These differences suggest that the oft-cited “feminization of agriculture” tends to simplify complex social relationships. It is in such contexts that mainstreaming has been taken up by agricultural institutions in different parts of the world.

The cases The CGIAR and IWMI The CGIAR is a consortium of 15 international agricultural research-for-development organizations. Since its foundation in 1971, the CGIAR’s mandate has been the promotion of food security, rural poverty reduction, and sustainable natural resource management. International attention on the importance of gender in agriculture and natural resources became a part of the discussions in the 1970s, and some CGIAR centers turned to gender research in the 1980s (CGIAR-IEA, 2016). However, it was not until much later with the push for gender mainstreaming more widely (see Arora-Jonsson, 2014) and in line with the World Development Report on Gender Equality4 that all CGIAR research programs were formally asked by the CGIAR Consortium Board to commit to gender mainstreaming and to prepare gender strategies in 2011. CGIAR gender mainstreaming has two objectives: to mainstream gender in research, and to promote diversity and gender at the workplace (CGIAR Consortium, 2011). These two objectives are expected to be refected in the planning, budgeting, staffng, implementation, monitoring/accountability, and evaluation of CGIAR’s research-for-development projects. While the CGIAR is staffed mainly by natural scientists working with forests, agriculture, irrigation, seeds, and breeding, the number of social scientists increased from 17% in 1995 to 26.7% in 2008 (CGIAR Science Council, 2009). Social scientists are dominated by economists followed by rural sociologists, anthropologists, human geographers, and political scientists. The chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC), an independent scientifc advisory body of the CGIAR, refected after her attendance at a CGIAR conference on the impacts of international agricultural research in 2017 that with only 300 scientists with PhDs in the social sciences (of a total of more than 8,000 CGIAR researchers and staff), they are “spread quite thinly.”5 Between 2013 and 2016, CGIAR established 20 postdoctoral positions across several of its organizations to support gender research and mainstreaming within the organizations. Projects within the CGIAR research program were obliged to budget 10% of their total funding on gender aspects of their research. The postdocs were meant to advise others and be part of research projects. Recruited from universities in the global North, they came from the felds of economics, anthropology, human geography, sociology, agricultural sciences, and crop and 17

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soil sciences and diverse backgrounds in the global South and North. They were expected to build their expertise through feldwork, publications, and training as well as network with each other across organizational boundaries. Along with others who identifed themselves as gender researchers in the organizations, they communicated through monthly webinars and newsletters, as well as annual conferences to promote research results and gender research methods as well as networking and collaborating among themselves. In 2016, the Gender Research and Integrated Training (GRIT) program was set up in partnership with Penn State University in the USA to increase the quality of research.The African Women for Agricultural Research for Development (AWARD) leadership program was offered to support female scientists and managers at midlevel management positions in developing their leadership qualities under the often-challenging hierarchical and patriarchal circumstances in their organizations.Apart from CGIAR-wide initiatives, several organizations like IWMI, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Potato Center (CIP), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) created “gender focal points” within their organizations who collaborated with each other in working groups on topics such as water and gender, gender dynamics in seed systems, and gender and breeding (CGIAR Research Program on Water, 2017). IWMI in Nepal employed three human geographers from France, Scotland, and Germany as researchers from 2014 to 2017 as well as three Nepali national research offcers with master degrees in geography and development studies from India, Norway, and the UK. Together, they conducted research and organized workshops with researchers, NGO representatives, and government offcials on improved water management and took up the question of gender inequalities, women’s work burden, and limited decision-making power in the context of male outmigration. Partly due to donor and World Bank infuence (Suhardiman, Clement, and Bharati, 2015), Nepal’s national irrigation and drinking water policies had been relatively progressive, making it mandatory for water user committees to have 33% women (Udas and Zwarteveen, 2010).A gender and social inclusion (GESI) unit is mandatory in most of Nepal’s ministries and line departments, as a requirement of the Gender Responsive Budgeting and Planning Directive. However, CGIAR research has pointed out that the outcomes have been limited due to organizational and cultural factors that hinder opportunities for real change (Shrestha and Clement, 2019).We examine some of these aspects below.

The Gender Academy at the Lantbrukarnas Riksförbund, Sweden LRF, the Federation of Swedish Farmers, is an interest and business organization with approximately 140,000 individual members. Apart from individual farmers, almost all cooperatives within Swedish agriculture and forestry are members.The LRF is not affliated with any political party and is an independent organization that fnances its activities through membership fees combined with asset investments and business operations. As it makes clear on its website, the LRF (2019) is committed to promoting green industries and its farmers and foresters so that they can fulfll their vision of growth, proftability, and power of attraction.6 In 2009, the LRF set up the Jämställdhetsakademi, the Academy of Gender Equality (herewith the Academy), in order to promote greater gender equality within farming and forestry. Founded as a thinktank for the LRF, the Academy “initiates and fnances research projects and studies for more knowledge on gender equality and entrepreneurship in the green sectors.We also take part in offcial debates and deliver new knowledge, ideas and are committed to this” (LRF, 2019).The composition of the initial board of the Academy founded in 2009 with high profle “experts,” including a banker, journalist, a gender researcher, and the vice-chancellor of 18

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the agricultural university in Sweden changed in 2016 in a conscious effort to include the heads of the large cooperatives (such as the dairy cooperative, Arla) in order to engage the cooperatives more centrally in gender mainstreaming efforts (Petra Pilawa in LandLantbruk 2016-04-03). In the wake of the #metoo movement in 2017, the sectors were convulsed in three different calls: #slutavverkat (from the forestry sector), #skiljagnarnafrånvetet (farming), and #visparkarbakut (horse riding).7 Women came out with stories about sexual harassment and discrimination within the sector. The LRF stated in a report, “unfortunately we are a long way from being gender-equal” (LRF Jämställdhetsakademi, 2018, pp. 4–5) and stepped up their efforts by organizing seminars, highlighting the issue of gender equality in various forums, and organizing a workshop with their members in the sector.

Gender mainstreaming across the North and South In this section, we analyze some of the main themes that emerged from a review of literature on gender mainstreaming and relate them to our case studies.

1. “Add and stir” to being mainstreamed into markets Scholars have been critical both in the global North (e.g., Shortall, 2015b; Prügl, 2009;Walby, 2005) and South (Parpart, 2014; Piálek, 2008; Mukhopadhyay, Steehouwer, and Wong, 2006; Mukhopadhay, 2004)8 that gender mainstreaming has not meant thinking through of structures that cause gendered inequalities but that it has merely entailed adding women to current unequal structures devised by others than themselves. More specifcally, gender mainstreaming becomes a case of women being mainstreamed into markets. Feminist economists (Folbre, 2006; Elson, 2017) have criticized policy interventions that encourage women’s participation in markets and paid employment in a context where women remain responsible for reproductive and household care work.They comment on the tendency of mainstreaming attempts to disregard limits to women’s time, implicitly assuming it to be infnitely elastic and thus increasing an often heavy burden of labor. While there is extensive evidence that reducing poverty can beneft women by reducing their vulnerability, by expanding their opportunities or by freeing up their time, labor market discrimination and unequal access to higher education have been shown to remain unchanged by economic development (Dufo, 2012). The discourse on the importance of entrepreneurship for empowerment is particularly evident in the global North as we go on to see in our example below. It has made inroads into the global South through micro-credit and income-generation programs. Scholars (Ghosh, 2013; Keating, Rasmussen, and Rishi, 2010) argue that in several places, they have led to fnancial crises, all in the name of women’s empowerment. While marketization can bring benefts by weakening traditionally unequal systems, it has often exacerbated inequalities by commodifying that which was previously uncommodifed (Fraser, 2014).This is clear in policymaking in climate programs where women’s local trade in non-timber forest products in Burkina Faso is sought to be commercialized.This is considered a double win as it enables the country to access climate funds by cutting down on logging as required by the program but is also considered to automatically result in women’s empowerment through their inclusion in larger international markets (Westholm and Arora-Jonsson, 2015). However, the larger markets women are meant to enter are far from equitable, and they have little control over them, bringing new inequities to rural areas (Elias and Saussey, 2013; Elias and Arora-Jonsson, 2018).9 Davids and Eerdewijk (2016) regard this focus on the individual empowerment of women as a defection from the problem of systemic gendered inequalities as the “smothering of feminist aims wherein main19

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streaming gender becomes a handmaiden to a project of neoliberal masculinist governmentality.” By choosing not to be “mainstreamed,” women in certain contexts have maintained a certain autonomy over their trade as well as the issues they took up. However, this is not always an ideal strategy since it has the potential to exclude them from sources of cash and markets—spaces that also needed to be changed (Arora-Jonsson, 2013). The focus on adding women to existing structures and markets, in particular, often to reach other means through gender equality initiatives are evident in both cases. Attempts to empower women economically and bring them into existing market structures are widely evident in CGIAR research programs despite—or rather because of—increasing gender-transformative approaches (Wong et al., 2019) meant to promote structural change and transform unequal power relations. Gender-transformative approaches use normative language that covers up deeply engrained political and cultural structures and practices that shape the lived experiences of farmers. Research that included IWMI showed that discourses and implementation practices tend to focus on technological innovations such as solar or drip irrigation as gender-sensitive, effcient, and productive solutions rather than the institutions, discourses, and practices around water management (Venot et al., 2014). A range of IWMI projects use the language of markets around crop productivity and the adoption of expert-designed (solar) irrigation technologies to generate businesses that can be replicated elsewhere and to create success stories as a response to strategic donor demands, such as that of the World Bank. Simultaneously, the language of markets also hides political and economic structural challenges, such as land and labor policy and practices,10 or social justice issues around caste, religion, gender, and class, which are central in natural resource management in South Asia and elsewhere. Projects in which IWMI collaborated allowed trained gender researchers to bring challenges around gender mainstreaming to the table. One example was a program led by an international NGO in Nepal that sought to empower women farmers by transforming them into rural entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders. The project envisioned a linear impact pathway linking water and market access as well as horticulture training to economic empowerment and women’s leadership.The project rehabilitated water infrastructures, such as water storage ponds and irrigation canals, offered horticulture training to women, and established farmer-managed vegetable collection centers in which women could sell their produce. The approach was grounded in the assumption that through climate-smart technologies, training in micro-irrigation and horticulture, and newly created local markets, women smallholders would be less dependent on rain-fed agriculture and increase their productive use of available water resources.This was seen as primarily benefting “left behind” women whose husbands had left to work in India, Malaysia, or the UAE. The gender researchers, however, observed that the project benefted only some women by reducing their time to fetch water, which enabled them to make petty cash from vegetable sales. In their accompanying study, the gender researchers argued that project implementation followed a business-as-usual approach with a narrow focus on economic empowerment (Leder, Clement, and Karki, 2017). Interventions were apolitical and technically framed and paid little attention to women's and men’s complex social networks, positions, and desire for change. Differences between women—such as age, marital status, caste, remittance fow, and land ownership—were not suffciently recognized and addressed when calling for group meetings and training, or deciding on where water infrastructures were to be rehabilitated or set up. In some instances, the encounters of project staff with villagers further widened inequalities. Interventions benefted mainly higher caste women, while Dalit11 and landless women were

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further marginalized. In two other research projects on water in which IWMI or the CGIAR gender researchers were involved,12 gender was diffcult to mainstream due to a lack of female project staff.Technological interventions such as pond rehabilitation and irrigation pump provisions were more visible and measurable, and hence more valued by the interdisciplinary project team than social interventions (Leder et al., 2019). The focus on markets and entrepreneurship is also evident at the Academy. The LRF Academy was founded in the context of a dwindling number of small farms and an attempt to resuscitate the agricultural sector. In a press release at its founding, the chairman of the Academy (also the vice-chairman of the LRF at the time) said, Women and men should have the same possibilities to start and run companies – that is not the case today. That is why LRF is establishing the Academy of Gender Equality. We want more people to have the possibility of being an entrepreneur within our sectors.There can be obstacles that make it diffcult for women.We cannot afford to disregard women.13 This is also clear from reports commissioned by the Academy with titles such as “Gender Equality Leads to Growth” or its frst report, the “Invisible Entrepreneur.” The coordinator of the Academy was clear about their purpose, “Our vision is the same as that for LRF – we aim for growth, proftability and attractiveness of the green sectors. Gender equality is not an aim in itself but a way for some to reach that vision.”14 There is tension, however, between statements made by the Academy members and the content of some of the reports commissioned to academics who also raise questions of inequalities and injustice as justifcation for gender mainstreaming. Such concerns came to a head in the wake of the #metoo scandals that shook the various groups that make up the LRF. The question of gender equality more broadly became a pressing issue, and, in response, strong leadership on the matter was seen as important. In both cases above, the focus has been on improving women’s economic agency, while the larger gendered context in which it was to take place was not really addressed.This was, however, brought to light by the gender researchers in Nepal, and in the case of the LRF, the larger #metoo movement that prompted women in agriculture and forestry to also raise the alarm.

2. The lack of acknowledgment of women in farm work and households Since the 1970s, feminists across both the North and South have pointed to how women’s work in agriculture and forestry tends to remain unacknowledged and unpaid. Women’s contributions not only to farm work but also unpaid labor in the home as well as contributions to the farm from work outside have tended to be ignored (see overviews in Shortall and Bock, 2015 and Arora-Jonsson, 2014). One implication of this, as Prügl (2009) shows in Germany, is that women’s access to pensions is seriously undermined. Writing on the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, Shortall (2015a, p. 725) wonders how gender mainstreaming can apply to an industry that is intrinsically premised on the exploitation of family labor and particularly women’s labor. Scholars have highlighted the need to deal with structural causes such as the lack of land ownership at the root of gendered inequalities that are left untouched by mainstreaming attempts15 (IsteniČ, 2015; Njuki and Sanginga, 2013; Shortall, 2015a; Agarwal, 2003). In an example from Slovenia, IsteniČ (2015) shows how in the formulation of policies, measures that

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might promote more women owning farms were abandoned as a result of pressure from powerful actors. Drawing on her many years of working with development, Mukhopadhyay claimed in 2004 that gender mainstreaming was tolerated as long as it remained in line with conventional development goals, but its political dimension, which centered on the struggle for gender equality, has been met with resistance. Within the CGIAR, gender researchers or social scientists were often welcomed, but their suggestions for change, such as those in relation to underlying structural disparities like unpaid care work, low wages, or women’s landlessness, were rarely implemented in transdisciplinary project teams. In these cases, the challenge for the natural scientists and economists lay in recognizing approaches that were not quantitative and the importance and need for qualitative approaches to understand people’s experiences of injustice and inequalities. For them, economic cost-beneft analyses spoke a clearer language than analytical or descriptive studies in which many gender researchers sought to explain complex social relations. One such instance was encountered by a gender researcher in work on an action research project with farmer collectives in North Bengal. The gender researcher repeatedly pointed out the unequal power relations of landholding male farmer families and landless women farmers in the “farmer’s collective” with whom they were working and that women’s tasks such as weeding and transplanting were less valued and unaddressed by the project. It was only when she conducted a detailed cost-beneft analysis that clearly demonstrated the fnancial and time loss of female farmers in contrast to the fnancial gain of the male farmers that the project team agreed to address these imbalances. By that time, the landless women had withdrawn from the collective. An elaborate economic argument was needed to convince the transdisciplinary project team of gendered inequalities—while the broader social complexities underlying these were diffcult for them to appreciate (Leder et al., 2019). At the LRF, the main focus had been on making entrepreneurs and formally taking up farming; it was in the wake of the #metoo movement that the Academy commissioned several reports that highlighted women’s hidden contributions to the running of farms as part of their everyday work. In the statistics that the Department of Agriculture gathers on farms, they began to count not only those who owned the farm but also began to ask who else was involved in its running. Through these new surveys, they have shown that although only 17% of women are listed as owners in the green sector, 44% actually manage the farms (Swedish Board of Agriculture, 2010 cited in LRF Gender Equality Academy, 2019). This has been extremely important in recognizing that formal ownership does not have to correspond with the work put into farming. How policy will address this is unclear. Other results that Academy members discussed and that recurred in reports are that women carry out more labor in the home and are mainly responsible for the children (take more parental leave) (LRF Gender Equality Academy, 2014a).As part of this work, the LRF commissioned a report on men who take parental leave and wrote about it on their websites as a way to inspire others within the federation (LRF Gender Equality Academy, 2014b).They also had a series on their websites on successful women entrepreneurs who ran their farms.While the LRF websites highlight examples of successful women “entrepreneurs,” there is little about the many problems that women (and men) face on farms every day—or the many different experiences that different groups of men and women may have.An understanding of inequalities in particular contexts and the relations in which people are embedded still remains a major challenge for gender mainstreaming.

3. The gap between policy and practice While gender mainstreaming has been adopted by most countries since 1995 as an overarching policy in various sectors, scholars show that action on the ground is far from robust and mecha22

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nisms have been wanting (Oedl-Wieser, 2015; Moser and Moser, 2005; Parpart, 2014; Walby, 2005).Authors write about the lack of institutional backup (Piálek, 2008).While some point out the near impossibility of working seriously with mainstreaming in a patriarchal system (Prügl, 2010), others (George, 2007; Leder and Sachs, 2019) show how gender mainstreaming needs to be responsive to the culturally specifc contexts to capture the complex realities in which gender policies are implemented. In 2000, the promotion of gender equality became an offcial objective of the European Union’s Rural Development Program. It was regulated through the obligation of gender mainstreaming and evaluated in the formal Common Agricultural Policy evaluation rounds.A recent analysis across the EU shows that women seldom participated in the program’s formation or decision-making on fund distribution. In addition, most of the “gender” projects funded through the RDP were fragmented attempts, and a coherent plan did not exist (Shortall and Bock, 2015). In Sweden, an evaluation found that most of the support from the program tended to go to men.The evaluation points out that “this is probably the effect of that in general, men are the owners of agricultural property even when it is often the wife who often runs the farm and takes strategic decisions” (Rabinowicz, 2010). Further, Shortall (2015b, p. 719) writes that responsibility for gender mainstreaming was often given to junior staff who did not always have the skills or the experience to deal with the policy and who were under-resourced to do so, akin to Mukhopadhyay (2004)’s “feminists marooned in the development business” in the global South.We go on to analyze this in relation to our examples. With increasing focus on gender within the CGIAR since 2011, a whole vocabulary of “gender,” “feminization of agriculture,” and “women’s empowerment” became everyday language within the CGIAR—in research papers, blog posts, and policy briefs (Leder and Signs, 2016). Much was expected of the gender postdocs in the organizations. Ambitions were high, but the limited time and budget of several did not always match up.Young, mostly female researchers who had just fnished their PhDs were meant to help mainstream gender in projects led by natural scientists or economists working on fows of fnance and resources at large scales and who were hard-pressed to see how it would relate to their work.Although “everyone” was meant to work with gender, there was a recurring complaint among the gender postdocs in the CGIAR that they had become the token gender person responsible for gender mainstreaming with little resources and actual power. It appeared that creating gender staff positions, budgets, conferences, and gender strategies did not automatically result in a cultural and organizational change within the CGIAR itself. A frst assessment of mainstreaming attempts within the CGIAR criticized the weak integration of gender, stating that “social science research appears reactive, with social scientists overly engaged in short-term, one-off studies and without involvement in important, strategic decisions” (Ashby, Lubbock, and Stuart, 2013, p. 14). Nevertheless, the network of postdocs who met regularly and worked across organizations, as well as the availability of funds for workshops and conferences, and the ability to consult with experts led to highlighting questions of gender and was valuable in establishing a place for gender mainstreaming throughout the consortium. In Sweden, gender equality is an overarching national priority in policy, and the LRF strategy document on gender equality (2017) echoes the policy aims. However, there appearto be no special provisions in place when it comes to implementing it in the agricultural sector. In an interview, the manager of the Academy pointed out that the LRF was the only body that had actually gathered around this question. She saw the Academy as a catalyst for igniting the importance of gender equality within the sector and promoting issues of equality among their members—both organizations and individuals. Structurally, “the Academy has no real funds of their own and thus no muscle, more than that … we can in minimal ways infuence people’s 23

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minds, to pay attention to these questions.That is what we can do, so to speak.” An important part of their work has been to maintain statistics and to commission reports from experts when needed.16 Her position as project manager was for 20% of her time.With a background in communications, she knew little of gender issues before she had started working on it earlier in the year but said she had always been interested in the issues around it. She related that an initial workshop on gender equality led to many insights. The Academy has been vocal in communicating about gender equality on their Facebook page and has brought together groups to discuss questions of gender equality in workshops at their headquarters and in the regions. This has also meant promoting a digital app to guide organizations on their work. Her position as part-time promoter of gender equality with few funds is, however, at odds with the organization’s declarations of taking gender equality seriously, especially when compared with the measures taken by the CGIAR. Not unlike other organizations in Sweden working in the green sector, work with gender equality is often regarded as a question of communication (Arora-Jonsson, 2018). An example from CIFOR17 demonstrates the effcacy of hard regulations, such as making space for gendered concerns in project budgets and outputs. Since gender was one criterion for which they had to allot funds and report upon, the trade and investments team working on palm oil brought in gender experts to provide support for a gendered analysis.The collaboration with gender researchers led to a paper on gender and palm oil plantations and a partnership with Oxfam to review the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Principles and Criteria. Such developments led to the team acknowledging the rigor that attention to gender brought to their own work (Arora-Jonsson and Basnett, 2018).This interdisciplinary collaboration also brought to light a vital aspect of gender mainstreaming—from a focus on markets and trade as abstract fows—it brought into conversation narratives from women farming in villages that went much beyond their inclusion into markets. It brought attention to the structural inequalities of markets and trading systems across scale—from villages in Indonesia to global trade.The gender research made a difference in that it raised concerns in transdisciplinary settings through their research and projects.

4. Women’s presence in decision-making and men’s championship of gender mainstreaming Research both across the global North and South has questioned the absence of women from decision-making in relation to agriculture, forestry, and questions of rural development.18 In some cases, gender mainstreaming has resulted in efforts to ensure the presence of women in committees for access and care of forest resources, water bodies, as well as agricultural cooperatives. A great deal of research on gender and participation, mainly from the global South on forestry and agriculture and some from the North on forestry (Evans et al., 2017; Oedl-Wieser, 2015; Lama, 2004; Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen, 1998; Reed, 2010), has shown women’s exclusion (especially lower class and/or caste women) from decision-making bodies.Affrmative action, despite its many limitations, has been shown to be an important strategy to counter women’s marginalization. Given time, results have been positive (Afridi, Iversen, and Sharan, 2017).19 Research has also shown that inclusion could become a way to legitimize the committees without necessarily giving the women any voice within it. In such cases, women’s groups have sought to circumvent this disadvantage by organizing themselves separately and making claims on mainstream organizations. Funding for women’s projects have, in fact, not always by design, enabled their efforts (Arora-Jonsson, 2013). 24

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Some research has also brought attention to large organizations that work with questions of forestry and agriculture, such as the two cases we discuss in this chapter. Contradictions arise in being able to address questions of gender in the content of the work done (in the feld and in projects) and within the organization itself. Cases show that rarely do organizations take on both (Arora-Jonsson and Ågren, 2019;Arora-Jonsson, 2018). For instance, in prior studies at CIFOR, offcers complained that there was more focus on poor women out there than on gendered imbalances within their own organization (Arora-Jonsson and Sijapati-Basnett, 2018). The fip side of the coin of the inclusion of women in decision-making arenas is the increasing focus and expectation on men to be seen as taking on leadership of gender mainstreaming, so far a fairly under-researched aspect of gender mainstreaming. As de Vries (2015) points out, men undoubtedly appear well-positioned to bring about change because of their positional power and the advantages conferred by their gender.And yet, lack of commitment by them can signal that the issue is not important. There is also another side to it as de Vries (2015, p. 13) points out, “Are we looking to men to be gender change heroes, thus inadvertently reinforcing the heroic masculine?”While such an approach can be necessary to gain acceptance, it can reproduce men and women as homogenous and binary opposites instead of critically engaging with feminist politics and power inequalities (Mwiine, 2019). We look into these different aspects in Nepal’s water sector, the CGIAR and LRF. In Nepal’s irrigation policy (Government of Nepal, 2013), the promotion of women’s participation to 33% in water user associations led to privileged families being represented through their female members, while more marginalized women of lower caste or class remained excluded. In 2006, only 4 of 31 districts had, on average, more than 20% women members (Udas and Zwarteveen, 2010).An earlier IWMI case study, however, demonstrated how women were successful in informally securing their irrigation needs by using gender norms of women as weak and in need of protection (Zwarteveen and Neupane, 1996). Researchers have pointed out that for gender mainstreaming to be effective in Nepal’s water sector, the masculine professional culture needs to be addressed (Udas and Zwarteveen, 2010; Shrestha and Clement, 2019). CGIAR also aimed to address gender and diversity in its own organizations through diversifying its staff in research, administration, and leadership in terms of gender, ethnicity, and professional experience (CGIAR Consortium, 2011).20 With a growing external push by the World Bank and other donors to address gender mainstreaming within its own organizations, IWMI commissioned a gender equity and inclusion initiative and study with a consulting frm in 2015. The consultants noted the lack of a shared view among leaders and staff on how diversity and inclusion matters and how it could be implemented (Ferdman Consulting, 2015).They called for a shift in the organizational culture toward more inclusive work environments to avoid staff silos and frustration over management. At the LRF, a brief overview of the LRF’s decision-making bodies shows a huge preponderance of men in leading positions (see Eklund and Lilleler, 2018, p. 53).The boards of the various cooperatives represented in the Academy are dominated by men.This is often put down to the idea of tradition.As a former chairman of the Academy expressed, a certain amount of tradition leads to the green sectors not being as gender-equal as they could be.21 Taking over the chairmanship of the Academy, the current chairman of the LRF stated at a seminar why it was important that he was also at the helm of the Academy and the push for mainstreaming,22 “As a leader, one is the carrier of culture and values. It sends signals to the world if I take up this role.” At the same seminar, the frst question he was asked was how long the Academy had been active, to which he did not have an answer, saying that he felt that it has always been around. In another interview, when asked how the Academy worked with gender equality in concrete terms, he was unable to answer the question.23 The conviction that 25

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to change structures, men must be seen to represent the issues seems strong in the organization (interview with project manager). On the one hand, the chairman’s statements and presence showed institutional support for gender mainstreaming. On the other hand, it appears from his lack of knowledge or interest in the issues that engagement with the Academy, although considered important, was more symbolic than engagement with its content.The move to include men in issues related to gender is, in fact, mainstreaming in the opposite direction; instead of adding women, men are called upon to concern themselves with what is still mainly seen as women’s issues.What difference the presence of these men makes remains moot.

Discussion Gender mainstreaming has meant many different things across the world.Yet, as the discussion above shows, some aspects recur, whether at the global, national, or local scale.A striking parallel that stands out across the world is the lack of discussion on land ownership in mainstreaming attempts in relation to agriculture and forestry. As we show above, research shows conclusively that an important reason for women’s disadvantage is their lack of access to productive resources and especially in relation to agriculture, the ability to own and make decisions over land.While both CGIAR and the LRF are aware of this, as is clear from their documents, there is little discussion on how they could work with this as well as address the structural inequalities in their work. Both the LRF’s support to publicize statistics about women’s hidden work and the IWMI’s gender training on women’s unequal labor burden is an attempt to shine a light on this. While that might be a stepping stone to engendering change, the cases show a lack of discussion on intersecting inequalities and discrimination both within their organizations and in the feld. Both the CGIAR and LRF cases demonstrate that gender mainstreaming efforts in agricultural contexts still focus on making the invisible visible—in other words, making visible the work that women actually do and convincing the mainstream of their contributions to agriculture— an aspect central to efforts in the early 1970s when the question of gender was frst taken up. However, not everything is the same as the proliferation of the jargon on gender demonstrates. The fondness for silver bullets based on stereotypes about gender has been particularly appealing in the world of gender mainstreaming.As a CGIAR person working on gender pointed out (Arora-Jonnson, 2019),24 making the invisible visible today also includes calling into question stereotypes about “gender” by agricultural and forest scientists.These include assumptions that all women (especially the poor) are oppressed by men in their communities, that they would prefer options that reduced their labor regardless of context or the outcome of the projects, and that there were clear technologies and scientifc solutions for their problems. Prescriptions about the importance of entrepreneurship for women at the LRF or income-generation and credit programs for women are examples of such an approach. In both cases, there has been an attempt to bring women in, often in order to revive a fagging sector. For example, the LRF’s initiatives to make women entrepreneurs or in Nepal, to provide better access to water, were about inclusion rather than addressing discrimination within the sectors. The majority of these ideas focus on individual women, whereas research has shown that it is often in collectives that women have been able to bring about change (see Arora-Jonsson, 2009; 2014; Sugden et al., 2020). In that sense, a clear North/South disjuncture becomes apparent in our cases. Mainstreaming attempts in the global South have often been carried out through women’s groups. Unintentionally, this has enabled substantive action. Income-generation or micro-credit programs have been successful in pushing forward women’s claims, not necessarily due to the potential for savings and income but because they provided space for collective organizing, spaces that women used to make claims that went far beyond issues of savings or incomes (Arora-Jonsson, 2013). 26

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In the global North, on the other hand, as the LRF case demonstrates, it appears that the singular understanding of empowerment through inclusion in the labor market for individual women as entrepreneurs has been paramount.This has a correlate at larger scales. Funding for large women’s organizations has consistently diminished25 for groups that, in the past, have actually brought many of these questions to the agenda. A lack of focus on collectives has perhaps undermined efforts toward change in this context. However, the cases also show that while practice often remained distant from fne-sounding policies on mainstreaming, the importance of policy cannot be overstated. Despite its many limitations, gender mainstreaming in the CGIAR, for instance, has provided the space for the gender postdocs and others wanting to push the boundaries to link up with each other, as well as others outside their system, widen the space, and take up intersecting dimensions of power in the work they did (Arora-Jonsson and Basnett-Sijapati, 2018) and bringing attention to power relations within collectives that otherwise are taken for granted. While some of the gender experts are isolated in their particular organizations, the network among them and their regular meetings have been a source of strength.The presence of hard regulations, such as the obligation to show gendered outcomes and to budget for gendered studies, have also contributed positively to opening the discussion and a better understanding of the contexts. The discussions on #metoo at LRF and increasing criticism from gender researchers or consultants about the importance of taking heed of masculine structures within the CGIAR potentially provide avenues for change. The LRF, however, presents us with a different dilemma—in this case, mainstreaming may be seen to have edged out women as the main protagonists with a focus on men as the face of gender equality. While the capacity of men to address inequalities may be greater than that of women in masculine organizations and felds such as agriculture and forestry, the lack of initiative by such men could serve the opposite purpose.The LRF example, in particular, leads to the question as previously taken up by scholars (de Vries, 2015; Mwiine, 2019) of whether claiming men as better champions or expecting men to be part of the business imperative to support gender equality, because they are men, can ever be effective. It may be more helpful to see women and men as undertaking complementary championing roles, and to note that both are required and that gender equity needs to be part and parcel of an organization’s mandate. As the cases show, gender mainstreaming also brought to light the cleavages in relation to the balance of social and natural sciences.The preponderance of scientists and practitioners trained in the natural sciences to the disadvantage of those trained in analyzing how questions of gender and power produce outcomes in the work they do has become all the more obvious. Several CGIAR organizations have sought to recruit more social scientists, although the balance remains skewed to econmists and natural scientists.The scant time allotted to the project manager of the Academy (20%) at the LRF for her work with gender suggests a lack of seriousness of the issue to the main work of the organization despite the great deal of discussion on it through their media. All this calls for greater attention to gender in organizations and in the work they do and to a need for a discussion on systemic inequalities that gender mainstreaming actually seeks to address.

Notes 1 There are, of course, also huge variations within the global North and South. We have nevertheless chosen to take this up since this does refect geopolitical divides but, most importantly, because gender equality has a particular North/South history in that the global North has often been held up as a beacon for gender equality for the global South. Furthermore, in our cases for instance, institutions and actors from the global North have been important in gender mainstreaming in the South, especially as the examples of the CGIAR/IWMI indicate.

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Seema Arora-Jonsson and Stephanie Leder 2 A great deal has been written on mainstreaming both in the global North and South. For some overviews see Davids, Driel, and Parren (2017), Arora-Jonsson (2014), and Shortall and Bock (2015).The themes we take up are in no way comprehensive of the entire corpus of literature on gender mainstreaming. They emerged for us as important especially in relation to rural and agricultural settings. 3 With invaluable research assistance by Nora Wahlström. 4 https://books.google.se/books?id=7Xo2yNmgrbkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=sv&source=gbs_ge_ summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false 5 https://ispc.cgiar.org/about/letter-from-chair 6 https://www.lrf.se/om-lrf/in-english/ 7 Translated literally they would be #thefnalfelling, #siftingwheatfromchaff, #wediginourheels/wekickback. 8 See special issues dedicated to the topic: Feminist Legal Studies (2002); Gender and Development (2005); International Feminist Journal of Politics (2005); and Social Politics (2005). 9 In such cases, there are instances where women have chosen to keep outside of markets and trade informally among themselves although at the cost of access to cash (ref). 10 The need for more radical land reforms in the Eastern Gangetic Plains was voiced through former IWMI staff who led a project in the region that experimented with combining irrigation technologies and social innovations, such as farmer collectives (Sugden et al., 2020). 11 Dalit is a term taken on in a countrywide movement by the oppressed lower castes in India. Dalits were formerly known as the untouchables and named the Harijans (the children of god) by Gandhi. 12 For example, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research project, Improving Water Use for Marginal and Tenant Farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, or the Enhancing Groundwater Recharge and Water Use Effciency in SAT Region through Watershed Interventions – ParasaiSindh Watershed, Jhansi, India led by ICRISAT and the CGIAR research program, Water, Land and Ecosystems, with funds from the Coca-Cola India Foundation for Rural Water Infrastructure. 13 Translation from Swedish. http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressreleases/lrf-grundar-jaemstaelldhets akademi-293557. 14 https://www.landsbygdsnatverket.se/inspiration/artiklarinspirerandeexempel/inspirerandeexempel/ jamstalldhethandihandmedlonsamhet.5.1251fb7615c9e885688712cb.html. 15 Women in Europe own only 24% of farms; 78% are classifed as spouses of holders (Eurostat, 2009). Despite the increasing number of women working off the farm, European women constitute 41% of the farm labor force (Shortall, 2015b). 16 Interview, Dec. 12, 2019. 17 In contrast to some of the other CGIAR organizations however, CIFOR was one organization where gendered concerns in work appear to be given much more attention.This was due in large part to the persevering work of gender scholars within CIFOR over several years. 18 See overview in Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019). 19 In research conducted on political parties in Sweden, results suggest that that not only does affrmative action result in more qualifed women entering the feld, but affrmative action has also shown a rise in the quality of the men in the feld (Besley et al., 2013). 20 In 2006, representatives from one organization’s country offces were called to the headquarters for training on gender, diversity, and sexual harassment. However, this was regarded by participants as toothless in light of the fact that at about the same time, a perpetrator of harassment was promoted to a higher position within the CGIAR despite overwhelming evidence (pers. communication). 21 https://www.landlantbruk.se/lantbruk/jag-hoppas-vi-kan-lyfta-jamstalldheten/ 22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fGhgUuqx5A&t=578s&fbclid=IwAR10Oz0SHjgz7euR bEi5M27Z713rxN74tNEMqBXixC33Qp3U9SI3cerX8 23 https://www.atl.nu/jobb-karriar/borgstrom-de-grona-naringarna-behover-andrade-varderingar/ 24 Pers. comm with Arora-Jonsson, December, 2019. 25 At a seminar discussing the Swedish feminist foreign policy at Sida, Stockholm, several women’s groups and NGOs brought up this aspect. January, 2015.

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Seema Arora-Jonsson and Stephanie Leder Government of Nepal. (2013). The irrigation policy 2013. Kathmandu, Nepal: Ministry of Irrigation. Hedlund, M. and Lundholm, E. (2015).“Restructuring of rural Sweden - Employment transition and outmigration of three cohorts born 1945–1980.” Journal of Rural Studies 42:123–132. IsteniČ, M.C. (2015).“Do rural development programmes promote gender equality on farms? The case of Slovenia.” Gender, Place & Culture 22 (5):670–684. Keating, C., Rasmussen, C., and Rishi, P. (2010).“The rationality of empowerment: microcredit, accumulation by dispossession, and the gendered economy.” Signs 36 (1):153–176. Lama, A. and Buchy, M. (2004). “Gender, class, caste and participation: community forestry in Central Nepal.” In Livelihoods and Gender, edited by Sumi Krishna, 285–305. New Delhi/Thousand Oaks, CA/ London: Sage Publications. Leder, S. and Sachs, C. (2019). “Intersectionality on the gender-agriculture nexus: relational life histories and additive sex-disaggregated indices.” In Gender, Agriculture and Agrarian Transformations. Changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, edited by C. Sachs, 75–92. Routledge Earthscan. Leder, S., Shrestha, G. and Das, D. (2019). “Transformative engagements with gender relations in agriculture and water governance.” Journal of Social Science and Public Policy 5 (1):128–158. Leder, S., Sugden, F., Raut, M., Ray, D., and Saikia, P. (2019). Ambivalences of collective farming: feminist political ecologies from the Eastern Gangetic Plains. International Journal of the Commons 13:105–129. Leder, S., Clement, F., and Karki, E. (2017). “Reframing women’s empowerment in water security programmes in Western Nepal.” Gender & Development 25 (2):235–251. Leder, S. and Signs, M. (2016). “Empowering women for 50–50.” https://wle.cgiar.org/thrive/2016/0 3/07/empowering-women-50-50. LRF Gender Equality Academy. (2019). “Jämställdhet I det gröna näringslivet.” (Gender Equality in the Green Sector). Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF). LRF Gender Equality Academy. (2014a). “Heliga familjen, heliga kor eller heliga jämställdheten?” (Holy family, holy cows or holy gender equality?). Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF). LRF Gender Equality Academy. (2014b). “Vi har nog delat mer än normen”. (We have probably shared more than what is the norm). Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF). Matysiak I. (2015). “The feminization of governance in rural communities in Poland: the case of village representatives (sołtys).” Gender, Place & Culture 22:700–716. Meinzen-Dick, R. and Zwarteveen, M. (1998). “Gendered participation in water management: issues and illustrations from water users’ associations in South Asia.” Agriculture and Human Values 15 (4):337–345. Moser, C. and A. Moser. (2005).“Gender mainstreaming since Beijing: a review of success and limitations in international institutions.” Gender and Development 13 (2):11–22. Mukhopadhyay, M. (2004). “Mainstreaming gender or ‘streaming’ gender away: feminist marooned in the development business.” IDS Bulletin 35 (4):95–103. Mukhopadhyay, M., Steehouwer, G., and Wong, F. (2006). Politics of the possible: gender mainstreaming and organisational change — experiences from the feld. Oxford: Oxfam Publishing. Mwiine, A. (2019). “Negotiating patriarchy? Exploring the ambiguities of the narratives on “male champions” of gender equality in Uganda Parliament.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 33 (1):108–116. Newman, J. (2013). “Spaces of power: feminism, neoliberalism and gendered labor.” Social Politics 20 (2):200–221. Njuki, J. and Sanginga, P. eds. (2013). Women, livestock ownership and markets: bridging the gender gap in Eastern and Southern Africa. London/New York: Routledge-IDRC-ILRI. Oedl-Wieser, T. (2015). “Gender equality: a core dimension in Rural Development Programmes in Austria?” Gender, Place & Culture 22 (5):685–699. Parpart, J. (2014).“Exploring the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming in international development institutions.” Journal of International Development 26:382–395. Piálek, N. (2008).“Is this really the end of the road for gender mainstreaming? Getting to grips with gender and institutional change.” In Can NGOs make a difference? The challenge of development alternatives, edited by A. Bebbington, S. Hickey, and D. Mitlin, 279–297. London: Zed Books. Prügl, E. (2009).“Does gender mainstreaming work?” International Feminist Journal of Politics 11 (2):174–195. Rabinowicz, E. (2010). Redovisning av uppdrag om halvtidsutvärdering av Landsbygdsprogram för Sverige 2007– 2013. Uppsala: SLU Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet. Reed, M. (2010). “Guess who’s (not) coming for dinner: expanding the terms of public involvement in sustainable forest management.” Scandinavian Journa of Forest Research 25 (supplement 9):45. Shortall, S. (2015).“Gender mainstreaming and the common agricultural policy.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 22 (5):717–730.

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Gender mainstreaming in agri and forestry Shortall, S. and Bock, B. (2015). “Introduction: rural women in Europe: the impact of place and culture on gender mainstreaming the European Rural Development Programme.” Gender, Place, and Culture:A Journal of Feminist Geography 22 (5): 1–8. Shrestha, G. and Clement, F. (2019).“ Unravelling gendered practices in the public water sector in Nepal.” Water Policy 21 (5):1017–1033. Sugden, F., Agarwal, B., Leder, S., Saikia, P., Raut, M., Kumar, A., and Ray, D. (2020). “Experiments in farmer collectives in eastern India and Nepal: process, benefts and challenges.” Journal of Agrarian Change 1–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joac.12369 Suhardiman, D., Clement, F., and Bharati, L. (2015). “Integrated water resources management in Nepal: key stakeholders’ perceptions and lessons learned.” International Journal of Water Resources Development 31 (2):284–300. Swedish Board of Agriculture. (2010). “Utvecklingen av manlig och kvinnlig delaktighet i ledningen av svenska jordbruksföretag 1999–2011”. (Development of men’s and women’s participation in the management of Swedish agricultural businesses 1999–2011.) Statistical Report 2011:5. Swedish Board of Agriculture. Udas, P. and Zwarteveen, M. (2010). “Can water professionals meet gender goals? A case study of the Department of Irrigation in Nepal.” Gender & Development 18 (1):87–98. Venot, J., et al. (2014).“Beyond the promises of technology: a review of the discourses and actors who make drip irrigation.” Irrigation and Drainage 63 (2):186–194. Walby, S. (2005). “Gender mainstreaming: productive tensions in theory and practice.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12 (3):321–343. Westholm, L. and Arora-Jonsson, S. (2015).“Defning solutions, fnding problems: deforestation, gender and REDD+ in Burking Faso.” Conservation and Society 13 (2): 189–199. Wong, F.,Vos,A., Pyburn, P., and Newton, J. (2019). Implementing gender transformative approaches in agriculture. CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research.A Discussion Paper for the European Commission. Zwarteveen, M. and N. Neupane. (1996). Free-riders or victims: women’s nonparticipation in irrigation management in Nepal’s Chhattis Mauja irrigation scheme. Research Report 7. Colombo: International Water Management Institute.

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2 GENDER DYNAMICS IN AGRICULTURAL VALUE CHAIN DEVELOPMENT Foundations and gaps Rhiannon Pyburn and Froukje Kruijssen

Introduction Since the frst rumblings on the topic began surfacing around 2000, a growing body of work has developed—both in practice and in research—exploring and elaborating on gender dynamics in global, regional, and local value chain development in the agricultural1 sector. Early studies on gender dimensions of value chains focused on women as informal employment in the production and retail ends of global horticulture chains in South Africa/Chile to Europe (Barrientos, 2001); gender and employment in Kenyan horticulture chains with a focus on the consequences for workers’ wages and skills as well as gender as a determinant for value chain participation (Dolan and Sutherland, 2002); women’s participation in high-value agricultural exports (Dolan and Sorby, 2003); and, on the (in-)effectiveness and limits of codes of practice in protecting women workers in relation to Kenyan fowers, Zambian fowers and vegetables, and South African fruit (Tallontire et al., 2005). This work exposed and made explicit the inequalities in global agricultural value chain development and its uneven impact, laying the foundation for subsequent gender studies in the feld. A value chain is all the processes involved in the production, processing, and marketing of a product from its inception to its fnal use. It consists of a series of chain actors, linked together by fows of products, fnance, information, and services (Figure 2.1). Each step in the chain is often referred to as a “node.”To produce and trade the product, these chain actors require inputs and services that are provided by so-called chain supporters. Finally, the value chain is infuenced by formal and informal rules and regulations, policies, and economic processes, which are referred to as the chain context or enabling environment. In value chain development, the concept of value chain upgrading is important. It refers to improving the capabilities, technologies, and institutional models, such that value chain actors are able to improve their competitiveness or move into higher-value products (Gereff, 2005) (economic upgrading) or to achieve improvement of the quality of workers’ employment (social upgrading) (Barrientos et al., 2011). Global value chain literature often refers to certain categories of upgrading related to what is being upgraded (product, process, functional, and inter-chain 32

Gender and agricultural value chains

upgrading). We will return to this concept when discussing the outcomes of gendered value chain interventions later in this chapter. With 20 years of gender analysis in value chain development, what has become very clear is that agricultural value chains can be particularly exploitative of women’s labor. Signs of gender inequality include providing labor without being in a position to make related decisions, doing work that is not recognized or valued as “work,” and lack of remuneration. Increasingly visible and quite stark are differences between men and women in relation to the value of the product or value chain node they engage in; disparity in remuneration and distribution of benefts; the varying terms and conditions of employment; competitiveness of the chain they engage in; and, differing capacities for upgrading. Gender analysis brings these inequalities to light. Arguments as to why gender matters in value chain development are grounded in three interlocking positions (see KIT et al., 2012, for example): • • •

Social justice: “it is the right thing to do” and a rights-based argumentation related to the fair distribution of advantages, assets, and benefts in society. Poverty reduction: “both women and men must be engaged in development efforts to effectively and effciently progress,” recognizing a direct link between gender equity and poverty reduction. Business opportunities: “it’s better business,” which implies serving businesswomen, women as a potential client base, and as consumers; improving a company’s reputation; women managers’ contributions to profts; and the now well-documented value of diversity in management success.

These arguments can be distilled into two entry points. The frst starts with women addressing where women are in value chains, what tasks women do, how they beneft (or suffer from) participation, and how their positions might be improved. Projects taking this entry point have often been led by NGOs or organizations with objectives related to women’s rights and women’s empowerment.They focused on making visible women’s contributions, especially in family farm contexts. Honey and shea butter value chain projects of this type proliferated in the early 2000s, often without a sound economic basis resulting in low viability.The second entry point hinged on improving value chain performance by involving women in global value chains. This entry point was about mobilizing the workforce, but also gaining value added through social commitments. Companies might, for example, brand products as “produced by women.” A downfall of these types of projects has been that “gender” or women’s participation has been instrumental to the economic objectives; gender equality and transformative change were not necessarily a part of planning or implementation.

Where are we at now? In recent years, these two entry points have, to a large degree, converged.That is to say that both improving the lives of women and improving value chain performance are recognized outcomes and objectives. Gender equality is replacing “women’s participation” as a driver, recognizing that gender relations are about both women and men and how they relate to one another. A shift is also happening vis-à-vis conceptualizing gender in value chain development from “women” to gender; from tasks, roles, and responsibilities to gender relations; from women-focused, often isolated initiatives to gender integration throughout the chain or enterprise; and, from gender accommodative approaches to gender transformative ones.These trends echo and refect broader shifts in gender and development thinking (c.f.Wong et al., 2019). 33

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This chapter In this chapter, we journey through what we know about gender dynamics in value chain development, drawing out what the past two decades have taught us. We begin by examining how the topic is being framed and key concepts used frequently in research and practice, directing the reader to a number of useful guides and toolkits for gendered value chain development.We then look at trends—how the feld has developed and recent directions; this includes viable and contemporary entry points for engaging in gender-inclusive value chain development. From there, we consider the outcomes of gendered value chain interventions in relation to both value chain performance and gender equality. Finally, we articulate concluding recommendations and gaps relevant to both researchers and practitioners with the aim of pushing the boundaries of how we think about and engage with gender dynamics in value chain work.

What we know From the frst publications on “women’s participation” in agricultural value chain development, the exploitative and uneven position of women vis-à-vis men has been shockingly apparent. Evidence continues to mount, and the gender-related questions being asked and approaches used are becoming more sophisticated. Before looking at the trends and evolution of thinking vis-à-vis gender dynamics in value chain development, we turn to the frameworks and concepts behind these trends. Researchers and practitioners have embraced diverse perspectives, entry points, and approaches in their efforts toward gender-inclusive value chains. Below, we discuss a number of key concepts that are being used, distinguishing between analytical concepts, tools, and outcomes.Without trying to be exhaustive, we also provide examples of sources that have used or emphasized the different dimensions discussed.

Framing and key concepts We begin with the entwined but important to distinguish concepts of structure and agency, two critical elements of empowerment critical to transformative change. For all concepts, we are considering them, in particular, in relation to value chains. Structure refers to institutions that either limit or enable individuals to participate in and beneft from activities in the value chain.This includes both formal institutions like laws and regulations, and informal institutions like social class, norms and attitudes, values, religion, and customs (KIT et al., 2012). In recent years, social and gender norms are the institutions that have received the most attention in value chain work, largely due to the inclusion of gender transformative approaches (GTAs) in development projects. In value chains, gender norms may shape, for example, if women are able to go to certain markets to sell their product (women’s mobility), or if men or women can easily act in certain roles on-farm, in the household, or the marketplace. For example, in some value chains, women dominate in processing or retail while they are absent from intermediary roles or in large-scale production. Social and gender norms vary across locations, for different value chains, and even within value chains for different products or production systems. In value chain projects, there has been a tendency to largely ignore other structural elements, as they are often beyond the scope of what a value chain intervention can/should do (e.g., inheritance laws). Nonetheless, these structural and institutional elements are shaping the context and the rules within which value chain development happens and are central for unpacking gender dynamics. 34

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Agency refers to the capacity of an individual woman to act independently and to make her own free choices (Kabeer, 1999). In a value chain, agency refers to individuals’ capacities to choose the activities they engage in and make decisions in those roles. In value chain analysis, this is usually analyzed by looking at three dimensions: 1) gender division of labor, 2) access and control over resources and benefts, and 3) decision-making power.We will look at each of these separately in the paragraphs that follow. Gender division of labor in value chains is about who does what in the chain itself, i.e., gendersensitive value chain mapping. The goal behind this is to understand and make visible the unrecognized but often crucial roles that different people play.This sheds light on where in the chain certain groups of people (men, women, youth of different social categories) are under- or over-represented. A lot of gendered value chain research looks at the gender division of labor with particular focus and over-representation of the production node. More recently, exploring the gender division of labor has started to extend to the roles that women and men play outside the value chain: productive, reproductive, and community roles, including paid and unpaid work. Examples of recent publications looking at the gender division of labor in relation to intra-household dynamics are Masamha et al. (2019) for cassava or Arora and Twyman (2018) on small-scale livestock producers in Costa Rica. This broader picture of what people do is important for understanding gender dynamics in value chains as these roles affect time use and have an impact on an individual’s work burden. Access to and control over resources and benefts refers to the opportunity to use resources and enjoy benefts. A lack of access to and control over resources hinders value chain actors in choosing how and when to use them as inputs into the chain. Following Kabeer (1999), resources include not only material resources such as technology, labor, fnancial capital, assets, and infrastructure, but also human and social resources such as knowledge, solidarity, social capital, and bodily integrity. Control over benefts is also important as this is about the ability to make decisions about how money derived from the value chain is spent or if products are used for home-consumption. Related to this is the distribution of benefts between actors in the same node and between nodes (e.g., processing), as well as the terms and conditions of employment. Evidence shows that within nodes, women are disproportionately active in lower positions in the hierarchy (Scott, 1994; Grimshaw and Rubery, 1995), and are more likely to be employed in informal jobs with less security or have seasonal contracts (Dolan et al., 2003; Tallontire et al., 2005). Decision-making power is frstly about who is involved in which decisions in the chain. This is related to having control over resources and benefts (as control means you are able to decide about what to do with them) as well as deciding about what to do and where to do it (having mobility).The ability to make decisions is not only about having infuence, but also about having enough self-esteem to exert it, and having the aspirations and motivation to be part of, and invest in, the value chain. Sometimes this is referred to as the capacity to innovate or intrinsic agency. The different types of power related to agency are sometimes summarized as follows: • • • •

Power within: a sense of self-esteem, dignity, and self-worth. Power with: strength gained from solidarity, collective power, and mutual support. Power to: the ability to make decisions and act on them. Power over: a social relation of domination or subordination between individuals (Pansardi, 2012 in Galiè and Farnworth, 2019).

A ffth, and recently distinguished element of power is power through (Galiè and Farnworth, 2019). Power through is characterized as an involuntary aspect of power that is relational in nature and 35

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common goal power within

power with

power over

power to

power through outcome

Figure 2.1 Representation of the defnitions of power (Galiè and Farnworth, 2019).

manifests without agency; that is to say, power through association with another person who is empowered (Galiè and Farnworth, 2019). An example would be a woman whose status is heightened when her husband becomes a local mayor; she is empowered and gains power, not through her agency or actions, but through her association with an empowered man (Figure 2.1). In value chains, decision-making power is also about relationships in the chain, including bargaining power and value chain governance.These dimensions are less commonly found in gender analyses. Value chain governance is about the relationships between actors and frms in a value chain. In the global value chain literature, this is usually about “lead” frms (actors internal to the chain) that coordinate what happens in a chain. It is sometimes also about the institutional mechanisms through which coordination of activities in the chain is achieved, which is external to the chain, and part of what we have referred to as “structure” above. The concepts outlined above—structure, agency, gender division of labor, access to and control over resources, decision-making power—imply that a gendered value chain analysis needs to take place at different levels including individual, household, core value chain, input and service providers, and the enabling environment (context) (e.g., FAO, 2018).

Guides for gendered value chain analysis and development A number of toolkits have been developed to provide guidance for gender-equitable value chain development, including gender-sensitive value chain analysis, as well as for the design and implementation of interventions. Seven of these were reviewed by Stoian et al. (2018) (see Annex for a list of the tools reviewed), of which fve provide analytical tools. In essence, these tools all build on each other, starting with the early ideas on gender-sensitive value chain mapping developed by Mayoux and Mackie (2007). According to the review, the tools differ as to where (and how much) they focus on the different levels of analysis; that is to say, where they distinguish between individual, household, collective enterprise, value chain, and enabling environment levels (Stoian et al., 2018). Overall, the guides prioritize analysis and interventions at the individual, household, and value chain level (in that order). Only two of the seven guides pay more attention to the enabling environment. When it comes to the dimensions discussed in the previous section, the review (Stoian et al., 2018) looked specifcally at gender division of labor in the value chain and the household, access to and control over resources and benefts, gender and social norms, and formal and informal rules and regulations (enabling environment). Norms received the least attention, but the guides vary greatly, and there is not a single guide that covers all topics in depth. Tools developed as part of the CGIAR research program on livestock and fsh (Baltenweck et al., 2019) have attempted to better integrate norms into value chain analysis, building on the work by OXFAM on women’s economic leadership and gender transformative approaches from nutrition programs (Hillenbrand et al., 2015). 36

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A different type of tool, one that aims at assessing the status of women’s empowerment and evaluating whether interventions are having an impact on it, is the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index2 (WEAI and derivatives) developed by the Washington DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The initial focus of the WEAI was on women in farm households.The WEAI for Value Chains (WEAI4VC) is currently being developed to measure empowerment across the value chain (including producers, entrepreneurs, and wage workers).The WEAI measures the individual empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women (and men) in the agriculture sector in an effort to identify ways to overcome obstacles and constraints. It measures the roles and extent of women’s engagement in the agriculture sector in fve domains: decisions about agricultural production, access to and decision-making power over productive resources, control over the use of income, leadership in the community, and time use. The empowerment index is calculated at the individual level, as well as gender parity between husband and wife in the same household.

Trends Reviewing the many studies undertaken on the gender dimensions of value chain development reveals where the focus of attention tends to be as well as the evolution in thinking over time and experience. Different kinds of value chain studies use the concepts and tools discussed above to different extents.They also address different levels.We have clustered the main kinds of studies to summarize how they contribute to the developing body of knowledge. The vast majority of gender and value chain studies focus on the gender dynamics around a single commodity in a specifc context, for example, studying the costs and benefts of challenging the patriarchy for women charcoal producers in Zambia (Ihalainen et al., 2018); gender in Myanmar’s small-scale aquaculture sector (Aregu et al., 2017); milkfsh mariculture in a specifc region of the Philippines (Roxas et al., 2017); and gender dynamics in coffee farming households in Uganda (Okiror et al., 2018). These kinds of studies provide very useful insights into the specifcities of gender dynamics related to the commodity and the socioeconomic, political, and environmental context where they focus.They can be important groundwork for interventions that ft the profle. Many studies take a single commodity to study and compare the gender dynamics in related value chains across different contexts. For example, researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) explored the socioeconomic, marketing, and gender aspects of village chicken production in the tropics (Alemayehu et al., 2018). Another study looks at the effects of sweet potato commercialization on men and women producers, traders, and artisanal processers in two regions of Kenya (Mudege et al., 2019).These kinds of studies provide insights into the specifcities of gender dynamics related to the commodity and its related chains, which are elements that cut across different contexts.This helps us to understand gender dimensions that are related to working with that specifc commodity and, ideally, some of the institutional constraints and opportunities related to regulations surrounding it.They can also shed light on gender relations in a particular area and the role of gender norms, for example, in shaping how people can engage in a value chain. By studying the same commodity and related chains in different contexts, this kind of evidence can emerge. A study on the Philippines (Malapit et al., 2019) takes context-specifc gender research as a starting point to inform gendered value chain analysis; that is to say, they look at contextualized gender issues that may be relevant for all value chains operating in that area.This fips the more common approach (mentioned above) of looking at gender dynamics around a single commodity in a specifc context or looking at the gender dynamics of a specifc commodity and related chains in 37

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different contexts; it puts gender relations frst. A couple of publications based on case studies and expertise from across seven countries tease out context-specifc issues that should be considered in the implementation process and focus on the many barriers to gender equity and equality in small-scale fsheries (Kleiber et al., 2017; Farnworth et al., 2016).This is another example of starting with the context to inform gendered value chain analysis. Other studies have looked across multiple commodities with a focus on domains/sectors, for example, an analysis of gender research on forest, tree, and agroforestry value chains in Latin America (Gumucio et al., 2018). Another example could be to look at multiple fsh value chains in an aquaculture zone or a variety of livestock chains in a specifc region. These studies provide insights into the intersections between value chains in a particular sector and common challenges and opportunities within those sectors in a region. For example, if cold storage or cold storage transportation is an issue, this may cut across multiple fsh chains or livestock chains. Likewise, animal-sourced nutrition issues may emerge as common ground. Some efforts are moving away from a purely value chain focus toward a more complete understanding of what makes up the livelihoods of the people involved. Diversifed strategies for livelihoods are increasingly being explored, breaking away from the single commodity focus. For example, one study looks at the development of charcoal production to supply a small town in rural Mozambique as part of a diversifed livelihood strategy (Jones et al., 2016). This kind of work recognizes that to understand gender relations, it is important to look at the full picture of what people do in order to survive and thrive.This is particularly important in a rural development context; rarely is a farm family dependent on and involved in only one value chain.This is also important to understand people’s time burden and to get a fuller picture of the different kinds of work—productive, reproductive, and community—in which they are engaged. A growing body of work is being published in relation to women’s empowerment in value chains. Some studies look at the mechanisms through which that might happen, for example, looking at empowering women in integrated crop-livestock farming through innovation platforms in Zimbabwe (Homann-Kee Tui et al., 2018); shrimp processing in Bangladesh (Choudhury et al., 2017) or, more broadly, as to whether and how employment in global value chains empowers women workers based on Kenyan cut fowers and tea industries (Said-Allsopp and Tallontire, 2014). Others focus on measuring women’s empowerment, for example, a study from the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) on measuring empowerment in the Philippines in three value chains: abaca, coconut, and swine (Malapit et al., 2019). Ihalainen et al. (forthcoming, 2020) provide a comprehensive review of CGIAR research on gender and value chains in their analysis, unpack the implicit relationship between participation in value chains and women’s empowerment, and related theories of change that are in use. They also make explicit the limits of what can be expected vis-à-vis transformation, when a market-based approach is used (Ihalainen et al., forthcoming 2020). In recent years, some studies have had a more explicit focus on equality/equity, using a feminist lens when approaching gender in value chain development; that is to say, they go beyond an instrumental approach to put gender equality at the center of the exploration. Circa 2014, international agricultural research began exploring the value and role of gender transformative approaches (Wong et al., 2019) in moving beyond analysis to supporting changes in gender norms and other formal and informal institutions within agricultural domains, including in value chain development. As mentioned in a previous section, gender norms are increasingly a part of what is studied, more so than other structural institutions affecting gender dynamics in value chains. However, studying gender norms takes different shapes and forms. Barrientos (2014) looks at the interaction between commercial cocoa chains between India/Ghana and Europe, and societal norms embedded in consumption and production patterns across diverse societies. 38

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Others look at how social and gender norms constrain or facilitate value chain participation, like how employment and socioeconomic hierarchies in the production–consumption relation of export-oriented cut fowers are used to reproduce as well as contest norms and practices (Patel-Campillo, 2012). Some studies are very specifc, looking at issues such as the role of men in connecting women to cash crops in Uganda (Ambler, 2018); whether dairy value chain projects change gender norms in rural Bangladesh (Quisumbing et al., 2013); or the effectiveness of certifed tea value chains delivering gender equality in Tanzania (Loconto, 2015). Studies with an explicit focus on equality and/or equity are exciting as they bring in the political foundation of gender analysis to challenge the status quo as opposed to describing and potentially reinforcing it. Other strategic gender research (e.g., on ownership, gender myths, and gender norms) can also inform value chain research and be used to frame value chain studies and interventions.Very often, there is a focus is on studying gender dynamics in one node of the value chain, most often on the production node. What makes these studies more interesting is where strategic gender research is used to inform the study, for example, an ICRISAT study on the effect of kinship structures on smallholder production of groundnuts in Malawi (Bikketi et al., 2019). While examining just one node (production) of one value chain (groundnuts), the study makes a different kind of contribution by bringing in strategic gender analysis (e.g., on kinship). Another impact study on dairy and horticulture value chain interventions shows that while there was an increase in women’s control over production, income, and assets, there was no change in terms of the gender gap in asset ownership; that is to say, men’s income increased more than women’s, so that gender asset gap persisted (Quisumbing et al., 2015).While there were benefts to the household and the women and men individually involved, claims as to progress on gender equality are problematic where the gender gap persists. Maintaining a gender lens in assessing impacts and the success or failure of an intervention is critical. These studies use gender concepts and themes in value chain analysis, enriching their contributions to the feld vis-à-vis gender equality. Finally, many publications focus on specifc tools for gendered value chain practices or protocols for gendered value chain research. Gelli et al. (2017) is an example of a study protocol related to a poultry value chain and nutrition intervention in Burkina Faso. Stoian et al. (2018), mentioned earlier in this chapter, is a good example of an overview of toolkits for value chain selection, analysis, and intervention design. See also the Annex to this chapter.

Outcomes of gendered value chain interventions Gender and value chain interventions are usually concerned with two types of outcomes: improving the performance of the value chain (how it functions, how much added value it creates) and achieving gender equality (how the benefts are distributed), including women’s empowerment. Not all value chain interventions aim for (and achieve) the same degree of change in both domains. Based on a framework by Johnson et al. (2018), a distinction can be made between agricultural interventions that aim to reach, beneft, or empower women. The CGIAR research program on fsh agri-food systems (FISH) (2017) added a fourth possible outcome related to gender equality, namely, transform; that is to say, transforming gender relations. “Reach” outcomes are those that include a number of participants involved in project activities with a focus on women in different roles; they are about reaching women as the target group or benefciary. “Beneft” outcomes are those that refer to increased opportunities and/or abilities to use resources; specifcally, they are about women benefting from a value chain intervention. “Empowerment” outcomes are the ones that concern an increase in agency; they are about empowering the women 39

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(and men) involved. Finally, “transform” outcomes are concerned with changes in structures, i.e., formal and informal structures and institutions; they are about transforming gender relations vis-à-vis the value chain. As introduced at the start of this chapter, the means to achieve improvements in value chain performance is often referred to as value chain upgrading, which is about improving the capabilities, technologies, and institutions in a value chain or for a specifc frm or actor such that they are able to improve the way they operate and perform.While global value chain literature tends to be interested in what is being upgraded (a product or process, for example), the development literature is more concerned with how that can be achieved (i.e., by doing things better in the same node, by taking up functions from another node, or by improving vertical and horizontal linkages, coordination, in the chain). This is echoed in the gender and value chain literature. For example, the book, Challenging Chains to Change—Gender Equity in Agricultural Value Chain Development (KIT et al., 2012) takes chain empowerment as a starting point.The authors defne empowerment as increasing the capacities of farmers to add value to the activities they are involved in and to become involved in chain management. They also develop four types of upgrading strategies to achieve this. FAO’s guiding framework for gender-sensitive value chains (FAO, 2018) also refers to value chain upgrading and addressing gender-based constraints as part of upgrading strategies that are both economically and socially sustainable. A challenge for value chain practitioners is in the design of interventions that meet both value chain performance and gender equality outcomes. Another challenge is to consider outcomes at the different levels laid out earlier in this chapter (e.g., individual, household, core value chain, input and service providers, enabling environment) and explore the interplay between them. For example, Quisumbing and Roy (2014) showed that in the dairy value chain in rural Bangladesh, while a household may beneft from value chain participation, within the household, there may well be tradeoffs at the individual (women/men/children) level.That study looks at assets, decision-making, and time use, concluding that the benefts of value chain participation are uneven, at best. For example, while men still dominated decision-making on household expenditures and use of milk, women had more voice in decisions related to animal feed and inputs. At worst, the tradeoff for women’s participation increased their time burden, meaning less time for childcare with a potentially adverse effect on children’s nutrition. The study underscores the importance of intra-household dynamics in assessing outcomes of value chain interventions and in understanding the gendered implications. It also shows the tradeoffs and mixed results when we look across levels (in this case, individual versus household). A clear challenge for any study or intervention is fnding the “right” balance for the objectives embraced vis-à-vis gender equality and value chain performance.These will vary depending on the project (or study), the context, and the overall objectives. Making choices and decisions as to the tradeoffs and being explicit about those is key to positioning value chain initiatives visà-vis gender equality.The room for maneuver will vary. For example, in some cases, parameters may be fxed, such as the value chain, region, who is involved, the node of the value chain to be studied, or where the intervention will happen. Other times, a practitioner or researcher may be starting from scratch and be able to set their own parameters. We advocate for thoughtful engagement with explicit and well-articulated choices.

Concluding recommendations and gaps Gender dynamics in value chains have gained attention over the past 20 years or so, but there is still work to do.To conclude, we underscore some of the persistent challenges to progress on practice and research on gender dynamics in value chains.While excellent and forward-looking 40

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cases, projects, studies, and interventions can be found, a challenge is to get out of several ruts and break new ground. Persistent challenges include the need to: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

Look beyond the production node. With some exceptions, there remains a striking focus on production-level studies and interventions. More gender analysis is needed beyond the production node to processing, post-harvest, marketing, and so on.What are the challenges at these nodes? How are gender relations supporting or constraining participation, beneftsharing, and empowerment through the chain? Focus on gender relations, not gender roles. The gendered division of labor—gender roles— rather than gender relations remain the focus of much gender and value chain work.While it is valuable to understand existing gender dynamics, including “who does what” in the value chain, household, and community, it is important to recognize that these roles are dynamic and fuid over time. Care must be taken to avoid reinforcing or strengthening existing (often stereotyped) roles. Exploring and understanding gender relations—the space between women and men—of different social categories, and how they interact and engage with one another, including power dynamics, is critical. Intra-household gender dynamics are crucial to understanding the nuances of gender (in-) equality. Remember that gender is about women and men and how they relate. Some studies and projects have come a long way in reframing initiatives using a gender lens. However, this remains a challenge. Much work still looks mostly at women and mostly at reaching women rather than beneft-sharing, empowerment, and transforming gender relations. Use an intersectional approach. Gender analysis entails looking at power relations and at the different social categories with which a person identifes. Intersectional approaches ensure that the different social categories (age, ethnicity, sex, race, socioeconomic standing, etc.) studied are the “right” ones to meet the intervention or study objectives.Which women/ men are involved? Who is missed? Is this intentional? Examine institutions more, with less focus on capacities. A prevailing misframing of how to address gender inequality is the focus on women’s capacities—capacity building initiatives—rather than equal consideration to structural and institutional settings. This “fx the woman” mentality places the onus on women to change without adequately taking into account existing institutional constraints (as well as opportunities).We need to learn more about institutional and structural challenges to, and support for, gender equality. Analyze structures and institutions beyond just gender norms. Gender norms have begun to gain some traction in recent years as a focus of study and engagement, but other structural constraints and opportunities still tend to be overlooked. More attention to structural issues and the institutional context is needed. What supports or hinders participation in and beneft from value chain engagement? What structural and institutional elements support women’s empowerment and create space for the transformation of gender dynamics? Include sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Understanding the social context and power dynamics is critical to understanding what is happening in a value chain. Sexual harassment is pervasive in many work contexts, and gender-based violence is widespread in the household, community, and workplace. These topics are not studied enough and merit much more exploration. If women and men do not feel safe, how can they engage in a value chain?

A fragmented story emerges when scanning the body of work on gender and value chain development of the past two decades. By now, we should have a basis from which to draw conclusions and move past these fragments and context-specifc fndings on specifc chains toward 41

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cross-system comparisons and conclusions. But, what are scientists and practitioners learning from one another’s work? We have limited evidence as to “what works” in terms of value chain interventions supporting progressing gender equality, perhaps in part due to gender analysis in value chains leading to interventions that are not strictly value chain interventions. For example, gender analysis might lead to choices for interventions that have a different focus, and as such, are not captured or evaluated as value chain initiatives.Attention is required for this. Working on gender dynamics in value chains is a choice to engage in current, albeit neoliberal, market systems locally, regionally, and/or globally. Some argue quite convincingly against such engagement, taking a more radical position that value chains are not an effective tool for development and that global value chains, in fact, reinforce existing global inequalities. Others caution as to the limits to what we can expect from using value chains as a channel for women’s empowerment and are explicit in distinguishing women’s empowerment from gender equality (Ihalainen et al., forthcoming 2020). The gendered economy and the conundrum of working within a neoliberal market system is not a new concern (c.f.Tallontire et al., 2005). Our position is that working on alternatives is welcome, but in the meantime, improving the conditions and position of women and transforming gender relations within existing structures is also important. Tradeoffs often play out between value chain performance objectives, such as viability and effciency, and gender equality objectives, including the transformation of gender relations. Navigating and making choices in relation to these sometimes competing objectives is the art and science of gender-equitable value chain development and central to how we approach the subject here. Moving forward, we advocate for a feminist lens in studying and engaging in value chain development. Gender transformative approaches (GTAs), in particular, offer exciting pathways for reinventing gender relations and shifting structural constraints to support progress toward greater gender equality. We encourage the use of GTAs that dig deeply into the roots of inequality, including labor exploitation, and work for change that is steered by women and men of different social and economic positions who are engaging in (or wanting to engage in) value chain activities.Already, a lot of exciting headway is being made, but it is often fragmented. Refection and thoughtful engagement that builds on these emerging areas is the task at hand for the next generation of gender-inclusive value chain practitioners and researchers.

Annex: Gendered value chain tools reviewed by Stoian et al. (2018) •

• • • •

Chan, M.K. (2010). Improving opportunities for women in smallholder-based supply chains: business case and practical guidance for international food companies.Accessed May 12, 2018. Available at: http://agriprofocus.com/upload/Bill_and_ Melinda_Gates_Improv ing_opportunities_for_women_in_small_scale_supply_chains_-guide1428576461.pdf. FAO. (2018). Developing Gender-Sensitive Value Chains–A Guiding Framework. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Markel, E. (2014). Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment in Private Sector Development– Guidelines for Practitioners. Cambridge: Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED). Mayoux, L. and Mackie, G. (2007).Making the Strongest Links:A Practical Guide to Mainstreaming Gender Analysis in Value Chain Development.Addis Ababa: International Labour Organization (ILO). Rubin, D., Manfre, C., and Nichols Barrett, K. (2009). Promoting Gender Equitable Opportunities in Agricultural Value Chains: A Handbook. Washington, DC: US Agency for International Development. 42

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• •

Senders,A., Lentink,A.,Vanderschaeghe, M., and Terrillon, J. (2013). Gender in Value Chains. Practical Toolkit to Integrate a Gender Perspective in Agricultural Value Chain Development. Arnhem: Agri-ProFocus. Terrillon, J. (2010). Gender Mainstreaming in Value Chain Development: Practical Guidelines and Tools.The Hague: Corporate Network Agriculture SNV.

Notes 1 Note: in this chapter, we use a broad defnition of “agriculture” that includes aquaculture, fsheries, and forest products. 2 See the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture (WEAI) Resource Center: http://weai.ifpri.info/.

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Gender and agricultural value chains Quisumbing, A., Roy, S., Njuki, J., Tanvin, K., and Waithanji, E. (2013). “Can dairy value-chain projects change gender norms in rural Bangladesh? Impacts on assets, gender norms, and time use.” IFPRI Discussion Paper, IFPRI,Washington, DC. Quisumbing,A., Rubin, D., Manfre, C., and Waithanji, E. (2015).“Gender, assets, and market-oriented agriculture: learning from high-value crop and livestock projects in Africa and Asia.” Agriculture and Human Values 32 (4): 705–725. Quisumbing, A. Rubin, D., Manfre, C.,Waithanji, E., van den Bold, M., Olney, D., and Meinzen-Dick, R. (2014). “Closing the Gender Asset Gap: learning from Value Chain Development in Africa and Asia.” IFPRI Discussion Paper.Washington, D.C.: IFPRI Roxas,A., Guliman, S., Perez, M., and Ramirez, P. (2017).“Gender and poverty dimensions in a value chain analysis of milkfsh mariculture in Misamis Oriental, Philippines.” Asian Fisheries Science 30S:343–353. Said-Allsopp, M., and Tallontire, A. (2014). “Pathways to empowerment? Dynamics of women’s participation in global value chains,” Journal of Cleaner Production 107:114–121. Scott, A. (1994). Gender segregation and social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stoian, D., Donovan, J., Elias, E., and Blare, T. (2018). “Fit for purpose? A review of guides for genderequitable value chain development.” Development in Practice 28:494–509. Tallontire, A., Dolan, C., Smith, S., and Barrientos, S. (2005). “Reaching the marginalised? Gender value chains and ethical trade in African horticulture.” Development in Practice 15:559–571. Wong, F.,Vos,A., Pyburn, R. and Newton, J. (2019). Implementing gender transformative approaches in agriculture, a discussion paper for the European Commission. Amsterdam: CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research.

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3 GENDER INEQUALITIES IN FOOD STANDARDS Carmen Bain

Introduction Women’s empowerment and gender equality remain a major challenge within the rural Global South where gender inequalities and discrimination result in women having less access to agricultural assets, resources, decision-making, decent work, and education. Addressing gender disparities and empowering women has become central to the development discourse and interventions of many governments, businesses, and development agencies as critical to mitigate entrenched problems of food insecurity and rural poverty, and to fuel economic growth (McCarthy, 2018; Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). Within this context, social scientists and feminist scholars are concerned with understanding the role of new global governance confgurations within global value chains to address these problems (Grosser, 2009). Of particular interest is the infuence of non-state actors, including business and civil society organizations (CSOs), that have embraced new rule-making governance strategies, such as standards, audits, and codes of conduct, to address social and economic problems within their value chains as well as gender (McCarthy, 2018). While much attention has been on women agricultural producers, this paper argues that the role of private standards to address gender disparities in agricultural wage employment is also critical.Wage employment in agriculture remains precarious, low paid, insecure, temporary, and part-time work with few social benefts, particularly for women. Moreover, women’s lack of assets other than their own labor, gender discrimination, stereotypes, and their primary responsibility for domestic labor and unpaid care work means that women seeking paid employment face few options but to accept such precarious employment. Ensuring that women have access to “decent work” (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 343) is critical for improving the rights and welfare of women, households, and communities. In this chapter, I frst provide an overview of gender inequality within agricultural labor markets and women’s roles in providing household and unpaid care work. I then describe the rise of private governance in global value chains with a particular focus on private standards. It is important to note that the terminology used to describe non-state, market-driven forms of governance varies and continues to change over time. Common terminology includes private standards, voluntary standards, voluntary sustainability standards, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and codes of conduct.As the most encompassing label, I primarily use private standards 46

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throughout this chapter. I also acknowledge that there are important differences between some of these types of private standard initiatives, which are largely beyond the scope of this chapter. I then review the literature to assess the implications of private standards for enhancing gender equity within the paid labor market. One of the primary limitations of private standards identifed by feminist scholars is that they insuffciently address the household and women’s unpaid labor. Due to these omissions, I concur with other feminist scholars that private standards are inherently limited in their ability to fundamentally dismantle the structural inequalities that limit decent work and women’s access to it (McCarthy, 2018). Moreover, one of the core problems with private standards is that it perpetuates the myth that the household is separate from the paid labor market.Within this context, I conclude that efforts by the state to advance women’s agency remain critical for addressing these problems.

Women’s empowerment and gender equality within agricultural labor markets Women’s empowerment and gender equality have become central to development discourse and practice for women in agriculture.Women play an essential role in the agricultural labor force across the Global South.Women’s involvement in agricultural labor ranges from approximately 20% in Latin America to approximately 50% in sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, 2011). However, these numbers may underestimate women’s actual participation since women tend to “underreport their own agricultural activities,” and some work carried out by women is not offcially counted as agricultural work (FAO, 2011 cited in Sexsmith, 2019, p.39). Women are engaged in a wide array of agricultural employment, including working as subsistence and commercial agricultural producers to working as waged workers on agricultural plantations or out-grower schemes (Sexsmith, 2019). Improving gender equality and empowering women agricultural producers is now viewed by many governments, businesses, and global development institutions as critical to enhancing national economic growth and household and community development (McCarthy, 2018; Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). Relative to men, women face higher levels of poverty and food insecurity, have less access to agricultural training and productive resources, such as land, capital, and credit, and experience lower levels of decision-making power (Sexsmith, 2019). Women are increasingly portrayed “as entrepreneurial and altruistic” (Lyon et al., 2019, pp. 34–35) and their agency the answer to the deprivation the Global South confronts (Chant, 2016). From this perspective, targeting women for development interventions should be central to antipoverty and food insecurity initiatives since women are more likely to invest in their children and household’s wellbeing relative to men (Akter et al., 2017; Sraboni et al., 2014).To accomplish this, efforts such as closing the asset gap between women and men in agriculture are now core to efforts by actors from the United Nations to the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Lyon et al., 2019). In a context where agriculture is becoming increasingly “feminized,” development agencies view interventions that target women to address entrenched problems of poverty and food insecurity as “smart economics” (Lyon et al., 2019, p. 34). While much attention has focused on women agricultural producers, empowering women and tackling gender disparities in waged agricultural employment is also critical for reducing poverty and improving the economic and social welfare and sustainability of individuals, households, and communities in rural areas (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014; Sexsmith, 2019; Lyon et al., 2019).Across the Global South, millions of rural poor lack access to any assets other than their labor and therefore depend on wage employment in agriculture for their livelihoods (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). As part of the trend in the feminization of labor, paid employment for women has been rapidly increasing in nontraditional export agricultural crops tied to 47

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global value chains, such as cut fowers, horticulture, livestock, and seafood (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). Waged agricultural employment is important for achieving women’s empowerment and gender equality by providing income and challenging local gender norms and stereotypes regarding women workers (Sexsmith, 2019). Nevertheless, signifcant barriers exist to addressing the “entrenched, structural mechanisms” that (re)produce greater levels of alienated labor for women relative to men (Lyon et al., 2019, p. 37). Compared to men, women are more likely to be engaged in employment that is categorized by the International Labor Organization (ILO) as vulnerable (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014).Vulnerable work includes insecure work arrangements, such as subcontracted, temporary, casual, or part-time employment, where workers typically earn low wages and lack social protections.These jobs often expose them to unsafe working conditions that present health risks, including exposure to agrochemicals, as well as sexual abuse and harassment (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014; Sexsmith, 2019; McCarthy, 2018). Some of the entrenched, structural mechanisms that reproduce women’s alienated labor include workplace segregation patterns, especially in export agricultural sectors. For example, women face “horizontal occupational segregation” where, compared with men, they occupy a narrower range of employment sectors and occupations and “vertical segregation” where, compared with men, they are more likely to be employed in occupations that require manual labor and are deemed “lower skill” (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 348). Occupational segregation is reinforced through gender norms and stereotypes of feminine and masculine traits, such as women’s “nimble fngers” and attention to detail (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014).Women’s primary responsibility for domestic labor and care work often leaves them little choice but to accept vulnerable work and occupational segregation. Within this context, the challenge is “not simply to create new jobs but to create quality work with higher and more stable incomes and with safer and healthier working conditions” (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 343).The ILO’s Decent Work Agenda has been recognized by the United Nations as crucial to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now the Sustainable Development Goals (ILO, 2019).The Decent Work Agenda “promotes rights at work, decent and productive employment and income for women and men, social protection for all, and social dialogue, with gender equality and nondiscrimination as cross-cutting priorities” (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 343).

The household and women’s unpaid care work Feminist scholars have played a critical role in bringing the household and women’s unpaid care work to the center of gendered analyses of labor markets.These scholars argue that efforts aimed at enhancing gender equality within the labor market are thwarted by women’s overrepresentation in unpaid care work (McCarthy, 2018). According to the World Bank, women and girls around the world remain primarily responsible for unpaid domestic labor (Sexsmith, 2019).This domestic labor primarily involves women working to meet the needs of others without receiving any remuneration (McCarthy, 2018).This work can include caring for dependent relatives (children, the elderly, the sick), cooking, cleaning, shopping, and related domestic labor that is necessary for the household to survive (McCarthy, 2018). In many societies, it can also include women’s unpaid work in family businesses or engagement in subsistence agriculture (McCarthy, 2018). World Bank data show that up to 80% of this work is performed by women and girls (McCarthy, 2018).While there is considerable variation across and within countries in terms of “who, when, and why individuals perform unpaid work” (McCarthy, 2018, p. 337), on average, women “spend 2.6 times more hours performing this work than men” (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 31). 48

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Rural women in the Global South face particular challenges in performing their domestic labor tasks. For example, women often travel considerable distances to access water and frewood from public sources to support the household; access to transportation (e.g., bicycles, motorcycles, buses) is limited, as is access to public healthcare services when dependents are sick, and social norms and gender stereotypes constrain men from contributing to household chores and care work (Ransom et al., 2017; McCarthy, 2018; Sexsmith, 2019).These persistent inequalities signifcantly affect women’s ability to participate in the paid labor force and affect under what conditions they can participate. Women’s responsibilities for domestic labor limit their options and can force them to accept work that is part-time or casual, which is more likely to be low paid and low in status (McCarthy, 2018). In addition, their domestic obligations can limit their ability to improve their education or training or engage in activities, such as workers unions or cooperative meetings (Sexsmith, 2019).Women’s “triple-shift,” which involves working in paid employment while also performing most domestic tasks and care work (McCarthy, 2018), can increase time poverty, leaving little time for rest, leisure, or pursuing other social or educational activities (Bain et al., 2018). In sum, women’s unpaid care work plays an essential but often unrecognized role in supporting and sustaining households, communities, economies, and societies. Within this context, a major question for social scientists and feminist scholars is the contribution that private governance institutions, such as standards, can make to women’s empowerment and gender equality within agricultural value chains.

Private governance of global value chains Since the 1990s, the expansion of global value chains has coincided with a new paradigm in global governance. In this new paradigm, non-state actors, including food retailers, business associations, CSOs, and multi-stakeholder groups, play a leading role in developing governance institutions, such as standards for food safety, labor, and the environment. This paradigm shift is the result of several overlapping forces, including the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the development of international trade agreements, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement; now USMCA, United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), and the growth and consolidation of multinational corporations, especially food retailers (Bennett, 2017).These changes occurred in a neoliberal economic and political context where states in the Global North were less willing or able to regulate the behavior of business (Bain et al., 2013; Bennett, 2017). The result was growing concerns from civil society actors about the potential ills that unfettered global value chains might have for food safety, the environment, and labor (Bennett, 2017; Busch and Bain, 2004). CSOs and international bodies, such as the United Nations, began demanding that corporations implement mechanisms to govern their value chains in a socially and environmentally responsible manner (Bennett, 2017). In response, we have witnessed a surge in private governance initiatives, including standards, codes of conduct, and third-party audits, that non-state actors use to coordinate production and distribution practices throughout a value chain (Bain and Hatanaka, 2010;Tallontire et al., 2011; Bain et al., 2013). Much of the literature on private governance is focused on standards. Public standards are established by governments and embedded in laws, regulations, and policies, while private standards are often referred to as voluntary because compliance is enforced through the market and not via the state (Bain et al., 2013). Standards are criteria or rules “intended to measure a product, person or service’s performance or specifc characteristics (e.g., the amount of pesticide residue on apples) or the process through which the good was produced (e.g., an organic apple) (Nadvi and Waltring, 2004)” (Bain et al., 2013, p. 2). By establishing a 49

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common set of rules that create uniform characteristics for people and things, standards ensure that order and discipline can be maintained “across time and space … despite the heterogeneity that exists between cultures, languages, political systems, and markets” (Bain et al., 2013, p. 2).To increase their authority and legitimacy, private standards are often monitored using independent third-party certifers who conduct audits to assess and evaluate compliance with the standards (Hatanaka et al., 2005; Sexsmith, 2019). Since private standards now order so much of our social life, they are considered a useful entry point for revealing the social and material relations inherent in the production of commodities across value chains (Bain et al., 2013). Agrifood scholars are particularly concerned with the social implications and distributional effects of private standards for different actors within the context of global trade within value chains.This includes understanding the power and equity implications of private standards and how they may act to make some social relations visible and others invisible (Bain et al., 2013).

Private standards and gender inequality in agricultural labor markets Private standards are diverse in their origins, objectives, developers, and enforcement mechanisms and continue to evolve (Bennett, 2017). Nevertheless, private standards can be grouped into two broad categories: conventional and sustainable. Conventional private standards are often set by companies themselves and are designed to monitor their own corporate practices or those within their supply chains. Companies use private standards to advance economic, social, and environmentally sustainable business practices throughout their value chains intended to enhance their brand reputation, minimize risk, ensure consumer safety, and/or provide a price premium (Bain et al., 2013; Loconto, 2015; Bennett, 2017; Sexsmith, 2019). One example is GLOBALG.A.P., which is the largest farm certifcation program for monitoring agricultural practices around the globe. Within this program, gender-neutral standards for worker health, safety, and welfare are a subset of its standards for food safety, quality, and the environment and largely focus on minimizing risk by ensuring that producers comply with relevant labor laws, including for worker health and safety (Bain, 2014). Another example is CSR standards. CSR generally refers to the expectation that business is socially, economically, and environmentally responsible and accountable to society for its actions throughout its global value chains and should “compensat[e] for negative externalities and contribut[e] to social welfare” (Gond and Moon, 2011, p. 2 cited in McCarthy, 2018, p. 338). With CSR, corporations institutionalize social and environmentally responsible practices through private standards that are typically specifc to their companies (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). “Gendered CSR” refers to the recent “boom” in the “proliferation of CSR policies, programmes, initiatives, and partnerships that aim to contribute to gender equality in various contexts, but predominantly in the global South” (McCarthy, 2018, p. 338). Sustainable private standards have typically been developed by or with signifcant input from CSOs. Prominent examples include Fairtrade International, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ Certifed, and IFOAM Organic. Sustainability standards are focused on addressing environmental and human rights issues (Meemken and Qaim, 2017) and often have the goal of including and empowering disadvantaged producers and workers (Bennett, 2017). In some cases, such as UTZ Certifed, standards are used to reform company practices throughout its value chain, especially those of lead buyers such as food retailers or processors (Loconto, 2015) and in other cases, such as Fairtrade International,“to create alternative economic systems outside the capitalist market” (Bennett, 2017, p. 54). These programs include specifc standards intended to address gender inequalities (Sexsmith, 2019). Central to these standards are nondiscrimination clauses based 50

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on ILO conventions, which include equal pay for equal work, equal representation, freedom from sexual harassment, and maternity leave (Loconto, 2015; Meemken and Qaim, 2017). Over time, many of these standards have sought to go beyond equal treatment for men and women to include standards to enhance “workers’ rights, freedoms and provisions,” such as standards for minimum wage and unionization/collective bargaining (Loconto, 2015, p. 197). This includes expanding standards to focus on concerns specifc to women. For example, Fairtrade and UTZ have incorporated specifc gender programs, including workshops on gender equality, and increasing women’s participation in training, meetings, and other activities. However, it is important to note that some of these standards are recommended rather than required (Meemken and Qaim, 2017). One problem with assessing the role of private standards for gender equality in the labor market is the limited number of studies and data of private standards related to gender (McCarthy, 2018; Sexsmith, 2019). Sexsmith (2019) argues that the reason for this is twofold; frst, most private standards do not include gender equality as a primary focus, and second, most studies of private standards only consider gender as a secondary issue in their research questions. Another problem is that corporate reporting of the gender impacts of their standards remains minimal with little information on issues that are central to gender equality, such as part-time or temporary employment or efforts to address the “gender pay gap” (Grosser et al., 2018, p. 5). Among these studies, most focus on women small-scale agricultural producers (Dolan and Humphrey, 2000; Friedberg, 2004; Ransom and Bain, 2011) rather than agricultural labor, and few studies draw on feminist theory (Grosser and Moon, 2017; McCarthy, 2018). Despite the limited number of studies, there is an important body of feminist scholarship that has assessed the gendered implications of private standards. Research has shown that private standards can improve women’s working conditions in agriculture, especially in relation to wages, work hours, and worker health and safety. This is especially important for women who are disproportionately segregated into jobs that are part-time and/or temporary where low wages and precarious working conditions, including for health and safety, are common (Sexsmith, 2019). For example, private standards for programs, such as Fairtrade International, typically require employers to comply with national laws for wages and work hours (Sexsmith, 2019). Private standards can also play a critical role in improving worker health and safety with certifed farms “four times more likely to have occupational safety and health policies than noncertifed farms,” including for using harmful agrochemicals (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 42). In addition, private standards can improve overall working conditions by providing basic facilities, such as bathrooms, drinking and washing water, and housing (Loconto, 2015; Bain, 2010). However, most feminist scholarship has been critical of the ability of private standards to mitigate gender inequalities in agrifood value chains (Barrientos et al., 2003; Pearson, 2007; Allen and Sachs, 2007; Bain, 2010; Loconto, 2015). For example, standards that are intended to be “gender neutral,” including for worker health and safety, can exclude the specifc concerns of women and exacerbate gender inequalities by making women’s labor conditions and concerns invisible. Bain (2010) found that GLOBALG.A.P. standards for worker health and safety in relation to agrochemicals focused on setting standards to enhance the safety of workers engaged in tasks largely performed by men (e.g., pesticide spraying) but excluded those tasks largely performed by women (picking and packing fruit). Under these standards, women continued to be exposed to dermal and respiratory exposure of pesticides, with signifcant acute and chronic effects on their health.These effects range from vomiting and burns to miscarriages, fetal abnormalities, cancer, and even death.The ability for private standards to identify and address women’s specifc “needs and concerns,” or to mitigate the potentially negative effects of gender-neutral standards, is unlikely if women workers are not sitting at the standards-setting table (McCarthy, 51

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2018, p. 338). Studies of third-party audits show that audits are often inadequate for addressing these concerns, since auditors may not meet with workers (Bain, 2010; Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). In addition, an auditor reviews documents to assess whether the employer has complied with the standard, not the quality of the standard itself nor whether workers are exercising their rights (Loconto, 2015). For example, a standard may comply with national laws guaranteeing workers the right to maternity leave, but workers may not feel that they can exercise their right to take it (Loconto, 2015).

Private standards and women’s unpaid care work A key question is the extent to which private standards “‘recognise, reduce and redistribute’ unpaid care work” that can contribute to empowering women and address gender inequalities in the market and workplace (McCarthy, 2018, p. 337). Most research fnds that households and women’s unpaid labor are not incorporated into private standards within global value chains (Loconto, 2015). Pearson (2014) argues that private standards only apply to workers in paid employment in some—but not all— nodes of the global value chain and excludes unpaid labor (McCarthy, 2018, p. 338). Sexsmith’s (2019, p. 33) review of fve private standards schemes found that none of them “directly addresses gender inequalities in domestic labour” and that certifcation did “not directly reduce women’s unpaid labour burden.” McCarthy (2018, p. 337) fnds that women’s role in unpaid care work is largely not recognized, and therefore CSR initiatives are “missing a unique opportunity to contribute to gender equality and sustainable development.” Sexsmith (2019, p. 32) argues that business often considers the household and domestic labor as “a cultural concern beyond the scope of the mostly economic, environmental and social (public sphere) content of standards.” From this perspective, gendered domestic labor arrangements refect “local cultural norms” and are “beyond the scope of certifcation systems” (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 33). Similarly, McCarthy (2018, p. 337) argues that business views women’s unpaid labor “frmly in the realm of the private sphere.” In some cases, scholars found that failure to consider women’s unpaid care work meant that private standards may actually harm women. For example, most standards forbid children in the workplace because it can be considered exploitative, even when it is an accepted local practice or the labor of adolescents is an important source of family income (Sexsmith, 2019; Loconto, 2015). This rule can limit women’s participation in the paid labor force if women have no childcare options and need “to bring their children to work with them” (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 33). In general, households and women’s unpaid labor are typically deemed irrelevant to business and the economy and therefore excluded from economic analysis (McCarthy, 2018).This refects the dominant neoclassical view of economics, where domestic labor is not assessed because it is not determined to be proftable (McCarthy, 2018). Feminist scholars, on the other hand, challenge the assumption that the public and private sphere are separate, arguing instead that households and women’s unpaid labor should be central to any analysis of markets, including private governance institutions (McCarthy, 2018). McCarthy (2018, p. 340) argues that so-called “‘non-market’ activities” including housework, childcare, and caring for the sick, are “as important as ‘market’ activity” since market economies and societies could not function without them.

Role of the state From the perspective of feminist scholars, private standards are inherently limited in their ability to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality in the labor market. Private governance 52

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institutions ignore the “gendered macroeconomic context” in which they operate (McCarthy, 2018, p. 337) and are limited in their ability to “dismantle broader structural inequalities” that (re)produce gender inequality for women workers (Lyon et al., 2019, p. 45). For example, scholars have argued that a precarious workforce within agriculture, which includes a fexible and feminized workforce, is central to the proftability of lead buyers within global value chains. In a context of unstable commodity prices, oligopolistic food retailers, rigid quality, and “just-intime” demands, farmers are squeezed with farm receipts often “below the costs of production” (Lyon et al., 2019, p. 37). Within this context, squeezing labor is often the only space where farmers have some room to maneuver (Bain, 2010). For example, Bain (2010) found that a key strategy used by farmers to circumvent costly GLOBALG.A.P. standards was to rely more on subcontracted labor who were not covered by the certifcation process. There is no “win-win” in terms of gendering private standards since gender inequality is so central to business proftability. Job segregation and insecure employment allow businesses to pay women less and provide fewer employment benefts, such as healthcare or social security, which improves the company’s bottom line (Grosser et al., 2018). Business and global value chains proft from the subsidy of women’s unpaid care work not provided by businesses or the state since the value from women’s unpaid labor in the household and community accrues to business (Grosser et al., 2018; Lyon et al., 2019; McCarthy, 2018). In addition, there are various legal ways that corporations harm women, such as business efforts to avoid paying state taxes. Yet, these taxes are necessary to provide services by the state, such as childcare, public transportation, or infrastructure development, that are critical to addressing gender inequalities (McCarthy, 2018). McCarthy (2018, p. 345) argues that “before embarking on gendered CSR one might argue that the frst step would be for corporations to ‘do less harm’ by paying appropriate tax.”This helps to explain why most private standards are “piecemeal,” where companies select “initiatives that suit their purpose” to protect the frm but rarely pursue standards that advance “women’s rights for their own sake” (Grosser et al., 2018, p. 4). Within this context, many feminist scholars argue that private standards are limited in their ability to “alleviate unpaid care work without economic support and resources from welfare systems” (McCarthy, 2018, p. 345). To achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment requires the transformation of legal and regulatory structures (Sexsmith, 2019). These scholars have been critical of the state sharing or outsourcing its welfare responsibilities to “the private sector” (McCarthy, 2018, p. 345). Instead, the state plays a necessary role in developing and implementing policies and providing funding for public goods that reduce the domestic burden on women, including providing social welfare services (e.g., healthcare), childcare, public schools, land rights, infrastructure for water, sanitation, energy, and transportation, and domestic violence protections (McCarthy, 2018; Sexsmith, 2019). State policies and institutions, such as education and the law, also play an important role in helping shift social norms and attitudes that are critical for improving how domestic work is distributed between women and men and girls and boys (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). However, some feminist scholars argue that the problem of unpaid work “is too big a topic” that requires the involvement of multiple actors (Grosser et al., 2018, p. 4).While governments are “the ideal actor for providing support for unpaid care” from a pragmatic perspective—in a context of economic and political neoliberalism it remains necessary to explore the possibilities that private governance may provide in addressing women’s unpaid care work (Grosser et al., 2018, p. 4). Some scholars argue that there are ways that private standards can indirectly address gender inequalities in domestic labor. For example, Sexsmith (2019, pp. 32–33) argues private standards could support women’s unpaid labor by providing “loans or investments … to acquire labour saving technologies or community infrastructure projects that create safe and reliable 53

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child-care facilities.” Sexsmith also argues that standards can establish criteria that help women engage in paid labor while also meeting their responsibilities for childcare. For example, Fairtrade International and UTZ Certifed have criteria regarding childcare, however, “in neither case is child care obligatory to be eligible for immediate certifcation” (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 32). In other cases, scholars argue that private governance institutions could be improved by requiring a shift in who gets to sit at the standard-setting table. Loconto (2015, p. 209) argues that “who is involved in developing the standard is very important for determining what is included in the standard and the type of knowledge that is privileged,” including “how the measures for gender equity are constructed.” Private standards might be better understood not as “the tool that should deliver change, but rather a mechanism for mobilizing other interested actors,” including labor movements that can help transform labor practices (Loconto, 2015, p. 209).

Conclusion There is widespread agreement among scholars that our understanding of the effects of private standards on women’s empowerment and gender equality within agricultural value chains is limited and that more research is needed (Sexsmith, 2019). Notwithstanding the limited number of studies, several general conclusions can be made. Despite the widespread adoption of “women’s empowerment,” “smart economics,” and “closing the gender gap” rhetoric in global development, there is limited evidence that private standards can deliver substantive change in these areas (Lyon et al., 2019). One caution is that private standards and certifcation programs might become victim to “gender washing,” that is, “promoting the notion that women … can be saved through market integration” while companies continue to proft “from the labor of women subject to asset gaps” and other inequities (Lyon et al., 2019, p. 45). Discourses around “win-win scenarios” for business and women are misleading and such strategies “cannot address women’s human rights effectively” (Grosser et al., 2018, p. 4). Private standards have the potential to play an important but limited role in addressing some narrow forms of gender inequities. However, rather than advocating for more widespread adoption of private standards and expecting them to deliver fundamental change, many feminist scholars argue that our attention needs to be refocused on the role of government in addressing gender inequities, especially as they relate to women’s unpaid labor (Loconto, 2015). Empowering women by “removing barriers to women’s participation in decent employment” will require “a transformatory employment policy; that is … which helps to change peoples’ perceptions of what is possible, benefcial, and fair; fosters cooperative action; and strengthens women’s bargaining power in the workplace, the home, and the marketplace” (Elson 1999 cited in Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 367). Scholars also argue that substantive change depends on developing a social and material environment that expands women workers’ “agency to effect changes,” which will depend on expanding “their capacity for ‘voice’ and their capacity to ‘exit’ (i.e., withdraw or withhold cooperation)” (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014, p. 355). Dey de Pryck and Termine (2014, p. 355) argue that: These capacities depend on the resources they can mobilize, which can be individual (land, wages, equipment, human capital) or collective, such as their social capital gained through membership in social groups and networks, and their strategic potential to bring change.The attitudes of men and their willingness to support women are likely to be crucial to success. 54

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Feminist scholars have also argued that future research must include approaches that use an intersectional lens (Sexsmith, 2019). Intersectionality is concerned with “the processes through which some women (and men) become more marginalized than others” (Sexsmith, 2019, p. 14). Rural women engaged in the agricultural paid labor force are likely to share many disadvantages and inequalities that are described above. However, class, race, ethnicity, life course, and other social factors could mean that women experience these differently and that for some women, experiences of disadvantage and inequalities are more extensive (Dey de Pryck and Termine, 2014). Elson (2017, p. 52) argues that fundamental to closing the gender gap is to “recognize, reduce, and redistribute” women’s unpaid care work. Therefore, women will remain “weak winners” (Kabeer, 1999, p. 436) if governance efforts aimed at strengthening gender equality and women’s empowerment within agriculture pay insuffcient attention to addressing women’s domestic labor and unpaid care work. Here, feminist scholars can play a critical role in understanding and assessing governance efforts—from private standards to government policy—and their capacity to address this problem.

References Akter, Sonia, Pieter Rutsaert, Luis Joyce, Htwe Nyo Me, San Su , Raharjo Budi, and Pustika Arlyna. (2017). “Women’s empowerment and gender equity in agriculture: a different perspective from Southeast Asia.” Food Policy 69 (May):270–279. Allen, Patricia. (2014). “Divergence and convergence in alternative agrifood movements: seeking a path forward.” Research in Rural Sociology and Development 21:49–68. Allen, Patricia and Carolyn Sachs. (2007). “Women and food chains: the gendered politics of food.” International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15:1–16. Bain, Carmen. (2010). “Structuring the fexible and feminized labor market: global GAP standards for agricultural labor in Chile.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35:343–67. Bain, Carmen. (2014).“Chilean Temporeras and corporate construction of gender inequalities in global food standards.” In Gendered commodity chains: seeing women’s work and households in global production, edited by Dunaway, 119–34. Stanfor, CA: Stanford University Press. Bain, Carmen and Maki Hatanaka. (2010). “The practice of third-party certifcation: enhancing environmental sustainability and social justice in the global south?” In Calculating the social, edited by Higgins,V. and Larner,W., 56–73. London: Palgrave Macmillian. Bain, Carmen, Elizabeth Ransom, and Iim Halimatusa’diyah. (2018).“‘Weak winners’ of women’s empowerment: the gendered effects of dairy livestock assets on time poverty in Uganda.” Journal of Rural Studies 61:100–09. Bain, Carmen, Elizabeth Ransom, and Vaughan Higgins. (2013). “Private agri-food standards: contestation, hybridity and the politics of standards.” The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 20:1–10. Barrientos, Stephanie, Catherine Dolan, and Anne Tallontire. (2003).“A gendered value chain approach to codes of conduct in African horticulture.” World Development, 31:1511–26. Bennett, A. Elizabeth. (2017). “Who governs socially-oriented voluntary sustainability standards? Not the producers or certifed products.” World Development 91:53–69. Busch, Lawrence and Carmen Bain. (2004). “New! Improved? The transformation of the global agrifood system.” Rural Sociology 69:321–46. Chant, Sylvia. (2016). “Women, girls and world poverty: empowerment, equality or essentialism?” International Development Planning Review 38:1–24. Dey de Pryck, Jennie and Paola Termine. (2014). “Gender inequalities in rural labor markets.” In Gender in agriculture: closing the knowledge gap, edited by Quisumbing, R. Agnes, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Terri L. Raney, Andre Croppenstedt, Julia A. Behrman, and Amber Peterman, 343–370. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Dordrecht: Springer. Dolan, Catherine, and John Humphrey. (2004).“Changing governance patterns in the trade in fresh vegetables between Africa and the United Kingdom.” Environment and Planning A 36:491–509.

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Carmen Bain Elson, Diane. (2017).“Recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work: how to close the gender gap.” New Labor Forum 26 (2):52–61. FAO. (2011). The state of food and agriculture: women in agriculture. Closing the gender gap for development. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2050e.pdf Friedberg, Susanne. (2004). French beans and food scares: culture and commerce in an anxious age. New York: Oxford University Press. Grosser, K., and Moon, J. (2017).“CSR and feminist organization studies: towards an integrated theorization for the analysis of gender issues.” Journal of Business Ethics 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551 -017-3510-x. Grosser, Kate, Meagan Tyler, and Lara Owen. (2018).“Submission to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights Response to the Open Call for Input regarding the Working Group’s Report on the Gender Lens to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Insights from the gender and corporate social responsibility literature.” UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights 3–9. Hatanaka, Maki, Carmen Bain, and Lawrence Busch. (2005).“Third-party certifcation in the global agrifood system.” Food Policy 30:354–69. International Labor Organization. (2019). “Decent work and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.” https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/sdg-2030/lang--en/index.htm. Accessed on December 19, 2019. Kabeer, Naila. (1999). “Resources, agency, achievements: refections on the measurement of women’s empowerment.” Development and Change 30:435–464. Loconto, Allison. (2015). “Can certifed-tea value chains deliver gender equality in Tanzania?” Feminist Economics 21:191–215. Lyon, Sarah,Tad Mutersbaugh, and Holly Worthen. (2019).“Constructing the female coffee farmer: do corporate smart-economic initiatives promote gender equity within agricultural value chains?” Economic Anthropology 6:34–47. McCarthy, Lauren. (2018). “There is no time for rest: gendered CSR, sustainable development and the unpaid care work governance gap.” Business Ethics:A European Review 27:337–349. Meemken, Eva-Marie and Matin Qaim. (2017). “Can private food standards promote gender equality in the small farm sector?” GlobalFood Discussion Papers. No. 99. Universität Göttingen, Research Training Group (RTG) 1666 – GlobalFood, Göttingen Germany. Najjar, Dina, Bipasha Baruah, Aden Aw-Hassan, Abderrahim Bentaibi, and Girma Tesfahun Kassie. (2018). “Women, work, and wage equity in agricultural labour in Saiss, Morocco.” Development in Practice 28:525–540. Nelson,Valerie and Anne Tallontire. (2014).“Battlefelds of ideas: changing narratives and power dynamics in private standards in global agricultural value chains.” Agriculture and Human Values 31:481–497. Pearson, Ruth. (2007).“Beyond women workers: gendering CSR.” Third World Quarterly 28:731–749. Prügl, Elisabeth. (2015).“Neoliberalising feminism.” New Political Economy 20:614–631. Prügl, Elisabeth. (2017).“Neoliberalism with a feminist face: crafting a new hegemony at the World Bank.” Feminist Economics 23:30–53. Ransom, Elizabeth and Carmen Bain. (2011).“Gendering agricultural aid: an analysis of whether international development assistance targets women and gender.” Gender & Society 25:48–74. Ransom, Elizabeth, Carmen Bain, Harleen Bal, and Natasha Shannon. (2017). “Cattle as technological interventions: the gender effects of water demand in dairy production in Uganda.” FACETS 2 (Sept):715–732. Raynolds, Laura T. (2014).“Fairtrade, certifcation, and labor: global and local tensions in improving conditions for agricultural workers.” Agriculture and Human Values 31:499–511. Sexsmith, Kathleen. (2019).“Leveraging voluntary sustainability standards for gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture: a guide for development organizations based on the sustainable development goals.” International Institute for Sustainable Development 1–53. Sraboni, Esha, Hazel J. Malapit,Agnes R. Quisumbing, and Akhter U.Ahmed. (2014).“Women’s empowerment in agriculture: what role for food security in Bangladesh?” World Development 61 (Sept):11–52. Tallontire, A., Opondo, M., Nelson,V., & Martin, A. (2009). “Beyond the vertical? Using value chains and governance as a framework to analyse private standards initiatives in agri-food chains.” Agriculture and Human Values, 28(3):427–441, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9237-2.

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4 FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND GENDER EQUITY Anne Portman

Introduction Food sovereignty asserts the rights of peoples to defne and organize their own agricultural and food systems so as to meet local needs and secure access to land, water, and seed. Food sovereignty was asserted in response to the corporatization and globalization of food networks and the perceived inadequacy of global institutions, like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, to address inequities inherent in these processes.The food sovereignty resistance movement emerged in response to problems that have gendered dimensions. In acknowledgment of the critical role that women play in agricultural production and food provisioning around the world, an explicit commitment to gender equity has been a part of the food sovereignty concept from its earliest articulations by the peasant-led anti-globalization coalition group, La Vía Campesina (LVC).While the stated commitment to gender justice remains prominent in food sovereignty advocacy, practical efforts to attain it have lagged. Moreover, some critics argue that the breadth of the food sovereignty vision has led to internal contradictions, especially between gender justice and some of food sovereignty’s other specifc goals.This chapter will explore some of these perceived contradictions, asking if the presence of internal tensions undermines the coherence of the food sovereignty concept, and speculating on the impact of the presence of these tensions on the movement’s ability to achieve its stated gender justice goals. Drawing on the work of philosophers Val Plumwood and Karen Warren, I will explore the possibility of alleviating some of the tension by situating food sovereignty within an ecological, feminist framework. At its broadest, ecofeminist theory articulates material and conceptual connections between the subordination of women and the degradation of nonhuman nature.There is ample evidence that women face gender-specifc constraints in agriculture and food work. Women suffer disproportionately from hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases due to inequitable distribution of power at the household level (Patel, 2012).Women small farmers face substantial constraints: insecure rights in the land they cultivate, lack of secure water sources, and limited access to crucial things like formal credit, new technology, and marketing infrastructure.While these constraints affect all genders, women tend to face the additional burdens of performing unpaid labor on land that they do not own (Agarwal, 2014, pp. 1252–1253). Food processing and manufacturing systems rely on gendered divisions of labor, typically with women as disadvantaged workers in 57

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processing and packaging, while men tend to occupy the supervising and driver jobs (Allen and Sachs, 2007, pp. 6–7).Women farm laborers are subject to extremely low wages and are vulnerable to sexual harassment/assault (Allen and Sachs, 2007, p. 6).The “feminization of agriculture” (Agarwal, 2014, p. 1252; Song and Jiggins, 2003)—the fact that women are increasingly responsible for the labor involved in food production—intensifes the gendered nature of these problems. Moreover, solutions to problems are conceived, articulated, and undertaken under gendered conditions. This lends itself to the ongoing reproduction of gender inequality in efforts to address other global problems. Despite the “feminization of agriculture,” there remains a lack of women’s formal leadership in the agricultural arena.Women are underrepresented in ownership and managerial positions in the agricultural sciences, policymaking, and governance.As Annette Desmarais (2007, p. 282) notes, There are many reasons why women do not participate at [the leadership] level. Perhaps the most important is the persistence of ideologies and cultural practices that perpetuate unequal gender relations and unfairness. For example, the division of labor by gender means that rural women have less access to the most precious resource, time, to participate as leaders in agricultural organizations. This gendered context and women’s relative lack of institutional power makes it easy to overlook the need to change gender relations in agrifood systems. Women and women’s issues remain marginal in food studies and justice movements (Allen and Sachs, 2007; Vivas, 2012; Molina, 2019).1 As I see it, there are two general but signifcant worries that accompany attempts to craft solutions to food-related problems under gendered conditions; frst, the reproduction of gender inequity in proposed solutions. Given that women and girls do suffer hunger and malnutrition disproportionately and face intensifed challenges/barriers because of their gender, solutions that knowingly or unknowingly reproduce gender inequity are hardly solutions at all. Second, the contradiction or tension between gender equity and other food justice goals. Practically speaking, tensions require resolution, compromise, or sacrifce. When tensions arise, gender equity can appear tangential to food justice efforts. In solution-generating contexts where women lack institutional power, it is easy to sacrifce gender justice in service of other immediate goals. A pressing worry, then, is whether resistance frameworks have the conceptual and political resources to adequately resolve internal tensions without sacrifcing gender equity.Attending to these worries reveals a critical trend in current food sovereignty discourse of highlighting the internal conficts or contradictions of a wide-ranging movement. In the remainder of this chapter, I will provide an overview of food sovereignty’s emergence as a resistance movement, and some of its foundational principles. Then I will describe food sovereignty’s gender equity aims, focusing on the statements and initiatives of LVC. I will discuss some of the criticisms that have been raised regarding potential and actual conficts within the food sovereignty concept and movement. My focus here will be on contradictions between food sovereignty’s feminist goals and its other economic or social goals. Finally, I will describe a critical ecological, feminist framework and argue for its value in illuminating the coherence and the counter-hegemonic power of the food sovereignty concept.

Food sovereignty Since the mid-1990s, transnational coalitions of peasant activists have responded to the corporatization and globalization of food networks with an assertion of the need for food sovereignty. 58

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Food sovereignty remains an emerging and contestable structure of resistance, continuously being reframed in the context of a growing movement comprised of a diverse constituency of stakeholders around the world. But generally, food sovereignty asserts the right of peoples to defne and organize their own agricultural and food systems so as to meet local needs and secure access to land, water, and seed. The concept is predicated on an egalitarian dispersal of power (Patel, 2010) and valorizes “localized, accountable, and democratic decision-making … in ways that link local communities as part of regional and global movements” (Andree et al., 2014, p. 11). LVC was the group that frst elaborated on the concept of food sovereignty and remains the most globally prominent agrarian coalition group. It was founded in 1993 as a transnational alliance between farmers organizations following the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), where the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement were signed (Desmarais, 2007). Activists criticized these agreements as too focused on technical problems and as maintaining the status quo with regard to global trade.They wanted to see food addressed as a human right denied to many, especially those living in the Global South. LVC emerged as a peasantled initiative formed to collectively speak out against further globalization of an industrial, corporate-led model of agriculture (Desmarais, 2007; Desmarais et al., 2014). LVC adopted an intentional strategy of building solidarity and campaign coordination among geographically, culturally, and organizationally diverse peasant and farmer groups that were facing similar struggles (Desmarais et al., 2014, p. 91). LVC remains at the forefront of the growing global food sovereignty movement that involves rural- and urban-based environmental, social, and feminist movements, as well as fshers, farmers, pastoralists, consumer groups, and other social actors (Desmarais et al., 2014). LVC asserted the need for food sovereignty as a direct response to the inadequacy of the discourse and policies centering on “food security,” defned by the FAO as a condition that “exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to suffcient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 2013, p. 209). In the later part of the 20th century, global food security was increasingly managed through policies centered on the idea that economic growth, via market mechanisms, is the most appropriate solution for addressing global poverty and achieving food security (Schanbacher, 2010). However, many activists and theorists argue that food security remains fundamentally committed to a globalized economic system that is characterized by inequity and injustice, and reduces human relationships to their economic value (Schanbacher, 2010;Wittman et al., 2010; Andree et al., 2014). Alternatively, the food sovereignty model considers human relations in complex rather than reductionist terms, recognizing mutual social and ecological dependence, cultural diversity, and embeddedness in place.2 LVC argued that food sovereignty was a prerequisite for achieving food security: “Longterm food security depends on those who produce food and care for the natural environment … Food sovereignty is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity” (LVC, 2010, p. 197). In its original articulation of the food sovereignty concept, LVC laid out seven foundational commitments of food sovereignty that serve as preconditions for recognizing people as genuinely food secure (LVC, 2010, p. 1) that food is a basic human right, 2) agrarian reform that remedies landlessness, 3) protection of natural resources and biodiversity, 4) reorganization of the food trade to emphasize self-suffciency, 5) ending the globalization of hunger, 6) social peace, and 7) democratic control. LVC and its global partners proceeded to rearticulate the concept over the course of the following decade, but these principles remain its foundation. 59

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Throughout its evolution, the food sovereignty concept has maintained the idea that, frst, the nature and structure of food systems ought to be determined by the producers and consumers themselves rather than corporations or the “market” more abstractly. Second, food sovereignty embeds a malleability in the structuring of food systems, giving it conceptual fexibility that makes it particularly well suited to being reframed for application in different cultural and political contexts. Finally, it retains a commitment to the maintenance of biodiversity, cultural knowledge, and sustainability (though, of course, the scope and meaning of all of these are contestable).

Food sovereignty’s gender equity aims Ultimately, the food sovereignty concept recognizes that social justice (intergenerational, gender, racial, and so on) is practically bound to ecological sustainability. A commitment to redressing gendered inequality has been embedded in the concept from the beginning. The “democratic control” component of LVC’s (2010, p. 199) original call to food sovereignty ends by asserting, “Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.”While the food sovereignty concept has broadened over time, in response to a growing set of connected concerns (Patel, 2010; Wittman et al., 2010), each prominent articulation of the food sovereignty concept from transnational alliances has included a direct call to address gender injustice (Portman, 2018, p. 458). For example, “Upholding gender equity and equality in all policies and practices concerning food production” (Our World Is Not For Sale, 2010, p. 205), from the oft-cited 2007 Declaration of Nyéléni,“Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations,” and food sovereignty envisions “a world where … there is recognition and respect of women’s roles and rights in food production, and representation of women in all decision making bodies.” Currently, LVC’s website dedicates pages to what the coalition “fghts for” and what it “fghts against”; LVC prominently and explicitly fghts against patriarchy. Over the past 25 years, LVC has specifed multiple gender justice-related goals and action campaigns. As the statements above indicate, the group has called for equal decision-making power for women within the organization. The increasing participation of women leaders at global summits ensured ongoing dedication to the inclusion of women’s issues in summit declarations (Desmarais, 2003; Vivas, 2012; Women’s Assembly Declaration, 2017). For example, women demanded that they be granted greater participation in rural policy developments (Desmarais, 2003, p. 143). LVC advocates for land and legal reforms that encourage women’s land ownership. LVC also organizes efforts to curb violence against women, especially in adapting to post-subsistence agriculture livelihoods (LVC, 2019a; Navin, 2015, p. 93). In addition to these specifc goals identifed by LVC, the food sovereignty concept is organized around several general principles that support gender justice. Most fundamentally, in asserting the right of peoples to organize their own agricultural and food systems, food sovereignty calls for a reorganization of political power.The consistent democratic pulse of food sovereignty declarations animates the vision of its political efforts. As Raj Patel (2010) emphasizes, food sovereignty’s egalitarianism serves women and the movement. He writes, To make the right to shape food policy meaningful is to require that everyone be able substantively to engage with them. But the prerequisites for this are a society in which the equality-distorting effects of sexism, patriarchy, racism, and class power have been eradicated. (Patel, 2010, p. 194) 60

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Moreover, the movement would not be able to achieve some of its specifed goals without a robust egalitarian vision. For example, as indicated above, women may not be able to participate equally in LVC leadership if they are hindered by broader sociopolitical inequities. Additionally, food sovereignty calls for the revaluation of local, traditional knowledge and economies. Global corporate agriculture threatens to displace women from their roles in traditional agriculture by supplanting their agroecological knowledge with the technologies of industrialization (Shiva, 2002; Patel, 2012; Navin, 2015). The Declaration of Nyéléni (2007) asserts, “Our heritage as food producers is critical to the future of humanity.This is especially so in the case of women and indigenous peoples who are historical creators of knowledge about food and agriculture and are devalued.” LVC is committed to recognizing and protecting the contributions that women make to food economies and cultures. Seeds and seed sovereignty have been focal points of these efforts because of the critical role that seeds play in biodiverse production and in sustaining local agricultural knowledge (Wittman et al., 2010; Bezner Kerr, 2010; Shiva, 2002; Navdanya, 2019).Women’s particular roles in seed saving and exchange around the world have been well documented.3 For example, Carine Pionetti (2005) documented the value of women’s work in sustaining a localized seed economy in the Deccan Plateau of South India. Seed saving provides a “self-reliance and bargaining power within the household” as women select seeds to meet specifc, timely, localized needs and can use seeds as tangible assets (Pionetti, 2005, p. xiv). By minimizing risk, increasing crop diversity, and providing a material source of resistance and resilience, seeds actualize the security of a “knowledge commons” for many communities (Holt-Gimenez 2006). So, as Mark Navin (2015, p. 92) summarizes, Various cross-cultural studies have shown that the work women do in growing, harvesting, and preparing food is often central to their identities and social positions. So, efforts to preserve food cultures will also be efforts to preserve practices that affrm women’s identities and promote their social roles.

Tensions and contradictions Given the particular action goals of the movement and the conceptual pillars of the concept, gender justice should be seen as central, rather than tangential, to food sovereignty. However, food sovereignty is an ambitious idea and contains many specifed goals. Critics observe that the breadth of the food sovereignty vision seems to render the concept simultaneously overdetermined and diffuse (Portman, 2018; Patel, 2010).The concept includes so much that descriptions of it often read like a “defnition by committee” (Patel, 2010), an ever-expanding list of concerns.At the same time, its foundational principles are so comprehensive that the concept of food sovereignty would seem to cover almost any social justice or sustainable development concern (Flora, 2011). In light of this two-pronged critique, recall the two worries that I articulated above: 1) that proposed solutions reproduce gender inequity, and 2) the presence of contradiction between specifed goals (or between a specifed goal and a general conceptual principle). Scholars have noted that the expansive scope of the food sovereignty vision has led to internal tensions, creating a discursive trend of highlighting potential and actual conficts.4 For example, Bina Agarwal (2014) notes a shift in emphasis on the expanding defnitions of food sovereignty from national to local self-suffciency in agrifood systems Agarwal, 2014, p. 1251).Tensions also arise between promoting traditional food crops and maintaining a farmer’s freedom to choose what to grow and how to grow it (Agarwal, 2014, pp. 1256–1257) and between individual and collective rights, especially given that articulations of food sovereignty tend to “gloss over” the distinction between farm owner and farmworker,“one of the key distinctions in agrarian capi61

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talism” (Patel, 2010, p. 190). Each of these sites of tension would have aspects worth exploring through the lens of gender. Here, though, I will focus on three prominent areas where food sovereignty’s emphasized aims and/or rhetoric are in apparent confict with broad gender equity goals: 1) valuing the “family farm,” 2) valuing “traditional” knowledge, and 3) essentializing the connection between women and nature. First, there is a signifcant tension between empowering women and empowering “family farms.”We can see from analyses of the gendered nature of food-related problems like hunger and malnutrition that, globally, women remain disempowered at the family level, not just at the level of institutional leadership (Patel, 2012).Advocating for a model of individual family farming without addressing the deep-rooted cultural barriers that women face undermines the stated need for gender equity (Agarwal, 2014, p. 1255). Or, as Raj Patel (2010, p. 190) puts it, one of the most contradictory elements of the 2007 food sovereignty declaration is “the emphasis on ‘new social relations’ in the same paragraph as family farming, when the family is one of the oldest factories for patriarchy.” Moreover, the model of the “family farm” carries cisgender and heteronormative assumptions that are in need of feminist interrogation. As Michaela Hoffelmeyer points out in this volume, while many scholars have illustrated the historical subordination of women under the family farm production structure, they are only beginning to explore the implications for queer farmers. Unquestioned maintenance of these assumptions undermines the actualization of gender justice. While LVC has stated an acknowledgment of the need to include sexuality as a dimension of social (in)equity (LVC, 2017),5 this acknowledgment is in apparent contradiction with the dominant emphasis on the value and maintenance of traditional family farming as a production structure. Second, one of the elements of the food sovereignty vision that was introduced above as aiming toward women’s empowerment was the revaluation of women’s traditional knowledge and roles in local food economies. But, as with the gender imbalances of the family farm,“traditional food economies often involve oppressive hierarchies of power” (Navin, 2015, p. 96). We may worry that protecting women’s traditional subsistence and domestic work reinforces rather than subverts their subordination.While seeds often circulate in subsistence farming communities as sources of reciprocal exchange and indigenous knowledge, women’s role in these exchanges refect communities’ gender norms. For example, of the role of gender in Malawian seed exchanges and seed gifting, Rachel Bezner Kerr (2010, p. 143) writes, generational and gender differences embedded in seed relations are rooted in the structural inequality of women in [the] patrilineal Tumbuka and Ngoni culture, where men inherit land and women gain status from having sons. An older woman’s role as manager in seed selection is built on this patriarchal system.These gender inequalities challenge a notion of food sovereignty rooted in cultural traditions and need to be addressed if seed sovereignty is to foster social equity. So, in patriarchal cultures, the maintenance of cultural identity may imply the maintenance of women’s subordination (Allen and Sachs, 2007). Finally, it has been a challenge for advocates to recognize the sociocultural connections between women and food without invoking problematic claims about women’s essential natures. One of the implied reasons for protecting and valuing women’s food work is their natural predisposition to doing such work and doing it well. For example, see this representative statement from the Indian women’s seed collective and activist group, Navdanya,“Mother Earth and Women are the creative energies that sustain life on Earth and in our home and communities” (Navdanya, 2019a).And, from an older LVC Women’s declaration (2004): 62

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We [women], historical discoverers of agriculture, guardians of the earth and seeds, creators of medicinal knowledge and protectors of biodiversity, oppose the threats that free trade imposes on our autonomy, our knowledge, our wisdom, and our right to continue creating harmonious ways of life based on diverse and holistic cosmovisions of our peoples and communities. More recent women’s declarations tend to use less naturalized language in favor of more explicit feminist critiques of capitalism. Nevertheless, claims regarding the traditional, crucial role of women in agriculture can easily slide into gender essentialist tones. Such rhetoric leaves unquestioned the ideas of nature, femininity, and gendered work that have been constructed under patriarchy. As the next section of this chapter will make clear, relying on the idea that women and men have fundamental natural differences serves to undermine efforts for social and political equality. So, protecting women’s traditional food roles locally may be inconsistent with the movements’ broadest feminist aims. These three particular contradictions are united by the general worries that proposed solutions will reinscribe gender inequity, and that the presence of contradiction between the movement’s stated goals will undermine its stability. Patel (2010) argues that despite some of the contradictions between specifc goals, a commitment to radical egalitarianism is at the heart of the food sovereignty program.This democratic core provides the opportunity to regard conficts as temporary and resolvable. Agarwal’s work indicates that the reliance on a democratic resolution of confict is a reliance on the ability to build consensus (2014, p. 1256). Even if strong, consensus-building leadership were possible, and women continue to be given a platform in the movement, efforts led by women are not necessarily consciously feminist (Allen and Sachs, 2007, p. 14). As we have seen, some efforts may be in tension with, or even counter to, gender equity agendas. Agarwal argues that the kind of contradictions outlined in this section should prompt us to ask just how realistic the food sovereignty vision really is. Can this concept hold potentially contradictory aims simultaneously? Can it hold them in a way that also indicates the means for negotiating the tensions between these aims? In the next section, I consider these questions through the lens of ecofeminism.

Ecological feminism The foundational ecofeminist claim is that there are historical, conceptual, and material connections between the degradation of nature and the devaluing of women.6 Val Plumwood (1993; 2002) provides a robust account of the conceptual frameworks that support these mutual degradations. She argues that the shared logical characteristics of a centric conceptual structure underlie various forms of sexism, racism, colonialism, and human supremacy. Each case sets up one term (“masculine,” “white,” “European,” etc.) as the normative center and defnes others as secondary, derivative, or defcient in relation to it. As opposed to mere difference, dualisms are either/or relations that construct dichotomous pairs with fxed identities that are defned in opposition to one another and hierarchically ordered. They create radical separations between the group identifed as the privileged center and the groups that are consequently marginalized.The male/female binary under patriarchy is a paradigmatic example of value dualism, wherein male and female are presumed to have fxed natural identities that are defned in opposition to one another and hierarchically ordered. It is accompanied by a set of contrasting pairs, such as human/nature, mind/body, public/private, and so on. For ecological feminists, these dualisms reinforce one another insofar as nature is feminized and women are naturalized (Warren, 2000). 63

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The dichotomous sets are connected by assumptions implicit in the cultural background or made explicit by particular thinkers (Plumwood, 1993, p. 45). Take the assumption that only humans possess culture; this links culture/nature to human/nature. Meanwhile, the assumption that the human sphere is essentially characterized by rational intellect maps mind/body onto human/nature. The alignment of the rational with patriarchal social formations maps the mind/body pair onto the masculine/feminine pair. And because mind/body is linked to human/nature, so too can masculine/feminine be mapped onto the human/nature dualism. Thus, because of the implicit links between rationality, humanity, and masculinity, the whole set of dualisms can be mobilized in service of reducing and exploiting nature and those who are counted as a part of nature, like women. Ecological feminism attempts to theorize alternatives to value dualistic paradigms by resisting rigid and hierarchical distinctions. This resistance requires the simultaneous recognition of continuity and difference, heterogeneity, and substantive connections within and among groups (Plumwood, 2002). It requires recognition of the fuidity of social categories, material interdependence, and the bonds of co-constituting mutuality. But to actualize this recognition requires a posture of openness to communication from others and a willingness to adjust one’s actions and beliefs in response to that communication. Plumwood calls this ethical posture “the intentional recognition stance” (1993, pp. 136–141; 2002, pp. 176–186) and argues that it is the posture we should adopt toward all potentially communicative others, human and nonhuman. Doing so is a counter-hegemonic response to the exclusionary structure of value dualistic paradigms. This alternative allows for and values dialogical relationships rather than monological control and is inherently refexive rather than rigid. This posture of openness can underlie interpersonal relationships, theory-making, policymaking, and, I suggest, food making. The strategic practices of food sovereignty activism navigate, continuously and by design, the simultaneous recognition of heterogeneity within local communities and substantive connections across communities.The seed work of Navdanya provides a practical example, though, as I mentioned above, there is a need to be cautious about the portrayal of women as somehow inherently poised to understand the workings of nature best. Navdanya regards diversity as a resource; this is as true in the cultural, conceptual spheres as in the biological, agricultural spheres (2019a; Shiva 2002). Brazilian LVC leader, Itelvina Masioli says, Our concept of food sovereignty has to be linked to a project of agriculture … I think that we have to continue constructing from our practice, respecting the differences that exist, but the principles should have merit for wherever we are. (Wittman et al 2010), 44) How do we situate the possibility of this cohesion in the context of diverse traditions and practices that may be in tension? Philosopher Karen Warren illustrates ecological, feminist theory-building as metaphorically akin to quilting (2000, pp. 66–67). The borders of the quilt are created by some basic necessary conditions, giving the quilt its boundaries and structure.The patterns of the quilt emerge from the diversity of visions and practices of the quilters who create and patch it over time. This imagery conveys the necessity of maintaining a dialectical relationship between theoretical, conceptual work and practical, activist work, in both ecofeminist ethics and food sovereignty efforts (Portman, 2018, pp. 462–463). Some of ecological feminism’s “boundary conditions” are context-sensitivity, the inclusion of multiple (especially underrepresented) perspectives, and ultimately the resistance of social domination (Warren, 2000, pp. 98–102). 64

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I would argue that these are “boundary conditions” for food sovereignty as well. Put this way, we can begin to see how food sovereignty can hold contradictory aims in a way that indicates the possibility of negotiating tensions between them. I suggest that an ecological feminist lens reveals that the food sovereignty concept is bounded by the very principles that this kind of conceptual negotiation requires. Food sovereignty replaces either/or hierarchical logic with an embrace of a more fuid logic of mutuality. Recognition of mutuality is refected in its understanding of the co-constituting relationships between individuals, community, and land. It requires context-sensitivity in its assertion that food systems be built by people with localized knowledge who are responsive to the needs of human-ecological communities. Food sovereignty explicitly rejects a “one size fts all” understanding of the relationships between food and culture, agriculture and nature, and communities and the state. As Paul Nicholason, an LVC leader in the Basque country, has said, “[here] we’re identifying the diversity of resistances, the practices as well as the demands. In alliance building it is important to take part in dialogue, there’s room for internal differences, there are many issues yet to be discussed” (Wittman et al 2010, p. 41).The need to incorporate multiple, especially underrepresented perspectives, at multiple scales, is a condition of the food sovereignty concept. Solidary alliances function on a communicative model on which knowledge is shared horizontally rather than imposed “top-down.” This leads to the resistance of social domination and food sovereignty’s egalitarian ideal. The claim that communities are entitled to build their systems is really only meaningful if everyone is able to substantively engage with the process. Thus, the commitment to gender justice is a prerequisite to sovereignty. Does this mean that each effort must perfectly succeed in achieving gender justice? No, but it does mean that each effort can be refexively examined for apparent confict with this goal. Again, we may worry that “women’s uncompensated and unrecognized domestic work” (Navin 2015, p. 96) that bolsters the traditional family farm, will reinscribe women’s subordinated status. But put into a conversation rather than combating with the goals of gender justice, we may better explore how to compensate and recognize women’s work within the particularity of its context. We may also be more cognizant of the variations in the connotations of “family” and materiality of “family”-scaled production arrangements among diverse, localized instantiations. The intentional dialogs cultivated among solidary alliances (LVC, 2017; 2019a) model one platform for engaging deeper questions regarding the vision of a “family” that motivates food sovereignty projects, its baggage and exclusions, as well as its benefts and possibilities. Without these kinds of conversations, communities might invoke unquestioned traditions with problematic gendered and exclusionary associations. With the conversations, traditions can be engaged as living rather than static. Ecofeminism as a whole was dismissed early on by some prominent environmental philosophers (Biehl, 1991; Callicott, 1993, p. 333) as anti-theoretical and gender essentialist. As Victoria Davion (1994) pointed out, there is reason to question whether ecofeminist views that embrace gender-nature connections and/or “the feminine” uncritically ought to be considered feminist at all. But, Plumwood is committed to the idea that an adequate ethical framework must refect an explicit rejection of centrism and its logic of colonization. Under the umbrella of ecofeminism, Plumwood’s work is easily distinguished from those views that would valorize and leave unquestioned the concepts of nature and the feminine as they have been historically constructed within a dualistic/centrist framework. The philosophical work of Plumwood and Warren are examples of truly ecofeminist theorizing insofar as they acknowledge that resistance to patriarchy and response to ecological crises must bring the conceptual signifcance of the woman-nature connection under patriarchy to the fore (Davion, 1994, p. 16). Ecological feminism thus provides a model for how to understand the 65

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robust conceptual and material links between women and nature without relying on gender essentialist claims. This conceptual model is appropriate and available to theorists and food sovereignty activists looking to articulate the signifcance of the connections between women and food production/provisioning while maintaining the ability to critique and reform those roles in order to redress subordination.

Conclusion The brief overview I have provided in this chapter indicates the need for future work in the area of food sovereignty and gender justice.The food sovereignty concept recognizes that social justice, including gender justice, is practically bound to ecological sustainability. Activist efforts have refected an understanding of the connections between women’s political power and ecological health.There is, of course, a need for additional studies on how specifc food sovereignty projects succeed or struggle in incorporating gender justice into their work.We need ongoing documentation of the actual conversations happening, around the tensions between gender justice and other economic and sustainability goals, within local communities in the food sovereignty movement. Research projects might identify steadfast barriers to women, nonbinary, and queer communities with regard to material resources and leadership opportunities, especially within the food sovereignty movement itself. Research projects might also identify innovative, gender-focused solutions to overcoming these barriers. There is also ample room for theoretical expansion on the paths available for navigating the tensions between global vision and the local application of food sovereignty goals. My ecological feminist view positions food sovereignty’s calls to social justice as embedded in a truly radical rethinking of dominant conceptual frameworks and political relations. It replaces reductionist either/or logic with a fuidity and a logic of mutuality. It consequently cultivates a built-in orientation of openness, dialog, and refexivity.The ecological feminist framework does not, itself, eliminate internal tensions in resistance movements.The need to negotiate the call for protecting women’s social roles against the broad aim of social equity remains a pressing concern for the coherence of food sovereignty efforts. But ecofeminism can reveal internal resources available to theorists and practitioners for meeting this challenge.Tension can be a source of energy that is not necessarily destructive; it can be productive if it is encountered and engaged from a posture of openness within a context conducive to dialog.

Notes 1 While I use the term “women” throughout this chapter, I fully recognize that women are not a homogenous social category.An intersectional analysis in sociological work on gender and agriculture helps to reveal the nuances of the way that gender interacts with race and class in the material and sociocultural dimensions of agrifood systems. “These intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and class defne who does what work in the food system and under what conditions” (Allen and Sachs, 2007, p. 4). For an example of this kind of work that takes difference as a starting point for agricultural research and activism, see Park (2015). It should also be noted that queer and nonbinary people in agriculture may face specifc constraints due to gender presentation and/or sexuality. For more on this crucial and underexplored topic, see Hoffelmeyer’s chapter in this volume. 2 The dichotomy between food security and food sovereignty has proliferated in food sovereignty literature.The historical emergence of food sovereignty invites a contrasting of the concepts, and my brief summary here follows that pattern. But, there is also good reason to complicate this dichotomy. As Jennifer Clapp (2015) argues, critics have tended to oversimplify food security and ignore the changes in its meaning over time, while attending to the complexity of food sovereignty and its evolution as a concept. She argues that critics’ assessments of food security have attached questionable normative claims to what is actually an open-ended concept.

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Food sovereignty and gender equity 3 The sociological literature is too extensive to cite here. For some examples that specifcally engage sovereignty related themes, see Beznar Kerr (2010); Howard (2003); Pionetti (2005). 4 For explorations of internal contradictions regarding gender justice, see: Patel (2010); Agarwal (2014); Navin (2015); Park (2015). For wider-ranging critical explorations of contradictions and tensions within food sovereignty, see the following editions: Third World Quarterly Volume 36 (2015) and The Journal of Peasant Studies Volume 41 (2014). 5 Localized activism has sought to create spaces for LGBTQI members of the movement to connect and dialogue; see La Vía Campesina (2017; 2019b). 6 Different scholars and activists have theorized differently the nature of these connections and what is required to redress the oppression and destruction.There are ecofeminisms that are most closely linked with liberal feminism, cultural feminism, postmodern or poststructuralist feminism, and with feminist political activism. Following Cuomo (1998), I distinguish “ecological feminism” from the broader “ecofeminism” to signal my understanding of these connections as historical/conceptual and socially constructed, rather than as essential/natural/biologically determined.

References Agarwal, B. (2014).“Food sovereignty, food security and democratic choice: critical contradictions, diffcult conciliation.” Journal of Peasant Studies 41:1247–1268. Allen, P. and Sachs, C. (2007).“Women and food chains: the gendered politics of food.” International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15 (1):1–23. Andree, P., Jeffrey, J., Bosia, M., and Massicotte, M., eds. (2014). Globalization and food sovereignty: global and local change in the new politics of food.Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Bezner Kerr, R. (2010). “Unearthing the cultural and material struggles over see in Malawi.” In Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, 134–151. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Biehl, J. (1991). Rethinking ecofeminist politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Callicott, J. (1993).“The search for an environmental ethic.” In Matters of life and death, 3rd edition, edited by Tom Regan, 332–382. New York: McGraw Hill. Clapp, J. (2015).“Food security and food sovereignty: getting past the binary.” Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2):206–211. Cuomo, C. (1998). Feminism and ecological communities: an ethic of fourishing. London, UK: Routledge. Davion,V. (1994). “Is ecofeminism feminist?” In Ecological feminism, edited by Karen J.Warren, 8–28. New York: Routledge. Desmarais, A. (2003). “The Vía Campesina: peasant women at the frontiers of food sovereingty.” Canadian Woman Studies 23:141. Desmarais, Annette Aurelie. (2007). Globalization and the power of peasants. London: Pluto Press. Desmarais, A., River-Ferre, M., and Gasco, B. (2014). “Building alliances for food sovereignty: La Vía Campesina, NGOs, and social movements.” In Alternative agrifood movements: patterns of convergence and divergence, edited by Douglas H. Constance, Marie-Christine Renard, and Marta G. Rivera-Ferre, 89– 110. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group. Flora, C. (2011).“Review: Schanbacher,William D.: the politics of food: the global confict between food security and food sovereignty.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 24:545–547. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2013).“Basic texts of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.” http://www.fao.org/3/a-k8024e.pdf. Holt-Gimenez, E. (2006). Campesino a Campesino: voices from Latin America’s farmer to farmer movement for sustainable agriculture. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Howard, P. (2003). Women and plants: gender relations in biodiversity management and conservation. London, UK: Zed Books. La Vía Campesina. (2007). “Declaration of Nyelini” Forum for Food Sovereignty. www.nyeleni.org/spip. php?article290. LVC. (2004). “Declaration of the Second International Assembly of Rural Women.” https://viacampesina .org/en/declaration-of-the-second-international-assembly-of-rural-women/. ———. (2010) [1996].“The right to produce and access to land.” In Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, 197–199. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.

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Anne Portman ———. (2017). La Vía Campesina initiate debate on gender and sexual orientation diversity in the movement.” https://viacampesina.org/en/la-via-campesina-peasants-initiate-debate-gender-sexual-orient ation-diversity-movement/. ———. (2019a). “Patriarchy.” Last modifed March 26, 2019. https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-wefghting-against/patriachy/. ———. (2019b). “Peasants and farm workers in Europe call it time to dismantle heteropatriarchy.” https ://viacampesina.org/en/peasants-and-farm-workers-in-europe-call-it-time-to-dismantle-heteropatr iarchy/. Mies, M. and Shiva,V. (1993). Ecofeminism. London, UK: Zed Books. Molina, P. (2019).“Feminism and food sovereignty.” https://blogs.oxfam.org/en/blogs/feminism-and-food -sovereignty. Navdanya. (2019a).“Ecofeminism: liberation of both nature and women from violence and exploitation.” http://www.navdanya.org/site/eco-feminism. ———. (2019b).“Our vision.” http://www.navdanya.org/site/component/content/article?id=620. Navin, M. (2015). “Food sovereignty and gender justice: the case of La Vía Campesina.” In Just food: philosophy, justice, and food, edited by J.M. Dieterle, 87–100. London: Rowman & Littlefeld International. Our World Is Not For Sale. (2010) [2001].“Priority to people’s food sovereignty.” In Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, 200–207. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Park, C. (2015).“We are not all the same: taking gender seriously in food sovereignty discourse.” Third World Quarterly 36 (3):584–599. Patel, R. (2010).“What does food sovereignty look like?” In Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, 186–196. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Patel, R. (2012).“Food sovereignty: power, gender, and the right to food.” PLoS Medicine 9 (6): e1001223. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001223 Pionetti, C. (2005). Sowing autonomy: gender and seed politics in semi-arid India. London, UK: International Institute for Environment and Development. Plumwood,V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge. ———. (2002). Environmental culture. New York: Routledge. Portman,Anne. (2018).“Food sovereignty and gender justice.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31:455–466. Schanbacher,W. (2010). The politics of food: global confict between food security and food sovereignty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International. Shiva,V. (2002). Staying alive: women, ecology, and development. London, UK: Zed Books. Song, Y. and Jiggins, J. (2003). “Women and maize breeding: the development of new seed systems in a marginal area of South-West China.” In Women and plants: gender relations in biodiversity management and conservation, edited by Patricia L Howard, 273–288. London, UK: Zed Books. Vivas, Esther. (2012). “La Vía Campesina: food sovereignty and the global feminist struggle.” International Viewpoint. Last modifed October 30, 2012. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2 784. Warren, Karen. (2000). Ecofeminist philosophy: a western perspective on what it is and why it matters. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefeld. Wittman, Hannah. (2010). “Reconnecting agriculture and the environment: food sovereignty and the agrarian basis of ecological citizenship.” In Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, 91–105. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Wittman, Hannah, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe. (2010). Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community. Oakland, CA: Food First Books. Women’s Assembly Declaration. (2017). “VII International Conference: women’s assembly declaration.” https://viacampesina.org/en/vii-international-conference-womens-assembly-declaration/.

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5 GENDER INTEGRATION IN INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH FOR DEVELOPMENT Margreet van der Burg

Introduction It has never been doubted that women and men are both crucial in agriculture. Economic, legal, political, social, and cultural aspects of agriculture are considered important throughout time. With environmental worries, ecological aspects of agriculture also became part of the debates. The urge to stabilize food security, agricultural supply, and rural welfare coincided with feminist claims to make visible and recognize the contributions of women into farming and to have them equally profting from agricultural innovation and modernization (van der Burg, 2002; 2019). However, the connection between agricultural practice and research proved to be challenging. “Science for impact” has been the implicit motto for the agricultural sciences since the late 19th century. Scientifc efforts to improve agriculture were inspired by new insights in the natural sciences that could beneft agriculture.This fueled the establishment of the agricultural sciences as goal-oriented research with an emphasis on biophysical components. Scientifcally induced agriculture was considered distinct from usual farming practice, which had to be properly integrated as innovation in support of the modernization of the sector and nations. Gradually, disciplines with a societal perspective, such as law and economics, started to provide guidance to improve effectivity and avoid harmful impacts. Environmental worries led to including ecological aspects. Acknowledging farmers as a diverse group of actors on various farm types in rural sociology and anthropology, women in farming also came into the picture. Nevertheless, until the 1970s, scientifc investigation of the systemic interplay of all scales, aspects, and actors in agriculture had been lacking, and it has never become mainstream (van der Burg, 2019; Kauck et al., 2010; Feldman and Biggs, 2012; Klerkx et al., 2012). This chapter highlights gender integration in international agricultural research for development (AR4D) and in development (ARinD) in its capacity to interconnect social and life sciences. First, it explicates fve orientations in agriculture-related research from component research up to systems research without or with inclusion of social actors, up to the inclusion of societal contexts. Second, it stresses their interconnectedness by presenting recent research on gender in international AR4D/ARinD, starting with breeding. Lastly, current gender approaches are explicated to stimulate purposefully selecting approaches in advancing further gender integration. 69

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Research orientations in international AR4D/ARinD “Science for impact” at the crossroads of life and social sciences Currently, agriculture- and food-oriented scientifc institutions explicitly frame their work as “science for impact.” They highlight their aim to contribute to global challenges and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for a more food and nutrition secure and climateresilient world. In addition to the life sciences, social sciences are urged to contribute. However, connecting social and life sciences approaches in the wide-ranging feld of food and agriculture requires more than bringing scientists of diverse expertise together. Successful cooperation and actual integration of social, and thus also gender, dimensions calls for a purposeful effort based on an understanding of the distinctions and interconnectedness of the current research orientations in AR4D/ARinD.

Five research orientations in international AR4D/ARinD Three dimensions in orientation are distinguished to disentangle the complexity of international AR4D/ARinD on the crossroads of life and social sciences (e.g., van der Burg, 2019). Within these dimensions, fve research orientations can be distinguished, as shown in the matrix in Figure 5.1 and explained in the following tabled depictions in Figure 5.2.

Interconnectedness and gender integration claims The two latter of the fve research orientations appear to be the most obvious ones for gender integration since they have an explicit societal link. These often involve (rural) social scientists and are not necessarily considered important to engage with by all agricultural scientists. Nevertheless, the claim for the integration of a societal dimension, and thus also gender integration, goes beyond these two orientations.This corresponds with the motto “science for impact”

Figure 5.1 The fve research orientations on three dimensions in international AR4D/ARinD.

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Figure 5.2 The fve research orientations in international AR4D/ARinD with short depictions.

that refers to societal importance. Food security and gender equality are widely embraced as SDGs and explicitly so by their juxtaposition underlined as two sound objectives in the policy statements of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO; 2011) and the research strategy of the consortium of the international agricultural institutes (CGIAR). The relation between advancing both agricultural productivity and gender equality is extensively substantiated in Quisumbing et al. (2014). The CGIAR has taken up a gender strategy to mainstream gender integration into all consortium research programs (CRPs).They hired new gender specialists and postdocs to cooperate with other CGIAR scientists toward gender-integrated research worldwide. In close cooperation with consultants and academics together, they advanced the recent research debates on gender in agriculture (CG Board, 2011; CGIAR Consortium, 2012; CGIAR-IEA, 2017). 71

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Figure 5.3 The interconnectedness of the fve research orientations in international AR4D/ARinD.

Figure 5.3 illustrates how the fve research orientations can easily be linked and all operate in a societal context. It calls for expanding a societal dimension to all orientations. The graph suggests that the research orientations are interrelated in many ways. It highlights how changes or innovations in any of the felds will also infuence aspects of at least some of the others.This fuels the realization that new opportunities but also constraints for undefned stakeholders and peoples can be easily activated, often in gender-differentiated ways. Gender research calls for promptly examining what social aspects, including gender differentiation, would be important. It acknowledges temporal and cultural differences and change. It implies a break from “one size fts all” solutions. New methods have been developed to acknowledge and include the variety of (human) infuences in research by defning context, identifying system and chain relations, and probing how potential relevant social dimensions, such as gender, are at play. Gender integration helps develop alternatives beyond exclusively focusing on agricultural aspects with a biophysical emphasis. The graph also illustrates the societal context as wider than the direct context for agri-food systems. This implies that this wider context indirectly infuences the people and resources in agri-food systems, and agri-food systems also infuence society beyond their direct functioning. For instance, priorities in policy settings for property taxation, social security, and environmental regulation can be disadvantageous for farming families and need to be assessed on sector-specifc impacts. Agri-food production can also be harmful to the wider society, for instance, by its use of pesticides or its ecological footprint. The graph helps locate and defne gender integration as interconnecting and overlapping the research orientations in international AR4D/ARinD.

Gender integration in international AR4D/ARinD This section stresses the interconnectedness of the research orientations by connecting recent research on gender in international AR4D/ARinD, especially those advancing gender integra72

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tion into biophysical components and system research. It presents new publications that sketch overviews and discuss ways forward and are mainly published after the literature review of Bock and van der Burg (2017).The references to earlier studies and further explanations or examples can be found in the publications referred to..The gender researchers in CGIAR centers proved to be signifcant contributors in cooperation with gender experts in academia or as independent consultants.Together, they provided many scientifc articles, volumes, reports, and briefs to highlight their work following the 2011 Gender Strategy for various audiences, including both life and social scientists (e.g., portal https://gender.cgiar.org).

Gender integration into biophysical component research Making gender analysis meaningful for biophysical scientists is one of the greatest challenges for gender scientists working in the aqua/agricultural and natural resource domains according to two leading CGIAR scientists participating in the Gender and Breeding Initiative (GBI) (Tufan et al., 2018, foreword). Nevertheless, they cooperated in the GBI that was launched in 2017 as part of the CGIAR gender strategy. The GBI set a goal to review former research, bundle lessons learned, and draft ways forward to collaboratively build a gender-in-breeding strategy with an interdisciplinary group of breeders and social scientists.The two CGIAR scientists stress that understanding the difference in jargon and categorizations of knowledge is key in such a dialog to break new ground together (Tufan et al., 2018). Biophysical component research in agriculture mainly entails breeding research. From Tufan et al. (2018), we learn that the CGIAR is aware that breeding programs can aggravate not only women’s food insecurity and poverty but also their households’ if plant traits important to them are not regarded.They urge that breeding programs before genetically determining traits as taste, color, size, and shape, would consistently consider the needs, priorities and effects for potential groups of women and men users.Weltzien et al. (2020), also participants in the GBI initiative, substantiate that including women-preferred traits is essential for improving user benefts, and that neglecting women’s specifc crop uses in various domains limits the use and beneft of new varieties.This consequently means that breeding programs need to include a fuller complement of varietal characteristics based on the understanding of gender differences in responsibilities in the wider product-related processes. However, the in-depth literature review by Weltzien et al. (2020) signifes that we need much more detailed knowledge on gender-differentiated preferences and systematic integration into breeding programs than published so far in English written studies of the last 30 years. Gendered trait preferences related to gendered responsibilities and knowledge

To pave the way for future research,Weltzien et al. (2020) categorized past research and explored patterns of gender-specifc trait preferences in relation to gender-specifc responsibilities, and thus gendered knowledge, in production, household, and marketing tasks. They found that in their assessments most often women and men reported differently on trait preferences for crop use and production reasons, less often regarding market and seed handling. For instance, men only reported on yield components.Women referred more often to postharvest, processing, and food use aspects. Specifcally, only women indicated home food security for which they listed trait preferences enhancing pest resistance, early maturity, and multiple harvests. Preferences to shortening the “hungry season” had to do with early maturing and drought-tolerant varieties, even when providing lower yield.To reduce instability or stress, women also liked varieties that produce even in bad years on poor soils or in less favorable rotating and intercropping schemes. 73

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Gender-responsive breeding clearly requires further elaboration of concepts, research methods, and effort from diverse disciplines with plant breeding, according to Weltzien et al. (2020).They call for research with more precise distinction in preferences, for instance, detailing specifc plant uses and production objectives, who was involved (which women and which men), what genetic materials were available, and under what resource and growing conditions were these assessed. Above this, they call for further exploring how preferences refect the underlying structural gender differences regarding assets, markets, information, and risk. Weltzien et al. (2020) highlight the long-term commitment needed to understand and integrate the dynamic and complex socioecological context into breeding routines beyond individual breeders or breeding programs. Interdisciplinarity among especially socioeconomics, agronomy, plant physiology, pathology, and human nutrition is considered key to advancing the integration of market analysis and possible segmentation, consumer-type studies, analysis of specifc gender roles, social and production system risks and opportunities, and nutritional needs. Since trait preferences are also likely to change, they recommend including foresight analysis, choice experiments, or projections of future trends.They also clearly acknowledge that knowledge and expertise of women and men farmers and those of researchers cannot be easily ftted into what the others know, understand, assume, or observe. Therefore, they recommend using iterative and fexible approaches and participatory methods focusing on dialog, e.g., by visualizing, showing, observing, and discussing rather than formal surveys alone. To support such a long-term complex collaboration across disciplines to sharing and advancing gender-responsive breeding strategies, Weltzien et al. (2020) call for building solid institutional commitment and ownership. Extra stage in breeding programming to include societal and gender dimension

Based on their literature review,Weltzien et al. (2020) agree with Tulan et al. (2018) that (plant) breeding programs need to become more explicit about their goals, targeting and priority setting, and pathways to achieving them.They call for more built-for-purpose gender research on trait preferences within plant breeding programs.Tufan et al. (2018) made a start with addressing the lack of methods and tools to support breeding programs.Through the GBI, they collected and synthesized case studies to illustrate and discuss different ways of navigating the genderbreeding interface.These were grouped under setting breeding priorities, selecting and testing of varieties by participatory plant breeding, and seed control in seed production and distribution. To enhance gender-responsive breeding schemes considering gender differences,Tufan et al. (2018) suggest adding one stage to breeding programs to purposefully include a societal dimension: an extra stage of social targeting and demand analysis to inform breeding criteria. In the fnal chapter, Ashby (2018) details gender-sensitive decision-making for each of the eight distinct breeding phases by listing guiding questions to be answered. These include the identifcation of potential and fnal targeted end users and customers in which gender-differentiated demand would be included. In the following stage, the best matches between optional trait preferences, demand, and product profle or package of traits with a “breedable” product are interrogated. Then, optimal evaluation options for gender-differentiated needs are to be addressed in the defnition of breeding details, genotypes, and technical breeding objectives and methodologies. This includes the option to introduce new sources for varieties to meet the specifcations of the gender-responsive product profle plus the testing before the fnal release. At last, possible constraints in the delivery systems regarding the launch and dissemination of the new crop varieties or animal breeds are to be identifed, and where present, how to lift them is to be considered. 74

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Gender integration into biophysical system research The second orientation, biophysical system research in relation to production systems, has been studied from a gender perspective since the late 1980s. Currently, climate change is to the fore as a global challenge. Integrating gender in this domain has lately been called hard work and compared with the tale of Sisyphus, a man doomed to the eternal punishment of pushing a rock up a hill while the rock rolls down the hill as soon as he reaches the top (Anderson and Sriram, 2019). However, new research lines of gender integration offer interesting interconnections and approaches to explore further. “Design with gender in mind” to redress gender gaps

Similar to others who discuss breeding, Kristjanson et al. (2017) stress the need to “design with gender in mind” when tackling climate change. They participated in the global CGIAR program on Climate Change,Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS), which started with partner institutions in 2011.They expose the gender gaps in climate change impacts and uptake of new practices and also state that women remain largely neglected unless their differing needs, access to, and control over resources are considered. They conclude that not addressing gender will obstruct benefts for women due to persistent inequality. It frustrates opportunities to increase agricultural productivity and livelihoods, and thus hinders reducing the gender gap in agricultural productivity. With similar statements, Huyer and Partey (2020) introduce a special issue on climate-resilient approaches. They warn that climate change can easily widen the gender gap in agriculture and intensify current inequalities.They explain that barriers are sustained by normalized practices around societal norms, division of labor, access and use of resources (land, water, livestock, and fsheries), inputs (e.g., drought-adapted seeds), information and climate services, fnances, and decision-making at all levels. Mixed-methods for linking biophysical and socioeconomic approaches

Kristjanson et al. (2017) point to linking biophysical (e.g., soil health mapping) and socioeconomic approaches to address the relative infuences of land quality and institutional factors. Accordingly, they promote quantitative and qualitative approaches as equally crucial to better understand the complex nexus of gender, agricultural development, and climate change. Such an example is given by Chanana-Nag and Aggarwal (2020) in their application of big datasets for gender equality.They linked climate risk hotspots with high levels of participation of women in agriculture.They show how such a mapping method can help identify and prioritize possible target areas. Nevertheless, they suggest combining such a top-down methodology with a bottom-up assessment of the context and socioeconomic characteristics of the hotspot population. Similar to breeding, clear guidelines to address gender gaps in climate change are not available (Kristjanson et al., 2017). CCAFS made a start with a training manual on the integration of research and practice with gender in mind (Jost et al., 2014). Kristjanson et al. (2017) strongly recommend further developing participatory action research (PAR) approaches with a focus on testing new technologies, strategies, policies, tools, and approaches and co-learning with partners.They also suggest linking ARinD with innovative ICT-based action research and gendertransformative approaches.

Addressing systemic gender inequalities in AR4D/ARinD Integrating gender in natural resource management research went through a similar path as climate change research but a longer one.Asher and Varley (2018) clarify that research on women 75

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and forests started as part of a focus on how rural women use and manage natural resources in the 1980s. The women appeared disproportionately dependent on a wide range of natural resources–frewood for fuel, fodder, wild fruit, etc.–for their livelihoods. However, in their literature review, they mostly found guides and manuals from the 1990s with a rather narrow focus and only a few articles with some critical refection and consideration of power relations or structural factors of gender dynamics in forestry.They point at the opportunity to learn from feminist scholarship. Similarly, Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019) invite us to use compelling feminist research on gender and forest livelihoods but also other cutting-edge gender research to extend this to forest contexts. Natural resource management and feminist scholarship: the systemic nature of inequalities

Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019) highlight the importance of understanding the contextual and systemic nature of inequalities.They emphasize that change to one aspect would affect others since all issues are inextricably linked to one another in the everyday lives of women and men.They explicate how SDG 5 on gender equality can support forest livelihoods when looking beyond conventional forestry defnitions that associate forests mainly with timber, woody biomass, or biodiversity conservation.They argue that to achieve better managed and sustainable forests, it is essential to include the welfare and dignity of forest peoples as well as their livelihoods in research. They stress that there are no automatic gains in gender equality from greater development, expansion of markets for women, inclusion in forestry forums, or poverty alleviation programs. Contextual responses beyond “business as usual” in forest governance and daily management are required. Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019) see the domination of groups of men from certain castes, class, or age groups in decision-making on forests as a superstructure of gendered forest relations. This supports the positioning of forestry as a male domain that has often structurally disadvantaged women and other marginalized groups. Here, they point at perception biases as well as gender norms and values at play.The responses to challenges for forestry would require recognizing the interconnections of the profession and domain, both in organization and ideologies. Farming as occupational closure with persistent gender norms and identities

Well-being, health, and the hindering persistence of gender inequalities in agriculture or farming are also dealt with by Shortall et al. (2019).They suggest approaching farming as occupational closure, which resonates well with the mentioned superstructure in forestry by Arora-Jonsson et al. (2020).As used for the legal profession to capture the dynamics in occupations to exclude alternate infux, lately also for persistent gender exclusion in occupations, Shortall et al. (2019) stress the applicability of the notion of occupational closure to farming. Farming space continues to signify and maintain distinctive gender identities, gender roles, and the identity of family members. It continues to exclude women and regulates agriculture as a sector of male spheres of activity.This has signifcantly contributed to the invisibility of the work of farm women and the denial of it as authentic farm work and women’s identity as farmers. Furthermore, occupational closure is evident in the efforts to break through the gender segregation routines of agricultural value chains and agricultural training, as shown by Pyburn and Kruijssen and by Choudhury and Castallanos (both in this volume).This might not only help conceptualize the understanding of farm gender identities but also further analyze male dominance in related sectors such as forestry, as addressed by Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019). Occupational closure also touches the farm family as a central concept in defning gender identities in agriculture. Many agricultural operations are under the ownership or management of farming household members with family or partner relations. It is clear that household 76

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compositions vary widely and have to be operationalized when addressing gender equality in agriculture. Female-headed or -managed households (de iuro or de acto), polygamous and kinship relations and matrilineal or matrilocal succession lines are to be positioned in cultural and temporal contexts that do not follow the heterosexual norm and nuclear family model as known from modern,Western-dominated family ideology commonly engrained in agricultural sciences (e.g., Bikketi et al., 2019; Sachs and Garner, 2017). Feminist political ecology approaches including non-human relations and emotions

Especially for integrating both social and ecological context in AR4D/ARinD, feminist political ecology provides challenging perspectives and concepts within its wider social and ecological environments. It acknowledges both the material basis as well as the gendered dynamics in agriculture-based practices, both on farms and within the sector (Bock and van der Burg, 2017; Elmhirst, 2012). The list of questions Kaijser and Kronsel (2014) made to support research on the interconnectedness between human societies and climate change includes the gender relations between humans and the environment or nature besides those between humans. They also encourage examining the norms underlying relations to other humans, resources, and nature, how these are reproduced, reinforced, or challenged, and how these are refected in institutional practices. In her address to the study of commons and communing, Nightingale (2019) stresses from her feminist political ecology understanding that a reorganization of production, exchange, and community also implies the renegotiation and reconfguration of the relations between humans and non-humans. She pushes for a focus on processes of commoning and becoming in common, rather than seeking results in cementing common property rights, sharing relations, and collective practices. She sees political communities of commons not as a resource or place, but rather as a set of more-than-human, contingent relations-in-the-making that may result in collective practices of production, exchange, and living with the world. She explains that a focus on the complex dynamics of power would help us understand the contradictions and ambivalences of power. This might presume to also consider gender integration frst as process instead of prioritizing outcomes, results or products. Leder et al. (2019) elaborate on feminist political ecology to understand and examine collective action. In the process of shaping farmer collectives in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, they could trace distinct responses and struggles of people according to gender, land ownership, age, and ethnicity despite carefully using egalitarian principles. Group members benefted differently because of social relations, including intra-household relations, and mediated access to and control over resources. Besides including gender and class relations throughout, and especially in the formation and support of groups, Leder et al. (2019) also point to including emotional attachment in research as it helped them understand the role of loyalty in shaping signifcant mutual encouragement, informal discussions, and sharing resources and labor underlying the apparent struggles of inequality.

Gender approaches in AR4D addressing systemic inequalities Gender transformative approaches Transforming AR4D/ARinD by linking social hierarchies and power dynamics

Kawarazuka and Prain (2019) state that mainstream agricultural research tends to de-link gendered power dynamics from the analysis of innovation processes and technological outcomes. 77

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Where research on agricultural innovation has included many levels, gender gaps are often simplifed to measure women and men participation fgures.Their research on minority Thai farmers in Vietnam suggests that alternative approaches built on women’s own innovation pathways should be included. Women’s experiences, knowledge, and resources from their birth families and their peers play signifcant roles in disseminating new agricultural practices in the patrilocal household.The women are though cautious in their approach to innovation, minimizing both economic and social risks so that their activities can be supported by their husbands and in-laws. Kawarazuka and Prain (2019) observed that the women’s innovations in agriculture tend to be small in scale in terms of economic outcomes, but as social processes have signifcant meaning, while the aspect of women bargaining with patriarchy is mostly overlooked. They conclude that context-specifc theoretically informed gender analysis is critical to understanding these processes and contributing to transforming agricultural research and interventions for social and gender equity. In Clement et al. (2019), it is clearly argued that measured increased individual agency in agricultural production does not necessarily allow marginalized women to overcome structural barriers. Leder and Sachs (2019) support the many warnings against simplifying complex realities since it tends to depoliticize social hierarchies and inequalities. Clement et al. (2019) and Leder and Sachs (2019) imply that this has consequences for the interpretation of increased agency as a marker for improved gender equality and empowerment in the sense of gendertransformative change. Similar to Leder and Sachs (2019), Clement et al. (2019) recommend a contextualized and intersectional approach in AR4D/ARinD especially to address the structural barriers. They emphasize that increased agency can only be perceived as empowerment when it helps achieve what one values.They emphasize the importance of examining agency jointly with the associated local meanings and values. Clement et al. (2019) found from their qualitative analysis on Nepal that decision-making indicators would identify women with migrated husbands as more empowered, but they found it stressful to enter male spaces, particularly when deprived of mental and emotional family support.The explanation is that this is understandable if the boundaries and norms of these spaces remain unchanged and unquestioned. Gender transformative and accommodating approaches: the gender-aware spectrum

Kantor (2013) is often cited as the frst to use gender transformative approaches (GTAs) to put the social context at the center of analysis.This implies the integration of gender analysis into all AR4D/ARinD. She stresses that international AR4D/ARinD cannot develop without addressing how gender norms, practices, and power relations relate to unequal access to agricultural resources, markets, and technologies and not without working with both men and women to advance gender inequality. GTAs are since then propagated to purposely achieve systemic change in AR4D/ARinD (e.g., Hillenbrand et al., 2015; van Eerdewijk et al., 2017; Lawless et al., 2017;Aregu et al., 2019; van der Burg, 2019;Wong et al., 2019). GTAs are contrasted with gender accommodative approaches (GAAs). As derived from the gender integration continuum developed for the health sector, both GAAs and GTAs are considered gender-aware in contrast with gender-blind approaches that essentially deny or ignore gender aspects. GAAs can be participatory and especially beneft women and men in their immediate needs. However, they are considered as likely reinforcing gender inequalities if these entail gender-specifc AR4D or ARinD without addressing gender equality impacts. Nevertheless, in Aregu et al. (2019), we argue that GAAs can partly fuel transformative change but also aggravate inequalities, for instance, in the case of equal but differentiated support under 78

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unequal starting positions.We adapted the original graphic and stressed distinguishing GTAs and GAAs from the outcomes and not considering them as linear but as a spectrum so that gender transformation can be built into AR4D/ARinD in a wise and stepwise fashion (Aregu et al., 2019; van der Burg, 2019). Gender transformative approaches: aquaculture systems and GENNOVATE

CGIAR WorldFish and partners have built up experience in elaborating GTAs in aquaculture systems since 2012, and over the years shared the lessons learned (e.g., Choudhury and Castellanos, this volume; Lawless et al., 2017; Kruijssen et al., 2016; Hillenbrand et al., 2015; Kantor et al., 2015).They, for instance, developed a capacity-building package around the introduction of gillnets for fshing and management of small but nutrient-rich mola fsh. Because fshing has traditionally been men’s work in parts of Bangladesh, gender consciousness-raising exercises were conducted with important household and community members to shoulder the acceptance of the women’s new activities. These address the gender dynamics in intrahousehold power hierarchies, such as food distribution. The evaluation marked changed attitudes among men and women, enhanced collaboration between family members, and a greater number of women applying the technology (Kruijssen et al., 2016; Choudhury and Castellanos, this volume). WorldFish applied a GTA in the above and other ARinD that implies a conceptualization of empowerment beyond individual self-improvement toward transforming power dynamics and structures. It addressed these as three interconnected dimensions of empowerment (Hillenbrand et al., 2015; CARE, 2018, p. 7): • • •

Building agency: building consciousness, confdence, self-esteem, and aspirations (non-formal sphere) and knowledge, skills, and capabilities (formal sphere). Change relations: through intimate relations and social networks (non-formal sphere) and group membership and activism and citizen and market negotiations (formal sphere). Transform structures: discriminatory social norms, customs, values, and exclusionary practices (non-formal sphere) and laws, policies, procedures, and services (formal sphere).

WorldFish also explicates that GTAs actively strive to examine, question, and change rigid gender norms and imbalance of power (Hillenbrand et al., 2015). Gender leaders and postdocs in most CGIAR institutes, including WorldFish, collaborated within the CGIAR GENNOVATE research initiative with colleagues worldwide.They evidenced that restrictive gender norms in agriculture and resource management are deeply engrained in institutions, such as family, education, banking, and other organizations, and constrain the agency, access to resources and services, as well as mobility, representation, and decision-making for especially less privileged groups of women and men (Badstue et al., 2018). For the exchange with colleagues in AR4D/ARinD, Gennovate researchers present and exemplify their specifc design, methodologies, and results in open access briefs and articles (e.g., https://gennovate.org/).

Heterogeneity and intersecting inequalities A systemic approach that includes the acknowledgment of gender dynamics as power relations on various levels in a temporal and cultural context cannot overlook heterogeneity. Although not entirely ignored before, acknowledging heterogeneity among women and men has been recently stressed in AR4D/ARinD, as was the case in the literature in this chapter. In Rietveld 79

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et al. (2020), we suggest bridging gender and youth studies by addressing gender and generation as interconnected. Conceptualization of intersectionality or intersecting inequalities claims to explain and operationalize differentiations beyond adding variables or social categories (Leder and Sachs, 2019; Clement et al., 2019; Kings, 2017; Bock and van der Burg, 2017; Kaijser and Kronsell, 2014). Leder and Sachs (2019) call for unpacking the categorization of “women” within contextualized gender values and intersectionality; otherwise, researchers risk reproducing or even exacerbating existing gendered inequalities and further increasing the marginalization of groups of women. Leder and Sachs (2019) contrast surveys with qualitative ARinD and show the limitation of surveys if solely focused on sex-disaggregated data. For instance, they learned that women able to make decisions themselves and thus with survey scores of powerful agents, did not necessarily consider themselves empowered; some were rather marginalized in the community. Other women contributed themselves to the disempowerment of women, as elderly women did toward their daughters-in-law. Also the survey missed that the level of women’s empowerment was higly related to diverse intra- and inter-household relations; that women attached diverse and different meanings to the indicators used; and that they identifed other empowering factors than included. Kings’ (2017) extensive article on intersectionality regarding ecofeminism suggests concentrating on avoiding the unintentional marginalization of other groups or identities. This requires refecting upon one’s position, especially when speaking from the point of privilege or simply “asking of the other question.” She herself approaches intersectionality as a web of entanglement instead of a traffc junction of intersecting roads. Each spoke of the web would represent a continuum of different types of social categorization, such as gender, sexuality, race, or class. Corresponding to the suggested use of GTAs in AR4D and ARinD, she echoes a multi-level approach after warning that focusing solely on either the macro or micro level of power relations and social categories risks ignoring inequalities resulting from other levels of social structures.

Integrating the societal context beyond AR4D/ARinD According to Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019), taking SDG 5 seriously implies a fundamental change in approaches to forests and the environment—one that incorporates systemic and contextual factors as well as people’s relations outside of forestry.They exemplify that increasing women’s access to funds and social provisions such as childcare allowances also benefts these families and larger communities. Another example is the connection of violence in the forests in the Global South, which often results from struggles with multinational companies based in the Global North.This corresponds with Huyer and Partey (2020), who point to fostering change by decreasing constraints outside of agriculture, such as lack of access to fnance, transport, or energy to support production activities. Arora-Jonsson et al. (2019) also warn not to overlook the gender-neutral framing of the other SDG goals, which could undermine efforts toward rights called for in SDG 5. For example, the focus of SDG 8 and 9 on economic growth and trade could lead to serious disadvantages for marginalized groups, the environment, and gender equality. One example in which gender integration is required as a crosscutting and systemic approach from a wider societal context is given by Gopalakrishnan et al. (2019). They focus on coastal systems and low-lying areas that are increasingly at risk due to global climate change. Coastal areas are particularly exposed to a range of climate-related hazards that may lead to a series of socioeconomic impacts such as reduced agricultural productivity, loss of property and coastal 80

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habitats, loss of tourism, recreation, transportation and industry, and harbor activities. They point to non-climate stressors such as gender issues besides urban growth, population migration, changes in land-use, and pollution. Furthermore, conceptually intriguing examples in this book require further connection to gender integration in AR4D/ARinD, especially Tyler on black feminist agrarian ideologies, Hoffelmeyer on queer farmers, Bryant on mental health, and Shaw on GMOs (this volume).

Conclusion and ways forward The new CGIAR platform, GENDER (generating evidence and new directions for equitable results), presents gender equality in food systems as the main goal without discussing food systems themselves or integrating critical insights of gender research beyond methodologies and evidence (CGIAR Gender Platform, 2020). Nevertheless, the CGIAR gender leaders intend to close the old platform collaboration with a book that publishes a synthesis of the CGIAR gender research undertaken, creative perspectives, new insights, and a forward-looking agenda for gender research in agriculture and natural resource management.This initiative has not included other gender researchers or other social scientists and life scientists, which may mean it will risk not resonating with the substantiated interconnectedness in this chapter. By picturing fve research orientations in AR4D/ARinD within a society-wide context, this chapter helped open the perspective on gender integration as an interconnecting effort. The specifc sections on recent gender integration in breeding as biophysical component research and climate change as biophysical system research, showed that cooperation between social and life scientists has been established. Authors emphasize the importance to further develop, exchange, and interconnect scales in breeding to include the trait preferences of all stakeholders in a value chain, both formal and informal, but also for climate-smart agriculture and natural resource management. They call for more and specifc detailed research to support a robust knowledge base and capacity building.They also stress that these interdisciplinary efforts require institutional commitment to create a good foundation for the longer term. The inclusion of other aspects than accommodating to gender differences is not explicitly addressed by all. When purposefully empowering women and men, it is argued in GTAs to critically include agency, relationships, and structures in a transformative trajectory to purposefully advance welfare, well-being, and gender equality. Transformative change requires a systemic approach to research. It is rather obvious that this requires a system approach, including human agency. The tension in bridging life sciences with social sciences might be located between denial to and unease in integrating such an approach.This may be partly because packaged research products and categories of end-users do not seamlessly ft with calls for addressing intersecting inequalities and participatory (action) approaches. Nevertheless, the presented examples in AR4D/ARinD that include diverse groups of people, communities, or stakeholders deserve more elaboration, especially on how to connect various scales and intersecting identities as important aspects in identifying the multiple levels of power dimensions at play. These ARinD specifcally provide contexts and direct contacts to enable uncovering rather hidden differences than standardized survey methods. The translation of broader discussions and research development into gender integration in international AR4D or ARinD is challenging.This concerns the relation between human and non-humans or nature, which is not yet operationalized for agriculture, or an advanced integration and comparison of health and agricultural research beyond nutrition, especially regarding well-being.The unpackaging of farming as ‘occupational closure’, including a longstanding profession closely tied to family and kin constellations, calls for further unpackaging of AR4D/ 81

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ARinD as sector-specifc.This invites us to further explore both the overlaps, interconnections, and the borders of AR4D/ARinD within the agricultural sciences and beyond.

References Anderson, S. and V. Sriram (2019).“Moving beyond Sisyphus in agriculture R&D to be climate smart and not gender blind.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 3:84 (12 pp.). doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2019.00084 Aregu, L., A. Choudhury, S. Rajaratnam, M. van der Burg, and C. McDougall (2019). “Implications of agricultural innovation on gender norms: gender approaches in aquatic agriculture in Bangladesh.” In Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, edited by Sachs, C.E., 162–179. London and New York: Routledge. Arora-Jonsson, S., S.Agarwal, C.J.P. Colfer, S. Keene, P. Kurian, and A.M. Larson (2019).“5 SDG 5: Gender Equality – A Precondition for Sustainable Forestry.” In Sustainable development goals: their impacts on forests and people, edited by P. Katila, C.J.P. Colfer,W. de Jong, G. Galloway, P. Pacheco, and G.Winkel, 146–177. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashby, J. (2018).“4. Lessons Learned.” In State of the knowledge for gender in breeding: case studies for practitioners. Lima (Peru), edited by Tufan, H.A., Grando, S., and C. Meola, 133–146. CGIAR gender and breeding initiative.Working Paper. No. 3, https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/92819 Asher, K. and G.Varley (2018).“Gender in the jungle: a critical assessment of women and gender in current (2014–2016) forestry research.” International Forestry Review 20 (2):149–159. Badstue, L., P. Petesch, S. Feldman, G. Prain, M. Elias, and P. Kantor (2018). “Qualitative, comparative and collaborative research at large scale: an introduction to GENNOVATE.” Journal of Gender,Agriculture and Food Security 3 (1):1–27. Bikketi, E., E. Njuguna-Mungai, L. Jensen, and E. Johnny (2019). “13 Kinship structures, gender and groundnut productivity in Malawi.” In Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, edited by Sachs, C.E., 221–238. London and New York: Routledge. Bock, B.B. and M. van der Burg (2017). “Gender and international development.” In Gender and rural globalization: international perspectives on gender and rural development, edited by Bock, B.B. and S. Shortall, 245–253.Wallingford/Cambridge, MA: CABI. Burg, M. van der (2002).“Geen tweede boer.” Gender, landbouwmodernisering en onderwijs aan plattelandsvrouwen in Nederland, 1863–1968 (“No second farmer.” Gender, agricultural modernisation and education for rural women in the Netherlands, 1863–1968). Hilversum:Verloren. Burg, M. van der (2019).“Change in the making’: 1970s and 1980s building stones to gender integration in CGIAR agricultural research.” In Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, edited by Sachs, C.E., 35–57. London and New York:Routledge. CARE International (2018).“Gender equality and women’s voice guidance note.” https://insights.careinte rnational.org.uk/media/k2/attachments/Gender_equality_womens_voice_Guidance_Note_2018.pdf. CGIAR Consortium Board. (2011). Consortium level gender strategy. Montpellier, France: CGIAR Consortium. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10947/2630 CGIAR Consortium. (2012).“Meeting report progress on gender and agriculture research in CGIAR,” June 15, 2012, at CIRAD Paris Headquarters, Paris, France. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10947/2706. CGIAR Gender Platform. (2020). “GENDER EQUALITY in food systems.” https://gender.cgiar.org/ wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Gender-Platform-A4.pdf. CGIAR-IEA. (2017). “Evaluation of gender in CGIAR−Volume I: Evaluation of gender in research.” Rome, Italy: Independent Evaluation Arrangement (IEA) of CGIAR. https://cas.cgiar.org/evaluation/ news/evaluation-gender-research-and-cgiar-workplace. Chanana-Nag, N. and P.K. Aggarwal (2020).“Woman in agriculture, and climate risks: hotspots for development.” Climatic Change 158:13–27. Clement, F., M.C. Buisson, S. Leder, S. Balasubramanya, P. Saikia, R. Bastakoti, E. Karki, and B. van Koppen (2019). “From women’s empowerment to food security: revisiting global discourses through a crosscountry analysis.” Global Food Security 23:160–172. Elmhirst, R. (2012). “Introducing new feminist political ecologies.” Geoforum.Themed Issue: New Feminist Political Ecologies 42 (2):129–132. FAO (2011).“The state of food and agriculture: women in agriculture – closing the gender gap for development.” Rome: FAO. http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i2050e/i2050e.pdf.

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Moving gender equality forward in climate-resilient agriculture - Introduction to the Special Issue on Gender Equality in Climate-Smart Agriculture: Approaches and Opportunities.” Climatic Change 158:1–12. Jost, C., N. Ferdous, and T.D. Spicer (2014). Gender and inclusion toolbox: participatory research in climate change and agriculture. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), CARE International and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Copenhagen, Denmark. http://careclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CCAFS_CARE-Gender_Toolbox.pdf. Kaijser, A. and A. Kronsell (2014). “Climate change through the lens of intersectionality.” Environmental Politics 23 (3):417–433. Kantor, P. (2013). Transforming gender relations: Key to positive development outcomes in aquatic agricultural systems CGIAR research program on aquatic agricultural systems. Penang, Malaysia. Brief AAS-2013-12. http://pub s.iclarm.net/resource_centre/AAS-2013-12.pdf. Kantor, P., M. Morgan, and A. Choudhury (2015).“Amplifying outcomes by addressing inequality: the role of gender-transformative approaches in agricultural research for development.” Gender, Technology and Development 19 (3):292–319. Kauck, D., S. Paruzzolo, and J. Schulte (2010). CGIAR gender scoping study. International Center for Research on Women (ICRW),Washington, DC. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10947/2629. Kawarazuka, N. and G. Prain (2019). “Gendered processes of agricultural innovation in the Northern uplands of Vietnam.” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship 11 (3):210–226. Kings,A.E. (2017).“Intersectionality and the changing face of ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 22 (1):63–87. Klerkx, L., B. van Mierlo, and C. Leeuwis (2012). “Evolution of systems approaches to agricultural innovation: concepts, analysis and interventions.” In Farming systems research into the 21st century: The new dynamic, edited by Darnhofer, I., D.Gibbon, and B. Dedieu, 457–483. Netherlands: Springer. Kristjanson, P., E. Bryan, Q. Bernier, J. Twyman, R. Meinzen-Dick, C. Kieran, C. Ringler, C. Jost and C. Doss (2017). “Addressing gender in agricultural research for development in the face of a changing climate: where are we and where should we be going?” International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 15 (5):482–500. Kruijssen, F., G. Audet-Belanger, A. Choudhury, C. Crissman, J.P.T. Dalsgaard, C. Dawson, M. Dickson, S. Genschick, M.M. Islam, A. Kaminski, H.J. Keus, C. McDougall, L.E. Banda, C. Muyaule, and S. Rajaratnam (2016). Value chain transformation: taking stock of WorldFish research on value chains and markets. Penang, Malaysia: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems.Working Paper: AAS2016–03. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/78343. Lawless, S., K. Doyle, P. Cohen, H. Eriksson,A.M. Schwarz, H.Teioli,A.Vavekaramui, E.Wickham, R. Masu, R. Panda, and C. McDougall (2017). “Considering gender: practical guidance for rural development initiatives in Solomon Islands.” Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish. Program Brief 2017-22. http://pubs.iclarm.net/re source_centre/2017-22.pdf Leder, S. and C.E. Sachs (2019).“5. Intersectionality at the gender–agriculture nexus: relational life histories and additive sex-disaggregated indices.” In Gender, agriculture and Agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, edited by Sachs, C.E., 75–92. London and New York: Routledge. Leder, S., F. Sugden, M. Raut, D. Ray, and P. Saikia (2019). “Ambivalences of collective farming: feminist political ecologies from the Eastern Gangetic Plains.” International Journal of the Commons 13 (1):105–129. Nightingale, A.J. (2019). “Commoning for inclusion? Commons, exclusion, property and socio-natural becomings.” International Journal of the Commons 13 (1):16–35. Quisumbing, A., R. Meinzen-Dick, T.L. Raney, A. Croppenstedt, J.A. Behrman, and A. Peterman (eds) (2014). Gender in agriculture. Closing the knowledge gap. Dordrecht: FAO and Springer. Rietveld, A.M., M. van der Burg, and J.C. Groot (2020). “Bridging youth and gender studies to analyse rural young women and men’s livelihood pathways in Central Uganda.” Journal of Rural Studies 75:152–163.

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6 GENDER, NUTRITION, AND FOOD SYSTEM APPROACHES What can be learned from the past?1 Julie Newton

Introduction With the shift in the global development discourse from food security to food and nutrition security (FNS), there has been a growing acknowledgment that understanding gender dynamics in agriculture is critical for achieving global nutrition goals (Malapit, 2019).This is situated within a wider international effort to gather evidence around the contribution of agricultural programming to achieve nutrition outcomes (Ruel and Alderman, 2013).Through the decades, different conceptual frameworks have hypothesized the links between agriculture, nutrition, and gender.They have played an important role in guiding research generating evidence of the relevance of addressing gender dynamics in agriculture to improve nutrition outcomes (Van den Bold et al., 2015; Quisumbing et al., 2017).Yet, these frameworks have also brought challenges, namely in the way they have reinforced an instrumental framing of women’s role in household nutrition. Following the launch of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016), there has been a shift toward a food systems approach as the new framework to guide policy and program actions around nutrition. This brings both opportunities and risks to understanding the interlinkages between gender, agriculture, and nutrition. This chapter draws from gender, agriculture, and nutrition research in the Global South to present an overview of how different conceptual frameworks have contributed toward the thinking around these interlinkages.2 It introduces the “food systems approach” as the new frontier of holistic thinking around nutrition.The food systems approach (FSA) is an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy designed to inform sustainable solutions for suffcient healthy food.A food system comprises “all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the output of these activities, including the socioeconomic and environmental outcomes” (High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition [HLPE], 2014, p. 23). The chapter also highlights how this approach risks perpetuating the pitfalls of the past. Finally, the chapter explores what the latest advancements in the feld of gender, agriculture, and nutrition research can bring to food systems thinking. It brings insights from the literature around empowerment, inequality, and intersectionality that can be used to ensure that gender is an integral part of food systems thinking. 85

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Evolving framings of gender across different agriculture and nutrition frameworks Framings of gender at the agriculture-nutrition nexus can be traced across different conceptual frameworks from the health and agriculture felds. These include the UNICEF malnutrition framework and the agricultural nutrition pathways framework infuenced by The Lancet special issues on nutrition and the Scaling Up Nutrition movement.

UNICEF malnutrition framework: a starting point for shifting the debate toward food and nutrition security The UNICEF conceptual framework of malnutrition was developed in 1990 for the UNICEF Nutrition Strategy to highlight the multisectoral causes of malnutrition related to inadequate food, health, and caring practices (UNICEF, 1998). Malnutrition refers to defciencies, imbalances, and excesses of key nutrients and energy and can be categorized into two forms. Undernutrition includes stunting or chronic malnutrition (low height for age), wasting, or acute malnutrition (low weight for height), and micronutrient defciencies (lack of key vitamins and minerals). Overnutrition includes chronic conditions where food is in excess of dietary energy requirements resulting in overweight and obesity (WHO, n.d.).3 The framework was central to highlighting inadequate dietary intake as one of the immediate causes of malnutrition, in addition to disease.This reinforced the importance of agricultural interventions addressing malnutrition by addressing inadequate access to food. Food utilization, one of the four pillars of food security (see Table 6.1), subsequently became the entry point for agricultural programming to aspire toward nutrition goals through increased food production for sale and consumption, layered with nutrition counseling (Gross et al., 2000). With the shift toward discussions around the four pillars of food security, practitioners and scholars have used the term food and nutrition security to acknowledge that both are intertwined and to encourage integrated policy efforts toward one single development goal. This was further reinforced following the 2008 Lancet series on maternal and child nutrition that presented evidence on the scale of malnutrition. It emphasized the importance of intervening in the frst 1,000 days of life as the critical window of opportunity (pregnancy up to frst two years Table 6.1 Food security pillars Pillar

Defnition

Availability

Refers to the physical existence of food at a given point in time and place. Determined by the level of food production, stock levels, and net trade. Having physical, economic, and social access to food. Concerns food affordability, allocation, and preference. Having safe and nutritious food that meets dietary needs.Addresses the body’s ability to process the nutrients of consumed food. Concerns the nutritional value of food, health status, food safety, and food preparation. Refers to the stability of the other three pillars over time. Food could be available and accessible at one point in time, but this may only be temporary. For food and nutrition security to be maintained, all of the three pillars need to be stable.

Access Utilization

Stability

Source: FAO (2008); World Food Summit (1996); Food Climate Research Network (2020). https://ww w.foodsource.org.uk/building-blocks/what-food-security

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of life) to prevent chronic undernutrition (Bhutta et al., 2008).This spearheaded global effort by multiple UN organizations and heads of state to develop the Scaling Up Nutrition Framework for Action (2010).This resulted in the formation of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which comprises a collective effort of signatory countries, civil society, United Nations, donors, businesses, and researchers to end malnutrition.The movement prioritized collaborative action to prioritize the 1,000-day window of opportunity and promote a multisectoral approach to addressing the underlying causes of malnutrition and emphasis toward stunting as the main nutrition indicator. In response to the growing momentum around food and nutrition security, the Committee on World Food Security recommended revisiting the original World Food Summit food security defnition to acknowledge nutrition elements captured in the UNICEF framework.These additions are highlighted in italics: Food and nutrition security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to food, which is safe and consumed in suffcient quantity and quality to meet their dietary needs and food preferences, and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health services and care, allowing for a healthy and active life. (Committee on World Food Security [CFS], 2012, p. 14)

Agricultural and nutrition pathways framework: acknowledging the value of nutrition-sensitive programming The agricultural nutrition pathways framework was a direct outcome of the growing momentum around the converging goal of food and nutrition security.The 2013 Lancet special series on the child and malnutrition set the scene for looking deeper into the role of agriculture in achieving nutrition outcomes by highlighting the importance of using nutrition-sensitive development programs to scale up nutrition-specifc interventions and address multiple drivers of undernutrition (Ruel and Alderman, 2013; Bhutta et al., 2013) (see Table 6.2). This led to strong interest by donors and policymakers to layer nutrition interventions onto existing agricultural programs. Multiple versions of agriculture-to-nutrition impact pathways frameworks emerged to conceptualize the links between agriculture and nutrition in an attempt to provide guidance on what types of interventions agricultural programs could use (Ruel and Alderman, 2013; Herforth and Harris, 2014; Malapit and Quisumbing, 2016; Meeker and Haddad, 2013).They converged around six overlapping pathways linking agriculture to nutrition (see Table 6.3). In spite of the agriculture-nutrition pathways framework, the evidence base on how agricultural interventions contribute to nutritional improvements has been limited (Gillespie and van den Bold, 2017; Ruel et al., 2018; Herforth and Ballard, 2016).This stems from a number of challenges (Malapit, 2019; Newton et al., 2018). First, impact evaluations of nutrition-sensitive programs do not capture tradeoffs between agricultural and nutritional objectives (e.g., workload increase, higher incomes translating into the purchase of non-nutritious food, tradeoffs in the wellbeing of other household members). Second, few nutrition-sensitive programs assess how gender dynamics directly contribute to nutrition outcomes (Newton et al., 2018).Third, few experimental studies analyze impacts of nutrition sensitive programs on women’s empowerment, even though the interventions were designed to leverage strategies to empower women as a means for improved nutrition (Malapit, 2019). These challenges are compounded by the tendency for most agricultural development programs to make the link to nutrition through interventions that target women and are designed 87

Julie Newton Table 6.2 Defnitions of nutrition-specifc and nutrition-sensitive Defnition

Areas of interventions

Nutrition- Interventions or programs that address the Adolescent, preconception, and maternal health and nutrition; maternal dietary or specifc immediate determinants of fetal and child micronutrient supplementation; promotion nutrition and development—adequate of optimum breastfeeding; complementary food and nutrient intake, feeding, feeding and responsive feeding practices caregiving and parenting practices, and and stimulation; dietary supplementation; low burden of infectious diseases. diversifcation and micronutrient supplementation or fortifcation for children; treatment of severe acute malnutrition; disease prevention and management; nutrition in emergencies. Agriculture and food security; social safety Nutrition- Interventions or programs that address nets; early child development; maternal sensitive the underlying determinants of fetal and mental health; women’s empowerment; child nutrition and development— child protection; schooling; water, food security; adequate caregiving sanitation, and hygiene; health and family resources at the maternal, household, planning services. and community levels; and access to health services and a safe and hygienic environment—and incorporate specifc nutrition goals and action. Source: Ruel and Alderman (2013, p. 537). Table 6.3 Six pathways through which agriculture impacts nutrition 1. Food source: agriculture production leads to increased availability and accessibility of diverse food from own production 2. Income from agriculture production and non-agriculture work: increased income from non-farm income and farm income through marketed agriculture production could increase household capacity to purchase diverse foods. 3. Food prices: impacted by agriculture policies through supply and demand factors and thus affecting the selling and purchasing capacity of farmers. 4. Women’s social status and empowerment: women’s role in decision-making may affect their infuence on the production and consumption of food/agricultural products. 5. Women’s time:Women’s involvement in agriculture could impact the time allocation for care practices or feeding of children in the household. Intensive workload from agriculture hampers their role as caretaker and vice versa. 6. Women’s own workload and health and nutritional status: women’s involvement and employment in agriculture can affect their health and nutritional status because of longer working hours in degraded conditions on the farm, as well as having a lack of resources to seek health services. Source: Ruel and Alderman (2013); Herforth and Harris (2014); Malapit and Quisumbing (2016); Malapit (2019).

explicitly around women’s roles as food producers, mothers, and “custodians” of food for the family without addressing gender relations between women and men (Newton et al., 2018). This is illustrated by a recent review of nutrition-sensitive impact evaluations that highlights three types of gender interventions used in nutrition-sensitive programming (Ruel et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2017) summarized in Table 6.4. Interestingly, none of the examples provided 88

Gender, nutrition, and food systems Table 6.4 Examples of how nutrition-sensitive programs address gender Type of gender intervention

Case study

Effects

Targeting women did appear to be Targeted nutrition education Bio-fortifed vitamin A orange linked to higher rates of vitamin sweet potato (OSP) in Uganda for women through A intake among mothers and and Mozambique by Harvest behavior change young children. Decisions to adopt Plus. communication (BCC). OSP were jointly made with the Focusing on women who • Vine distribution and husband. Suggests there was a are pregnant or lactating agricultural extension targeting missed opportunity to engage men because of emphasis on men. around the nutritional benefts 1,000 days and stunting • Nutrition BCC targeting of OSP (Gilligan et al., 2014; versus dietary diversity. women. Quisumbing et al., 2017). Targeting women associated with Enhanced homestead food Targeted resources (assets, positive effects on child nutrition production (EHFP) in Burkina inputs, credit, extension) health and nutrition outcomes. In Faso and Nepal by Hellen either toward women Nepal, positive impacts on overall Keller International. or at the household household security and production level aimed to increase • Inputs and training for women of eggs and vegetables, and the production of food in homestead production and complementary feeding practices for sale or food for livestock rearing. (van den Bold et al., 2015; Olney consumption. • Bi-weekly household visits et al., 2015; Osei et al., 2017). from an older female health committee member on optimal nutrition practices. • Community access to land granted to women for village model farm. Positive results on income, nutrition Community development Organizing women in indicators for children, and child program providing livestock groups. This entailed dietary diversity. and training to rural women combining targeting Results reinforce the value of women self-help groups (SHG) in resource transfers to empowerment interventions (via Nepal by Heifer International women with group self-help groups) as a platform for approaches or using • Livestock training for women improving nutrition outcomes for the women’s group as a through SHG. both women and children (Miller delivery platform. • Livestock (resource). et al., 2014). • Nutrition education. Source:Adapted from Malapit (2019).

show evidence of the benefts of engaging men.This is because the programs were designed that way in the frst place, thereby reinforcing the biases and gaps in evidence.

Consequences of frameworks on framings of gender Understanding the roots of the different frameworks is critical for understanding their consequences on their framings of gender. While the UNICEF framework for malnutrition was pivotal for the transition toward food and nutrition security by providing a platform for discussing the infuence of gender dynamics 89

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on nutrition, it was framed around an understanding of gender as roles (rather than relational) and focused on women as traditional custodians of food and nutrition security. Here, gender inequality was positioned as the basic cause underpinning inadequate maternal and child care, thereby placing emphasis on women exclusively in their role as mothers and care providers. Similarly, The Lancet series and SUN movement emphasis on the 1,000 days and “stunting” as the main nutrition impact indicator resulted in programs exclusively targeting women in households and pregnant and lactating mothers with nutrition education. The agricultural nutrition pathways framework deepened this framing by putting the spotlight on women empowerment with three dedicated pathways highlighting the different roles of women (see Table 6.3).This had a visible impact on nutrition-sensitive programming, evidenced by how gender interventions were designed and the evaluation effects (Table 6.3). However, challenges related to the limited evidence base and poor design of nutrition-sensitive programs have also reinforced an instrumental framing of gender centered around women’s role in nutrition, which gets reinforced through evaluation design.This contributed toward an incomplete understanding of causal processes between gender, agriculture, and nutrition and how these can work positively and negatively to affect different types of women and men. It leads to biases and reinforces misconceptions around women’s roles, assuming that they are the only primary caregivers (ignoring other actors in the household such as grandparents) and that women are able to make the main decisions around what food is purchased, prepared, and distributed).With programs that only target nutrition education toward women, there was a missed opportunity to engage with men who also play important roles in key decisions around food distribution. With the emphasis on roles, these frameworks overlooked an understanding of gender as relational.This involves understanding the power relations between different types of women and men.This moves beyond looking at what women and men do to also acknowledging how gender affects intra-household dynamics in relation to who has access to different types of resources, the ability to decide on the use of the resources, and how benefts are shared. More importantly, a relational approach acknowledges the infuence of informal rules and regulations (norms) on what women and men can and cannot do and how these may reinforce food and nutrition inequalities. It is only recently with advances in metrics to measure women’s empowerment and growing recognition of the value of considering gender dynamics in nutrition that there has been more attention to evaluating nutrition-sensitive programs that take a relational approach to gender. For example, the recent evaluation of the Agricultural, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh analyzed the impact of three types of interventions (agricultural production, nutrition knowledge, and gender-sensitive nutrition curriculum; Helen Keller’s Nurturing Connections©) for promoting nutrition and gender-sensitive agriculture (2015–2018). This curriculum explicitly engages with men and mothers-in-law to address the power relations that impact nutrition.There have also been advances in better metrics to understand tradeoffs between nutrition, women’s workload, and time allocation and how this impacts on their wellbeing (Stevano et al., 2019).

Rise of the FSA What is a food system? The FSA is the latest framework to spark attention among international food and nutrition security stakeholders such as the CFS, HLPE, and Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (GLOPAN).

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Figure 6.1 A way of mapping the relationships of the food system to its drivers.

Food systems thinking is not new, and there are a variety of approaches across different disciplines (Ingram, 2011). They share similarities in that they analyze the relationships between different parts of the food system and the outcomes of activities within the system in socioeconomic and environmental terms (Van Berkum et al., 2018, p. 6). However, it is only recently that more systematic efforts are being used to combine interdisciplinary perspectives to scale public nutrition policies and support food business learning platforms (Ruben et al., 2019). One example of the latest efforts to operationalize food systems thinking is the recent conceptualization by Van Berkum et al. (2018),Wageningen University,The Netherlands.To date, it presents the most concrete effort to apply food systems thinking in practice through a decision support tool to inform the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs in designing food and nutrition security programming. Figure 6.1 illustrates food systems as comprising the interaction between food system activities and socioeconomic and environmental drivers leading to different outcomes. Food system activities are categorized into fve components: the value chain, the enabling environment, business services, the food environment, and consumer characteristics. It includes three types of outcomes: socioeconomic outcomes (e.g., livelihoods, employment), food security outcomes, and environmental outcomes (impacts on natural resources and climate). Environmental drivers mainly interact with agricultural production activities, and socioeconomic drivers affect all food system activities, giving rise to multiplier effects or feedback mechanisms (Van Berkum et al., 2018).

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Value-added food system approach for nutrition To date, most food systems analysis has focused on describing the different components of food systems, diagnosing different policy options to improve food systems performance, and analyzing food system transitions and adaptive innovation strategies (Ruben et al., 2019).The attraction of the FSA to nutrition policymakers is its potential to offer a multidimensional perspective to understanding complex causal interactions between competing subsystems, food system goals, and non-linear feedback mechanisms at different levels (Ruben et al., 2019, p. 5). For example, it helps to make explicit the tradeoffs and synergies between the goals of healthy diets, sustainable resource management, and inclusive development. It also highlights the infuence of external factors, such as economic growth, migration, climate change, and urbanization, on infuencing food systems. This provides a basis for a holistic and multilevel approach to policy design that includes interventions that might be beyond the scope of food production and consumption (Van Berkum et al., 2018; Posthumus et al., 2018). Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of the food systems’ socioeconomic context. Table 6.5 summarizes the different entry points for linking the FSA to nutrition policy. The FSA adds a multilevel perspective to the agricultural and nutrition pathways framework with its attention to feedback loops and different typologies of food systems. The analysis of feedback loops is a defning feature of FSA, which facilitates analysis and testing of different intervention strategies within the activities of the food system itself (e.g., value chain) or inform more long-term policies (Posthumus et al., 2018). Scholars have devised different typologies of food systems behavior to contextualize the design of policies and interventions to improve food system performance (HLPE, 2016; Ericksen et al., 2010). Distinguishing different typologies of behavior is useful for thinking through the different requirements for a food system to generate equitable outcomes for different target groups. For example, HLPE (2017) defnes three types of food systems (traditional, mixed, modern) to describe the different stages of structural transformation that a country might adopt to enhance the contribution of agriculture to food and nutrition security. Drawing on systems thinking, others diagnose different typologies (archetypes) of system behavior that operate simultaneously in the same food system at different levels (Posthumus et al., 2018; Kennedy et al., 2018; Meadows, 2001; Ericksen, 2008).

Table 6.5 Four pillars linking food system analysis to nutrition policy Pillar

Entry points

Distinguishing the desired nutritional outcomes for different categories of consumers (disaggregated by wealth, gender, age). Multiple delivery Food access met through a combination of home production, open pathways of food market purchase, supply by retail and supermarkets, and out-of-home consumption from restaurants and food services. Interactive governance Flows of material and information between different stakeholders. of material fows Steering of decision-making processes by different actors in the food systems and information environment. Diet implication The effects on dietary intake and possible nutritional imbalances resulting from a combination of diverse baskets of food products. Household targeting

Source:Adapted from Ruben et al. (2019, p. 5).

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Engagement of food systems thinking with gender The literature on FSA is surprisingly gender-blind.Apart from highlighting gender inequality as a socioeconomic driver of poor performance on nutrition outcomes, so far, there has been no systematic effort to understand how gender relations affect each of the different components of food systems (HLPE, 2017). Forms of gender analysis have been carried out on discrete components of the food system (e.g., separate gender value chain analysis for food supply system). However, this has been done without a comprehensive analysis of the interaction of the different components and how gender dynamics drive processes and feedback loops, leading to different food system outcomes. This is a signifcant oversight given how food systems thinking is now being used to frame and guide food security and nutrition investment, policy, and interventions. Regarding socioeconomic drivers, discussions around gender continue to center around women’s so-called caretaker roles in nutrition. For example, in HLPE (2017, p. 78), gender is acknowledged as the “most signifcant driver” of the food environment and diet since “women decide the household diet, and, as primary caregivers, they have a strong infuence on children’s nutritional status.Yet they are often disempowered and neglected, and their knowledge ignored. … due to social norms, care work is unequally distributed, women are negatively impacted.” In response, women and girl empowerment via education, increasing the control of income by women, and access to resources and services (e.g., markets, economic, and fnancial resources) is recognized as a key strategy to improve FSN. Such strategies are often rationalized by existing evidence showing positive relationships between women’s control of income and improved health and nutrition outcomes of children (Van den Bold et al., 2013).This not only reinforces understandings of gender as only pertaining to women, but it also repeats the pitfalls of the past by placing the onus on women to enhance household nutrition. This reinforces women’s instrumental role as mothers and care providers, ignoring gender as a social relation between women and other power holders in the household. This is a missed opportunity to engage in gender analysis of power relations that includes men’s roles and relations, and other actors, such as mothers- and fathers-in-law and siblings who also provide care.

What do the latest advances in gender and agriculture offer to food systems thinking? The move to operationalize food systems thinking has been accompanied by the development of various tools and guidelines to support policymakers to undertake quick scans and translate scientifc insights on food systems into concrete FNS interventions (e.g., FAO guide on nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems in practice: option for intervention; Dutch decision support tool for food and nutrition security; FAO, 2017; Posthumus et al., 2018). While these are gender-blind, they do provide a useful starting point for thinking through the different entry points for gender integration into food systems thinking. Most tools include diagnosis in a number of steps: frst, a mapping of a food system focusing on symptoms and trends; second is an analysis of the causal processes to identify the underlying causes and feedback mechanisms; and third, the system behavior (archetypes) is labeled, after which actionable leverage points for policymaking and relevant actors are identifed.As a priority, there are clear opportunities to apply a gender lens to the frst and second steps.This provides a critical foundation for applying gender analysis to different system behaviors and mapping their consequences on different types of individuals. Research around equity, equality, and empowerment has much to offer food systems thinking (Harris, 2018). First, it can support conceptual clarity around inequality in food system outcomes for different types of individuals at different levels. Second, it provides insights into how power 93

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affects processes contributing to social exclusion and marginalization, which act as structural bottlenecks for equity (Harris and Nisbitt, 2018).The next section explores a number of strategic entry points to apply gender analysis during the diagnosis of food systems outcomes and causal processes.

Opportunities to enhance clarity around different food system outcomes An intersectional lens can support the analysis of inequality by unpacking how food systems outcomes differ for different types of individuals, households, or groups. The term “intersectionality” refers to how the social position of an individual is shaped by the different points of intersection of their social identities, such as gender and class, age, ethnicity, religion, and marital status, across different contexts (Crenshaw, 1990; Colfer et al., 2018). Empowerment is commonly understood as the “expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices, in a context where this ability was previously denied to them” (Kabeer, 1999, p. 437). It is recognized as multidimensional and a multiple outcome and dynamic process, dependent on the interaction between resources, agency, and institutional structures (Eerdewijk et al., 2017). Moreover, the latest advances in measuring women’s empowerment in agricultural programs through better metrics can support food systems approaches to collect better evidence of how gender dynamics affect the interactions across the different elements of food systems to lead to different outcomes (Johnson et al., 2017; Malapit, 2019). These include the Women Empowerment and Agricultural Index (WEAI) and project level WEAI (pro-WEAI). The WEAI is a validated survey-based index that measures women’s empowerment relative to men in agricultural programs around fve domains: decisions about agricultural production, access to and decision-making power over productive resources, control over income, leadership in the community, and time use.The pro-WEAI is the latest advancement and covers 12 indicators: autonomy in income, self-effcacy, attitudes about domestic violence, input into productive decisions, ownership of land and other assets, access to and decisions on credit, control over income, work balance, mobility, group membership, membership of infuential groups, and respect among household member. Together, these contributions—intersectionality and women’s empowerment—provide opportunities for food systems analysis to clarify who wins and who loses in what way and to what extent. From a food system perspective, an intersectional lens reinforces the value of being clear on what types of food system outcomes are the priority and for whom (Figure 6.1). Disaggregating outcomes is important because it is a key part of mapping the symptoms of different food system processes and who is affected. It helps to steer what type of gender impacts are expected and can be tracked. Combining the lenses of intersectionality and empowerment can support our understanding of how inequalities in food security and nutritional outcomes develop and become entrenched for different individuals (Harris, 2018).This information is key to identify leverage points to address inequity at the source. For food and nutrition security outcomes, a gender analysis implies choosing and disaggregating nutrition outcome indicators across the most relevant dimensions of marginalization for the appropriate target group (Harris and Nisbett, 2018). The analysis also requires appropriate comparison groups.The focus on the frst 1,000 days has reinforced the tendency to prioritize anthropometric nutrition indicators (e.g., stunting) for children under two and dietary diversity for pregnant and lactating women.This was achieved at the expense of attention to the nutritional concerns of other individuals within the household. An intersectional lens recognizes that there are different types of nutrition vulnerability, according to one’s social position. Using other appropriate nutritional indicators (dietary diversity) acknowledges how other household 94

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members, such as adolescent girls, older women and men, and older girls and boys, may also be nutritionally disadvantaged. Socioeconomic disadvantage by age and social status within the household will also intersect with other social markers (ethnicity, location, religion) to deepen nutritional disadvantage.This disaggregation is central for subsequent analysis of how different food system outcomes affect different groups and individuals in contradictory or complementary ways.The recent WHO (2019) guide on mainstreaming nutrition actions through the life course presents a useful attempt to adopt such an approach. For socioeconomic and environmental outcomes, a gender analysis implies more clarity in thinking through how different types of policies and programs involving training and how transfers of resources translate into benefts (employment, income, access to land, diversifed livelihoods). The nuances of this can be captured using the recently developed continuum of tracking gender outcomes (reach, beneft, empower) developed by Johnson et al. (2017) in their analysis of 13 agricultural development projects under International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Gender Agriculture and Assets Project Phase 2. This continnuum summarized in Figure 6.2 supports food system analyses to specify the nature of gender impact and for whom (Danielsen et al., 2018). Its value is that it acknowledges that transfers of resources, new technologies, and new livelihood opportunities do not always translate into control over the benefts. Moreover, it can also be used to analyze what type of strategies are needed to secure different types of food systems and for whom. Food systems analysis could go deeper into understanding which individuals are empowered by looking at who controls decisions around benefts and whose voice and status is enhanced through different interventions through a specifcally gendered lens. With the recent developments in the WEAI and pro-WEAI, policymakers now also have the opportunity to track the infuence of food system changes on women empowerment outcomes as part of the socioeconomic outcomes as well as nutrition outcomes.

Figure 6.2 Entry points for using gender outcomes typology to clarify food system outcomes.

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These different gendered socioeconomic outcomes are critical in analyzing inter-relationships with other food security and environmental outcomes. Looking at these different interactions enhances our understanding of reinforcing intersectional factors of inequality (Harris and Nisbett, 2018). The typology will also allow scholars to identify the most appropriate metrics to map changes across different food and nutrition security, socioeconomic, and environmental outcomes for different types of women and men in different contexts. For example, food systems mapping could analyze whether there is equality of nutrition outcomes across comparisons of individuals and groups according to gender, age, and land access. Insights into the causal processes will allow the subsequent analysis of feedback loops and consequences of feedback loops for different types of individuals.This is important for understanding the broader tradeoffs in food systems.

Opportunities to enhance clarity around food system processes driving inequities Food system processes are driven by the interaction between food system activities and socioeconomic and environmental drivers. Ultimately, these interactions are underpinned by power relations determining who decides, who benefts (gains), and who loses out across different food system outcomes. Power imbalances take place at different levels across the food system, for example, between large scale multinational food frms and small scale farm producers and suppliers producing food or between those designing nutrition policy (i.e. policy makers) and those affected by it (consumers). Here, the conceptualization of empowerment provides valuable insights into how to apply power analysis to understand the causal processes of food systems. Empowerment is both an outcome and a transformative process of change (Kabeer, 1999).The transformation of inequitable power relations takes place when marginalized groups or individuals within a food system have the agency to take action. This is contingent on the redistribution of resources toward these groups through shifting institutional structures that shape their choice and voice (Eerdwijk et al., 2017). FSA analysis of causal processes offers the following entry points for gender analysis. For integrating gender into socioeconomic and environmental drivers, it is useful to think through what types and how different institutional structures and norms shape different women’s and men’s access to key resources required to engage in food system activities (e.g., land, capital, equipment). Institutional structures refer to the formal and informal rules and practices that infuence the decision-making and distribution of resources for different individuals. Norms refer to the collectively held expectations and beliefs of how different women and men should behave and interact in different arenas at different stages of their lives (Eerdewijk et al., 2017, p. 35). From a food systems perspective, norms and institutional structures greatly infuence where different women and men can engage in food system activities (across different arenas) in the food production and supply chain, and the extent to which they can derive benefts from participation. From a food systems perspective, it is valuable to analyze how institutions drive the inequitable delivery of different food system services (production, value chain, health, conservation, etc.).This analysis could reveal important insights into possible improvements in targeting and enhanced delivery channels to reach those who are excluded (Harris and Nisbitt, 2018).Without a gender and intersectional analysis of the different constraints and opportunities that different women and men face within the food system, policies and science and technology addressing food system outcomes can entrench gendered inequalities.When looking at tradeoffs and different food system archetypes, it is important to consider how a shift in one institutional arena affects women and men differently. For example, trade relations driving market prices could 96

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contribute toward imbalances in price negotiation for nutritious food products.This may lead to tradeoffs in consumption practices that affect nutrition outcomes for different individuals. An analysis of gender norms is also critical for understanding what drives consumer behavior and capture consumers’ choices and decisions around what food to purchase, prepare, eat, and allocate within the household. To date, analysis from the agricultural and nutrition pathways has highlighted the gendered causal mechanisms of different pathways of production for sale and consumption, and how these interact with norms around how foods are distributed in the household. In the past, this has prioritized the analysis of pathways leading to FNS outcomes for children and mothers. Increasingly, new analysis highlights the value of extending the focus to men and other household members.This includes elaboration around how these impact upon the choices of what food is produced and consumed and how food is distributed within the household (Malapit and Quisumbing, 2016).While previous analytical frameworks have placed the onus on women’s preferences as custodians of “food” and care practices of young infants, more recent analyses have shown that focusing on women alone without considering men’s roles is to miss out on opportunities to leverage the impact of agriculture on nutrition. For integrating gender into food system activities, the existing research around women’s empowerment associations along agriculture-to-nutrition pathways can yield important insights into interactions of the food supply chain and FNS outcomes. The latest research on time use in agriculture-to-nutrition pathways has shown how interventions that neglect time constraints risk creating negative consequences, which can detract from nutrition outcomes of food system interventions.This research shows that impacts vary for different household members in terms of workload and time burden (Johnston et al., 2018; Komatsu et al., 2018; Stevano et al., 2019). Food value chains are at the heart of food system activities. Lessons learned from the literature around the social performance of value chains can support food systems to analyze power relations within the value chain and its interactions with business services and the food-enabling environment (Kruijssen, 2018).Three areas of interrogation are critical for analyzing the gender dynamics of the role of value chains in food system processes and feedback loops (Danielsen et al., 2019; Pyburn and Kruijssen, this volume): frst, understanding where different types of women and men are present at different nodes of the value chain; second, how the benefts (food and nutrition security, socioeconomic, and environmental) of participation in different nodes of the value chain are distributed between different types of women and men; and third, understanding how institutional structures and norms infuence value chain governance in terms of who has decision-making power at different levels and nodes of the value chain.

Conclusion As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the evolution of thinking around different FNS approaches and frameworks infuences the framing around the links between agriculture, nutrition, and gender. These create opportunities but can also have negative consequences on our understanding of gender dynamics, which flter into the design of new FNS programming.With the move toward food system approaches, there is an opportunity to avoid the pitfalls of the past.This begins by unpacking the gender dimensions of the different components of the food system and their inter-relations, which is vital to understanding who benefts and who loses out from different interactions. System outcomes are always the result of the behavior of multiple actors interacting with different parts of the system structure. A gender analysis of the power relations between different stakeholders is critical to identify who these actors are and how they infuence the distribution of resources and agency of different target groups with positive and negative impacts on food system outcomes.Without a gender analysis of the outcomes and the 97

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causal processes, food systems analysis is at risk of overlooking key factors driving inequalities within the food system. At worse, current approaches to food system analysis can perpetuate misconceptions and inaccuracies, leading to faulty policy recommendations that reinforce situations of advantage and marginalization. The latest contributions in the literature around intersectionality, equity and equality, and women’s empowerment can support food systems approaches to more accurately analyze and track power imbalances. The value of gender analysis lies in more clarity around food systems outcomes related to nutrition (food utilization) and being more specifc on the nature of gender outcomes across food security and nutrition, socioeconomics, and the environment. Gender analysis informed by the lenses of empowerment and intersectionality can strengthen food systems analysis of inequitable causal processes underpinning interactions between drivers and activities. It is an exciting time to work on the nexus of gender, agriculture, and nutrition. Many gender entry points for food system programming are related to tradeoffs in terms of who benefts and who loses out.To date, it is widely recognized that this is an area where there is a need for better evidence and more research based on a strong foundation of gender analysis concepts. To meet the new challenge of engendering food systems thinking, researchers could consider research around the following areas: •

•

•

Ensure consistent disaggregated analysis of the different types of food system outcomes compared across different groups and multiple intersections of marginalization.This should include an analysis of the gender differences in food system outcomes across different food system typologies. This will support modeling different feedback mechanisms to understand the consequences of food system archetypes on different types of women and men. Analyze the gender dimensions of the tradeoffs, tipping points, and feedback mechanisms. A gender analysis of feedback loops across different parts of the food system will facilitate analysis of how different food system scenarios could reinforce or address unequal outcomes. Ensure impact evaluations consistently report on gender outcomes and causal processes to better understand the different agricultural nutrition pathways.With advances in empowerment metrics (WEAI, pro-WEAI), it is now possible to undertake a systematic analysis of how different strategies can be used across the food system to empower different types of women across different types of food system outcomes across different contexts.

Notes 1 Thank you to Anouka Eerdewijk for reviewing this chapter. 2 Note that this chapter focuses on research and evidence around undernutrition as one form of malnutrition as opposed to overnutrition. 3 https://www.who.int/childgrowth/4_double_burden.pdf and https://www.who.int/features/qa/mal nutrition/en/

References Bhutta, Z.A., Ahmed, T., Black, R.E., Cousens, S., Dewey, K., Giugliani, E., Haider, B.A., Kirkwood, B., Morris, S.S., Sachdev, H.P.S., and Shekar, M. (2008).“What works? Interventions for maternal and child undernutrition and survival.” The Lancet 371 (9610):417–440. CFS. (2012).“Coming to terms with terminology food security, nutrition security, food security and nutrition, food and nutrition security.” 39th Session of the Committee on World Food Security. http:// www.fao.org/3/MD776E/MD776E.pdf.

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Gender, nutrition, and food systems Colfer, C.J.P., Sijapati Basnett, B., and Ihalainen, M. (2018). Making sense of ‘intersectionality’: a manual for lovers of people and forests. (CIFOR Occasional Paper no. 184, p. 40p). Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Crenshaw, Kimberle. (1990).“Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color.” Stanford Law Review 43:1241. Danielsen, K., Braaten,Y., Newton, J., and Kruijssen, F. (2019). Conceptual framework for gender aquaculture value chain analysis and development. KIT, Royal Tropical Institute and WorldFish, unpublished. Danielsen, K.,Wong, F., McLachlin, D., and Sarapura, S. (2018).“Typologies of change: gender integration in agriculture and food security research.” https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/handle/10625/57120 Eerdewijk, A. ,Wong, F.,Vaast, C. Newton, J.,Tyszler, M., and Pennington, A. (2017). A conceptual model of women’s and girls’ empowerment.Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute. Ericksen, P., Stewart, B., Dixon, J., Barling, D., Loring, P., Anderson, M., and Ingram, J. (2012).“The value of a food system approach.” In J. Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Diana Liverman. Food security and global environmental change, 45–65. Routledge. Ericksen, P.J. (2008). “Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research.” Global Environmental Change 18 (1):234–245. FAO. (2017). “Nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems in practice: options for intervention.” http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7848e.pdf. Gillespie, S. and van den Bold, M. (2017).“Agriculture, food systems, and nutrition: meeting the challenge.” Global Challenges 1 (3):1600002. Gilligan, D.O., Kumar, N., McNiven, S., Meenakshi, J.V., and Quisumbing,A.R. (2014). Bargaining power and biofortifcation: the role of gender in adoption of orange sweet potato in Uganda (Vol. 1353). Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, IFPRI discussion paper 1353. Gross, R., Schoeneberger, H., Pfeifer, H., and Preuss, H. (2000). “The four dimensions of food and nutrition security: defnitions and concepts.” http://www.fao.org/elearning/course/fa/en/pdf/p-01_rg_c oncept.pdf. Harris, J. (2018). “What do equity and equality have to do with it? Insights for food and nutrition from development studies research.” https://a4nh.cgiar.org/2018/08/07/what-do-equity-and-equality-hav e-to-do-with-it-insights-for-food-and-nutrition-from-development-studies-research/. Harris, J. and Nisbett, N. (2018). “Equity in social and development-studies research: insights for nutrition.” In Advancing equity, equality and non-discrimination in food systems: pathways to reform, 55-63. London: United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition. Herforth, A. and Ballard, T.J. (2016). “Nutrition indicators in agriculture projects: current measurement, priorities, and gaps.” Global Food Security 10:1–10. Herforth,A. and Harris, J. (2014).“Understanding and applying primary pathways and principles.” Brief #1. Improving Nutrition through Agriculture Technical Brief Series.Arlington,VA: USAID/Strengthening Partnerships, Results, and Innovations in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) Project. https://www.spring-n utrition.org/sites/default/fles/publications/briefs/spring_understandingpathways_brief_1.pdf HLPE. (2014).“Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems.”A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome. HLPE. (2017). “Nutrition and food systems.” A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome. Ingram, J. (2011). “A food systems approach to researching food security and its interactions with global environmental change.” Food Security 3 (4):417–431. Johnson, N., Balagamwala, M., Pinkstaff, C., Theis, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., and Quisumbing, A. (2017). “How do agricultural development projects aim to empower women: insights from an analysis of project strategies.” IFPRI Discussion Paper 01609. Johnston, D., Stevano, S., Malapit, H.J., Hull, E., and Kadiyala, S. (2018). “Time use as an explanation for the agri-nutrition disconnect: evidence from rural areas in low and middle-income countries.” Food Policy 76:8–18. Kabeer, N. (1999).“Resources, agency, achievements: refections on the measurement of women’s empowerment.” Development and Change 30 (3):435–464. Kennedy, E., Gladek, E., and Roemers, G. (2018). Using systems thinking to transform society; the European Food System as a case study. WWF. Komatsu, H., Malapit, H.J.L., and Theis, S. (2018).“Does women’s time in domestic work and agriculture affect women’s and children’s dietary diversity? Evidence from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique.” Food Policy 79:256–270.

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Julie Newton Kruijssen, F., McDougall, C.L., and van Asseldonk, I.J. (2018). “Gender and aquaculture value chains: a review of key issues and implications for research.” Aquaculture 493:328–337. Malapit, H. and Quisumbing,A. (2016).“Gendered pathways to better nutrition.” Rural 21, 01/2016:15–17. Malapit, H.J. (2019). “Women in agriculture and the implications for nutrition.” Agriculture for Improved Nutrition: Seizing the Momentum: 58-67. https://chap-solutions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ Agriculture-for-Improved-Nutrition-CABI.pdf Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage points: places to intervene in a system. Hartland,WI:The Sustainability Institute. Meeker, J. and Haddad, L. (2013). “A state of the art review of agriculture-nutrition linkages.” AgriDiet Briefng, https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/3035/AgiDiet%2 0Global%20Review%20FINAL.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Miller, L.C., Joshi, N., Lohani, M., Rogers, B., Loraditch, M., Houser, R., Singh, P., and Mahato, S. (2014). “Community development and livestock promotion in rural Nepal: effects on child growth and health.” Food and Nutrition Bulletin 35 (3):312–326. Newton, J.,Verhart, N., and Bake,A. (2018).“Enhancing the effectiveness of agriculture-nutrition pathways: key insights from a gender analysis of impact evaluations.” Food and Business Knowledge Network and KIT the Royal Tropical Institute. Olney, D.K., Pedehombga, A., Ruel, M.T., and Dillon, A. (2015). “A 2-year integrated agriculture and nutrition and health behavior change communication program targeted to women in Burkina Faso reduces anemia, wasting, and diarrhea in children 3–12.9 months of age at baseline: a cluster-randomized controlled trial.” The Journal of Nutrition 145 (6):1317–1324. Osei,A., Pandey, P., Nielsen, J., Pries,A., Spiro, D., Davis, D., Quinn,V., and Haselow, N. (2017).“Combining home garden, poultry, and nutrition education program targeted to families with young children improved anemia among children and anemia and underweight among nonpregnant women in Nepal.” Food and Nutrition Bulletin 38 (1):49–64. Posthumus, H., De Steenhuijsen-Piters, B., Dengerink, J., and Vellema, S. (2018). Food systems: from concept to practice and vice versa. Amsterdam: KIT Royal Tropical Institute and Wageningen University and Research. Quisumbing,A, Sproule, K., Martinez, E., and Malapit, H. (2017).“Gender and women’s empowerment in nutrition sensitive agriculture: a review, new evidence, guidelines and implications for programming.” https://www.slideshare.net/IFPRI-PIM/gender-womens-empowerment-and-nutrition-a-review -new-evidence-and-guidelines-for-nutritionsensitive-agricultural-programming. Ruben, R.,Verhagen, J., and Plaisier, C. (2019). “The challenge of food systems research: what difference does it make?.” Sustainability 11 (1):171. Ruel, M.T., Alderman, H., and Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group. (2013). “Nutrition-sensitive interventions and programmes: how can they help to accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition?.” The Lancet 382 (9891):536–551. Ruel, M.T., Quisumbing, A.R., and Balagamwala, M. (2018). “Nutrition-sensitive agriculture: what have we learned so far?.” Global Food Security 17:128–153. Stevano, S., Kadiyala, S., Johnston, D., Malapit, H., Hull, E., and Kalamatianou, S. (2019).“Time-use analytics: an improved way of understanding gendered agriculture-nutrition pathways.” Feminist Economics 25 (3):1–22. UNEP. (2016). Food Systems and Natural Resources.A report of the Working Group on Food Systems of the International Resource Panel. UNICEF. (1998). The state of the world’s children 1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www. unicef.org/sowc98/sowc98.pdf. van Berkum, S., Dengerink, J., and Ruben, R. (2018). The food systems approach: sustainable solutions for a suffcient supply of healthy food (No. 2018-064).Wageningen:Wageningen Economic Research. van den Bold, M., Dillon, A., Olney, D., Ouedraogo, M., Pedehombga, A., Quisumbing, A. (2015). “Can integrated agriculture-nutrition programmes change gender norms on land and asset ownership? evidence from Burkina Faso.” The Journal of Development Studies 388 (April 2016):1–20. Westhoek, H., Ingram, J., Van Berkum, S., Özay, L., Hajer, M., van den Bold, M., Dillon, A., Olney, D., Ouedraogo, M., Pedehombga, A., and Quisumbing, A. (2015). “Can integrated agriculture-nutrition programmes change gender norms on land and asset ownership? Evidence from Burkina Faso”. The Journal of Development Studies 51 (9):1155–1174. WHO. (2019). Essential nutrition actions: mainstreaming nutrition through the life course. Geneva:World Health Organization.

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PART 2

Land, labor, and agrarian transformation

7 WOMEN’S RIGHTS TO THEIR LAND When property does not equal power Peggy Petrzelka

Introduction “The concept of telling your tenant1 what you want, that’s something I hadn’t considered … I just had never considered that, you know … trying to tell somebody how to farm my land,” Sharon tells us, as she refects on a day she spent with women agricultural landowners. When pressed for why she is hesitant to tell her renter how she wants her farmland managed, multiple reasons are provided.“I’ve known him since he was wee tall,”“he was my Dad’s farmer,”“I don’t want to rock the boat,”“women were taught to ‘play nice in the sandbox’,” “I see him in church every Sunday, how do I tell him I want to change things?” and “I don’t want to be known as the ‘bitch’ in the community.” “Sharon” is a composite of hundreds of women agricultural landowners in the US, and the verbatim quotes are just a handful of reasons given by these women when explaining why they do not exercise their rights on, and to, the agricultural land they own. In this chapter, I detail the (very limited) research on these women agricultural landowners in the US, with a specifc focus on women non-operator landowners (WNOLs)—women who own farmland by themselves or co-own it with a husband, siblings, or other relatives and rent it to an operator to farm.While we increasingly know more about women farmers, i.e., operators, in the US, the research on women non-operating landowners is much more sparse for various reasons I detail below. And in discussions regarding gender and agriculture, these women are still very much invisible, and so are their struggles with their rights to, and on, the farmland they own. I begin the chapter with an overview of what we know about these landowners in terms of their numbers, then turn to the research that has examined how gender dynamics play out on the land.

Data on agricultural landowners National data on agricultural landowners in the US has been provided only three times in history, coming from the Agricultural Economic Land Ownership Surveys (AELOS) that collected information from both landowners and renters in 1988 and 1999 as follow-ups to the periodic Census of Agriculture (in 1987 and 1997, respectively) and the 2014 Tenure, Ownership, and 103

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Transition of Agricultural Land Survey (TOTAL).What we know from these surveys is nearly 40% of US farmland is rented or leased from agricultural landowners (USDA NASS, 2015). In 2014, women landlords owned 87,269,480 acres, which represents nearly 10% of the 911 million acres used for agriculture in 2014, 25% of the 354 million acres rented out for farming, 31% of the 283 million acres rented out by non-operator landlords, and 46% of the 191 million acres rented out by non-operator principal landlords,2 according to the TOTAL survey (USDA NASS, 2015). While these fgures on their own are substantial, as noted in previous research, these numbers are suspect for various reasons (Petrzelka et al., 2018) and do not accurately represent the degree of agricultural ownership by women. First, historically, women have struggled to gain equal rights to agricultural property, and “joint ownership” once meant the land was mans’ property (Effand et al., 1993). In was not until the nineteenth century that a woman could own property separate from her husband (Effand et al., 1993). In terms of inherited property, up until 1981, women were subject to tax laws that prevented equal access to inherited land, laws to which men were not subject (Sachs, 1983). Second, 37% of the respondents in the TOTAL survey reference above were women. However, the Iowa Land Ownership Survey,3 which has collected panel data from a representative statewide sample of land parcels and landowners in Iowa since 1949 (Duffy and Smith, 2008), shows that in 2017, 49% of Iowa’s agricultural landowners were WNOLs. They owned 47% of Iowa’s farmland and leased 55% of all acres (Zhang et al., 2018) (comparable information on WNOLs in other states does not exist, a critical gap in the data on agricultural landowners4).Third, this probable undersampling of women landowners in the TOTAL data was confrmed by a USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) staff member involved in the survey (personal communication). Finally, based on anecdotal evidence from prior surveys sent to women landowners, we know they often pass these surveys on to either their male renters or a male relative to fll out believing, as one female landowner stated, they “don’t know about farming” (personal communication).As Eells (2008, p. 181) has argued,“[i]f women widely assume that men involved with women’s farmland hold greater knowledge and expertise, they will refer researchers to men to respond to questions about land use and land management.” This lack of data on women landowners is problematic for multiple reasons: contributing to the invisibility of these women, lack of consideration of them in agricultural programs and policies, and a lack of understanding of the gendered dynamics they experience, to which I now turn.

Gender dynamics in agricultural landownership Several researchers have delved into this issue of ownership rights more deeply by studying landlord–renter relations. For example, Gilbert and Beckley (1993) studied decision-making authority (their proxy for power) among farmland owners and their renters in two Wisconsin townships.They found landlords and renters overwhelmingly agreed that the latter were the primary farmland decision-makers.They argued that rather than a dominant landlord-subordinate renter relationship (as argued in previous research, e.g., Harris [1974] and Mooney [1983]), what is actually occurring is a dominant renter-subordinate landlord relationship, and suggest those being dominated include women who have lost their spouse and not remarried (Gilbert and Beckley, 1993, p. 578). At the same time, Effand et al. (1993) and Rogers and Vandeman (1993), both using the 1988 AELOS data, examined differences in involvement in farm management decisions (their proxy for power) and found that female landlords were less likely to make farm management 104

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decisions than male landlords. Rogers and Vandeman (1993) also found younger landlords, both male and female, more involved in on-farm management decisions, highlighting the intersection of gender dynamics with age. Research in the following decade more directly examined gender in on-farm decisionmaking, primarily with qualitative data. In his Iowa study of WNOLs, Carolan (2005, p. 396) found that female landlords would self-censor and were reluctant to discuss implementation of various agricultural practices with their renters, fearing they would “scare away good tenants.” Carolan (2005, p. 402) notes, “all of the female landlords described inequitable power relations between themselves and their male tenants. Specifcally, they expressed feelings of exclusion [and] alienation [from the farm decision-making].” In her study of Iowa women farmland owners, Eells (2008, p. 67) found deception of female landlords occurring by some renters, particularly in terms of potential soil conservation measures, which would be presented to the female landlord by the male renter most often in “an authoritative way as not being very practical or effective.” Eells (2008, p. 68) also found that conservation and stewardship values of the women can be silenced when the renters are relatives, and environmental concerns are subdued in order to maintain “peace within the family.” A quantitative study of the role of gender in on-farm decision-making in four Great Lakes counties found WNOLs less likely to be involved in decision-making on their land if they were older, retired, inherited the land, co-owned the land with a sibling, or rented to a farmer not related to them. By contrast, for male landlords, involvement in decision-making on the land was reduced only when a non-relative farmed the land (Petrzelka and Marquart-Pyatt, 2011), indicating a much more complicated situation for WNOLs involvement in decision-making than for male non-operator landowners (NOLs).Thus, the patterns in the research were becoming very clear—women agricultural property owners hold little power to, and on, their land. More recent research has delved into the reasons why this is occurring. That is, why do numerous women like “Sharon” feel they have no right to decision-making on the land they own. Carter’s (2017) work gives a rich description of the complexity of situations faced by women agricultural landowners in Iowa. She argues gendered expectations that stem from cultural narratives determine who in society has power over the land and how it is used.The cultural narratives “privileging male control of land” mean that women landowners are expected to be “placeholders,” who maintain the land as “proftable and viable so it can be passed on to the next generation.”They defer their decision-making to their male renter or co-owner, and thus comply with gendered norms in the patriarchal structure, despite their landownership and legal power (Carter, 2017, p. 504). While “placeholders” are not entirely passive and still make some decisions regarding leasing arrangements with renters, decision-making on the land is typically ceded to the renter. In a study of 58 WNOLs living in Illinois and Indiana, 33 (57%) acknowledged they cede their power to a male (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019a).The ceding of power manifests primarily in renters’ resisting WNOL land management suggestions. Women landowners do not push for change even though it is what they desire. For example, Sally is a 71-year-old landowner who co-owns family land with her sister, has a renter who managed the land for her parents, and has been with the farm for approximately 20 years. As she describes their relationship, “We trust and respect our farmer very much … Cover crops and things like that, it’s not really an option for us because of what he’s doing … So we are just done wanting to be demanding.” As suggested in Sally’s words, women often “inherit” a renter along with farmland. This renter may be a neighbor, friend, or family member who goes to church with the landowner and is part of her community. Thus, there may be tremendous social pressure to forego questions or ignore problems related to farm management, and a reluctance to express or even imply 105

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criticism of the renter (Eells and Adcock, 2013). As Carter (2019, p. 895) notes,“Social control permits the continuance of historical power relations on the land even as the landowner-tenant relationship is changing.” She provides an example of a woman non-operating landowner who chose not to drain a wetland on her land, which would have allowed her nephew (the farm operator renting from her) to have more crop production acres.While the woman stood resolute in her decision to not drain the wetland, she faced various social sanctions to the point where she no longer attended the church she grew up in and was ostracized by both her family and the larger community. Carter states (2019, p. 902), This landowner’s desire to maintain the wetland for the wildlife challenged social norms in her family and the larger community, where she was expected to cede to her nephew’s desire to drain the wetland to plant more corn. In failing to comply with these expectations, she jeopardized relationships even beyond those that related directly to the farm and, as a consequence, sacrifced her place in her family and community in order to maintain the wetlands. In Fairchild and Petrzelka’s (2019a) work, Donna, a WNOL in Indiana, describes why she cedes power to her renter,“He’s a neighbor. And I don’t want to, you know, upset him. I don’t think he would get angry, but I’m not exactly sure.” Fairchild and Petrzelka (2019a) and Carter (2017; 2019) also found a perceived lack of agricultural knowledge on the part of women landowners as another major reason for ceding power to the renter. Fairchild and Petrzelka (2019a, p. 65) detail how Cassandra, a 63-year-old sole landowner who rents her land to her brother, struggles with knowledge and how to communicate to her brother how she wants the land to be managed, saying, One of my brothers works the land and I can’t talk with him about what my thoughts and goals are for the land. I feel like he can talk circles around me. My long-term goal is that the land could be farmed more sustainably.And that’s not going to happen with my brother.And I don’t know enough to have a good conversation. She continues, My one attempt at saying that I would just like to know other ways to have more sustainable practices and stewarding the land and [he] just looked at me and was like, “we have very sustainable practices,” and I’m like, “wait a minute, every year there’s more chemicals, I don’t understand how that’s sustainable.”And he says,“You just don’t understand farming.”And I was like,“okay,” and that was the end of the conversation. As Carter (2019, p. 895) notes, In the US, women have historically been, and continue to be, excluded from spaces of agricultural knowledge exchanges and decision-making, such as agricultural policy making and USDA or land grant university research (citing Leckie, 1996; Sachs, 1983; Wells and Eells, 2011). While the majority of women landowners discussed in the research cede power, more recent research is also beginning to tease out differences among women landowners—recognizing they are not a homogenous group. Carter’s (2017; 2019) work found two primary groups, the 106

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“placeholders” discussed earlier, and “changemakers”—women landowners who resist the gendered expectations of a “placeholder” that prioritizes men’s power (Carter, 2017). Carter (2017, p. 514) fnds that 19 out of the 26 women owners of Iowa farmland she interviewed expressed intentions to be a “changemaker,” and they did so often through “surreptitious compromise,” such as implementing a change in secret, after someone died, or at a slower pace than they might otherwise prefer. For example, some of the women in her study mentioned that they would wait until a family member or spouse passed away before making specifc changes on or regarding the land, such as implementing conservation practices. Fairchild and Petrzelka’s (2019a) work found that while the dominant group of women landowners in Illinois and Indiana interviewed did cede power to their renter, two groups of women did not—one group who shares power with their renter and one group who does not cede their power. Sixteen (28%) of the women landowners in the study indicated they are very happy in their renter relationship and involved in the land management decisionmaking process, with their preferred management practices often implemented on their land. For example, Connie inherited her land and co-owns it with family members. She indicates that she and her renter are constantly working together to implement practices and are already implementing many of the practices she wants to see on her land. She says, “We’ve always been pretty conscious about erosion and that kind of thing. And [renter’s names] are as well, so we’ve always kind of talked about that to try to do what we can to keep that [erosion prevention] happening.” All the women in the shared power group identify engaging in frequent communication with their renter to ensure they are involved in the decision-making process and know what is going on with their land. A second and interrelated reason for being content in the relationship is the women indicated they have a knowledge of farming practices. Anne co-owns her farmland with her sister.They inherited their farmland after the passing of their father, and both live off of the land being farmed. She notes, “I have a really good relationship with all my tenants. I think because I’ve done what they’re doing, because I’ve farmed it, I know the costs and the stresses and that kind of thing.” Anne’s experience in farming the land herself shows how the knowledge she has gained from being involved with the farming process provides her with power in decision-making (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019a, p. 67). Ten of the women landowners (17%) in Fairchild and Petrzelka’s (2019a) study do not cede their power to their renter. The primary way women in this category take power is by fring their renter. For Claudia, her renter was failing to implement desired practices and not stewarding the land according to her values.As she described her renter (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019a, p. 70), Our farmers didn’t listen … and it was the older male farmers usually, that didn’t listen to us.They just wanted to send us a check and found our questions intrusive and irritating … He would tell you whatever you wanted to hear, but he wouldn’t do it … and that was irritating. I wanted cover crops, it didn’t happen. He told me he put ‘em on. I took less money to use it for cover crops, and he didn’t do it. This third group of women, those not yielding power, were the youngest of the groups of women identifed, while those yielding their power were the oldest of the three groups, supporting earlier research fndings on the interconnectedness of age with gender, whereby younger women are more involved in on-farm decision-making (e.g., Rogers and Vandeman, 1993). Interestingly, this third group of women also had the most experience working in maledominated occupations, which, they noted multiple times in the interviews, came in handy 107

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when they were dealing with their male renters (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019a). For example, Claudia, who fred her renter, states,“I work with all men. I’m the only woman in my area, and the previous job I was at, there were only six women out of ffteen hundred people, and I was one of the six.” And Margaret, who also fred her renter, shares her experience working with male doctors and confronting them when they contemplated denying a woman a raise because “‘she’s got a husband.’ She laughs saying, ‘I’m sure if you ask the right people, they’d consider me a total bitch … but unfortunately a woman has to be that way in order to make a way’” (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019a, p. 73). These women are similar to Carter’s (2017) “changemakers,” who were public in their actions that challenged gendered expectations, often by using the same action the women in Fairchild and Petrzelka’s (2019a) study did—fring their renter. Unlike Carter’s (2017) study, however, none of the women in this third group use less confrontational methods (e.g., confict avoidance) to impose their power. Rather, they all used direct action to ensure their desired management practices were being implemented. That is, they do not appear to be attempting to ft into the gendered patriarchal structure of agriculture (Carter, 2017), but rather, are taking on the patriarchal structure. The more recent research is also beginning to suggest that women who cede their power to their renter are strategic, and “do gender” when need be. In discussions with these women, they have shared with me and each other how to behave when they want something specifc done on their land. A very popular strategy, indicated by the heads nodding whenever it is shared among a group of women landowners, comes from Phyllis.“I have cookies in my freezer, I pull them out when I see my tenant coming down the drive and before I go to talk with him to ask him to do something,” she states. Sandra adds, “When talking to the good old boys [the renters], remember they’re old-school, be polite, walk away, be sure to add ‘when [you] have time of course.’” And Eileen states her strategy for dealing with her renters very succinctly,“I get along better if I can be the little ole lady they want me to be.”5 Thus, this (very) limited research suggests the women landowners ceding power may strategically do gender and encourage other women landowners to do the same. Dottie, discussing issues she was having with her male renter who will not do as she wishes, exclaimed,“‘I’m going to go eyeball to eyeball with him.’Alice, sitting across from Dottie, quickly reminded her,‘Now remember the honey and vinegar Dottie.’To which Dottie replied, ‘That’s true … that’s true’” (Petrzelka and Sorensen, 2015 ). Doing gender is not a choice for these women, but rather a result of social sanctions. Just as many female surgeons told stories of how, when they behaved like their male colleagues, they were labeled as cold, bitchy, or high-strung for not being gender appropriate (Cassell, 1997, p. 49), women agricultural landowners receive the same sanctions (Carter, 2019).

Future research and policy needs There are multiple open questions remaining about women non-operating landowners. Below I detail four recommendations for future empirical and policy work that will help move this body of research further.These include: 1. The role competition for farmland plays in women’s rights on their land. 2. The role community pressures and rural context plays in women’s rights on their land. 3. The need for increased geographical and demographic representation of women landowners. 4. Policy change at federal and local levels. 108

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Competition for land What role does competition for land play in terms of women’s rights on and to their land? Does owning land in an area where there is high competition for farmland help or hinder women’s power? Carter (2019, p. 903) found in her study of Iowa women landowners that given the pressure for farmers to farm more corn and beans in order to remain competitive in the commodity markets and the need for these acres to be near one another because of the diffculty and expense in transporting large farm equipment, it is not surprising that women reported pressure to sell or manage their farmland in a way that better ft with social norms about land use. Thus, women do not have power, given the social pressure they are under. However, work in New York suggests the opposite—that in areas where land is very competitive, women landowners have more power over what will happen on the land, as they can fnd someone else to rent the land if the owners’ land management wishes are not implemented by their renter. It is in the areas where land is not competitive and women need a renter on the land in order for the land to stay assessed as agricultural land that the women are at a disadvantage (Petrzelka and Filipiak, 2019). Conducting more in-depth research on how competition for farmland relates to women landowners’ power would aid in understanding more clearly the various constraints WNOLs are facing.

Role of community pressures and rural context What we fnd in the research with women non-operating agricultural landowners is that the more entangled owners are with their renters, i.e., the stronger the personal ties that are felt by the women, the more pressure they feel to yield power.The role of social pressure has been examined in the research to some degree by Carter, who concludes,“we know little about how [women’s] decisions are infuenced by social pressures to conform to culturally dominant views of land use” (2019, p. 895).We also know very little about how women’s decisions are infuenced by culturally dominant views of who should “own” the land. Related to this is understanding more clearly how women agricultural landowners “do gender.” While we have several examples in the research of how women farmers do gender (e.g., Little, 1987; Pilgeram, 2007; Smyth et al., 2018), we do not have systematic studies on this for women non-operating landowners. Understanding more fully, and then addressing the social and cultural barriers and pressures these women are under is extremely important. Likewise, we need a clearer understanding of the penalties that result for women when they choose to exercise their power.

Need for increased geographical and demographic representation in the research The most recent research on women non-operating landowners comes from women landowners who have participated in learning circles (peer-to-peer learning environments with a focus on assisting women landowners to achieve the goals they have for their agricultural land).These have been organized by the Women, Food, and Agriculture Network6 (WFAN), based in Iowa, and American Farmland Trust7 (AFT).Thus, our knowledge of WNOLs is primarily limited to those women who choose to participate in the learning circles and may not be representative of all women non-operating landowners.There may be other WNOLs who do not see or have any issues with the renter relationship and others who know that attending a learning circle may 109

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not be supported by other family members. Indeed, in both Carter’s (2019) work and my own, we know of women who came to the learning circles secretly, and others whose sons insisted on joining their mothers and then insisted their mothers leave the learning circle, given the focus on achieving the women’s goals. In addition, most of the existing knowledge on WNOLs is from studies conducted in the Midwestern US. The fndings from these studies have provided policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with a sense of what WNOLs in the Midwest look like and the challenges they face in renting their farm to an operator. How these power relationships play out in other geographical regions is seldom explored and thus, an area for future research. Likewise, new research on women landowners will ideally incorporate landowners of color, non-cis landowners, and those in all types of partnered relationships.

Policy changes at federal and local levels Finally, it is important to note that it is not solely renters who do not acknowledge the rights women have to their land. Eells (2008; 2010) argues that agricultural agencies promote their programs and practices in a way that maintains men as the primary individual engaged in agriculture and falls short in representing women. An analysis of imagery and text on the USDA websites of the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS)8 and Farm Service Agency (FSA)9 supports this argument. It was found that “women are represented less than men in federal agricultural agency imagery in terms of numbers, focus, and role” (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019b, p. 32). In their analysis, the authors found that on the websites, there were twice as many photographs depicting only males than those depicting only females. In addition, men are twice as likely as women to be the focus of the photograph and four times more likely than women to be shown as active. Men are also twice as likely to be represented in an agency role and almost three times as likely than women to be in an agricultural role. (Fairchild and Petrzelka, 2019b, p. 32) The vast differences in these fndings by gender are discriminatory. Situations of USDA agencies discriminating against women landowners have also been detailed in the research (e.g., Petrzelka et al., 2018). For example, one landowner, when she called the local FSA offce to inquire about information, stated: [Despite being a landowner] when I called the local FSA offce to obtain information about my land; FSA wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone unless I brought in my marriage certifcate to show I was married [and therefore had rights to the land]. Another stated, “[As a landowner] I need concrete and actionable information so I don’t get dismissed as unimportant when I call USDA” (Petrzelka et al., p. 8). So, just as male farm operators at times dismiss women’s rights to their land, so too, do federal agencies whose mission is to be working with these landowners (Petrzelka et al., 2018).10 (Fortunately, USDA agencies have begun to take more active roles in the learning circles via partnership with organizations such as the Women, Food, and Agriculture Network and American Farmland Trust, thus illustrating a desire to better meet the needs of women landowners.) Systemic changes are needed. Currently, enormous weight is put on alternative networks as an avenue for these women (e.g., Carter, 2019; Petrzelka et al., 2019) to help fx the bias and 110

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discrimination they are facing in terms of being denied access to policies and programs. And these alternative networks are critical. But systemic changes within the USDA are also needed to address institutional discrimination.Wells and Eells (2011, p. 138A) state: We know this: women have not been on the radar, received the services, or had messages crafted for them.They have been uninvited, and excluded. It is in the best interest of the land to cater to more women farmland owners … we need to step back and rethink programs from their standpoints … Bringing disenfranchised women into the system will take institutional change, perhaps in the form of different (and perhaps smaller programs), revamped messages, or new support networks.

Conclusion As Rocheleau and Edmunds note, “Throughout the world women have been excluded from access to and control over a wide range of land … resources” (1997, p. 1368), and in their discussion of women’s land ownership in various countries, state,“Even where formal title is given jointly to a husband and wife, a woman may lose decision-making authority … on and off the farm” (1997, p. 1354).Whatmore (1991), in her feminist critique on family farming in England, echoes this when she argues that although women farmers may hold title to their land, whether the land is truly theirs in terms of control over it is in question. And Salamon (1993, p. 596), in her work on family farming in the Midwestern US and gendered ownership dynamics, noted that plat maps “reveal legal ownership rather than the social ownership.”Thus, what we are seeing in the US when it comes to women’s right to their land has been documented in many countries around the world. It is hoped that moving the research and policy in the four directions identifed, as well as multiple other directions, will begin to bring both increased visibility and understanding of women agricultural landowners in the US. What is unique, and disheartening, about this group of women is, under capitalism, ownership is supposed to endow the owner with the power. But with women agricultural landowners, we fnd otherwise. Property does not equal power.

Notes 1 Tenant refers to a farm operator that a woman agricultural landowner leases her land to, and is used interchangeably with “renter.” I use the term renter, unless taken from a direct quote. 2 Principal landlords are either “individual owners or the principal partner in a partnership arrangement.” (USDA NASS, 2015, p.13). 3 The only state to systematically collect detailed ownership information on agricultural landowners. 4 A multistate survey of non-operating landowners has been conducted by American Farmland Trust (AFT) (https://www.farmlandinfo.org/special-collections/4763), which will be the most comprehensive dataset on non-operating landowners since the 2014 TOTAL survey. 5 Peggy Petrzelka and Ann Sorensen.“I get along better if I can be the little ole lady they want me to be”: Women landowners navigating a “man’s (agricultural) world.” International Symposium on Society and Resource Management. Charleston, South Carolina (June 2015). 6 A nationwide group whose mission is to engage women in building an ecological and just food and agricultural system through individual and community power (wfan.org). 7 A nationwide group whose mission is to “save the land that sustains us by protecting farmland, promoting sound farming practices, and keeping farmers on the land,” (farmland.org). 8 The NRCS is a USDA agency whose outreach mission is to provide leadership to ensure that all programs and services are made accessible to all NRCS customers, fairly and equitably, with emphasis on reaching the underserved and socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers and landowners.

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Peggy Petrzelka 9 The Farm Service Agency is a USDA agency whose mission is “equitably serving all farmers, ranchers, and agricultural partners through the delivery of effective, effcient agricultural programs for all Americans” (https://www.fsa.usda.gov/about-fsa/history-and-mission/index). 10 In addition, there is a real lack of understanding of women agricultural landowners (and non-operating landowners in general) by the federal agricultural agencies. As an example, in a 2017 Land for Good conference held in Denver, CO, a top FSA offcial erroneously noted, in a panel discussion about nonoperating landowners that “we know exactly who they are,” and “they do not care about the land.” There is no study population list of non-operating landowners, and we know from research many NOLs care deeply about their land.

References Carolan, M. S. (2005).“Barriers to the adoption of sustainable agriculture on rented land: an examination of contesting social felds.” Rural Sociology 70 (3):387–413. Carter,A. (2017).“Placeholders and changemakers: women farmland owners navigating gendered expectations.” Rural Sociology 82 (3):499–523. Carter,A. (2019).“‘We don’t equal even just one man’: gender and social control in conservation adoption.” Society and Natural Resources 32 (8):893–910. Cassell, J. (1997).“Doing gender, doing surgery: women surgeons in a man’s profession.” Human Organization 56 (1):47–52. Duffy, M. and Smith, D. (2008). Farmland ownership and tenure in Iowa 2007. Iowa State University Extension, Ames, IA. Eells, J. C. and Adcock, L. (2013).“Women caring for the land (WCL): improving conservation outreach to female farmland owners.”Viewed 2, December 2019. http://wfan.org/curriculum-manual/. Eells, J. C. (2010). “Loving the land is not enough: empowering women landowners to prevent environmental degradation.” Ecopsychology 2 (3):179–185. Eells, J. C. (2008). “The land, it’s everything: women farmland owners and the institution of agricultural conservation in the U.S. Midwest.” PhD thesis. Iowa State University. Effand, A. B., Rogers, D. M., and Grim,V. (1993).“Women as agricultural landowners: what do we know about them?” Agricultural History 67 (2):235–261. Fairchild, E. and Petrzelka, P. (2019a).“Power and landownership: dynamics at play between women agricultural nonoperating landowners and their renter.” Unpublished manuscript from Doctoral dissertation. Utah State University. Fairchild, E. and Petrzelka, P. (2019b).“The USDA and gender equity: representation on the agency websites and social media.” Unpublished manuscript from Doctoral dissertation. Utah State University. Gilbert, J. and Beckley, T. M. (1993). “Ownership and control of farmland: landlord-tenant relations in Wisconsin.” Rural Sociology 58 (4):569–579. Harris, M. (1974).“Entrepreneurship in agriculture.” Agricultural Law Center. Monograph 12. University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. Leckie, G. J. (1996). “Female farmers and the social construction of access to agricultural information.” Library and Information Science Research 18 (4): 291–321. Little, J. (1987).“Gender relations in rural areas: the importance of women’s domestic role.” Journal of Rural Studies 3 (4):335–342. Mooney, P. (1983).“Towards a class analysis of Midwestern agriculture.” Rural Sociology 48 (4):563–584. Petrzelka, P., Briggs-Ott, M., Fairchild, E., and Filipiak, J. (2019). “‘From a circle of introductions’: adult learning and empowerment of women agricultural landowners.” Environmental Education Research. https ://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504622.2019.1632265. Petrzelka, P. and Filipiak, J. (2019). “Great Lakes protection fund project.” Final report draft. Utah State University. Petrzelka, P. and Marquart-Pyatt, S. (2011). “Land tenure in the US: power, gender, and consequences for conservation decision making.” Agriculture and Human Values 28:549–560. Petrzelka, P. and Sorensen, A. (2015). “I get along better if I can be the little ole lady they want me to be’: women landowners navigating a man’s (agricultural) world.” Presentation given at the 21st Annual International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Charleston, SC. Petrzelka, P., Sorensen,A., and Filipiak, J. (2018).“Women agricultural landowners—Past time to put them ‘on the radar’.” Society & Natural Resources 31 (7):853–864.

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Women’s rights to their land Pilgeram, R. (2007).“‘Ass-kicking’ women: doing and undoing gender in a US livestock auction.” Gender, Work and Organization 14 (6):572–595. Rocheleau, D. and Edmunds, D. (1997).“Women, men and trees: gender, power and property in forest and agrarian landscapes.” World Development 25 (8):1351–1371. Rogers, D. M. and Vandeman, A. M. (1993). “Women as farm landlords: does gender affect environmental decision making on leased land?” Rural Sociology 58 (4):560–568. Sachs, C. E. (1983). The invisible farmers: women in agricultural production.Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld. Salamon, S. (1993).“Culture and agricultural land tenure.” Rural Sociology 58 (4):580–598. Smyth, J. D., Swendener, A., and Kazyak, E. (2018). “Women’s work? The relationship between farmwork and gender self-perception.” Rural Sociology 83 (3):654–676. USDA NASS. (2015). Farmland ownership and tenure. Results from the 2014 tenure, ownership and transition of agricultural land survey.Viewed 6 January 2016. http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Onl ine_Resources/Highlights/TOTAL/TOTAL_Highlights.pdf Wells, B. and Eells, J. (2011). “One size does not ft all: customizing conservation to a changing demographic.“ Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 66 (5):136A–139A. Whatmore, S. (1991). Farming women: gender, work and family enterprise. London, England: Macmillan Academic and Professional, Ltd. Zhang,W., Plastina,A., and Sawadgo,W. (2018).“Iowa farmland ownership and tenure survey 1982–2017: a thirty-fve year perspective.”Working Paper 18-WP-580. Center for Agricultural and Rural Development. Iowa State University.Viewed 23 July, 2019. https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/6492

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8 GENDER AND LAND GRABBING Youjin B. Chung

Introduction In the wake of the food, fuel, and fnancial crises of 2007/2008, there has been a surge in largescale land acquisitions in the Global South.Actors behind this so-called “global land grab” have been diverse, including private investors, national governments, as well as institutional investors, such as hedge funds, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds with interests in producing and/ or speculating on agricultural commodities (Fairbairn, 2020; Anseeuw et al., 2012; GRAIN, 2008).1 While fgures vary, it is estimated that over 30 million hectares of land have formally changed hands globally between 2006 and 2016, with the majority of these deals located in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nolte et al., 2016; GRAIN, 2016).2 Despite the astounding pace, scale, and conjunctural specifcity of the global land rush, the phenomenon is less something new than a continuation of the violent histories of enclosures, colonial annexations, and postcolonial land privatizations that have undergirded the global expansion of capitalism (Borras et al., 2011; White et al., 2012; Geisler and Makki, 2014; Moyo et al., 2012; Peluso and Lund, 2011; Chung, 2019; Edelman et al., 2013). The early literature on the global land grab between 2007 and 2012 focused broadly on making sense of what was happening when, where, how, and why (Scoones et al., 2013). Given that many of the reported land deals remained at speculative or planning stages, it was too early to assess their long-term effects. During this time, feminist scholars and activists began raising concerns about the lack of discussion on gender, or the “overwhelming gender-blindness” in the literature (Chu, 2011; Palmer, 2010, cited in Daley, 2011; Behrman et al., 2011). Drawing on existing feminist scholarship on agricultural commercialization, contract farming, market liberalization, and land tenure reform of previous decades, these authors highlighted that the failure to consider gender in the global land grab debate will likely exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities, vulnerabilities, and conficts over resources. Since mid-2012, there has been a growing body of empirical research on contemporary land deals that foreground gender and other forms of social difference. This chapter provides an overview of recent work in this feld by examining fve thematic issues on gender and land grabbing emerging from feminist political ecology, critical agrarian studies, feminist economics, rural sociology, and related felds.The themes discussed include 1) consultation and negotiation; 2) access to land and livelihoods; 3) compensation and resettle114

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ment; 4) labor relations; and 5) political reactions from below and above.This chapter concludes with an invitation for the continued feminist inquiry into these interconnected issues while opening up new questions and concerns for consideration.

Consultation and negotiation The lack of gender-equitable representation and decision-making in land deal negotiations has been an enduring concern in the literature. Some have indicated that local consultations may be bypassed altogether. In the post-confict Democratic Republic of Congo, it has been reported that in 2002 alone, the government allocated 43.5 million hectares of farmlands, village lands, forests, and biodiversity hotspots to logging companies without obtaining consent from local communities (Debroux et al., 2007). In Latin America, where the role of military and paramilitary groups and narco-traffckers has been prominent in land grabbing, community consultations have been non-existent or have taken violent forms, including direct incursions on Afro-descendent and indigenous territories, as well as wholesale massacres of peasant farmers (Ballvé, 2012). In Cambodia, research has repeatedly shown how state authorities, in conjunction with corporate actors, have violently evicted hundreds of people from their lands and burned their houses down to make way for agro-industrial plantations (Lamb et al., 2017; Schoenberger and Beban, 2018). Where consultations do occur, they often end up being held with individuals with privileged social positions, such as village leaders, elders, elites, household heads, and private landowners who tend or are assumed to be men. In West Kalimantan, Julia and White (2012) describe how state-owned oil palm companies selectively chose customary and religious leaders and teachers— all men—to disseminate information to other community members. De Vos and Delabre (2018) suggest that these “invited” or “front room” spaces—such as offcial company-community meetings and internal village meetings, some of which happen at night—remain physically and culturally closed, and perceived as closed, to women in the region (see also Morgan, 2017; Elmhirst et al., 2017; Li, 2015). Women must then create their own informal spaces and networks for knowledge sharing. In Cambodia, Kusakabe (2015) found that women’s participation in public consultation meetings was only made possible when they were accompanied by their husbands. In the Congo Basin, Lewis et al. (2008) note how certain local chiefs refused women the right to participate in consultation and negotiation processes with forestry companies. In India, however, the Land Acquisition Act explicitly prohibited government offcials from delivering notices of compulsory land acquisitions to anyone but male heads or members of households, thereby legally reinforcing patriarchal norms and practices (Dewan, 2008, cited in Levien, 2017). In Kenya and Ghana, the exclusion of women in land deal negotiations has been attributed to the persistent gender bias among investors and governments, where men are considered to be “real” farmers and landowners, and women their dependents (Tsikata and Yaro, 2014; wa Gĩthĩnji et al., 2014). Even in cases where participation in land deal negotiations is extended to all community members, evidence from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mozambique show that the voices of women remain marginal and the fnal decision-making authority often resides with men (Calde et al., 2013; Salcedo-La Viña and Morarji, 2015; Morgan, 2017). In the Congo Basin, Lewis et al. (2008) further suggest that illiteracy among women and hunter-gatherer groups foreclosed their understanding of complex legal issues surrounding commercial land concessions.Taken together, these fndings demonstrate that women’s attendance in consultation meetings alone does not translate into their ability to meaningfully partake in decision-making or their “ability to freely exercise both ‘voice’ and ‘choice’” on matters that directly affect their lives and livelihoods (Daley, 2011, p. 7; Agarwal, 2001). 115

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Access to land and livelihoods Land grabbing and the ongoing dynamics of agrarian capitalism of which it is a part involves major reconfgurations of social relations that govern land access.The gender politics of resource access and the associated effects on rural livelihoods and social reproduction has been discussed extensively in feminist political ecology, feminist agrarian political economy, as well as the broader scholarship on gender, environment, and development.A key contribution of these related felds has been that agrarian and environmental change driven by capitalist processes often leads to intra-household contestations and negotiations over access to land, labor, and livelihoods, as well as interpretative struggles over the meaning of gender and property (Carney and Watts, 1990; Schroeder, 1999).3 This stems from an understanding that different groups of women and men have differential responsibilities, situated knowledges, and socio-material relationships with particular kinds of rural resources (Rocheleau et al., 1996). Resources here refer not only to private farm plots, crops, and trees, but also a wide range of common property resources including forests as well as “in-between” spaces, such as roadside bushes and irrigation ditches, which may seem inconsequential at frst glance, but may be invaluable for women for meeting their personal, household, and community needs and responsibilities (Rocheleau and Edmunds, 1997). These insights are critical for assessing one of the most powerful narratives deployed by investors and governments in the global land rush, that of converting “marginal,” “empty,” “idle,” “unused,” or “waste” lands into productive use (see Baka, 2014; Geisler, 2012;The Gaia Foundation et al., 2008; ActionAid International, 2008). In its highly infuential report entitled Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefts?, the World Bank has suggested that large-scale agricultural investments can, “when done right,” provide opportunities for countries with “large amounts of currently uncultivated land” and a “large gap between potential and actual yields” (Deininger et al., 2011). While these narratives provide a semblance of self-evident truths, they misread or fail to consider existing practices and knowledge of local resource users. To illustrate, when the Ghanaian government decided to allocate what it classifed as “marginal” land to investors to expand jatropha production for biodiesel in its northern region, it did so without local consultation and without a clear understanding of how the land was being used by women for the cultivation of shea nuts, a major source of independent income for them during the rainy season (ActionAid International, 2008). Similarly, the Indian government’s ambitious plan to plant jatropha on 17.4 million hectares of “wastelands” for biofuel production omitted an understanding of how poor rural farmers and landless laborers, especially women, depended on those very resources for supplementary grazing and the collection of fuelwood, medicine, and other plant resources for religious purposes (Narayanaswamy et al., 2009). Likewise, the Kenyan government’s leasing of over 100,000 hectares in the Tana River Delta to various foreign investors for horticultural, sugarcane, and biofuel production was completed without a careful study of how those areas were critical not only for the livelihoods of local farmers, pastoralists, and fshers but also for biodiversity conservation (Smalley and Corbera, 2012; FIAN, 2010).What is evident from the vast literature on global land grabbing is that the perception and meaning of “land,” whether “marginal” or otherwise, is deeply contested, and this ontological difference can lead to various forms of dispossession and impose serious restrictions on land access, including people’s ability to beneft from resources that have important social reproductive value (Chung, 2017). Recent work has further shown how contemporary land enclosures can perversely affect resource access at the household and community level, with important gendered and generational implications (Park and White, 2017). Scholarship in this area has been burgeoning in 116

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Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, which has been a major target for oil palm expansion since the 1980s. Julia and White (2012) demonstrate how the state/corporate appropriation of land in a Hibun Dayak community in West Kalimantan had the effect of deteriorating women’s land rights, which had previously been recognized under customary tenure arrangements. Li (2015) further explains that the Dayak and Malay farmers who became squeezed in the “enclaves” between expanding oil palm plantations in the region were left with barely any land to sustain themselves or the next generation. These farmers eventually gave up their land and went into wage labor for oil palm plantations, the consequences of which were particularly dire for women who received lower wages and thus struggled to make ends meet for their families. Echoing these fndings in their study of palm oil expansion in East Kalimantan, Elmhirst et al. (2017, p. 1152) emphasize that gender and intergenerational struggles for land and livelihoods are deeply entwined or “hard-wired” into the dynamics of large-scale agricultural investments and that they require long-term analysis.

Compensation and resettlement In light of dispossessions associated with global land grabbing, an urgent new question is whether and to what extent states and investors compensate displaced populations, and how compensation policies and practices are shaped by, and in turn shape, uneven gender relations of power. Previous studies of dispossessions, land reforms, and resettlement schemes across different places and times have shown that compensation procedures tend to be shaped by male bias, which can lead to further impoverishment and vulnerability for women (Mehta, 2009; Colson, 1999; Indra, 1999). Similar patterns have been observed in recent cases of large-scale land acquisitions in Africa and Asia (see Chung, 2017; Verma, 2014; Julia and White, 2012; Levien, 2012). In her examination of a transnational land deal for commercial sugarcane production in coastal Tanzania, Chung (2017) highlights how patriarchal ideologies were embedded in the planning process for involuntary resettlement. During the compensation valuation exercise, government authorities priviledged the registration of husbands or male “heads of households,” rendering gender a key determinant for eligibility for compensation. This had the effect of normalizing male bias in everyday state practice while reinforcing patriarchal structures of property control within the family. While compensation remained delayed and unpaid, she shows how some men have capitalized on the promise of payment as bridewealth credit to acquire additional wives, deepening conjugal tensions and conficts. Chung (2017) further critiques the narrow productivist conceptualization of value under the Tanzanian law and the international guidelines on involuntary resettlement, in which only cash crops and permanent fruit trees with so-called “earning capacity” were considered worthy of compensation. As a result, numerous indigenous tree species on which people depended for food, fuelwood, fber, fodder, medicine, building material, and cultural rituals, including female initiation rites, were omitted from the formal valuation process. Her fndings raise an important question about who has the power to valorize or devalue certain land-based knowledges and practices, and with what material and cultural consequences for rural communities. In West Kalimantan, Indonesia, one of the ways in which state-owned oil palm corporations have attempted to compensate the dispossessed villagers has been to provide them with smallholder plots for contract farming (see Julia and White, 2012; Li, 2015). However, as Julia and White (2012) show, there have been signifcant delays in the distribution of smallholder plots, and some families have never received any compensation for their lost land. Even when the plots were distributed, they were registered in the names of “family heads,” or husbands, except in the 117

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case of widows and divorcées, similar to the Tanzanian case above.This meant that women’s access to land—and by extension, access to credit and farmer cooperatives—became dependent on the authority of their partners. Similar male bias was noted by Levien (2017; 2012) in his study of large-scale land acquisition for the development of special economic zones in Rajasthan, India. Local villagers dispossessed from their farmlands and communal grazing land were given compensation plots by the government, but the land rights, including the right to sell, were allocated to and controlled by male household heads.When men sold the compensation plots and gained access to unprecedented sums of cash (while being effectively landless and unemployed), women complained that their partners were misspending their money by drinking more alcohol and resorting to domestic violence. In sum, recent research suggests that the ways in which compensation is measured, distributed, and appropriated draw on and deepen pre-existing gender inequalities. The following section discusses whether jobs promised by governments and investors can provide adequate redress for these injustices.

Labor relations One of the most common promises made by governments and investors in the global land rush has been job creation (Cotula et al., 2009). However, the elusiveness of this promised beneft has been extensively critiqued. As Li (2011) suggests, while investors need the land of local communities, they may not always need, or want to hire, local laborers. She reminds us that palm oil plantations in Indonesia have relied historically on cheap and abundant migrant laborers, especially male youth, who were deemed more easily disciplined given their precarious social position. Even the World Bank, in its otherwise optimistic report cited above, has questioned whether agricultural land deals can create employment opportunities for local residents. The report notes that expected job creation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, ranges from less than 0.01 jobs per hectare for a 10,000-hectare maize plantation to 0.351 jobs per hectare for an outgrower-based sugarcane plantation (Deininger et al., 2011). Even when jobs are promised by investors, however, their commitments remain vague and not legally enforceable (Cotula et al., 2009). In the case of Liberia, while community members have signed memoranda of understanding with a palm oil company that promised jobs along with other benefts, the documents failed to include any details, including who and how many people would be hired, what type of work they would be doing, and for how long and under what conditions they would be employed (Global Witness, 2015). Concerns about dispossession, impoverishment, and the lack of employment benefts associated with large-scale land deals have led to growing policy interests in so-called “inclusive” business models. These models, often touted as alternatives to land grabbing, seek to incorporate local people directly in the production process and beneft-sharing arrangements not only through paid work in plantations but also in outgrower or contract farming programs in which local farmers are expected to have a greater voice in business decision-making (Vermeulen and Cotula, 2010; Sulle et al., 2014). In line with this trend, the UN FAO has commissioned a series of reports in Africa and Asia to assess the gender-differentiated outcomes of “inclusive” agricultural investments for local land access and labor relations (see Daley et al., 2013; Daley and Park, 2012;Wonani et al., 2013; King and Bugri, 2013; Leonard et al., 2015); given that employment data pertaining to land deals initiated in the post-2007/2008 period still remains patchy, these reports largely draw on cases of commercial agricultural development projects that have been in operation for a longer period of time. A clear pattern that emerges across policy and academic literature is that labor is strictly segmented by gender, and that this segmentation is informed by and reproduces prevailing gender 118

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inequalities. In their study of a mango production project in northern Ghana which began in 2001,Tsikata and Yaro (2014) show that out of 855 local people hired as plantation feld workers, 600 were casual workers, 80% of whom were female; of the remaining 255 permanent workers, women constituted only 30%. While 60 additional local residents were hired as feld staff supervisors, all of them were men; and of 21 administrative staff, only 2 were women, one of whom was a janitor.When women were hired as permanent feld workers, they were assigned feminized tasks, such as nursing tree seedlings, grating, mulching, cutting, packing, and selecting mangoes, whereas men were tasked with jobs that were perceived to be more physically demanding, such as slashing, applying manure, spraying pesticides, harvesting, or transporting. In sugarcane plantations in Tanzania, which have been operational since the 1960s, however, more casual workers tended to be men; this has been attributed to the fact that labor-intensive tasks, such as cane-cutting, harvesting, and pan-boiling in the factory, are culturally perceived as men’s work (Dancer and Sulle, 2015). Beyond signifcant wage differentials, conditions of work for casual and seasonal laborers are more precarious than those of permanent workers, although corporate policies and practices vary. In the palm oil plantations studied by Li (2015), casual feld workers, dominated by landless or near landless local women, were not eligible for healthcare, pensions, and other benefts, and did not receive protective equipment, whereas casual laborers in sugarcane plantations in Zambia examined by Wonani et al. (2013) had access to healthcare services from the company clinic and were eligible for paid sick leave. Similar gendered patterns are observed in outgrower schemes. In Africa, scholarship in critical agrarian studies has shown how contract farming can be a mechanism through which peasant households are adversely incorporated into uneven circuits of global capital (Oya, 2012; Little and Watts, 1994). Feminist scholars have further highlighted that contract farming is predicated upon a unitary model of a peasant household in which production politics—and the attendant struggles over property rights and division of labor—are assumed to be shaped by a senior male authority (see Chayanov, 1966 [1925]), rather than through ongoing negotiations and contestations between family members (Carney and Watts, 1990; Schroeder, 1999; Hart, 1992). This reifed understanding of a patriarchal household is refected in the ways in which outgrower contracts are often made only with husbands, even when production would involve the exploitation of unpaid family labor and ultimately increased workload for women (Dancer and Sulle, 2015;Wonani et al., 2013; King and Bugri, 2013; Daley et al., 2013;Tsikata and Yaro, 2014). Moreover, outgrower schemes typically require substantial start-up costs, meaning that poorer households, including widows, divorcées, and single mothers, who often experience relative income poverty, are excluded from the outset or must be ready to incur signifcant debt (Dancer and Sulle, 2015; Daley et al., 2013). In sum, these fndings demonstrate the centrality of gender and labor in the land grab debate; land grabbing often entails the incorporation of agrarian communities into global commodity production in ways that are deeply exploitative and gendered.

Political reactions from below and above Building on critical agrarian studies’ traditional concern with contentious politics and everyday forms of peasant resistance, recent research has aimed to understand not only how different classes of individuals and groups are impacted by land grabbing, but also how they respond or react to it. The literature highlights a wide range of political reactions from below, ranging from grassroots protests and demonstrations against displacement and dispossession, to transnational alliance-building and campaigns against global land grabbing, to mobilizations that seek to improve the terms under which local people are compensated and incorporated into agricul119

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tural value chains (see Borras and Franco, 2013; Hall et al., 2015). Such diverse manifestations and repertoires of agrarian politics extend far beyond, and complicate, the notion of resistance. While many authors acknowledge that responses to land grabbing are differentiated along multiple and intersecting lines of social difference, sustained feminist analysis on the topic remains sparse, although with some important exceptions, as I highlight below. Several recent contributions to the Journal of Peasant Studies have explored the role of women vis-à-vis men in public protests against land grabbing and forced evictions, particularly in the case of palm oil expansion in Indonesia (Morgan, 2017), rubber concessions in Cambodia (Lamb et al., 2017), and sugarcane production in Uganda (Martiniello, 2015). Although these overt forms of political contention have had limited success in curbing displacement and dispossession, these studies are nonetheless important for understanding how gender, as a power-laden process, becomes directly embedded in struggles over land. Specifcally, they highlight the complex ways in which gender is understood, mobilized, performed, subverted, as well as reproduced through women’s participation in protests. Morgan (2017) and Martiniello (2015) demonstrate how women in Indonesia and Uganda, respectively, drew on their positionality and social status as mothers and grandmothers to draw attention to the risks land dispossession posed on intergenerational social reproduction, and to urge the restoration of moral norms around land access and social justice.The performance of aggrieved Ugandan women/mothers who stripped naked in front of state and corporate representatives was, as Martiniello (2015, p. 662) suggests, an “exhortation to respect moral obligations towards women in their reproductive and nurturing capacity,” even as it reinforced assumptions about gender difference and the essentialist association between women and nature. In the Cambodian context where men are more susceptible to police surveillance and violence, Lamb et al. (2017) and Park (2019) suggest that having women at the frontlines of protests was an atypical but strategic way for people to vocalize their concerns while minimizing the possibility of state retaliation.Yet, despite their leading roles in public resistance, Lamb et al. (2017) raise concerns about the ways that women were excluded from post-eviction reconstruction activities, such as community governance and the mapping of land. Beyond open protests and demonstrations, some scholars have examined the “judicialization of land grabbing” (Grajales, 2015, p. 542), or the use of formal-legal instruments to contest land dispossession (Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2015; Alonso-Fradejas, 2015). Discussion of this formal-legal repertoire of agrarian resistance, however, has largely been void of gender analysis, despite the fact that masculinism of the law and the “pervasive gendering of the public sphere” (Landes, 1988, p. 2) have historically served to legitimize the subordination of women. Chung (2018) highlights the dangers of this through a case of perverse lawfare in coastal Tanzania. She focuses on a lawsuit in which three male elders sued the national government and a foreign investor instead of acquiescing to dispossession by a sugarcane plantation.While the lawsuit appeared to be, and was justifed by the plaintiffs as, rightful resistance to land grabbing, it was ultimately dismissed by the High Court of Tanzania with costs. Through an ethnographic investigation, she reveals how elders’ lawsuit was, in fact, riven with contradictions and predicated upon an intersectional politics of exclusion that silenced, misrepresented, and transgressed the rights of not only the elders’ wives, but also those of other villagers across gender, generation, and social status. Much remains at stake, she argues, if researchers remain insensible to the silent and hidden operations of gender in the formal-legal repertoires of agrarian resistance. Concerns about the negative impacts and implications of global land grabbing have also spurred various institutional responses.These include international efforts to establish standards for “responsible investments,” such as the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment led by various UN agencies and the World Bank, and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible 120

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Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests led by the Committee on World Food Security. While these global governance initiatives are not blind to questions of power and inequality, there is concern about their tokenistic and depoliticized references to “gender” in ways that are counterproductive to the transformative goals of feminism, an issue that continues to trouble feminist scholars (Cornwall et al., 2007; Mollett, 2017).The optimism around these global land governance mechanisms further masks the important question of how they might be implemented and monitored on the ground such that they do not result in “callous experiments” on the lives and livelihoods of rural women and men (Wisborg, 2014, p. 44; Collins, 2014). Others suggest that these voluntary codes of conduct are unlikely to deter land grabbing or affect in any signifcant manner the confguration of powerful interests that shape land deal negotiations (Borras and Franco, 2010; Levien, 2017). In lieu of voluntary mechanisms,Verma (2014) suggests that there should be a set of enforceable and legally binding international regulations that protect the rights of rural women and men, although the feasibility of this type of intervention or the necessary political will remains elusive.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the gender dimensions and implications of land grabbing across fve thematic areas, including consultation and negotiation, land access and livelihoods, compensation and resettlement, labor relations, and political responses.While there may no longer be an “overwhelming gender-blindness” in the literature (Palmer 2010, cited in Daley, 2011), feminist analysis of land grabbing and agrarian change more broadly still remains on the margins.Yet, if there is one clear lesson that emerges from the preceding discussion, it is that we fundamentally misunderstand the processes and outcomes of land deals if we fail to acknowledge gender (and its many articulated forms) as a key signifer of power. Research on the themes featured in this chapter will require continued examination and elaboration in the coming years. By way of conclusion, I would like to suggest three additional areas that deserve further consideration.The frst has to do with the gendered ways in which land deals are managed and governed on the ground. Recent research has demonstrated how investments unfold in varied and complex ways involving diverse actors at multiple scales with different interests (Wolford et al., 2013). However, feminist analysis of governmentality as it pertains to land grabbing still remains insuffcient, although a few have engaged in interesting ways with affect and embodiment (Schoenberger and Beban, 2018), as well as biopower and necropower (Chung, 2020) to bring to the fore how land grabbing extends beyond control over territories to control over bodies. Second, while there has been increasing attention to the intersections of gender, generation, class, and caste in shaping land deals (Park and White, 2017; Edelman and León, 2013; Levien, 2017), little has been discussed on the relationship between gender and race/ ethnicity. This absence is concerning when contemporary land grabbing has been likened to neo-colonialism (GRAIN, 2007; Moyo et al., 2012) and a “foreignization of space” (Zoomers, 2010, p. 429). Taking cues from decolonial and postcolonial feminist scholarship (Lugones, 2010; Radcliffe, 2015; Mollett and Faria, 2013), future research would beneft from considering how the coloniality of gender/power—and its differential confgurations across time and space—results in qualitatively different experiences of and responses to land grabbing in diverse agrarian milieux. Lastly, researchers must draw attention to not only what happens “after the land grab,” or what Li (2018) refers to as the reconfguration of socio-political relations in and around plantations, but what happens when land deals are delayed, canceled, or struggle to materialize altogether, an emergent trend that has been identifed by civil society groups and researchers (GRAIN, 2018; Nolte et al., 2016; Johansson et al., 2016).This signals the need for 121

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deeper engagements with the liminality of contemporarly land deals and capitalist agrarian transition more broadly (Chung, 2020), and the kinds of politics and struggles it generates for different groups of rural people.

Notes 1 While agricultural commodity production has been the primary intention of investors in the global land rush, other drivers have included mineral extractions, commercial forestry, biodiversity conservation, tourism/ecotourism, special economic zones (SEZs), urban and commercial developments, and land speculation (Zoomers, 2010; Fairhead et al., 2012; Levien, 2012). 2 Figures vary widely on the extent of the global land rush, which speaks to the methodological challenges associated with studying the phenomenon (Scoones et al., 2013). 3 Access is defned as the ability of individuals or groups to beneft from resources by drawing on a wide range of social relationships, processes, and institutions (Ribot and Peluso, 2003).

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9 GENDER AND LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION Elizabeth Ransom and Forrest Stagner

Gender permeates all aspects of meat in the global agrifood system. At the consumption level, the literature tends to focus on linkages between identity and meat consumption, especially masculinity in Western societies (Schösler et al., 2015).At the point of processing, scholars have focused on gender segregation in meat processing facilities (Horowitz, 1997; Freshour, 2019). In both instances, the literature has largely focused on Western countries. By contrast, at the production level, attention to gender is more recent and, with a few exceptions (Sachs et al., 2016), most research has examined gender and livestock in non-Western, smallholder production systems. This chapter will highlight gender in livestock production systems in the Global South. These systems play an important role in income generation and market development, health and nutrition of households and children, and strategies for adaptation to climate change. Although a focus on gender is long overdue, it risks treating gender in an instrumental manner, to the neglect of gender for empowerment and the transformation of inequitable gendered relationships. Accordingly, this chapter provides an overview of the existing literature related to thinking about gender and livestock production systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and concludes by identifying areas for future research and avenues for creating a more sustainable and gender-equitable approach to livestock production. This introduction provides a brief overview of how livestock production systems have changed globally in the past 60 years. It elaborates on what can increasingly be described as a bifurcation in production systems—the expansion of large industrial production systems and persistence of extremely small-scale production systems—and the gendered implications of this bifurcation.The next section of the chapter will describe gender and livestock production systems in SSA. More than 50% of SSA land is rangeland that is primarily suitable for grazing animals. However, most of these lands are at or over their carrying capacity (Holechek et al., 2017). In addition, SSA is home to well over half of all people living in extreme poverty globally, and 27 of the 28 poorest countries in the world (World Bank, 2018). Most of those in extreme poverty live in rural areas where agriculture and livestock production represent important assets for survival and upward mobility out of poverty.

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Changes in livestock production systems globally Global meat consumption and production have risen sharply and steadily since 1960, with the production of land animals—cows, pigs, and chickens—increasing from approximately 45 million metric tons (MMT) in 1960 to 259 MMT in 2016 and meat consumption per person essentially doubling from 20 to 40 kg/per year (Winders and Ransom, 2019).The increases in both consumption and production have been starkly uneven, with dramatic increases in specifc countries (e.g., the United States and China) and minimal growth (e.g., Mali) or even decline (e.g., Uganda) elsewhere, particularly in SSA (see Ritchie and Roser, 2019). The majority of the meat that is consumed in the world today comes from larger farms and intensive livestock systems, whereby large numbers of animals are kept in confned spaces where they can be fed intensively in order to increase weight and be slaughtered quickly (Herrero et al., 2017; FAO, 2014). However, there are still approximately 1.5 to 2 billion people in the world today that depend upon smallholder farms for maintaining their livelihoods, and SSA is one of two regions in the world where the majority of farmland is managed by smallholders (Poole, 2017).Within smallholder farms, most rely on keeping some type of livestock, particularly smaller stock, like poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats. Livestock provides a range of services for smallholders, including fertilizer, a source of food, or a cash income, as animals can usually be sold quickly for cash if needed (Rapsomanikis, 2015). This juxtaposition of smallholder production (that makes up the majority of farming systems in the world today) and industrial meat production (that is the source of the majority of meat consumed in the world today) can be better understood in what has been dubbed the “agrarian question.”There are two dimensions to this concept. One dimension focuses on the explanation for the persistence of peasant and smallholder farmers in capitalist economies, while the other asks what ought to be the role for these farmers in capitalist economies. Ultimately, subsistence farming, the type of farming that is characteristic of most smallholders in SSA and is viewed as an inherently unproftable venture, is often seen as an anachronistic livelihood undertaken in capitalist economies solely out of poverty and desperation (McMichael, 1997). In contrast,Alexander Chayanov (1966), writing in the early years of the Soviet Union, took a charitable view of smallholders, or what he referred to as the peasantry. Chayanov explained the persistence of peasant farming through the peasants’ ability to self-exploit in order to achieve a balance between 1) labor and consumption and 2) utility and drudgery.The apparent contradiction of the agrarian question is resolved through the understanding that peasant farms are not driven by a proft motive but rather on the values of the peasants themselves (van der Ploeg, 2014). Philip McMichael (1997) sees this aspect of peasant agriculture—its motivation by values rather than proft—as an opportunity to “re-embed” values that have been externalized in capitalism. McMichael and other scholars look toward organizations like La Vía Campesina, an international organization fghting for the rights of peasants, as vehicles for this re-embedding (Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2010; McMichael, 2017). However, Friedmann (1990) reminds us to consider two important points. First, while peasant agriculture may operate on different principles than capitalism, it does not exist outside of capitalist institutions and is thus made vulnerable to the proft-seeking motive. Peasants are, therefore, at risk of losing their land and being forced into wage labor to obtain a livelihood.The second point, which returns us to the focus of this chapter, is that there are gendered aspects to the agrarian question that are often overlooked.As smallholders are drawn further into the market, either through land dispossession and wage labor or through petty commodity production, gender relations are transformed (Friedmann, 1990).This tension between peasant and capitalist reproduction reverberates throughout each topic explored in this chapter—not just market integration, but health and wellbeing, and climate change and vulnerability as well. 127

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Finally, thus far, the terms “peasant” and “smallholder” have been used interchangeably.The peasantry has often been associated with a way of life and a state of being in contradiction to capitalist economies (Bryceson, 2000). By contrast, “smallholder” often refers to the amount of land and social capital a farming household has access to for the purposes of food production. Scholars have argued that smallholders, as part of capitalist economies, are in need of and receptive to being developed into commodity producers (see Bryceson, 2000). While we do not fully support the assumption that smallholders must be subsumed into commodity production, we have adopted the term “smallholders” for two reasons. First, smallholders have been extensively targeted by governments and development actors in recent years for integration into the marketplace (see Wiggins and Keats, 2013). Second, the peasantry, which Chayanov describes, maintains a kind of homeostasis and reproduces sustainably from one generation to the next. In SSA, however, this type of homeostatic generational reproduction is less common. In Rwanda, for instance, large and growing rural populations have led to increasing density and local environmental resource degradation, arguably contributing to the genocide there (Pritchard, 2013; Uvin, 1996).Throughout the Global South, the evidence suggests decreasing average farm sizes—meaning smallholders are increasingly trying to eke out a livelihood on ever-smaller parcels of land (Lowder et al., 2016). That smallholder farmers in SSA face these challenges further complicates the second dimension of the agrarian question; what ought to be the role for these farmers in the future? This chapter investigates some of those complications with respect to gender and livestock on the continent.

Gender and livestock production in SSA SSA is home to approximately 17% of the world’s population, a share that is projected to grow to 25% by 2050 (World Bank, 2018).While extreme poverty has declined globally, SSA has experienced the least decline, and today is home to well over half of all people living in extreme poverty, most of whom live in rural areas and work in agriculture (World Bank, 2018).1 Livestock is viewed as an important asset for rural populations, both for survival and as a possible pathway out of poverty, and the gendered relationships associated with livestock impact men and women differently and often unequally (see Quisumbing et al., 2014). While livestock has long been considered one of the most important assets outside of land for rural populations globally and in SSA, there has been limited attention given to gender and livestock until very recently (Kristjanson et al., 2014; Njuki and Sanginga, 2013a;Tangka et al., 2000). Generally, livestock is increasingly understood as another dimension in which men and women’s access to, control of, and beneft from is largely unequal, favoring men over women (Galiè et al., 2018). In many cases, women and children’s labor is used to rear animals, while the benefts derived from the animals and their products disproportionately accrue to men (Dumas et al., 2018). In focusing on gender and livestock production in SSA, there are a few themes that emerge from the literature. First, however, it is important to note that SSA is as enormous as it is diverse. Smallholders make up approximately 80% of all agriculture in SSA, and livestock is a critical component of this type of farming system (OECD-FAO, 2016). Pastoral farming systems (people who depend upon livestock-based nomadic or semi-nomadic livelihoods) represent approximately 7% of agriculture in SSA; however, the FAO estimates that approximately a quarter of the SSA population exists in pastoralist communities and that pastoralists operate in approximately 30 SSA countries (FAO, 2018). Industrial livestock production also exists in SSA, but generally is only considered signifcant in South Africa (Gollin, 2014).This chapter will focus on gender and livestock production among smallholders in SSA, with a 128

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brief discussion of pastoralists (Box 9.1). Industrial livestock production systems in SSA will not be discussed in this chapter, with the exception of the conclusion, where there is a brief mention of the need for more research related to gender and industrial livestock production systems. Until recently, the empirical data on gender and who owns, cares for, and benefts from livestock production have been limited. Much of the existing evidence was qualitative (Boogaard et al., 2015), since quantitative data relied on household surveys that were based on a unitary household model that ignores intra-household (and highly gendered) variability (Njuki et al., 2011). In recent years, more robust empirical data are being collected that uncover the gendered dimensions of livestock ownership, control, and use within households (Galiè et al., 2018; Njuki et al., 2011; Njuki et al., 2013a; Quisumbing et al., 2015;Tavenner and Crane, 2018). By “taking the roof off of households,” the literature reveals that the use rights of livestock are very heterogenous and complicated. Indeed, ownership rights may not equal decision-making rights, the ability to access products (e.g., milk), or to sell an animal (Boogaard et al., 2015; Kristjanson et al., 2014).With the growth of gender-disaggregated data collection efforts, there has been a sizable expansion in the literature, with increasing attention to three dominant themes: 1) income and markets, 2) health and nutrition, and 3) risk and vulnerability.These are discussed in turn.

Income and markets Among smallholders, livestock is often the only viable way to generate income in the formal market (Kariuki et al., 2013). Literature in this area has focused extensively on livestock as assets, with asset ownership associated with poverty reduction, economic mobility, and reduced risk to vulnerabilities at the household level (Njuki and Mburu, 2013; Njuki and Sanginga, 2013a). Prevailing research emphasizes the gendered dimensions of livestock in providing pathways out of poverty for women throughout the developing world (Kristjanson et al., 2014). This work increasingly recognizes that asset ownership is gendered and because animal ownership is more informal than that for land or other assets, women’s claims to livestock and livestock products are thought to be more tenuous (Njuki et al., 2011; Quisumbing et al., 2015). Gendered livestock assets mean that men and women often own or beneft from different types of animals.A common belief that has guided development policies is the view that women are more likely to own or control smaller animals, like chickens, while men are more likely to own and beneft from larger animals, like cattle. However, to date, the empirical evidence in support of this has been limited (Ransom et al., 2017).While there is a general sense that gender preferences do exist across different types of livestock, with women associated with smaller animals, there is also growing evidence that these differences vary widely and deserve more attention, particularly in livestock development programming focused on animal agriculture (see Waithanji et al., 2013). Across the heterogeneous landscape of SSA, studies reveal that women, men, and households beneft differently from different types of animals and animal products (Njuki and Mburu, 2013). For example, women in SSA have much higher rates of milk marketing than involvement in livestock sales (Waithanji et al., 2013). However, research has also found that an increasing market orientation harms women’s involvement in sales of livestock and livestock products, including milk. Specifcally, studies have documented men taking over the income from women’s livestock when the livestock or livestock products become higher in value and are sold through more formalized markets.This has been well documented, for example, in milk markets and more commercialized egg markets (Njuki and Mburu, 2013; Njuki and Sanginga, 2013a; Tavenner and Crane, 2018). In their study of women and milk marketing in Kenya, Tavenner 129

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and Crane (2018) note that the location and size of markets matter; the nearer a market is to women’s households and the smaller the market, the more likely women will participate in the selling of milk in the market and maintain control over the income from milk sales. As markets grow larger and if a formal accounting of women’s milk sales occurs, men become aware of just how much money women are earning and, in the case of Kenya, this meant the men took over the women’s income earned from milk sales (Tavenner and Crane, 2018). While ownership of livestock assets is considered an important indicator of women’s ability to control the income from livestock and livestock products, there is also evidence that ownership may not be necessary for women to beneft or manage income generated from livestock products (Njuki and Mburu, 2013). For example, when a cow is owned jointly by men and women, women may have access to the evening milk (usually a smaller quantity than the morning milk), which they can then decide how to allocate (e.g., for sale or household use) (EADD, 2009; Njuki et al., 2011; Tavenner and Crane, 2018). Despite the variance found regarding whether women beneft from the income from animals and animal products, studies consistently show that women provide most of the labor in livestock in SSA (Njuki and Mburu, 2013; Quisumbing et al., 2015), an issue discussed below. Finally, while the bulk of the literature is focused on women’s income earned from livestock, Boogaard et al. (2015), in their study of goats in Mozambique, caution against solely focusing on income as it relates to livestock. In Mozambique, while women do not market goats, they do use goats for community festivals and other similar events, which earns them social capital. So, while women do not receive direct monetary return, the authors caution against overlooking the other types of value that women extract from livestock.

Health and nutrition Livestock plays a key role in household food security strategies in SSA. During times of food shortages, livestock, or livestock products (e.g., eggs) can be sold to generate income for purchases, including food for a household. In addition, livestock products can be consumed by the household during periods of food shortages (Njuki and Sanginga, 2013b).There is also the indirect beneft of animal manure and traction that can be used to grow crops. More generally, livestock ownership has been shown to increase the consumption of animal-sourced foods (ASF), which is believed to reduce malnutrition and stunting in children. However, the impact of intra-household inequalities in access to livestock and livestock products has received insuffcient attention. Increasingly, scholars have focused on the ways women’s control over livestock impacts children’s wellbeing and health (Dumas et al., 2018; Jin and Iannotti, 2014; Kariuki et al., 2013). In general, women’s ownership of livestock increases reported months of having adequate food as well as the consumption of ASF (Jin and Iannotti, 2014; Kariuki et al., 2013). However, there are also several studies that suggest children, especially young children, might experience negative health consequences due to living in close contact with animals or consuming animal products at too young of an age (Dumas et al., 2018; Hetherington et al., 2017). In summary, while the evidence is increasing that women’s livestock ownership has a positive impact on their children’s nutritional wellbeing, exactly when and how there is a positive impact that remains less well understood. Other areas that still require further research include the effects of women’s livestock ownership on the nutritional and physical wellbeing of the women themselves.Women provide much of the labor for livestock, but this does not guarantee their own consumption of ASF.They also work regularly in close proximity to animals, which can raise health concerns associated with disease transfer between animals and humans (Zaingirai et al., 2017). 130

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There has been a lack of attention to types of breeds of animals, for which women are responsible, related to women’s labor time invested in livestock. For example, studies often simply count the total number of animals owned and analyze the level of signifcance to nutritional indicators (Hoddinott et al., 2015; Mosites et al., 2015).The problem with this approach has to do with the difference in the quantity of livestock-related products, as well as the amount of time required for the upkeep of local versus improved breeds. Local dairy breeds, for example, may only give a household 1 or 2 liters of milk per day, in contrast to a crossbred dairy cow that can provide up to 10 liters of milk per day. A breed that produces more livestock products changes not only the amount available for household consumption but also the potential to generate income, which can also impact household nutritional wellbeing. Conversely, crossbred dairy cows may require more labor and resources, as they require more water and are more vulnerable to environmental conditions.

Climate change, vulnerability, and resilience SSA contains some of the world’s most vulnerable2 populations with respect to climate change due to these populations’ heavy reliance on the surrounding environment and natural resources (Assan et al., 2018; Perez et al., 2015). Climate change poses risks to the availability of rain and water sources, leads to higher temperatures, and increases the prevalence of weeds and pests, which will likely result in signifcant decreases in crop and livestock productivity. Growing populations exacerbate these issues by further degrading the environment through activities such as gathering frewood, making charcoal, overfshing, and depleting soil fertility through overcultivation (Perez et al., 2015). Men and women do not feel the effects of climate change equally; women often bear a disproportionate burden of the hardships resulting from these changes (Olaniyan, 2017; Assan et al., 2018; McKune et al., 2015; Perez et al., 2015). In response to the loss of productivity in marginal agricultural lands, many areas of SSA are poised to see an increase in livestock management as a way of coping with and adapting to climate change (Jones and Thornton, 2009). As mentioned above, livestock and animal products can be incorporated into livelihood strategies to provide extra income and improve food security. Livestock can also be sold in an emergency, providing a buffer against shocks (Jones and Thornton, 2009; Dumas et al., 2018).While livestock may serve to increase household food security and income stability, there is reason to worry that increased livestock management may increase women’s burden of work as they are often responsible for livestock duties (Chanamuto and Hall, 2015; Dumas et al., 2018). For households seeking to adapt to climate change, wage work offers an attractive option to diversify livelihood strategies away from natural resources and climate dependence (Dumas et al., 2018; Keane et al., 2016). Since men are much more likely to seek wage work outside of the home, women are left to take on more responsibility for crops, livestock, and domestic duties. Moreover, with men generally controlling income and income-generating assets, a livelihood strategy of increasing livestock management to obtain income stability risks creating additional work for women to maintain the livestock asset while excluding them from the benefts of that work (Bain et al., 2018; Galiè et al., 2018). A gendered analysis is critical to the creation of inclusive climate-focused development projects that beneft all members of the household. In a study of subsistence farming households in Ghana,Assan et al. (2018) found that, due to gendered livelihood strategies, men and women desired different information to help them cope with climate change.Women were more interested in processing and storing food, whereas men wanted extension education that would focus 131

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on increased food production. Additionally, women’s perspectives need to be incorporated, as some climate adaptation strategies may negatively impact women. For example, having men shift to using crop residue for ground cover can reduce women’s access to crop residue for animal fodder (Beuchelt and Badstue, 2013). A further concern is women’s lack of voice in the community. Women are often confned to the home due to cultural factors and gendered divisions of labor in which women perform the bulk of domestic duties (Kristjanson et al., 2014).Without a voice in community decisionmaking, women’s concerns are not heard, increasing the likelihood that community-wide decisions regarding climate change adaptation will likely fail to build women’s resilience and may well erode it (Chanamuto and Hall, 2015; Dumas et al., 2018; McKune et al., 2015). Expanding upon the previous example related to crop residue use, if women have less access to crop residue for animal fodder, this could contribute to the animals producing less, thereby reducing food security for households (Beuchelt and Badstue, 2013). Finally, development organizations could support the ways in which smallholders and pastoralists are already coping with climate change. For instance, some female heads of farming households participate in village savings groups to reduce reliance on income from rain-fed crop agriculture, while some pastoralists have changed the composition of their livestock in response to climate change (Assan et al., 2018; Chanamuto and Hall, 2015). Building off such locally adaptive solutions may encourage uptake and meet with greater success than more top-down approaches (Box 9.1).

Box 9.1: Pastoralists, gender, and livestock production Pastoralism is a livestock-based, nomadic livelihood that supports around 268 million people in SSA, close to a quarter of the entire population (FAO, 2018). Pastoralism evolved as an adaptive ecological response to the emergence and growth of SSA’s drylands, allowing humans to generate food and income from the scarce natural resources of these regions (FAO, 2018). Despite the resilience of this livelihood historically, SSA’s pastoralists increasingly face many challenges, including changing demographics, environmental degradation, climate change, and violent confict (for an overview, see Holechek et al., 2017). Pastoralists’ changing environment is having profound and complex impacts on gender relations.A case study from Uganda, for instance, found that increasing violence between pastoralist groups had reshaped marriage traditions and increased exposure to genderspecifc violence for both men and women, but had also opened up niche opportunities for women entrepreneurs (Mkutu, 2008). Governments in East Africa have demonstrated a desire to sedentarize their pastoralist populations—in theory, to build resilience—though it appears that newly settled pastoralists are more vulnerable than either previously settled smallholders or unsettled pastoralists and, of course, sedentarization upends established gendered practices and outcomes (Pedersen and Benjaminsen, 2007).

Theoretical limitations and areas for future research As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, only recently has the research literature focused on gender in livestock production, and the emphasis has primarily been within smallholder agricul132

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tural systems in the Global South. Undergirding much of this research has been the realization that women, if given the same opportunities and resources as men in agriculture, could be just as productive in agriculture as men, what the FAO (2011) calls the gender yield gap. However, this focus on women runs the risk of being used in an instrumental manner. For example, giving women access to dairy cows, so that their children are better nourished, without understanding the consequences for the women themselves. Or, to revisit the agrarian question, should pastoral women be encouraged to participate more in the marketing of agricultural products as they are removed from their land? The point is, such an instrumentalist view of women in agriculture might suggest approaches that yield some benefts (e.g., increased food security), but it ignores the need to fundamentally alter the power dynamics embedded in social relationships within communities (see Drydyk, 2013). The literature would beneft from deeper theoretical insights to increase the focus on the power dynamics of gender and livestock production.As Tavenner and Crane (2018, p. 702) note about gender and markets, one of the three themes discussed in this chapter, “much gender research in livestock value chains analyzes women’s participation in markets as an unproblematized binary rather than analyzing gender as a relational and intersectional concept.” Understanding gender as socially constructed and imbued with power dynamics, especially within studies that seek to promote women’s empowerment, is a needed addition to the literature on gender and livestock production. While a signifcant advancement in research occurred by moving away from the unitary household model to an exploration of women’s ownership and use of livestock and livestock products, there are at least two additional areas that need further research and theorizing as it relates to gender and livestock. The frst is the incorporation of intersectional theory. While most gender scholars readily understand that gendered power relations intersect with other forms of structural power—which in SSA include, but are not limited to, ethnicity, class, age, and religion—the literature has not done an effective job of capturing and understanding the importance of these intersections. Moreover, the household as the primary unit of analysis in empirical research is problematic from an intersectional point of view. Throughout SSA, it is common to fnd polygamous families in compounds made up of several households are situated alongside monogamous households with a male and female head.Thus, a more empirically grounded understanding of how livestock is utilized by different family members to provide for diverse family structures with diverse needs is warranted. The second area that needs further research and theorizing is a focus on men and masculinities. To be clear, the new attention to women and gender within livestock production is long overdue. However, past research and development programs did not fully understand how men and masculinities shaped livestock production systems either. Specifc to climate change, Gonda (2017, p. 69) writes, “[t]here is almost no research on how climate change affects men or how the aims of climate change adaptation projects align or clash with masculine values and identities.”While Gonda’s study is focused on Nicaragua, her point is applicable throughout most of the Global South, including SSA. Moreover, still lacking in the literature is a focus on gender in industrial livestock production systems. Industrial production systems are generally highly masculine spaces, yet, very little gender research has studied these spaces, which at a minimum, has implications for climate change adaptation and policy.

Notes 1 Defned as people living on less than US $1.90 per day (see World Bank, 2018). 2 For a review of vulnerability and resilience with respect to climate change, see Adger (2006).

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10 GENDERED VULNERABILITIES AND ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE Margaret Alston

A wealth of signifcant research on the differential impacts of, and adaptive capacity to, climate change has been undertaken in a number of countries around the world (see, for example,Arruda and Krutkowski, 2017; Byravan and Rajan, 2009; Enarson, 2012; Dube et al., 2017).This work has highlighted that gender is a signifcant predictor of vulnerability and that this vulnerability is mediated by intersectional factors such as age, marital status, level of poverty, race, ethnicity, occupation, religion, location, and immigration status (Djoudi et al., 2016). Nonetheless, while there has been widespread recognition that gender is critically signifcant to one’s life chances in areas affected by climate-induced and environmental disasters, there are two worrying trends in the wider sphere of climate politics that impact heavily on women experiencing these events. One is a tendency to essentialize women in climate policy discourse without a differentiation of the diverse circumstances and intersectional factors that shape their lives.This reinforces the representation of “women” (as an undifferentiated category) as helpless victims (Djoudi et al., 2016).The other, leading on from this tendency, and noted by Arora-Jonsson (2011), is a subtle typecasting of women in the Global North as virtuous defenders of, and advocates for, the environment while women in the Global South continue to be viewed as vulnerable victims. Both place signifcant expectations on women at the same time as they reduce attention to appropriate institutional responses to women’s vulnerability. It is clear to observers, researchers, and women living in affected communities and post-disaster sites that the essentializing of women reduces critical attention to a range of factors including the greater likelihood that women will live in poverty, have less educational opportunities than men, have reduced access to resources, and experience unequal power relations. Furthermore, the socioeconomic, political, and cultural circumstances that shape gender-based inequalities, the male normative structures that reinforce unequal power relations, and the inequitable access to resources and positions of power that infuence women’s capacity for resilience and adaptation are largely unaddressed. In this chapter, I will examine the current understandings of gendered vulnerabilities, adaptations, and resilience in the context of climate change. In particular, I want to note that in successfully bringing gender vulnerabilities to full view, we have yet to hold policymakers and infuencers to account for climate and disaster policies and practices that support and indeed enhance gender equality. In fact, it is arguable that the lack of attention to gender in policy and 137

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practices can further cement gender inequalities. In assessing the adaptive responses and resilience of women living and working in climate-affected communities, I highlight how climate discourse and policies, incorporating attention to gender, must make transparent the nuances of gender inequalities that exacerbate vulnerability in order for women to achieve transformative resilience. This discussion exposes a critical need for robust gender mainstreaming in climate policies, practices, and processes to ensure that women are given equal access to resources and support in the context of climate-induced events and that entrenched gender inequalities are not reinforced.

Vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience Before proceeding to discuss gender in the context of climate change, it is useful to assess the critical concepts of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience.To fully understand the development of these concepts and their relevance to gendered experiences, it is noteworthy that climate change impacts were initially observed by scientists taking a systems approach to their examination of ecological issues, fragile environments, and species impacts (see, for example, Holling, 1973; Folke, 2006). In fact, evidence from the physical sciences continues to dominate climate discussions as the global community searches for answers to global warming and the build-up of greenhouse gases. Social and gendered impacts and the effects on people and their communities came late to the scientifc analysis of climate change, and thus the conceptual language that shapes our understanding of climate change and environmental disasters draws signifcantly from scientifc dialog. Terms such as “vulnerability,” “mitigation,” “adaptation,” and “resilience” emerged from environmental discourse and were adopted and adapted when attention shifted to the impacts on social environments and affected communities. Furthermore, in drawing from scientifc dialog, it is arguable that social and gender researchers initially took a systems approach by looking at social systems to provide evidence of large-scale community impacts and the way these communities were adapting (or, in fact, maladapting) to climate change. It is arguable that this systems approach aids the essentializing of women.

Vulnerability Thus, our understanding of vulnerability within communities draws on notions of environmental vulnerability, and the most authoritative defnition of vulnerability in a climate change context emerged from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who defned it as: the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with the adverse effects of climate change … [and] is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity and adaptive capacity. (IPCC, 2001, p. 995) Nonetheless, physical scientists, and indeed the IPCC, are increasingly recognizing the signifcance of the interlinking of social and ecological systems (see, for example, Folke, 2006), noting that environmental health cannot be achieved if social systems are not supported.Yet, as Ravera et al. (2016, p. 235) note, although gender is recognized as a signifcant factor shaping vulnerability in the face of environmental changes, “gender analysis of socio-environmental issues still remains understudied, … its incorporation in development and environmental policies has advanced little by little.” Social scientists, wishing to address the impacts on people, have produced variations of this defnition of vulnerability, largely maintaining the systems approach. For example, Fordham 138

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et al. (2013 cited in Alston et al., 2019, p. 43) defne vulnerability in a climate change context as being “embedded in complex social relations and processes and … situated squarely at the humanenvironment intersection requiring social solutions if successful risk reduction is to occur.” Thus, individual and collective vulnerability resulting from environmental disasters is viewed as being irrevocably linked to one’s environment or place and embedded in the social systems (the community and family in particular) in which people live. Life chances in the face of environmental disasters are highly dependent on socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors such as poverty, occupation, and access to resources and positions of power that shape one’s life within these social systems.Women are particularly vulnerable because of their caregiving role and, in many countries, responsibilities for the collection of water and fuel. Djoudi et al. (2016) remind us that vulnerability is complex and includes its power dynamics, and thus any suggestion that “women” dominate those most vulnerable, ignores the multi-layered complexity of vulnerability. Issues of class, wealth, age, and family responsibilities determine how vulnerability to climate impact is individually experienced.As Arora-Jonsson (2011, p. 750) notes: “the generalized belief in women’s vulnerability silences contextual differences. Gender gets treated not as a set of complex and intersecting power relations but as a binary phenomenon carrying certain disadvantages for women and women alone.” In our discussions of vulnerability in a climate change context, we must avoid assigning passivity and victimhood to women and address agency and emancipation. In this context, assessing women’s adaptive capacity and their resilience, often in the face of overwhelming odds, exposes the vast array of skills and local knowledge that women can bring to policy and action spaces.

Adaptation Adaptation is defned as the ability of social systems (people and communities) to adapt in a positive way to the impacts of the environmental damage caused by climate change.The adaptive capacity of people and communities refers to the potential of people and communities to adapt.This can be hampered by factors such as a climate event, the level of ongoing danger (real or perceived), resource distribution, access to resources including safe water, food security, poverty, trust in institutions, institutional intransigence, and inequalities (including gender) (Alston et al., 2018). Practices and processes introduced to address a climate event or ongoing climate change can reinforce inequalities or challenge them.Thus, if goods are distributed unevenly and largely to men, if decision-making bodies are composed mainly of men with women’s issues/ perspectives ignored, and if advice is sought only from men, then gender inequalities will be enhanced in the disaster context and become more intransigent. Transformative adaptation refers to the capacity inherent in these major climate events (and the responses enacted to address them), to challenge, change, and transform these inequitable factors within affected communities. Ravera et al., (2016, p. 239; drawing on Walker et al., 2004) note that transformative resilience refers to the ability to create “a fundamentally new system when the ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable.”Thus, after a disaster, there is the potential for change if, in the responses, gender inequalities are challenged, resources distributed evenly, poverty addressed, decision-making bodies constructed to refect the composition of the community, and institutional responses addressing social, cultural, economic, and political inequalities (Matthies and Narhi, 2017; Pelling, 2011). Pahl-Wostl (2015) notes that, for transformative adaptation to be possible, governance structures must adapt and transform structural elements that foster inequalities. Lukasiewicz et al. (2013) note that these structures and their interventions must be just and seen to be just by the community.This requires high levels of trust in governance institutions and for these institutions to recognize 139

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the importance of identity, place, and trust (Alston et al., 2018). For transformative adaptation to encompass gender equality, this requires not only political will but also strong advocacy. Thus, there is ample argument for gender to be a central factor in climate policies and practices. Speaking at Earth Summit +20 in June 2012, Michelle Bachelet (UN News, 2012, p. 1), the then Head of UN Women, noted, “we cannot afford to leave women marginalized, this is not sustainable.This social exclusion of women is not only hurting women, it is hurting all of us.”

Resilience Resilience refers to the capacity of people to adapt and transform when necessary (Gallopin, 2006). Alston et al., (2019, p. 45), drawing on a wide body of literature, defne resilience as the capacity of people and communities to adapt and transform following an event that causes social, political, and environmental change. Thus, resilience is a signifcant concept that refers to the need for adaptation for those affected by climate events and for governments and institutions responding to these events to foster resilience. Resilience is about reducing vulnerability in the face of uncertainty and requires not only trust but a response that facilitates attention to the needs of all those affected.These three concepts—vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience—provide a way to analyze the outcomes for those affected by climate events and point to the types of interventions required to support those affected. For gender equality to be addressed in the context of climate events, there must be strong institutional structures that recognize the value of equality and diversity.Yet, unfortunately, this is far from the case—for many, there appears to be a major, self-serving investment in ignoring and, indeed, denying climate change exists at all.

Climate change denial The current volatile geopolitical environment is a signifcant threat to both strong attention to transformative adaptation in general and gender equality in particular. An overt swing to the right of politics is evident in many Western countries at the same time as a rise in fundamentalism occurs in countries of the developing world. Unfortunately, this geopolitical climate undermines attention to the complexities of gender inequalities in the context of climate change. Yet, there is no doubt that global political responses have been enacted at transnational levels to address climate change.These include the establishment of the IPCC, the signing of the Kyoto and Hyogo Protocols by many countries of the world; the establishment of the Green Climate Fund to support less developed countries to adapt effectively; the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–2030; the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; and the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings. These meetings, protocols, frameworks, and transnational cooperative ventures all focus attention on climatebased events and responses. However, focusing attention on gender has been more problematic. A quick assessment of global attention to gender through these transnational events and plans indicates that it has only been through strong lobbying by feminist groups, such as the Women’s Environment Development Organization (WEDO) and GenderCC, that gender has been recognized at all, and, it appears, somewhat grudgingly. The Community of the Parties meetings held annually among signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides a useful yardstick of gender actions. Strong and constant lobbying has resulted in: • •

A call at COP 7 (2001) for country delegations to include more women. The establishment of the women’s action group, GenderCC, at COP 13 (in 2007). 140

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• • • • • •

The establishment in 2009 at COP 15 in Copenhagen of the Troika+ of Women Leaders on Women and Climate Change who were crucial to the Doha agreement to enhance the representation of women in climate change negotiations. A further push at COP 18 (in 2012) for countries to have more gender-equitable delegations and representatives working on Kyoto and other protocols. The addition of gender as a standing item at COP 18 (2012). A call for greater gender responsiveness in climate policies, gender training for delegates, and the appointment of a senior gender expert to the UNFCCC at COP 20 (2014). A call to enhance gender responsiveness in climate policies, incorporate women’s local knowledge, appoint a gender focal point, and develop a gender action plan at COP 22 (2016). Implementation of a gender action plan at COP 24 (2018) (European Capacity Building Initiative [ECBI], 2017, cited in Alston et al., 2019; UNFCCC, 2019).

There is no doubt that there is signifcant attention to climate change at transnational levels led largely by United Nations’ instrumentalities and international non-government organizations (INGOs). However, there is also no doubt that there is strong resistance at the national level, as governments grapple with the reality and rapidity of climate change. Despite strong support at the 2015 Paris COP for global cooperation on climate change and the development of a climate change accord, the non-binding nature of the accord has rendered it relatively toothless. The subsequent withdrawal of the US from the accord process has reduced its effectiveness still further. Arguably, the election of Donald Trump in the US, the distraction of Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the powerhouse, fossil-fuel dependent developments in countries, such as India and China, have led to a downplaying of the urgency of climate change. In many countries, and this includes my own country—Australia—there is signifcant resistance to even acknowledging that there is a climate problem. The Chair of the Business Council in Australia, Maurice Newman, noted in 2015 that the notion of “climate change” was introduced conspiratorially to enable a “new world order under the UN” (Dunlop, 2015).The Australian conservative government Minister for Energy, Matt Canavan, has also noted that Australia’s commitment to coal mining was not endangering Australia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gases as “we’re not burning the coal here, it’s being exported to other countries” (Robertson, 2017, p. 1). Meanwhile, the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, noted in a tweet in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive” (McKie, 2019). In a major speech in July 2019, on the environment to an audience heavy with industry and coal interests, Donald Trump failed to mention “climate change” at all (Waldman et al., 2019). The Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, while not a denier, is an economic rationalist who prioritizes economic advancement over environmental sustainability. In an interview in May 2019, he is quoted as saying, “I don’t accept this idea that we have to choose between the economy and the environment” (Australian Broadcasting Commission [ABC], 2019).These conspiracy theories and ultra-conservative views espoused by national leaders are of great concern as they excuse non-action on climate change. This is hardly the environment for institutional responsiveness and concerted policy attention to climate change, nor does it augur well for complex attention to gendered vulnerabilities. Climate denial means there is a lack of attention not only to climate change, its causes, and outcomes but also to gender equality and uneven power relations that shape vulnerability. By failing to attend to climate change, and by continuing to foster inaction in the face of over141

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whelming evidence, politicians ignore the outcomes. There remains some skepticism, particularly among conservative policymakers (many of whom were and are climate-change deniers), about how people living through the same event in the same community (and even in the same household) could experience these disaster events differently. Yet, at the same time as national leaders are dismissing the signifcance of climate change, the evidence is not hard to fnd. In 2019, Europe experienced its hottest summer on record with temperature records tumbling across the continent (Freedman, 2019). A spokesperson for the United Nations noted Global emissions are reaching record levels and show no sign of peaking.The last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security. (UN, 2019) In 2019, aware of the urgency, the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, hosted a climate action summit to refocus world attention on the 2015 Paris Agreement and to draw attention to the critical climate change occurring across the world.

Gendered impacts of climate change Evidence for the signifcant impacts of climate change is not hard to fnd. Nor is it diffcult to note how gender shapes one’s life chances in areas impacted by climate-induced natural disasters. Space allows only a brief discussion of three issues—health and wellbeing, food and water insecurity, and displacement—that critically impact the adaptive capacity of women and men impacted by climate disasters.

Health and wellbeing Emerging data on the impact of climate change on health and wellbeing from the World Health Organization (WHO) (2017) predicts that by 2050, 250,000 deaths per year will result from climate change.While mental health debilitation is evident during and following a disaster (Alston, 2012; Alston and Hazeleger, 2019), other health impacts include a rise in miscarriages (Save the Children, 2006), increases in diarrhea, dysentery, malnutrition, skin diseases, and hygiene issues (WEDO, 2008), and a rise in colds, breathing diffculties, typhoid, reproductive health issues, high blood pressure, dehydration, jaundice, eclampsia, anxiety, and mental health issues (Alston, 2015). Women in our climate change study undertaken in Bangladesh (Alston et al., 2014) reported the need to go further and often for fresh water following the contamination of their water sources following cyclones.This had resulted in increased gynecological issues, skin diseases, fevers, and other related health issues associated with contaminated water.

Food and water insecurity Household water security can be heavily impacted by contamination following disasters, but also by droughts and increasingly by geopolitics as countries build dams on the borders robbing their neighbors of water supplies.This is evident on the borders of Bangladesh, China, India, and other areas of South Asia (Vidal, 2014).Water sources are often contaminated following a disas142

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ter, and this increases the time taken to access this precious commodity elsewhere, signifcantly increasing the workloads of women and reducing their capacity to engage in resilience building and family restoration activities. Following disasters, there may be a signifcant increase in the time taken to source water and fuel, eroding the rights of women and their capacity to engage. Food security is another area of increasing concern as changing climates and production cycles reduce the capacity to grow or catch food. Increasingly, we are seeing the impact of the outmigration of family members and the ongoing impacts of climate change, impacting food production. Part of this migration can be attributed to disasters, which impact on livelihoods and agricultural productivity. For example, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) (2010) notes that women are increasingly responsible for agricultural production at the same time as demand for food will rise by 70% by 2050. In research conducted in Bangladesh (Alston, 2015) and Australia (Alston et al., 2018), we note that women’s agricultural work has increased signifcantly as a result of impacts of climate change and the need to diversify livelihoods.Yet their enhanced agricultural labor is not matched by increased access to resources. Meanwhile, at the household level, when food security is compromised,“women eat last and least in poor families” (Arora-Jonsson, 2011, p. 745). In our research in Bangladesh, in a survey of 617 people in rural areas (298 women and 319 men) impacted by climate change, 76% of women and 48% of men noted that women eat less when food is scarce in order to ensure that other family members have more food (Alston and Akhter, 2016).

Displacement Displacement is a common feature of post-disaster experiences, and the process of displacement is often gendered. Estimates suggest that women and their children account for approximately 80% of those who are displaced by climate change (Halton, 2018). When community infrastructure and homes are wiped out, and there is an ongoing threat of danger, displacement of whole families and neighborhoods can occur. However, there is also the increasing necessity for families to split up, if temporarily, following a disaster when livelihoods have been destroyed. Often this involves a male member of the family—father, husband, son, or brother—moving to a city for work—or even to another country—and sending remittance income back to the family. Increasingly, remittance income is also earned by female members of the family working as domestic or farm workers and, in Bangladesh, in garment factories. Remittance has become a signifcant feature of family incomes in the Pacifc Island nations and many parts of South Asia. Of grave concern is that this process of seeking remittance has resulted in young girls being vulnerable to traffcking when they think they are being taken to the city for legitimate employment.

Factors shaping vulnerability to climate impacts Gender Gender is a critical indicator of vulnerability, and this has been recognized in research from across the world (see, for example, Enarson, 2012; Dhunghel and Ohia, 2012; Eriksen et al., 2010; Parkinson and Zara, 2013).While mindful of the need to qualify the vulnerability of “women,” there is evidence that they are more likely to die in disasters (Neumayer and Pluemper, 2007), have less access to resources, are more likely to live in poverty, are constrained by caring roles, and must make signifcant livelihood adjustments to cope with the outmigration of family members. 143

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Gender impacts arise, not because of women’s inherent vulnerability or supposed weakness, but because of differential social and cultural norms and expectations that shape the lives of women and men in various societies. The socioeconomic, cultural, political, and institutional factors that shape gender inequality, the expectations on women to do the bulk of caregiving and household tasks, and the expectation that they are a reserve labor force army, readily mobilized when additional income is required, ensures that many women are more vulnerable. Critically, as Arora-Jonsson (2011, p. 745) notes, this generally means an “increase in women’s responsibilities without consequent reward” nor even acknowledgment. In our work in the Global South, this is very evident. Furthermore, this work adds to an already heavy burden of caring tasks, often made more complex by illness and injuries incurred during and after a disaster. Eastin (2018) notes that women are compromised by increased workloads and that this makes it diffcult to undertake paid work, join civil society groups, and take leadership roles.This leads to an “undermining of women’s ability to achieve economic independence, to enhance human capital and to maintain their health and wellbeing” (Eastin, 2018, p. 287). A critical outcome noted in research emerging out of post-disaster sites is the increase in violence against women in the aftermath of a signifcant climate event. This has been noted regardless of the type of disaster, developed or developing world context, level of poverty, age, experience of prior violence in relationships, or livelihood adjustments (Parkinson and Zara, 2013; Whittenbury, 2011; Alston, 2015; Enarson, 2012).Violence can include a rise in forced child marriages in areas where family poverty and food security are compromised, and parents feel they have no other options (Alston et al., 2015).

Poverty Particularly vulnerable when disasters occur are women from rural areas living in poverty.The introduction of the millennium development goals and the sustainable development goals directed global attention to poverty. A signifcant reduction in global poverty occurred in the early 2000s. Now, just over 10% of the world’s population lives in poverty (World Bank, 2016). However, Hallegate et al. (2016) predict that climate change will result in an additional 100 million people living in poverty by 2030. Because women are more likely to live in poverty, there is a link between gender and poverty, and it is more diffcult for women to recover their economic position. Arora-Jonsson (2011) supports this, noting that the feminization of poverty is too simplistic to explain differential poverty. Rather, we need to acknowledge the social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances that shape women’s lives, leaving them more vulnerable to poverty. Addressing the factors that shape the dominance of women in poverty statistics is a critical step in acknowledging the vulnerability of women following disasters.

Rurality Rurality is another factor associated with vulnerability because of the high level of dependence of rural people on environmental assets and agriculture for their livelihoods. Climate change is causing major disruptions to weather patterns and production cycles affecting food production and livelihoods. For example, large areas of the African, American, and Australian continents have experienced major droughts, foods, and bushfres, and countries such as Bangladesh and Pacifc Island nations have witnessed the washing away of agricultural land through sea level rises and storm surges. Because women now make up more than half the world’s agricultural workforce (FAO, 2010), they are more vulnerable to changes in production cycles.Yet, they own less than 10% of agricultural land and have access to only 10% of agricultural aid (FAO, 2013). 144

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Together with displacement and the outmigration of men, women, boys, and girls, and sourcing income elsewhere, the impacts on traditional ways of life and livelihoods in rural areas have been signifcant.

Moving forward Where do we go knowing that women are disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental disasters, and knowing also that women are frontline activists in the struggles to save our environment? Firstly, we must remove the binary categorization of women as victims or virtuous stewards and recognize the complexities of women’s vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience. Our understanding must accommodate intersectional factors and power dynamics that shape, enhance, or constrain the lives and work of women across the world. In imagining a more equitable future, the words of Mary Robinson, seventh President of Ireland and former High Commissioner for Human Rights, are instructive—“we must imagine the world we want to see, the world we want to hurry toward” (Falvey 2019, 14–15).While it is useful to rail against the gender inequalities exposed by climate challenges, Robinson reminds us to know toward what future we are working. Much of the discussion on women and climate change has attended to their vulnerability. However, while this focus has been necessary, it has defected attention from the many instances of women’s resilience. For example, the study by Andersen et al. (2017) of gendered vulnerability and resilience in households in Peru, Brazil, and Mexico reveals that female-headed households, particularly those headed by older women, in all three countries are more resilient than maleheaded households.They conclude that It would be a mistake to look at women as vulnerable and therefore unable to offer solutions to the problem. … Greater attention to gender analysis in climate change should supplement, not supplant, other dimensions, such as class, ethnicity and regional affliations which also determine the climate-related implications for men and women. (Andersen et al., 2017, p. 874) Yet, despite women’s high levels of involvement with climate change mitigation and adaptation (Salehi et al., 2015), gender continues to be a signifcant gap in scientifc analyses of climate change and environmental disasters (Ravera et al., 2017, p. 237). I am reminded of Bacchi and Eveline’s (2010, p. 337) exhortation that “there can be no sunset clause on gender analysis.” Our future-scaping must include, and indeed demand, gender to be a central focus in scientifc and policy analyses. Building on the work established through global policy initiatives, including the COP meetings, and our expanding understanding of climate change, imagining a future that incorporates the fostering of transformative resilience and gender equality in more aggressive responses to climate change should be central to any planning for the future.This would require signifcant attention to the institutional structures through which climate actions are adopted and adapted and make visible the differential impacts of policies and programs on women and men (Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC], 1997).Yet, attention to gender equality has largely failed in the past because of a reluctance to resource institutional structures with radical change objectives. Rather, the agencies and organizations tasked with preparing for climate change actions appear to unquestionably accept women’s subordination. The list of responses to gender nuances at the COP meetings noted above, illustrates this point, demonstrating the slow and grinding process necessary for gender equality to be recognized as a just response to climate actions and policies. 145

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Nonetheless, we now have a gender action plan endorsed at COP 24 in 2018, and this may provide the basis for action.This plan can assist in identifying “gender-sensitive strategies to respond to the environmental and humanitarian crises caused by climate change” (UN Women Watch, 2011, p. 1). A good example of an energizing gender project addressing climate challenges for women is the BOMA project (bomaproject.org), which has introduced a program for women living in extreme poverty in drought-affected areas of Africa. The BOMA project is about working to “empower women, build resilient families, instill hope, and transform the conversation about what is possible” (bomaproject.com). The introduction of the Green Climate Fund and other philanthropic initiatives can also provide funding and support for a gender platform for action. The need for constant vigilance and oversight of actions undertaken within institutional structures that have traditionally accepted gender-based inequalities and violence as part of traditional cultures is self-evident. So too is the capriciousness of assigning gender analysis only to “vulnerability and virtuousness” (Arora-Jonsson, 2011, p. 749).Yet, moving forward, there is an ongoing need for gender actions in the new frontier of climate change. These expose the need for nuanced assessments of gender vulnerability in the context of environmental disasters.This must include complex attention to the intersectional factors that shape women’s greater vulnerability across borders, climate events, political contexts, economic systems, and cultural boundaries and demand trustworthy institutional structures that will address gender inequalities in ways that are widely acknowledged to be just. Climate change gives the platform not only to address women’s vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience but also to challenge gender inequalities and institutional structures that limit the freedom of women and girls.

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Margaret Alston Matthies,A., and Narhi, K. (2017). Introduction: it is time for social work and social policy research on the ecosocial transition. In Matthies, A., and Narhi, K. (eds), The ecosocial transition of societies: the contribution of social work and social policy. London/New York: Routledge/Advances in Social Work, 1–14. McKie, R. (2019).“Climate denial: Donald Trump mimics criminal behaviour when justifying his stance.” The Conversation, July 30, 2019. Retrieved on August 7, 2019 from https://theconversation.com/cl imate-denial-donald-trump-mimics-criminal-behaviour-when-justifying-his-stance-120741. Neumayer, E., and Pluemper,T. (2007).“The gendered nature of natural disasters: the impact of catastrophic events on the gender gap in life expectancy 1981 – 2002.” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a bstract_id=874965. Date accessed November 24, 2009. Pahl-Wostl, C. (2015). Water governance in the face of global challenge: from understanding to transformation. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Parkinson, D., and Zara, C. (2013). “The hidden disaster: domestic violence in the aftermath of natural disaster.” Australian Journal of Emergency Management 28 (2):28–35. Pelling, M. (2011). Adaptation to climate change: from resilience to transformation. London: Routledge. Ravera, F., Iniesta-Arandia, I., Martin-Lopez, B., Pascual, U., and Bose, P. (2016). “Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change (Editorial).” Ambio 45 (3):235–248. Robertson, J. (2017). “Matt Canavan on Q and A: exporting Adani’s coal does not affect Australia’s emissions.” The Guardian, 18 July. Retrieved on August 18 from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne ws/2017/jul/18/matt-canavan-exporting-adani-coal-does-not-affect-australias-emissions. Robertson, M. (2019).“A future world: why the man-made climate crisis is a women’s issue.” Data sourced on August 26th, 2019 from https://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/44444/1/climate-change-f eminism-women-mary-robinson-interview. Salehi, S., Nejad, Z., Mahmoudi, H., and Knierim, A. (2015). “Gender, responsible citizenship and global climate change.” Women’s Studies International Forum 50:30–36. Save the Children. (2006). Watermarks: child protection during foods in Bangladesh. Dhaka: Save the Children UK. Suhiyini, I., Alhassan, J., Kuwornu, K., and Osei-Asare, Y. (2019). “Gender dimension of vulnerability to climate change and variability empirical evidence of smallholder farming households in Ghana.” International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management 11(2):195–214. The World Bank. (2016). Poverty overview. http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview. Date accessed August 19, 2017. UN WomenWatch. (2011). Women, gender equality and climate change. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/ feature/climate_change/downloads/Women_and_Climate_Change_Factsheet.pdf. Date accessed November 29, 2011. UN. (2019). Climate action summit – a race we can win. Retrieved on July 30, 2019 from https://www.un. org/en/climatechange/un-climate-summit-2019.shtml. UNFCCC. (2019). “Gender at COP24.” Retrieved on August 11, 2019 from https://unfccc.int/topics/ gender/what-s-new/gender-at-cop-24. UN News. (2012). “Rio+20: sustainable development needs women’s empowerment, UN offcial says.” 18th June. Retrieved on August 29th, 2018 from https://news.un.org/en/story/2012/06/413562. Vidal, J. (2013). “China and India ‘water grab’ dams put ecology of Himalayas in danger.“ The Observer, August 10. Available from www.theguardian.com/global- development/2013/aug/10/china-india -water-grab-dams-himalayas-danger. Date accessed September 6, 2013. Waldman, S., Chemnik, J., and Aton, A. (2019). “In environment speech, Trump fails to mention climate change.” EandE News, July 9. Retrieved on July 30 from https://www.scientifcamerican.com/article/ in-environment-speech-trump-fails-to-mention-climate-change/. Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R., and Kinzig, A. (2004).“Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems.” Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. Whittenbury, K. (2011). “Climate change, women’s health, wellbeing and experiences of gender-based violence in Australia.” In M. Alston and K. Whittenbury (eds), Research, action and policy: addressing the gendered impacts of climate change. London: Springer, 207–22. Womens’ Environment Developemtn Organisation (WEDO. (2008). Gender, climate change and human security: lessons from Bangladesh, Ghana and Senegal. New York:WEDO. World Health Organization. (2017).“Environmental health in emergencies.” Retrieved on August 29, 2019 from http://www.who.int/environmental_health_emergencies/natural_events/en/.

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11 GENDER AND SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFICATION Cornelia Flora

Sustainable intensifcation (SI) has been defned in many ways, sometimes implying more inputs on the land or in the animal in an industrial manner. Other interpretations stress better use of existing resources, replacing inputs with cultural practices, such as intercropping and mixed crop and animal systems without damaging the ecosystem or bringing more land into production. The concept has developed over time in response to evolving approaches to agricultural development. “Sustainable agriculture,” as a term, has been used in many ways, and its practice has evolved for non-till to conservation agriculture to alternative agriculture to sustainable agriculture. Sustainable intensifcation is used to show that sustainable practices need not result in reduced yield. Sustainable intensifcation requires a diversity of crops and animals integrated into the same system. The green revolution began at the end of World War II. After the war, the allies, particularly the US, had a surplus of nitrogen no longer needed for weapons.The companies that held that nitrogen sought other uses for it and chemical fertilizers provided that use (Spitz, 1988; Kroma and Flora, 2003; Rasmussen, 1960; Cochrane, 1979). Equating agricultural development with input responsiveness of crops and animals inspired many plant and animal breeding efforts over the years. In these cases, intensifcation meant putting more inputs on the crop or into the animal to maximize per acre yield or rate of gain.The combination of plant breeding and petrochemical inputs reassured governments that food needs would be met.That approach ensures profts for seed and chemical companies, which increasingly are the same multinational corporations (Marsden and Whatmore, 1994).The focus was intensifcation, but not sustainability—in other words, unsustainable intensifcation. Ecological and social considerations were assumed away. More calories were needed to feed the world. And while the production of a few carbohydrates increased rapidly, so did the concentration of their production, with fewer people on the land and the environment deteriorating from monocultural systems often aimed at export. A concern with soil deterioration in the US was addressed in the United States with no-till farming, designed to keep cover on the felds to reduce erosion and increase organic matter. As it used herbicides to allow crop rotations, it had the support of industrial agriculture.Yet by the end of 2017, continuous no-till has been adopted across only 21% of all cultivated cropland acres in the United States (Creech, 2017).

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other national systems took the principles of no-tillage, organic cover on felds, and crop rotations to help international research and development centers to promote those practices as conservation agriculture (CA), beginning in the early 1990s.As smallholders did not have easy access to imported herbicides or seeds engineered to resist those herbicides, CA in many places reduced chemical inputs and increased yield as soil health improved (Silici et al., 2011; FAO, 2016). The US National Research Council set up a Committee on the Role of Alternative Farming Methods in Modern Production Agriculture in 1984, hoping to include environmental concerns in industrial agriculture in the US (National Research Council, 1989). That committee included several women, yet neither gender nor women were mentioned in the report. The report, which came out in 1989, was controversial, causing several agricultural organizations heavily invested in the high input approach to publish critiques of the document (CAST [Council of Agricultural Sciences and Technology], 1990). As concern about the negative aspects of the industrial agriculture model grew around the world, the alternative agriculture approach was viewed as too narrow. International organizations and national researchers began addressing sustainable agriculture (SA). SA took a farming systems approach rather than the linear approach used in technology transfer, involving farmers in system design and implementation. Systematic attention to farming systems research and extension (FSRE) began in the mid-1970s addressing technology development activities oriented to small-scale, limited resource farmers (Hildebrand, 1990).At frst, even though working with small-scale farmers on the ground, gender was ignored (Hildebrand, 1990), although they were in clear sight working growing crops and animals, not just processing them (Hildebrand, 1986). It took the empirical and theoretical research of feminist scientists to bring gender into the analytic mix (Poats et al., 1988). SI responded to the environmental and social damage that was the collateral damage of increased monoculture production (Pretty, 1997). It is an approach that can co-produce agricultural, natural, social, and human capital outcomes (Pretty et al., 2018). SI is based on CA, that is, stopping soil degradation though keeping cover on the soil, crop rotation, and minimal soil disturbance. It had been widely promoted to African smallholder farmers, particularly to increase maize production (Brown et al., 2017; Nyagumbo et al., 2016). In September of 2017, the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS) and the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research convened a regional policy dialog in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to discuss scaling conservation agriculture for sustainable intensifcation in South Asia (TAAS, 2017). Studies by the consortium in South East Asia found that scaling CA requires the application of farming system’s coherent interventions, adoption of a farmers’ participatory approach, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration, more emphasis on translational research and transformational action, grants of monetary incentives to farmers adopting CA, political commitment, and policy support.This clearly requires a complex systems approach. The adoption rate of CA has been low across the world despite over ten years of promotion. One of the reasons for that may be a focus on specifc technologies (based on the traditional technology transfer method of development), rather than on system redesign, which builds on local practices to work with local farm families to make them more effcient to meet household needs (Pretty et al., 2018). Understanding the importance of gender in building more sustainable smallholder agricultural systems is central, although often only mentioned in separate “gender” sections of reports. Gender is then mainly focused on nutrition, which too often is viewed as apart from agriculture unless a missing nutrient can be bio-engineered into one of a few colonial crops—wheat, rice, soybeans, and potatoes. Until recently, the importance of biodiversity in agriculture and thus 150

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food has been ignored in favor of monocultures (within the CA strictures—grain rotated or interplanted with legumes and cover on the soil). However, there has been concern that some versions of SI/CA require increasing purchased inputs, particularly herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and hybrid seed. While the green revolution took place during an era of economic expansion, which provided opportunities to those who lost their access to land and water as “effcient” monocultures of miracle varieties were grown, that is not the case in the 2020s. World economic growth is stagnating, and export-oriented agriculture is facing serious diffculties in all countries across the globe.Thus, moving to a highly mechanized system on land that has been denuded of trees and brush that provide nutrients to the soil is a questionable strategy. Gender-inclusive SI can provide a way for rural households to stay on the soil, in the community, with economic security, and social inclusion in a healthy ecosystem for themselves and their grandchildren. How should one judge the effectiveness of different approaches from increased purchased inputs, such as hybrid seeds and fertilizer, to increasing the diversity of the current system through using local knowledge to SI? The Offce of International Cooperation and Development (OICD) uses a tripart approach to measure the impacts of development interventions, linking the economy, society, and environment (Strange and Bayley, 2008).With these three outcomes in consideration, sustainable intensifcation of agriculture goes beyond production per acre in a given growing season (a very individualized approach), considering community as the source of sustainability. In this chapter, sustainability means • • •

A healthy ecosystem. Economic security for all in the community. Social and political inclusion of all in the community.

A healthy ecosystem means healthy soil, water, air, and rich biodiversity that all can access. Economic security means that each community member and each household knows that each day they will have food, lodging, water, education, and health, with access to what they need to produce or purchase those sources of security, which allows them all to live with dignity. Social and political inclusion means that all males and females within the community have a voice in determining the policies, rules, and regulations that facilitate sustainability (Flora et al., 2016). To move toward sustainability—always a process, never a fnal destination—it is helpful to see what factors in a community facilitate sustainability in order to mitigate or adapt to the constant pressures that make communities and household livelihoods unsustainable. Sustainability can imply sustaining the status quo. Increasingly, given the increasing volatility in weather and markets, the term “resilience” is replacing or used in conjunction with “sustainable.” System sustainability (keeping the current system in place) is greatly impacted by climate change and the volatility of globalization. Both global factors can undermine the balance of the capital within a system and generally hit the most vulnerable frst and hardest.“Resilience” means that systems are fexible enough to adapt to maintain a healthy ecosystem, economic security for all, and inclusion in social, cultural, political, and economic systems.This chapter addresses the formation and continuation of food and agricultural systems that are sustainable through resilience. Resilience is more than sustainability, as rapid changes in markets and climate require constant adaptation, and resilience is the ability to adapt to maintain households and communities. Much agricultural development has been based on technology transfer—a very linear approach. Sustainable intensifcation means understanding the nature of interactions among different elements of the food and agricultural systems, which requires attention to context, not just bio-physical but social, cultural, and political.A 2017 study (Musumba et al., 2017) from the 151

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US government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Sustainable Intensifcation, proposed a fve-point framework for assessing sustainable intensifcation in agriculture.These areas are: • • • • •

Productivity—including crop yields, animal production, and variability of production. Economic—including proftability, variability of profts, and labor requirements. Environmental—including impact on biodiversity, and both water and soil quality. Human—including nutrition, food security, and health. Social—including equity and gender, social cohesion, and collective action.

In understanding sustainable intensifcation and gender, the community capitals framework is helpful in examining sustainable intensifcation and analyzing both the resources available currently within the system and the potential impacts of changes in one resource on the others. These resources include natural, cultural, human, social, political, fnancial, and built capital.The capitals—resources that exist in the household and community—impact upon each other.These add dimensions beyond the assessment framework to understand how SI is gendered. In sustainable intensifcation, it is important to see and understand interactions among the capitals. Capital is resources invested over the long term. Evaluating the impacts of sustainable intensifcation in agriculture means looking at much more than one season’s yield increase or decrease of a specifc crop. An important aspect of using the capital in sustainable intensifcation is that the seven types of capital are easily understood and operationalized by local communities. In Latin America, the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) or, in English,Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, researchers, among others, have found that local groups fnd specifc indicators of each capital that would have escaped the notice of an outsider (Lachapelle et al., 2020). Men, women, and youth all have different perspectives of each capital and their interactions. We can examine the pathway to increased resilience by looking at seven resources (capital) that make up community systems, as smallholder agriculture is mostly community-based. These are natural, cultural, human, social, political, fnancial, and built (Flora et al., 2016). Each of these capital is gendered, in that males and females have different relations to them, particularly in terms of access and control, but also in terms of ways of knowing and understanding them and the system.

Natural capital Natural capital, including soil, water, seeds, animals, microbes, slope, and weather, is the basis of life, which is most visible in agricultural communities. Climate change puts the livelihood strategies of men and women at risk. In some eco-social regions, women provide labor for men’s crops and animals, while maintaining their production on separate plots or trees. In other areas, there are women’s crops and men’s crops. In some areas, such as in Central America, women maintain the diverse traditional varieties because they taste better and take less cooking time, while the men in the family raise green revolution varieties to sell. As a result, women tend to save seed from diverse sources and keep saved seed longer (as shown by the Sustainable Intensifcation of Maize and Legumes in Eastern and Southern Africa [SIMLESA] surveys conducted by International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT – Centro Internacional para el Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo) in South East Africa. Mmbando [2011] is one example—I used these data when doing an evaluation of SIMLESA for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research in 2017 and 2018).Women plant responding to 152

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the weather, knowing which seeds respond to different weather patterns.Women are also more likely to mix different varieties of the same crop in the same plot, as well as intercrop, which aids in preserving and improving the soil. Women also access a wide variety of wild foods, which are often destroyed when herbicides are used on nearby monocultures. Women generally not only observe changes in fora and fauna but adapt their livelihood strategies in response to them. Yet, women generally have less access and control over natural capital, including land and water, than males and corporations (Flora, 2001). Sustainable intensifcation requires access to sustainable production and control for sustainable management.Where women and men who do the agricultural work do not have access to and control of natural resources, sustainable intensifcation is much more diffcult.

Cultural capital Women are often the keepers of traditional cultural capital, oriented to nature and fellow community members.Those relationships are reinforced by rituals of respect to the land and each other. For example, in the Andes, women proudly keep their traditional dress, the pollera, which marks them as indigenous but also provides a sense of substance and solidity that holds them together. The local language, which women are more likely to speak and thus preserve, is important for sustainable intensifcation, as there are many words related to natural capital that do not exist in the language of the colonizers, which is often the language of education.When you can name something, you can act toward it, but languages that originated in Europe are likely to lack words for subtle changes in natural capital in developing areas. The cultural capital of development agencies is based on the systems in which they are embedded, which includes a limited vocabulary for nature and its variations. An example is when the International Potato Agency asked indigenous women in mountain communities to plant a variety of nematode-resistant potatoes and tell them which worked best. The women dutifully planted each kind of potato, and, after harvest, were able to describe which of many traditional dishes each was suited. However, one potato variety proved diffcult for them, and they could not defne its best use. Rather than reject it, they kept using it in different ways in different places and rainfall regimes, because, as they explained, if God made it, it was good for something. Expecting a bad-good dichotomy or even a good-better response is based on a colonial cultural capital that assumes one variety would, of course, be always better than the others. Such an expectation also eliminates what the women showed – awareness of the importance of context for the success of a plant or animal.

Human capital In development, as in almost all of agriculture, the farmer is assumed to be male (Tufan, 2019). When women do farm work, it is often discounted as “women’s work,” even when they are out in the feld weeding or harvesting or at home selecting seed to save for the next season.While all of these tasks require important knowledge of diverse agro-ecosystems, the technology transfer model ignored women or worked with women’s groups to teach them the “right way” to do their tasks.The right way often included mechanization, the yearly purchase of hybrid seeds, and the application of agrochemicals. CIMMYT conducted baseline studies in South East Africa as they began a sustainable intensifcation program to demonstrate that women provide the bulk of agricultural labor in all sites (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania), as men are more likely to have off-farm work or alternative on-farm income. Women’s most common tool is the hand hoe, which 153

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involves much stooping and bending and leaves the soil exposed to wind and water erosion. These results are representative of much of Africa and parts of Asia. Female-headed households are found to have fewer individuals inside or outside the community on whom they can depend for help (although that varied by country) and less adult equivalent household labor. In many developing countries today, such as Cambodia,Argentina, and Senegal, young women have the same level of formal education as do men.As women increasingly study agricultural sciences and natural resource management, they can be hired by state entities as extension educators, and thus reach out more easily to women, whose husbands often do not like them meeting with males (cultural capital), as in some traditional Muslim, Catholic, and Hindu communities. As males migrate seeking wage labor, often part of the family’s strategies to adapt to climate change, women take over many productive activities that traditionally were performed by males. As their responsibilities double, sustainable intensifcation should be co-designed with women in the communities to diversify production while lightening manual labor. Pretty (1997) suggests that productivity on agricultural and pastoral land is as much a function of human capacity and ingenuity as it is the result of biological and physical processes. Capacity is not something that comes from the outside, nor is ingenuity. Sustainable intensifcation requires identifying and enhancing existing skills and abilities, not just transferring knowledge from one place to another.

Social capital Social capital is critical for sustainable intensifcation, which requires not just individual decisions but collective knowledge creation, sharing, and implementation. Social capital has two dimensions: bridging (networks of similar people) and bonding (networks of people who are different in access to each of the capital).Women’s social capital tends to be bonding.There are often cultural and time barriers to women forming bridging social capital. Men and women have different networks. A survey by SIMLESA showed that in some of the countries, female household heads (FHH) were disproportionally members of religious organizations compared to other organized groups, potentially forming bridging social capital, as they meet with women from other communities. These organizations could prove useful in adapting and developing technologies for FHH as well as male household heads (MHH).Women’s organizations tend to be based on kinship, although NGOs have organized savings groups and nutrition groups within communities. Building women’s existing organizations, where women gain confdence in their abilities and learn leadership skills through bonding social capital, contributes to increasing bridging social capital to include the concerns of both men and women. Women generally have less access to formal organizations, traders, and individuals inside or outside the community on whom they can depend for help as they move toward sustainable intensifcation. Facilitating and supporting women’s bonding and bridging social capital is a critical part of moving to sustainable intensifcation in smallholder agriculture. One of the important efforts of SIMLESA is to include women in agricultural innovation platforms (AIPs). As new forms of social capital, but organized under the assumptions of male cultural capital, it took time for determined women to have a meaningful voice. But, when there are several women in the AIPs, they persisted and thus impacted the formation of value chains for both the inputs and the outputs of more sustainable agricultural activities.

Political capital Political capital is the ability of a group to mobilize its norms and values to infuence standards and regulations, and enforcement of those regulations determine whether community capital is 154

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enhanced, degraded, or ignored. Political capital can be a threat to or a bulwark for sustainable intensifcation. For sustainable intensifcation, it is critical that men and women in smallholder agriculture communities have organizations and connections that can give them voice and power to deal with bureaucracies, both public and private. Many rules around the access to and control of all the capitals are set centrally at a national level, based on the reapplication of rules and regulations developed for an industrial agriculture model. And often, the rules and regulations that could protect land rights and environmental sustainability are not enforced, often because there is no funding available to support that enforcement.Women’s norms and values must be taken into account when establishing the rules and regulations that determine access to and control of resources for SI—or other development programs—to have an impact that does not disadvantage women and girls. Policies must be in place at a variety of levels that reward SI and makes access to diverse capitals available to women and men. Those policies must be appropriate to rapidly changing contexts.And those policies must be enforced.

Financial capital Financial capital is made up of forms of currency used to increase the capacity of other resources. Financial capital is often privileged in development assessments because it is easy to measure. Thus, there is a tendency to put other capital into fnancial capital terms, such as income increases from each year of education, market value of cultivation tools, etc. Ecosystems, culture, and social systems are often destroyed to create it. Examples of fnancial capital include savings, income generation, earning for businesses, payment for environmental services, loans and credit, investments, taxes, tax exemption, microcredit associations, gifts, and philanthropy. Sustainable intensifcation requires crop diversifcation, which often requires investment to set up markets, buy machinery for processing, and farm-market transportation, etc.When only men hold land titles and land is the only asset to use as collateral, women and youths have a great deal of diffculty making innovation pay. Often, new organizations or enterprises (social capital) use alternative collateral, and fnancing terms (political capital) are necessary to enable fnancial capital for sustainable intensifcation. Often, titling land for both women and men is necessary for each to access credit for their separate but complementary enterprises (Deere et al., 2017).

Built capital Built capital consists of human-constructed infrastructure that contributes to or detracts from other community capital.Water systems and wells, machinery, transportation, information technology, solar panels, housing, roads, bridges, health centers, and daycare centers are all examples of built capital that can enhance sustainable intensifcation if designed and implemented with both male and female input. Poor rural women have little access to infrastructure that could decrease their domestic work or increase their production effciency in an ecologically sound way. Sometimes development projects consider what women do, but do not talk to the women about how, or why they do it.There are contradictions from introduced innovations technically adapted to women, yet culturally unacceptable. The introduction of built capital that has not included women in its design and implementation has negative impacts on natural, social, cultural, and human capital.An example of this is the motorization of land cultivation, which generally is designed for men. In places in Africa, the introduction of male-oriented carbon-driven machinery causes benefcial trees and bushes to be cut down and livestock to be eliminated from the felds, decreasing soil quality, encouraging land consolidation, and decreasing the nutritional 155

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status of the household. In contrast, animal-powered traction aimed at minimal disturbance of the soil, often accomplished by donkeys or dual-purpose cattle that women, as well as men and children, can use, increases crop and animal productivity as well as human health. With the introduction of technology, especially when technology can generate income, gender roles change.When special saws and carts allow fast harvesting and gathering of wood, men generally take over that function, particularly when women do not have access to the fnancial capital to purchase the new technology. SI could utilize women’s social capital to form microcredit organizations to cooperatively develop the business through shared ownership of the built capital to diversify not only production but income streams. Female-headed households have less access to built capital, including farming tools and machinery, and less access to credit to acquire technology that might reduce their workload while maintaining a healthy ecosystem and providing economic security, education, formal organizations, credit, traders, political leaders, individuals inside or outside the community on whom they can depend for help (although that varied by country), adult equivalent household labor, animals, particularly animals for traction, and savings. In West Africa, men use cattle for animal traction, while women and children use donkeys. To be gender-inclusive, mechanization must be designed to work with donkeys as well as cattle.The Sustainable Intensifcation Innovation Lab (SIIL) is designing ergonomic harnesses for both species, improving traction effciency and animal welfare. New technology introduces new roles for men and women.When labor is mechanized, what once was women’s work—and a way of earning household income—becomes men’s work, particularly if it increases market insertion.Women haul water—until technologies, such as mechanical pumping of water and motorized containers to haul water—are introduced.Those technologies acquired by men through credit from their land title allows the volume of water hauled to be greatly increased and sold.Then it becomes men’s work. Men, who generally hold the land title if the land has been titled, fnd it easy to get credit to purchase a machine for land cultivation, hauling water, or carrying wood.Women do not. Often when an activity is mechanized, it generates more income, and thus that activity is now the domain of males. An alternative to individual ownership is collective ownership of machinery. But this requires trust. Existing women’s groups, often brought together for microfnance, have the trust necessary to allow members of the group to use the machinery without worrying about it being misused and going unrepaired. The individual trust is there, and the group works together to maintain their collective investment. Designing tools and machines for sustainable intensifcation involves working closely with men and women farmers, considering their current and potential tasks, as well as with the small businesses that currently build and repair machinery and tools, particularly local blacksmiths. Strategies include: • • • • •

Developing multifunctional and modular technologies and machinery that are versatile, affordable, scalable, and reduce the drudgery of operations performed by women. Focusing on smallholder, on-farm tasks that can beneft from appropriate scale mechanization. Ensuring that all activities build in-country capacity, integrate gender considerations, create measurable outcomes and impacts, provide important knowledge to relevant stakeholders, and facilitate the creation of business ventures by local people. Overcoming the barriers to the adoption of mechanization. Building capacity at in-country institutions through innovation hubs (Hansen and Rendall, 2018).

The frst step in designing appropriate technology for a sustainable socio-ecosystem is to engage with and listen to smallholder farmers—both men and women—and learn how they currently 156

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do agriculture. Since colonization, plowing has been emphasized as good farming, so the discussion must include the reasons for conservation agriculture—minimal or no land disturbance, cover on the ground all year long, and crop rotation. In the course of these mutual learning sessions, animal-drawn ripper planters were designed, feld-tested, and adopted because 1) the local blacksmiths knew how to make them and 2) they saved labor and animals were healthier, thanks to the new types of harnesses. In Burkina Faso, sustainable intensifcation frst focused on animal productivity and comfort in terms of harness/yoke design and low-stress training of oxen and donkeys. Land preparation shifted from plowing to conservation agriculture with ground cover and zone-tillage ripping. Sowing was redesigned and cow-drawn planters were locally improved with a low-cost seed plate drive mechanism. Furthermore, dual-purpose crops, such as millet, cowpeas, and peanuts, whose stover was chopped by locally manufactured hand-turned choppers, improved animal health, milk production, and human health, particularly of babies and young children. Finally, the work that required the most physically taxing female labor, weeding, was replaced by a newly designed cultivator for weed control propelled either by a man or a woman. In Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia, dual-purpose millet and other grains were developed to improve both human and animal nutrition.Women-run enterprises processed the millet for baby food and other products, while youth—male and female—worked with redesigned forage choppers to cut the more nutritious stover into forage that could then be ensilaged for fermentation to further improve its nutrient content and be fed to animals during the hungry season, giving them the energy to pull the planters at the end of the hungry season when planting takes place. While built capital is often thought of as an incremental technology—moving from animal traction to tractors, that is not always the sustainable course.Tractors do different things to soil than the hooves of animals.They cost a great deal of fnancial capital to acquire and to maintain in terms of fuel, batteries, etc. Engine-powered machinery adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and often turn over more soil than is necessary, increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. By paying attention to how men and women ft into and alter the existing ecosystem, built capital that can improve soil health, animal health, and human health, as well as generate local enterprises for women and girls and men and boys, can be developed.

Gendered capital interactions for sustainability/resilience Women’s cultural capital, combined with bridging and bonding social capital, result in sustainable intensifcation in areas where there has not been a strong presence of global resource extraction. Sustainable intensifcation is more diffcult when there are petroleum and other mineral extraction and industrial agriculture, in the area, all of which greatly marginalize women. SI works best when there are diversifed crop and livestock systems and diversifed use of the products from them.The waste from one can be an input to another.Women and men can work separately and together to identify and connect the streams and to provide the built capital for the transformation of the products in the household or the community, often using cultural capital to make the linkages. Pretty (1997) has documented that the active involvement of women as key producers and facilitators is the key to sustainable intensifcation, adaptation and adoption around the world. This requires a change in the cultural capital of development agencies to no longer see the farmer as male, but to understand both men and women are farmers and that they can locally add value through agro-processing, marketing, and other off-farm local activities that generate 157

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jobs and income and retains earnings in the rural economy.The cultural capital of governments and development agencies must also change to be able to evaluate the degree to which low purchased input agriculture can increase production, rather than assuming only outside inputs, from hybrid seed to chemicals, can increase productivity.This will occur most effectively when the contributions of women farmers, in terms of all the capital, are recognized and incorporated by local farmers into planning and implementation.

References Brown, B., Nuberg, I., and Llewellyn, R. (2017).“Stepwise frameworks for understanding the utilisation of conservation agriculture in Africa.” Agricultural Systems 153:11–22. CAST (Council for Agricultural Science and Technology). (1990). Alternative agriculture: scientists’ review. Ames, IA: CAST. Cochrane, W. (1979). The development of American agriculture: a historical analysis. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Creech, E. (2017). “Saving money, time and soil: the economics of no-till farming.” NRCS Conservation. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time-and-soil-economics-no-till-fa rming. Deere, C., Anglade, B., and Useche, P. (2017). “Decomposing the gender wealth gap in Ecuador.” World Development 96:19–31. FAO. (2016). Save and grow: maize, rice, wheat. Rome: FAO. Flora, C. (2001). “Access and control of resources: lessons from the SANREM CRSP.” Agriculture and Human Values 18 (1):41–48. Flora, C., Flora, J., and Gasteyer, S. (2016). Rural communities: legacy and change (5th edition). Boulder: Westview Press. Hansen,A. and Rendall,T. (2018). Appropriate scale mechanization for global development. Manhattan, KS: Feed the Future, Sustainable Intensifcation Innovation Lab,Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium. Hildebrand, P. (ed.). (1986). Perspectives on farming systems research and extension. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Hildebrand, P. (1990). “Farming systems research-extension.” In Presentation at the international symposium to mark the retirement of Professor C.R.W. Spedding: systems theory applied to agriculture and the food chain, University of Reading. https://ufdc.uf.edu/AA00008173/00001/citation. Jha, P., Kaleita, A. L., Karlen, D. L., Laird, D. A., Lenssen, A.W., Lübberstedt,T., McDaniel, M. D., Raman, D. R., and Weyers, S. L. (2019). “Regenerating agricultural landscapes with perennial groundcover for intensive crop production.” Agronomy 9 (8):458. Kroma, M. and Flora, C. (2003). “Greening pesticides: the presentation of an agricultural tool over time.” Agriculture and Human Values 20:21–35. Lachapelle, P., Gutierrez-Montes, I., and Flora, C. (eds.). (2020). Community capacity and resilience in Latin America. New York: Routledge. Marsden,T. and Whatmore, S. (1994).“Finance capital and food system restructuring: Global dynamics and their national incorporation.” In Philip McMichael (ed.) The global restructuring of agro-food systems (pp. 107–128). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mmbando, F. (2011). “Community Survey Report for Tanzania” sustainable intensifcation of maize-legume based farming systems in eastern and southern Africa (SIMLESA). Canberra, Australia: CIMMYT and Australian Center for International Agricultural Research. Musumba, M., Grabowski, P., Palm, C., and Snipp, S. (2017). Guide for the sustainable intensifcation assessment framework.Washington: USAID, Feed the Future, SIIL. National Research Council, Board on Agriculture. (1989). Alternative agriculture.Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. Nyagumbo, I., Mkuhlani, S., Pisa, C., Kamalongo, D., Dias, D., and Mekuria, M. (2016).‘Maize yield effects of conservation agriculture maize–legume cropping systems in contrasting agro-ecologies of Malawi and Mozambique.’ Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems105:275–290. Poats, S., Schmink, M., and Spring, A. (1988). Gender issues in farming systems research and extension. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Pretty, J. (1997).‘The sustainable intensifcation of agriculture.’ Natural Resource Forum 21:247–256.

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Gender and sustainable intensifcation Pretty, J, Benton,T., Bharucha, Z., Dicks, L., Flora, C., Godfray, H., Goulson, D., Hartley, S., Lampkin, N., Morris, C., Pierzynski, G., Prasad, P., Reganold, J., Rockström, J., Smith, P., Thorne, P., and Wratten, S. (2018). ‘Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensifcation.’ Nature Sustainability 1:441–446. Rasmussen, W. (1960). Readings in the history of American agriculture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Silici, L., Ndabe, P., Friedrich,T., and Kassam,A. (2011).‘Harnessing sustainability, resilience and productivity through conservation agriculture: the case of Likoti in Lesotho.’ International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 9 (1):1–8. Spitz, P. (1988). Petrochemicals: the rise of an industry. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Strange,T. and Bayley,A. (2008). Sustainable development: linking economy, society, environment. OECD Insights. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264055742-en. TAAS. (2017). Scaling conservation agriculture for sustainable intensifcation in South Asia - a regional policy dialogue: proceedings and recommendations. New Dehli, India:Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences. Tufan, H. (2019). Acceptance speech upon receiving the Norman Borlaug Award for feld research and application. Des Moines, IA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Q9klNoOAc.

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12 THE ROLE OF MOBILE PHONES IN EMPOWERING WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE Surabhi Mittal

Introduction Information and communication technology (ICT) has opened up new opportunities for economic growth and social development not only in the industrial and services sector but also in the agricultural and social sphere. Increased penetration of ICTs and mainly mobile phones provide unique opportunities for bridging the gaps in information, technology use, and also gender disparity. Several projects have been initiated using mobile-phone-based platforms to provide agricultural information and advice to farmer communities, including market price, weather alerts, and fnancial services (Mittal and Mehar, 2012; Hussain, 2016; Gichuki and Mulu-Mutuku, 2018). The mobile phone, a modern ICT, has helped provide several new opportunities not only to connect people but also to improve service delivery and reduce transaction costs (Word Development Report [WDR], 2016; De Silva and Ratnadiwakara, 2008, Duncombe, 2016). The digital dividends for the agriculture sector from ICT are enhanced on-farm productivity by reducing the constraints of agricultural extension services and information, facilitating market transparency, and improving logistics (Mittal and Tripathi, 2009; Mittal et al., 2010;WDR, 2016). In addition, as agriculture becomes knowledge-intensive due to the availability of new farming methods, technologies, and inputs, the need for the latest agriculture-related information has also increased. The overall goal of using mobile-phone-enabled information delivery mechanisms is to promote inclusive growth by reducing the knowledge gap both between large and small farmers and across gender by creating awareness about the latest technologies and best practices, as well as facilitating two-way communication (Mittal and Mehar, 2013b).

Status of gender involvement in agriculture and decision-making Women contribute to a major share of farm labor, all over the world, especially in developing countries.The amount of women employed in agriculture is approximately 50% to 60% across the globe, with women being the main managers of small livestock (FAO, 2011).Women play a crucial role in agriculture, and it is necessary to build up women’s capacities to involve them in productive activities, decision-making processes, social change, and leadership (Suresh, 2010). 160

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The participation of women has been increasing in agriculture, mainly as agricultural labor. This phenomenon is driven by increased fragmentation of landholdings, low affordability of hired labor, outmigration of men for alternative job opportunities, and increased mechanization leaving small drudgery work that requires more labor, like weeding and transplanting, is left for women to perform (Satyavathi et al., 2011; Rao, 2006; Headey et al., 2011; Khan et al., 2012; Aregu et al., 2011). But in spite of this, women’s role in agriculture is characterized by large gender gaps in vulnerabilities, access to resources, and productivity, and thus they face diffculties in coping with the challenges of access to markets and the ability to adapt to climate change (Huyer, 2016). Women also have poor access to extension services largely because of social and cultural constraints (Mittal and Mehar, 2015; Bello et.al., 2017).The other important aspect is that even if women are playing an active role in agriculture, it is often found that their involvement in the decision-making process on various agricultural activities is very limited.The lack of access to information sources, new technology, credit facilities, and proper training limits the decisionmaking capacity of women (Rao, 2006; Chayal et al., 2013). It is against this backdrop that this chapter provides evidence from the literature on how modern ICT, like mobile phones, has helped to reduce the barriers of information asymmetry and how this access to new knowledge has led women to feel empowered. It is too early to state that this empowerment has been converted into action, the impact of which can be quantifed, but there is evidence that women farmers want information, and they feel empowered through this information. Women’s empowerment in the context of this paper is measured in terms of increased access to information and their ability to utilize the information for agricultural activities.

ICT as a means of improved access to information and overall empowerment The majority of farmers receive information through multiple sources, and, in recent years, mobile phones have also become an important source of information for farmers across developing countries in Africa and Asia. It is often seen that small-scale farmers, women, and elderly people are less likely to use mobile services and are largely dependent on traditional sources like radio, television, and extension agents due to low literacy levels, poor access to information networks, and limited access to mobile phones (Mittal, 2012; Kansime et al., 2019; Isaya, 2018; Saghir et al., 2013).These constraints also keep them away from accessing the most recent and modern technological information and innovations, leading to a further increase in information gaps.Access to technology for smallholder farmers can help to improve agricultural production and promote women’s empowerment, but this will only happen in conjunction with improved control of assets for women, equitable decision-making between women and men, and strengthened capacity to access to information (Huyer, 2016). Traditional, male-dominated extension services contribute to gender bias in terms of access to information, participation, implementation, and innovation (Mittal and Mehar, 2015; Bello et.al., 2017; Saghir et al., 2013; FAO, 2011; 2015; MunMehar et al., 2016). Studies (Mittal and Mehar, 2015; Kansiime, 2019; Saghir et al., 2013; Hudson et al., 2017) have shown that access to mobile phones has led to an increase in accessibility of information for women in India and several African countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. The agricultural sector, and in particular the farmer, is highly vulnerable to risk as a result of the high variability in climatic conditions and market uncertainties. The farmer’s exposure to risk and uncertainty is often aggravated by a lack of information about weather, inputs, farm management practices, or market prices, which adversely impacts crop production and income 161

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(Mittal, 2012; Mittal and Mehar, 2014). The delivery of the latest agriculture-related information has resulted in increased productivity through informed decision-making on crop choice, seed varieties, inputs, agronomic practices, and plant protection; reduction in production costs through the adoption of better/quality inputs and technologies and better management practices; and improved incomes resulting from reduced costs and better price realization for the produce. Mobile-phone-based services have facilitated the work of extension agents and provided new resources to participants to improve their yields in Mozambique (Bello et.al., 2017). Joseph et al. (2017) show that access to ICTs has the potential to impact poverty alleviation for rural women. ICTs can be used as an empowerment tool for rural women. ICTs have helped reduce the constraint of mobility and computer experience, which earlier hindered women’s welfare and empowerment (Joseph et al., 2017). The study shows that the use of the telephone (both cellular and landline), internet, and other ICTs have benefted rural women in education, business, and economic sectors in both rural India and South Africa by removing the bottleneck of access to information. Islam and Slack (2016) show that women in rural Bangladesh have become empowered by access to mobile phones.The availability and use of mobile phones have accelerated the development of women in the rural population by creating the possibility of a wider connection and has created positive outcomes on health, education, and livelihood.This has also created a better overall living standard by improved access to information on economic and income-earning opportunities in India, Bangladesh, Uganda, and other small-farm-based African countries (Masika and Bailur, 2015; Islam and Slack, 2016; Masinde and Thothela, 2019). Rural women feel secure, independent, and empowered with access to a mobile phone, and overall, this has contributed to their confdence. Handapangoda and Kumara’s (2013) study in Sri Lanka shows that access to mobile phones empowered women by strengthening and expanding their social circle and support networks. Mobile phones helped improve the control of information and decision-making and overall empowerment.

ICT as a means of improved agricultural productivity and nutrition Access to income and equal employment opportunities for women enhance their household’s access to food and nutrition. Sekabira (2017) shows that beyond income, improved access to mobile phones has also led to impacts on other dimensions like gender equality and nutrition. Based on panel data from smallholder farm households in Uganda, Sekabira’s study shows that improved use of mobile phones has led to increases in household income, women’s empowerment, food security, and dietary quality. Better access to mobile phones for women has led to an improvement in their social welfare much more than if only the men in the family had access to mobile phones. Brown et al. (2014) did a pilot study using text messaging to provide nutrition education and promote better dietary choices in college students and found that the intervention resulted in improved consumption of fruit and vegetables among the students, though there was no gender differentiation. Similar experiments in rural areas could potentially lead to better health and nutritional benefts for pregnant and lactating mothers. A fundamental step forward in the direction of improving women welfare involves removing the constraints faced by women with regard to their access to information and agricultural extension services. Information asymmetry tends to limit the ability of women farmers to harness the potential of agriculture, as they often do not have access to the appropriate technological know-how and inputs, as well as information on weather patterns and best agronomic practices. In this context, the roles of extension services become signifcant. Extension agents often fail to reach out to women farmers due to structural impediments, 162

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such as staffng and funding shortages, that make it diffcult to reach resource-poor, remote farms (as women’s barriers to credit and land titles usually leave them with marginal lands). Existing cultural and social barriers also discourage women farmers from interacting with male extension workers. Enhancing women’s skills and knowledge through extension systems is a prerequisite for increasing their decision-making capacity and income, which leads to better food and nutritional outcomes. Within agriculture extension services, agri-nutrition-related education and communication have a very critical and important role to play if we want food security to translate into nutritional security and gender empowerment. Extension services have a facilitating role in multisectoral convergence for leveraging agriculture with regard to nutritional security and gender empowerment. ICT, together with traditional media, offers a platform for promoting extension for agri-nutrition. Although extension services have started integrating modern ICT tools to disseminate information in developing countries, gender bias continues to exist due to women’s poor access to these resources. Huggins and Valverde (2018) studied the mobile nutrition program (m-Nutrition), which did lead to improved nutrition, food security, and livelihoods for rural women and children through mobile-phone-based information services in Malawi.Weber et al. (2018) showed that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has been functional in the United States since the 1970s and has provided positive nutritional outcomes. The introduction of mobile-phone-based apps on this program led to further improvement in the accessibility of benefts to the users and also helped increase the user base.

Improved access to ICT’s impact on the adoption of technology Behavioral change, awareness, and information about technology are crucial parameters of technology adoption (Dillon and Morris, 1996). ICTs play a signifcant role in providing this information and knowledge to farmers. Overall, ICT improves the reach, availability, and adoption of technology and improves access to input and output markets by bridging the information gap.These improvements help to facilitate institutional changes that can create desirable impacts through improved market effciency (Mittal et al., 2010; De Silva et al., 2010; Anderson and Feder, 2007). The process through which reduced information asymmetry leads to increased adoption of technology is not very well analyzed in the context of agriculture. Mittal and Mehar’s (2015) study, conducted in climate-smart villages in India, shows that with the dissemination of information through mobile phones, farmers have become more aware of these technologies and started recognizing the value of information on weather delivered to them.They shared anecdotal evidence as to how precise and timely weather-based agro-advisories have helped them to make informed decisions about the use of inputs during the sowing season, based on which they have saved on irrigation expenses and the cost of pesticides and weedicides.Women farmers have become more aware of climate-smart technologies, and they feel empowered with access to information. Moreover, wherever possible, they were taking action as well.The feedback received from female farmers clearly revealed that they appreciated the awareness they developed on climate-smart agriculture practices and issues related to climate change. Several of them noted that they often shared the information with other women who were not part of the project. Uduji and Okolo-Obasi (2018) evaluated the adoption of improved crop varieties by involving farmers in the e-wallet program in Nigeria and found that rural farmers depended on the e-wallet program for increased use and adoption of improved seed. The results suggested the 163

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need for an improved e-wallet model by lessening constraints, mostly associated with rural information and communication infrastructure, and distance to the registration and input collection centers as these are constraints to women and older people. Efobi et al. (2018) collected evidence from 48 African countries on change in female economic participation with the advancement in information and communication technology.The results show that improving communication technology increases female economic participation, although it is constrained by the geographical penetration of the services. The spread of ICT is believed to reduce transaction costs and promote market integration (Gichuki and Mulu-Mutuku, 2018; Mittal et al., 2010). Gichuki and Mulu-Mutuku (2018) found that in areas where women faced diffculties in accessing fnancial services through direct banking systems, there was a substantial increase in the adoption of mobile banking and mobilephone- based payments services. . With increased control of fnance and decision-making for women, there was a signifcant impact on their awareness and use of mobile money technology. However, mobility constraints still exist for women, and they are less likely to adopt mobile banking technology if there are hidden charges.

Role of ICT in adaptation to climate change The realization of the need for additional information increased with the observed changes in agriculture due to climate change and its risk to agriculture. It is strongly believed and has been demonstrated that ICTs, primarily mobile phones, have the potential to reduce information asymmetry and can play a role in facilitating the adoption of technologies (Ali and Kumar, 2010; Mittal et al., 2010; Mittal, 2012; Mittal and Mehar, 2013a; De Silva et al., 2010; Bhatnagar, 2008; Anderson and Feder, 2007; Mittal and Kumar, 2000; Gumucio et al., 2020).These studies have identifed key gender-related factors and processes that infuence unequal access and use of information and resources. It was found that ICTs can reduce the constraint on women in accessing weather and climate information. Partey et al. (2020) carried out a study in the Lawra-Jirapa districts of the upper west region of Ghana to show how men and women farmers have different perceptions about farming activities and coping mechanisms related to climate change. In this location, downscaled seasonal forecast information has been disseminated through mobile phone technologies (Esoko platform) since 2011.The study confrmed that although there was no gendered differentiation on perception about the impacts of climate change on agriculture, men were more responsive to the climate information services being provided through the mobile platform for climate risk mitigation.This difference could be attributed to the ease of access and use of mobile phones by men in comparison to women.The study by Partey et al. (2020) also shows that men had better access to fnancial services and had more control of the household income relative to women in the household.This created a difference in the ability to act upon the information. However, access to an ICT platform has also led to an improvement in the relative status of women farmers in awareness and decision-making. Similar results have also been shown in studies by Mehar et al. (2016), Hariharan et al. (2020), and Mittal et al. (2016) for India. Masinde and Thothela (2019) write that an effective decision-making support system that can aid farmers’ tactical and routine level decisions has been proven to lead to increased agricultural production. Their study showed that the tool—ITIKI Plus— integrates indigenous and scientifc data and information to provide contextualized micro-level drought forecast and cropping information to small-scale farmers in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa, and has enabled farmers, especially women, to make decisions that are up to 98% accurate and, as a result, there was an increase in food production by up to 10%. 164

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Role of ICT in improving market connectivity and incomes Women lack access to markets, and this leads to their low participation in the marketing processes. Access to ICTs has helped connect rural farmers with market sources. Studies (Mittal, 2010; Sekabira, 2017; Larsson and Svensson, 2018; Sikundla et al., 2018; Owusu et al., 2018; Katengeza et al., 2013) show that the use of mobile phones has helped to make smallholder farmers more connected to the market and this has also led to an increase in income. Larsson and Svensson (2018), in their study on Uganda, show how mobile phones have transformed the informal market economy and affected women.The introduction of mobile phones has empowered women with information and improved their participation in the market. Sikundla et al. (2018) investigated the adoption of mobile phones for the marketing of agricultural produce among smallholder farmers in South Africa.Their results show that gender, private traders, and local marketing channels, monthly income, political, and economic factors infuence mobilephone adoption in agricultural marketing. Usually, women have lower access and control of sources of income, and thus they are less likely to have access to mobile phones.With increased participation in marketing activities, women tend to increase their adoption of mobile phones. Similar results are also shown by studies like Owusu et al. (2018),Asongu and Odhiambo (2018), and Katengeza et al. (2013) for other countries in Africa. It is recommended that concerted efforts should be made to address erratic networks and high airtime tariff challenges to encourage mobile-phone adoption among smallholder farmers in the country for marketing (Sikundla et al., 2018). A study by Wossen et al. (2017) in Nigeria examined the productivity and welfare effects of the mobile-phone-based subsidy program, and the results suggest positive impacts for benefciary smallholders. Moreover, the distributional effects of the program suggest no heterogeneity effects based on gender and farmland size. Suri and Jack (2016), in their study on long-term poverty and gender impacts of mobile money, show high adoption of mobile money in Kenya.The impacts are more pronounced for female-headed households leading to changes in fnancial behavior that mainly increased fnancial resilience, savings, and labor market outcomes, such as occupational choice, especially for women who moved out of agriculture and into business. Mobile money helped female-headed households to increase the access to fnancial resources leading to improved food consumption, better nutrition, effcient allocation of labor, resulting in a meaningful reduction in poverty in Kenya.

Conclusion The process of adopting mobile-phone-based information delivery systems has been slow, and many of the models are still at an early stage of development. The sustainability of these models is also in question as most are still funded externally, and farmers are not paying the cost of receiving information. It is believed that mobile-phone-enabled agro-advisory services have the potential to reduce knowledge gaps and generate awareness of improved technologies and are defnitely inclusive in their gendered aspects. However, enabling factors in the agricultural sector act as constraints on the utilization of information that is delivered in the form of agro-advisories.The effectiveness of the system plays a signifcant role in the magnitude of the impact of an ICT intervention in agriculture, and the constraints of institutions and policies can have an impact on the effciency of ICT systems (Mittal et al., 2010). Furthermore, we expect that as the information gap reduces over time, the marginal benefts from information will also be reduced. Farmers will become more aware that the information and the utility of information they receive will decline unless the information is new and within the context of climate change and 165

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cropping patterns (Mittal, 2012; Mehar et al., 2016).Thus, the gendered biases in the system of extension in agriculture and information dissemination may reduce with the widespread use and adoption of mobile-phone-based extension services. Empowering women farmers starts with information. In these times of uncertainty related to climate change and increased climatic variability, the more informed women farmers are of weather updates, new technologies, government schemes, and market information like prices, the more likely they are to make better choices and decisions. Over time, farmer groups have become more aware of these technologies and value the information on weather delivered to them.Women farmers value these services, show interest in knowing about new technologies, and feel empowered with the information delivered to them.They have also become more aware of new technologies.There is still a long way to go before women can convert this information into action and add value to the agricultural activities in which they are involved. It is imperative that extension services should reach women; it is important to understand how information services can overcome existing barriers, keeping in mind the existing social and cultural context.The gender perspective on climate information is not extensively studied, although the literature highlights the necessity of developing genderresponsive climate services. More about it can be read in the chapters by Alston and Mehtar in the volume. Overall, socio-cultural norms limit women’s access to climate information. That barrier can be broken by improved access to ICTs.

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Surabhi Mittal Mehar, M., Mittal, S., and Prasad, N. (2016).“Farmers coping strategies for climate shock: is it differentiated by gender?” Journal of Rural Studies 44:123–131. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.01.001. Mittal, S. (2012).“Modern ICT for agricultural development and risk management in smallholder agriculture in India.”Working Paper No. 3. Socioeconomics, CIMMYT (April 2012). Mittal, S. (2016). “Role of mobile phone-enabled climate information services in gender-inclusive agriculture.” Gender, Technology and Development 20 (2):200–217, frst published on May 15, 2016. doi: 10.1177/0971852416639772. Mittal, S., Gandhi, S., and Tripathi, G. (2010).“Socio-economic impact of mobile phone on Indian agriculture.” ICRIER Working Paper No. 246, International Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi. Mittal, S., and Kumar, P. (2000).“Literacy, technology adoption, factor demand and productivity: an econometric analysis.” Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics 55 (3):490–499. Mittal, S., and Mehar, M. (2012).“How mobile phones contribute to the growth of small farmers? Evidence from India.” Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture 51 (3):227–224. http://www.agrar.hu-berlin.de/ fakultaet/departments/daoe/publ/qjia/contents/2012/3-12/Mittal. Mittal, S., and Mehar, M. (2013a). “Agricultural information networks, information needs and risk management strategies: a survey of farmers in Indo-Gangetic Plains of India.” Socioeconomics Program Working Paper 10. Mexico, DF: CIMMYT. http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/women-farmers-haryanachange-starts-information#.VRkUC47MDdM. Mittal, S., and Mehar, M. (2013b). “Delivering agro-advisories through mobile phones- Reality check?” Agricultural Extension in South Asia Blog. http://www.aesa-gfras.net/images/Surabhi.pdf Mittal, S., and Mehar, M. (2014).“Socio-economic impact of the mobile phone based agricultural extension.” In Saravanan, R. (ed.), Mobile phone for agricultural extension: worldwide mAgri innovations and promise for future. New Delhi: New India Publishing Agency, 195–224. Mittal, S., and Mehar, M. (2015).“Socio-economic factors affecting adoption of modern information and communication technology by farmers in India: analysis using multivariate probit model.” The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. 22(2):199-212. doi: 10.1080/1389224X.2014.997255. http://www .tandfonline.com/eprint/PVvBq7ti3Nj3ZtsA8mUh/full. Online Jan 22 2015. Mittal, S., and Tripathi, G. (2009). “Role of mobile phone technology in improving small farm productivity.” Agricultural Economics Research Review 22: 451–59 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/57502. Munyna, H. (2000).“Application ICTs in Africa’s agricultural sector: a gender perspective.” In Rathgeber, E.M., and Adera, E.O. (eds), Gender and the information revolution in Africa.Toronto Canada: International Development Research Centre, pp 85-124. Muto, M., and Yamano,T. (2009).“The impact of mobile phone coverage expansion on market participation: panel data evidence from Uganda.” World Development 37 (1):1887–1896. Owusu, A.,Yankson, P., and Frimpong, S. (2018). “Smallholder farmers knowledge of mobile telephone use: gender perspectives and implications for agricultural market development.” Progress in Development Studies 18 (1):36–51. Partey, S., Dakorah,A., Zougmor, R., Oudraogo, M., Nyasimi, M., Nikoi, G., and Huyer, S. (2020).“Gender and climate risk management: evidence of climate information use in Ghana.” Climatic Change 158: 61–75. Rao, E. (2006).“Role of women in agriculture: a micro level study.” Journal of Global Economy 2 (2):09–123. Saghir, A., Chaudhary, K., Muhammad, S., and Maan, A. (2013). “Role of icts in bridging the gender gap of information regarding livestock production technologies.” Journal of Animal and Plant Sciences 23 (3):929–933. Sekabira, H., and Qaim, M. (2017).“Can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition? Panel data evidence from farm households in Uganda.” Food Policy 73:95–103. Sikundla,T., Mushunje,A., and Akinyemi, B. (2018).“Socioeconomic drivers of mobile phone adoption for marketing among smallholder irrigation farmers in South Africa.” Cogent Social Sciences 4 (1):1505415. Suresh, L. (2010). “Impact of information and communication technologies on gender development in India.” In Proceedings ICSIT 2010-international conference on society and information technologies, pp. 83–88. Suri, T., and Jack, W. (2016). “The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money.” Science, 354 (6317):1288–1292. doi: 10.1126/science.aah5309. Uduji, J., and Okolo-Obasi, E. (2018). “Adoption of improved crop varieties by involving farmers in the e-wallet program in Nigeria.” Journal of Crop Improvement 32 (5):717–737. doi: 10.1080/15427528.2018.1496216.

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13 GENDER AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FISH AGRI-FOOD SYSTEMS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH Surendran Rajaratnam, Molly Ahern, and Cynthia McDougall

Introduction Fish are a well-recognized and often irreplaceable source of bioavailable micronutrients and animal protein in many developing countries, with some countries relying on fsh for around half of the animal protein supply (Ababouch and Carolu, 2015).The demand for fsh continues to rise due to global recognition of its nutrition and health benefts (Ababouch and Carolu, 2015; Ayoola, 2010). Fishing and aquaculture activities support the livelihoods of 660–820 million people, with over 90% of those living in developing countries and working in small-scale operations (Ababouch and Carolu, 2015). Given their critical role in livelihoods, food, and nutrition security, and the wellbeing of the people of the Global South, fsh, fsheries, and aquaculture are key entry points to improve development outcomes through food systems (Box 13.1).

Box 13.1 Capture fsheries and aquaculture production have increased in the last three decades (Msangi et al., 2013). However, the relationship between the two production systems and food outcomes is complex and needs further investigation. The development of aquaculture has been considerable and high profle, yet uneven; 90% of total aquaculture production globally takes place in Asia, whereas Africa produces less than 2%, half of which is produced in Egypt (Ababouch and Carolu, 2015). In addition, there are concerns that fsh from aquaculture may not reach the poor (Golden et al., 2017), as it may serve the market demand of those most able to pay (Cohen et al., 2019). At the same time, there is growing evidence that the role of capture fsheries in food and nutrition security—providing essential nutrients and protein to tens of millions of people in the Global South, in particular, Africa—may be underestimated and undervalued to date (Campling et al., 2012; Belton and Thilsted, 2014; Funge-Smith and Bennett, 2019).

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Fish is produced both through small-scale (traditional and artisanal) and large-scale (commercial and industrial) capture fsheries and aquaculture.Traditionally a food and livelihood activity for fshing communities, political strengthening of the environment for private investment, exports, and cross-border trade has transitioned fsh to a global commodity (Campling et al., 2012). Fish represents USD 164 billion in exports as of 2020 (FAO, 2020), of which 54% originates in developing countries (World Bank, 2019; FAO, 2020).While emerging blue economy or blue growth investments and discourse frame the oceans as the “next economic frontier,” there is mounting concern that small-scale fsherfolk may be crowded out by more powerful economic or environmental conservation interests that are focused on maximizing monetary or environmental values while dismissing the livelihoods and ability of small-scale fshers to produce affordable, nutrient-dense food for themselves and other consumers (Cohen et al., 2019; Béné et al., 2016;Tlusty et al., 2019). As fsh has transformed into a global commodity, complexities and unknowns have arisen in the dynamics between fsheries, aquaculture, markets, and development outcomes. A recent study indicates that some developing countries’ wild catch would be enough to ameliorate micronutrient defciencies if kept for domestic consumption (Hicks et al., 2019). The frst Illuminating Hidden Harvest study highlighted underreported catch from global inland capture fsheries, primarily due to undercounting the importance of small-scale sectors, which produces as much fsh as large-scale sectors for direct human consumption in areas with high rates of poverty and malnutrition (World Bank et al., 2012). While the growth of fsh exports from the Global South contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Southern countries, it is simultaneously critiqued as undermining food security in developing countries (Biswas, 2011; Alder and Sumaila, 2004). As a part of this, even though nutritious wild fsh is produced and traded more often in low-income countries (Thilsted et al., 2016), in some systems, they are prioritized for aquaculture feed rather than direct human consumption, which is especially problematic for nutritionally vulnerable populations (Greenpeace, 2019).That being said, there is also evidence of the signifcance of small-scale aquaculture for food and nutrition security, especially in Asia. For example, in India, Kumar and Dey (2006) note that farm households that engaged in aquaculture had 10.9% greater energy intake and lower prevalence of undernourishment than wage-earners’ households. Gender dynamics represent a key element of the fshery and aquaculture systems and a determinant of their outcomes—as well as a nested set of inequalities. Women’s unpaid, low paid, and reproductive labor heavily subsidizes the fshing economy (Biswas, 2011). Women’s reproductive activities absorb the costs needed to be borne by the state for working poor fshing families (Biswas, 2011), and their cheap labor subsidizes capitalist fsheries by keeping wage levels in the industry low (Connelly and McDonald, 1983). Current development policy and discourse highlight the instrumental value of challenging gender inequalities, underscoring the instrumental value of women’s empowerment for growth and development. For example, more broadly, studies have shown that when women are involved in livelihood activities or have access to income, they tend to spend on household requirements, such as children’s education and food, thus ensuring nutrition and health security (Smith et al., 2003). In aquaculture, similar studies have surfaced on this instrumental value of empowerment. For example, women’s active involvement in polyculture fsh farming led to increased yields, household consumption, and improved nutritional status for the family (De et al., 2012). Conversely, aquaculture and fsheries investments that do not engage in an informed way with gender dynamics can have limited or perverse outcomes. Despite the inequities and the imperative to address them, the sectors’ engagement with gender to date has been limited.We highlight three aspects here. First, women’s contributions, 171

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including labor, are undercounted in fsheries and aquaculture sector data (Biswas, 2018).This contributes to gender-biased or blind policies and programs in the fsheries and aquaculture sectors (Frangoudes and Gerrard, 2018; Brugere and Williams, 2017), which affects women and men differently (Kleiber et al., 2017). It results in inadequate funding and investment in economic sectors where women are concentrated, further marginalizing and undervaluing their work (Biswas, 2017; Aregu et al., 2017). Second, where the sectors do engage with gender, they tend to stop at a focus on roles (“what women do, what men do”), on women-targeting, and “women in” framings, risking “empowerment lite”1 [see Cornwall, 2018]), or limiting the scale of analysis to the micro-level, lacking the broader fshing context (Kleiber et al., 2014). Gender studies in fsheries and aquaculture tend to be local or at the household level, highlighting key issues in fsheries social sciences but lacking traction in broader economic, ecologic, and political arguments for ocean governance (Cohen et al., 2019). Critical analysis of women and men within rapidly changing sector dynamics is important to: ensure that our sector is not weakened by dividing it, putting men on one side and women on the other, in a context where increasingly small-scale fshers from the North and South are having to abandon their way of life due to the impact of government policies which favor industrial fsheries interests.2 (Biswas, 2011, p. 58) Third, the tendency to engage with women in the sectors (and in development more generally) as a homogenous group, undermines effective policy and programming because it overlooks the differential access to and control over resources and varying experiences that women (and men) face based on their age, class, race, marital status, or social characteristics. These limitations underscore the need to shift focus in our understanding of fsheries and aquaculture from targeting of single issues to considering a more comprehensive set of socioeconomic, environmental, and health and wellbeing dimensions (Tlusty et al., 2019), including social justice, and applying a gender lens that looks across scales and is intersectional. In this chapter, we aim to contribute to addressing this need.We do so by diving into small-scale and commercial fsheries and aquaculture through a gender lens to look at the political (state), economic (markets), and local (household) environments, to connect the fsheries’ social sciences with the blue economy in order to answer the following questions: • • •

How do key political economy trends of feminization, migration, and labor play out and infuence the experiences, opportunities, and challenges of women and men in commercial and small-scale fsheries and aquaculture? What are the gender dynamics in commercial and small-scale fsheries and aquaculture, and in what ways are the experiences, opportunities, and barriers the same or different for different women and men? Overall, how do these commercial and small-scale sectors shape and represent opportunities for or barriers to equitable and decent livelihoods for women and men in the global South?

Global trends: feminization, migration, and exploitative labor Here, we apply a political economy and gender lens to highlight patterns in three interacting trends that the literature identifes as pertinent in fsh agri-food systems: feminization, migration, and exploitative labor. 172

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Women’s broadened and deepened involvement in agricultural production because of their increasing responsibility for household survival and their response to economic opportunities in commercial agriculture can be referred to as the “feminization of agriculture” (LastarriaCornhiel, 2006). Similar to the agriculture sectors, the fsheries and aquaculture sectors are experiencing feminization with male outmigration (Kusakabe, 2002). This has both positive and negative implications. On the one hand, it leads to women facing increasing workloads (Ashaletha et al., 2002; De and Pandey, 2014). Male outmigration for multi-day commercial fshing or to cities for work leaves women with a greater work burden both outside of the house (in commercial and small-scale fsheries and aquaculture work) as well as domestic duties (De and Pandey, 2014; Kusakabe, 2002; Ashaletha et al., 2002). On the other hand, it is argued that it leaves space for women’s involvement in fsheries and aquaculture to increase in importance (Kusakabe, 2002; Rubinoff, 1999), and gives women more space for decision-making and income-generating opportunities (Wrigley-Asante, 2011). Migration is not only a male phenomenon, however. In some Asian countries, women comprise the majority of migrants, and globally, half of all migrants are women, resulting in a “feminization of migration” (Weeratunge, 2010). In the fsheries sector, both fshermen and fsherwomen migrate across national boundaries in pursuit of better fsh catches and seeking incomes. At the borders of Cambodia and Thailand, women are concentrated in small-scale trading while men are in transportation and trade on a larger scale (Kusakabe et al., 2006). Women’s lack of capital and resources to store unsold fsh and relatively less connection with government offcers prevents them from moving beyond small-scale trading in the fsh supply chain (Kusakabe et al., 2006). In the informal sectors and fsh trade, multiple studies have revealed gendered exploitative labor in the form of transactional sex for fsh.This is most common in Southern Africa and is a coping strategy for women who lack capital or use sex to build business relationships with men that consequentially result in a higher prevalence of HIV/AIDS in migrant fshing communities, especially in Southern Africa (Weeratunge et al., 2010). Women who take part in transactional sex for fsh are often migrant fsh traders, young and single or older, widowed or divorced women, revealing that marital status is important for access to fsh, while in contrast, men’s marital or migration status affected the likelihood of them partaking in transactional sex (Kwena et al., 2013). Campling et al. (2012, p. 189) wrote that “women must choose between fexible but uncertain livelihoods selling reef fsh, trading sex for low-quality salt fsh, and the new option of highly disciplined low-waged labor in fsh processing plants.” In terms of commercial labor, while commercial fshing vessels often recruit young men, as inferred above, fsh processing factories often recruit women.While data is limited, as described in the following sections, seafood processing factory work has been reported as being characterized by low pay and poor conditions (Williams, 2010; Choudhury et al., 2017). It is not only women, however, who are exploited for low-cost labor in the sectors. The long-haul fshing industry has been in the spotlight for human traffcking for labor in many countries, including Thailand and Taiwan, where the presence of men in labor traffcking for multi-day fshing trips outweighs women (Yea, 2012). Resurreccion (2006) raises the point that gendered exploitative labor may be unintentionally entrenched by the development sector. Because women’s work may not be economically accounted for, development programs have been found to treat women’s time as elastic. Engaging women (women-targeting) may inadvertently add to women’s workloads, further subjecting them to male authority and perpetuating gender inequality (Resurreccion, 2006). In other words, programs may unintentionally add to women’s workloads, as the widely held but narrow framing of women as “housewives” assumes that women are available to invest their time and labor in development and community activities (Resurreccion, 2006).As noted earlier, 173

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this compounds the gendered division of labor inequities, with women’s unpaid labor absorbing the state’s responsibility for the welfare of children and the elderly in unpaid reproductive work (Biswas, 2011).

Gender in commercial and industrial aquaculture and fsheries Gender division of labor, decision-making, and implications for men and women Commercial or industrial fsheries and aquaculture here refers to the part of the sectors that is market-oriented (versus subsistence) and is proft-driven, characterized by large-scale operations, often utilizing mechanization and employing labor. Capitalist modernization and state policies regulating fsheries have shifted local fsherfolks’ involvement in value chains, and in some cases, created confict between commercial and smallscale fshing communities.The Deep-Sea Fishing Policy of 1991 in Kerala, India (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018), for example, allowed foreign vessels access to waters within 200 miles of India’s coast, leading to exacerbated overfshing and livelihood crises for small-scale fshing communities (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018). Policy prescriptions laid out in the Washington Consensus in the 1980s led to economic restructuring in borrowing countries.This included policy changes in fsheries toward promoting export-led growth, deregulation of international trade and crossborder investment, and “labor market fexibility”.The “labor market fexibility” is critiqued as a euphemism for poor wages, poor working conditions, and casual labor that exploits women disproportionately (Biswas, 2011). Against this backdrop, the gendered division of labor in the commercial sector has been characterized by land and sea, with resource-related jobs generally dominated by men (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2019; Pini and Leach, 2011). Men are predominantly involved in fsh harvesting, and while some women work on commercial fshing boats, they tend to dominate more in pre- and post-harvest activities (Lebel et al., 2011).This processing involves labor-intensive work such as washing, scaling, drying, sorting, packing, and icing fsh. This gendered division of labor refects and shapes the different experiences of and outcomes for women and men in the commercial sector. As noted, while men may face unsafe conditions at sea, women work long hours in unhygienic or unsafe processing or factory conditions. Moreover, various studies have signaled gendered inequities playing out systematically in the commercial sector in the form of women being paid lower wages than men, experiencing abuse and harassment in the workplace, and being disproportionately exposed to health problems (Ayinla, 2003; Ashaletha et al., 2002; Choudhury et al., 2017; Jeebhay et al., 2004; Rashid et al., 2016;Williams, 2015).Women have little decision-making ability and power in industrial fshing governance (Lentisco and Lee, 2015), and are often excluded from management and higherlevel positions in commercial fsheries and aquaculture value chains (Halim, 2004). Unpacking this further, women’s (and men’s) experiences are shaped by the type of work and intersectional factors. In terms of the former, although women are generally engaged in lower-paid work than men overall, income varies across female-dominated jobs with waged work, such as sorting, grading, and peeling, being lower-paid and entrepreneurial work, such as fsh vending, curing, and value-added activities, being higher-paid, at least in some contexts (Rubinoff, 1999; Sari et al., 2017). Applying an intersectional lens, women’s (and men’s) economic opportunities are shaped by class, age, and race, and other socioeconomic characteristics (Britwum, 2006). In Ghana, for example, women’s economic success can be determined by access to economic resources and the social relations that structure this access; for example, access to fsh can be dependent on blood ties and marital status, social relations that affect a 174

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woman’s ability to negotiate (Britwum, 2006). In Goa, India, female migrants from other Indian states and young, single and Hindu women have been found to be more often exploited in lower-paid work, while older, married, and Christian women were found to experience greater mobility, income control, and better outcomes (Rubinoff, 1999). Similarly, social networks, education, initial capital, or access to fnance shape women’s access to fsh (although their success often still depends on men, when women are not allowed to go to sea) (Lentisco and Lee, 2015; Britwum, 2006). These intersectional infuences interact with economic trends. A study in Kerala, India, for example, found that capitalist modernization of fsheries has placed women at different positions in the distribution network based on education and household economic status, although women remained subordinate to men as men had adopted more sophisticated technologies (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018). Those women with direct access to fsh through their own or family fshing activities are better off than secondary or tertiary users who must make business arrangements with fshermen to receive fsh in exchange for a portion of the profts, or purchase fsh to process and sell, often for lower proft margins than primary users (Britwum, 2006; Lentisco and Lee, 2015). Gendered labor in commercial fsheries and aquaculture refects not only the infuence of policies that may lack gender-responsiveness but also the strong infuence of social and gender norms. Norms are the “informal rules” that inform women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities, decision-making, and access to resources in the workplace and in the household (Ashaletha et al., 2002; Aregu et al., 2017; Aregu et al., 2018; Bennett, 2005; Locke et al., 2017). Social and gender norms in many places restrict women’s mobility and the types of work that they can be involved in, confning women to fshing activities near the home, and strongly discouraging them from fshing alone or seeking work away from home (Ashaletha et al., 2002; Kusakabe, 2002). A woman’s freedom to work outside of the home is often a measure of her low status or poverty (Rubinoff, 1999). For example, in India, if a woman works away from home, there may be a social perception that the husband is unable to provide for the family (Ashaletha et al., 2002).Work outside of the home, for example in fsh processing plants, often puts a strain on the woman’s time to complete household activities, which can cause friction and even violence in the household, resulting in women working outside of the house only out of necessity (Wahed and Bhuiya, 2007). In addition, women are constrained by lack of representation in cooperatives, less interaction with development agencies and extension offcers, lack of support from husbands, and wage discrimination (Ashaletha et al., 2002). The industrialization of fsheries and aquaculture has changed the nature and experiences of rural women’s employment (Islam, 2008; Lebel et al., 2011). In some cases, there is evidence of it contributing to less constraining shifts in social norms and division of labor in some regions of the world. For example, in the Philippines, older women are becoming primary providers for the household due to their husband’s roles in fshing decreasing with age, as they are unable to participate in multi-day fshing trips on commercial fshing boats (dela Pena and Marte, 2001). In India, it became more acceptable for women (especially older women) to travel far from the house to commercial fsh-landing sites to purchase fsh at wholesale prices for processing (Hapke and Ayyankeril, 2004).A similar shift is seen in Ghana, where women are not stigmatized (as they may be in other areas of Africa) for speaking loudly, using physical strength, or exercising power over others in the fsh markets, and men have increasingly taken on traditionally female tasks associated with food provisioning (Overa, 2007). At the same time, industrialization and commercialization have contributed to compounding gendered burdens or barriers. From a labor perspective, as noted above, men’s engagement in multi-day fshing labor may increase women’s workloads. Moreover, as commercial fsheries and aquaculture have created employment (albeit low paid) for women in processing and market175

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ing, it has also increased women’s total workload as there has not yet been a corresponding shift in the domestic gender division of labor. In other words, even as they join the paid workforce, women continue in many contexts to be expected to fulfll traditional gender roles of domestic chores and caretaking (Shah, 2010). In addition to increasing women’s work burdens, this can feed back into additional challenges as it can create tensions in the household (Choudhury et al., 2017). Overall, Islam (2008, p. 211) argues that the “feminization of the workforce in aquaculture is accompanied by the marginality of females, who receive lower wages and social prestige than male counterparts.”

Access to and distribution of resources within commercial fshing and aquaculture In many countries, women experience challenges to access and use technologies that could enhance their position in the value chain and increase their benefts from fshing activities. In fsh processing, for example, Davies and Davies (2009) found that men dominated in using improved technologies, while women continued to use traditional techniques and experience greater post-harvest losses and signifcantly lower capacity to process fsh than their male counterparts using improved methods. Similarly, despite the presence of more effcient smoking kilns in Sierra Leone, Browne (2002) found that women were using more rudimentary smoking methods, possibly due to lack of training or lack of access to the kilns. Similarly, mechanization, more broadly, has had gendered outcomes favoring men. In India, the mechanization of fsheries has led to heightened effciency in the male-dominated fsh-harvesting sector, accentuating the role of women as processors and marketers, thus increasing women’s work burdens, especially if they do not have access to improved technologies (Ashaletha et al., 2002). Increased competition due to cold storage and iced fsh sold by men in markets in Kerala, India, led to longer workdays for women and greater distances traveled to commercial landing sites. Additionally, norms and access issues that restrict women’s use of motor vehicles limits the distance they can travel to purchase fsh or may limit the quantity they can carry per trip (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018; Ashaletha et al., 2002; Fröcklin et al., 2013). However, a few cases in the literature also demonstrate positive outcomes for women’s access to technology as a result of mechanization. In the case of fshwives and fsh-mammies in Ghana, the increase in production due to modernization opened new opportunities for women to access social capital and networks, enabling them to secure control over technology and resources (Lentisco and Lee, 2015). The mechanization of fshing activities broke barriers for women in the Ivory Coast, as boats with motors reduced the need to paddle and winches for drawing in the fshing net reduced physical demands that traditionally justifed men’s roles in fsh production (Britwum, 2006). In terms of other resources, as traditional gender roles confne women to reproductive work and household duties, women have historically lacked their own savings and assets to grow their business relative to men. Furthermore, access to assets for collateral is often a necessity when applying for a loan or microcredit to cover startup costs or to grow a business, and due to a lack of assets or savings, women may resort to borrowing money from their husbands or a male family member (Fröcklin et al., 2013).Women may also be excluded from assets, such as commonpool resources, when they become proftable. In the Mekong Delta, use of open-access lands for the collection of seaweed and aquatic resources is a critical livelihood and food security activity, especially for women and girls, however, the privatization of these lands for commercial aquaculture has stripped women of this livelihood and nutritious food source (Lebel et al., 2011). In addition to limited savings and access to land, social norms may limit women’s mobility to 176

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go outside of the village or may prohibit young women from using motorbikes on their own to reach distant markets, although fexibility in this norm is allowed for older women to use motorbikes in some areas, such as in southern India (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018).

Gender in small-scale aquaculture and fsheries Gender division of labor, decision-making, and implications for women and men Similar to the commercial sector, much of the literature signals a gender division of labor in small-scale fsheries.There is generally an emphasis on men as harvesters and women as processors and involved in food preparation, although this may be overstated in the literature.This, for example, overlooks the multitude of women who harvest fsh in various ways as well as neglecting gleaning (often carried out by women) as a key form of fsheries’ harvest. The key roles often associated with women in small-scale fsheries and aquaculture include repairing nets, selling products, preserving products, fnancing the feet, caretaking, domestic duties, subsistence farming, and ensuring household food security (Lebel et al., 2011; Bennett, 2005; Resurreccion, 2006). Men are traditionally more associated with operating boats to go fshing, fshing for higher-value species, and harvesting fsh from ponds (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2018; Fröcklin et al., 2013). Connecting these, the thread that is less recognized is that in women’s unpaid domestic work, subsistence activities, such as reef gleaning, marketing, pre- or post-harvest activities like net mending, and work in other sectors, subsidize men’s ability to participate in fshing (WorldFish Center, 2010; Biswas, 2011). Several authors suggest that the fshing economy would collapse without women processing and selling fsh for money (Biswas, 2011; Harper et al., 2013; Brugere and Allison, 2008; Resurreccion, 2006). This broad picture notwithstanding, gendered engagement in small-scale fsheries and aquaculture varies by context as well as in relation to socioeconomic factors, such as class or caste. In Bangladesh, for example, women mend nets, whereas, in Southeast Asia, this is typically a man’s job (Kusakabe, 2002). In Laos, women operate motorized boats and gill nets while men dive (Kusakabe, 2002). In Nigeria, women formulate feed, feed fsh and clean and stock ponds, while men are in charge of pond construction, medication, and spawning (Ibrahim, 2011). In India, women tend to work in fsh processing, weaving gill nets, and selling fsh door-to-door, although this is primarily women from lower caste groups (De and Pandey, 2014). Across contexts, one common theme is that gendered barriers constrain women’s participation in and returns from small-scale fsheries and aquaculture (Weeratunge et al., 2010). These barriers include the gendered distribution of labor (in which women need to balance productive and reproductive work), access to capital, access to raw materials (including fsh), lower education levels, lack of assets and access to technology, transportation problems, poor market links and networks, including low access to extension offcers, and constraining social norms around “gender-appropriate work,” mobility, household chores, and dominance by spouses (Lebel et al., 2011; Lentisco and Lee, 2015; Ibrahim et al., 2011; Agbebi and Fagbote, 2012; Agbontale, 2009; Siamomua-Momoemausu, 2005; De and Pandey, 2014; Aladetohun, 2010). In Kenya, for example, in terms of normative barriers, women are prohibited from going out on boats to fsh, as there are beliefs associated with womanhood and holiness, and monthly menstruation is believed to annoy the water gods (Kamau and Ngigi, 2013). Cultural boundaries in India restrict women’s mobility and communication with men, making it diffcult for women to access extension services (De and Pandey, 2014).When women are involved in fsh harvesting in various contexts, they often fsh on a smaller scale, using rudimentary technologies such as baskets, and for lower-value species (Rajaratnam et al., 2016; Lentisco and Lee, 2015). Similarly, 177

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Cole et al. (2018) found that the inequitable distribution of unpaid care work increased women’s post-harvest losses in small-scale fsheries. A value chain analysis conducted with fsherwomen along the coast of Lake Victoria, Kenya, revealed that women are located in the lower nodes of the value chain, where returns are low.The majority of the women were fsh traders, with only 7% involved in fsh processing and 3% involved in fsh harvesting (Kamau and Ngigi, 2013). These multi-scale and gendered patterns are also evidenced in small-scale fsheries decisionmaking (governance). In some cases, adopting or creating new governance systems can undermine or disrupt local governance structures, and some development project interventions have reduced the access to fsheries resources and decision-making power women formerly had in local regimes (Weeratunge, 2010). In other cases, such as the Barotse Floodplains of Zambia, while there is a dual system of governance for land and water rights for fshing, the traditional authority is recognized over the state as controlling access to fshing grounds (Rajaratnam et al., 2016).Yet the majority of traditional leaders are men, and men primarily inherit water rights and beneft from charging fees to outsiders to fsh. When barriers are reduced in small-scale fsheries and aquaculture, studies suggest that there are positive outcomes for women and food systems. In Cambodia, for example, household ponds where women carried out at least 50% of fsh culture tasks resulted in higher yields (Nandeesha, 1994). Small-scale aquaculture projects in Vietnam recorded benefts such as better nutrition and improved income, which women used to pay for schooling for children, improved technical knowledge for women, strengthened women’s unions, and improved bargaining power (Lebel et al., 2011). Given constraints due to a lack of capital, microfnance institutes have become involved with women in aquaculture value chains in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,Thailand, and India, with results suggesting improved women’s empowerment and better outcomes for food security and economic growth (Aladetohun, 2010).These are not linearly achieved, however, or readily gained through simply targeting women, as evidenced by Scarborough et al. (2017), who found the intra-household gender asset gaps increased in a small-scale aquaculture program, despite women-targeting. Choudhury et al. (2017) and Sari et al. (2017) similarly highlight that engagement of women in small-scale (and commercial) production and value chains is not suffcient for empowerment unless underlying barriers, including gender distribution of labor and constraining norms, are addressed.

Access to and distribution of resources in small-scale fsheries and aquaculture Women’s access to fsh through primary, secondary, or tertiary access reveals much about gender dynamics and power dynamics and signifcantly infuences outcomes. Primary users have access to their own catch, secondary users receive fsh or make deals with their husband or family members to process fsh in exchange for a portion of the profts, and tertiary users must rely on purchasing fsh from the market for resale, often at lower proft margins (Lentisco and Lee, 2015). In Kerala, fsh-vending women had business for about 300 days per year, whereas fshermen’s incomes were more seasonal (100 days per year), suggesting that women’s diversifed access to fsh through their own catch and purchase for sale offer a more stable income across the year (Aswathy and Kalpana, 2019). However, most fsherwomen have only secondary or tertiary access to fsh, and their access to and control over resources tend to be limited (Lentisco and Lee, 2015). Power structures often marginalize women, and as tertiary users with less power and fewer assets, women may resort to harmful practices such as sex-for-fsh transactions (Lentisco and Lee, 2015; Rajaratnam et al., 2016; Fiorella et al., 2015; Kwena et al. 2013). In terms of access to assets, Resurreccion (2006) notes that women are generally absent in fsheries rights and access regimes, which tend to be dominated by fshermen, the military, fsh178

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ing lot owners, sublease holders, and politicians (Resurreccion, 2006). In small-scale aquaculture, women tend to be excluded from access to or control over aquaculture resources. Choudhury and McDougall’s (2018) study found that women more often experience psychological ownership of aquaculture resources while men claim legal ownership.The gendered nature of ownership was reported to have its own outcome based on decision-making and control that women and men are able to exert. An interesting tension arises in small-scale aquaculture; on the one hand, homestead production offers a potential increase in women’s access to and control over the fshpond and fsh because of their proximity to the household and the ability of women to weave it (and cooking the fsh) among their domestic work (and engage without challenging mobility norms). On the other hand, as an accommodative strategy, it could potentially be gender-reinforcing (as on its own, it supports the notion and boundaries of the homestead as the “woman’s domain” and of women’s time as infnitely elastic). Power dynamics not only infuence gendered access to fsh but also to technologies and assets that can allow entry to the sectors or improve effciency in production or the value chain. In addition to farmland, women need access to technologies that aid their engagement in aquaculture and fshing activities. However, women are often allocated to the use of smaller or less advanced technologies than men (Kusakabe, 2002; Lentisco and Lee, 2015). In Sierra Leone, men use motorized boats to go out to sea to fsh, while women use scooping nets to fsh inland water bodies and rivers—a dry-season technique that supplements household consumption, but requires a group effort, as one person must locate and disturb the fsh, and the others scoop the fsh once disturbed (Browne, 2002). Innovations and technologies for aquaculture and fsheries even at a small scale can be gender-exclusive, as they can require a large amount of capital, resulting in women becoming labor on other peoples’ farms rather than operating their own (Lebel et al., 2011). In terms of access to revenue, fsh trade is also subject to government tariffs and licensing, and Kusakabe et al. (2008) highlight that in cross-border fsh trade between Thailand and Cambodia, unexpected costs and arbitrary fees imposed by customs offcers often affect women disproportionately. This appeared to be linked to women having weaker networks and perceiving that they had less negotiating power as they are expected to be subservient and obedient (Kusakabe et al., 2008). Additionally, when women do participate in fsh harvesting and aquaculture, they are usually allocated control of lower-value species (Kusakabe, 2002; Lentisco and Lee, 2015).

Conclusion Current market approaches to fsh agri-food systems are supply-driven, with relatively little focus on developing countries’ nutritional and livelihood needs or socioeconomic factors that drive the fsheries and aquaculture sectors.With the high number of people relying on fsheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods and nutrition in developing countries, this primary focus on fsh supply for export markets to developed countries undervalues the role of fsh for livelihoods, food security, and nutrition of those who rely on it most. This review has highlighted that while both commercial and small-scale fsheries and aquaculture are critically important, they are both crosscut by macro- and micro-patterns of social and gender inequalities and inequities.The feminization of labor and migration in the fsheries and aquaculture sectors, while not without opportunities, have demonstrated risks and negative effects on health and wellbeing. Exploitative labor practices affect both women and men in the sectors, including further exacerbating uneven work burdens. Insuffcient recognition of gender and social dynamics, including women’s unpaid and paid contributions to the fsheries 179

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and aquaculture sectors, restrictive social norms and gender roles, and gender-blind policies contribute to the dearth of enabling environments for women to engage equitably in safe and fair work in the fsheries and aquaculture sectors. Micro-scale inequities are nested within larger dynamics—cross-cutting commercial and small-scale sectors—in which small-scale fshers and workers have relatively little say in, or returns from, the sector’s opportunities or risks. These contribute to fshery- and aquaculture-dependent women—and men—taking precarious and low paid work in order to support themselves and their families. The analysis underscores the risk that—if not explicitly addressed—already economically impoverished communities and less powerful actors may be pushed into situations of greater vulnerability. This chapter has applied a lens that makes explicit links between gender and the political economy. This type of integrated investigation can help to explore the interconnected drivers, patterns, challenges, and opportunities in fsheries and aquaculture for different groups of women and men beyond a single sector or scale.This review suggests that future research incorporates further depth in terms of contextually important intersecting identities to illuminate patterns of engagement in and benefts derived from the sectors. Furthermore, research that generates a sharper understanding of the relative and relational aspects between genders—and among various actors—within fsheries and aquaculture will help unravel barriers and leverage points to address these in order to “level the playing feld” for women in the emerging blue economy and blue growth. Future research can contribute by further investigating formal and informal interactions and outcomes of public policies, civil society and private sector investments and how these can align for a more equitable, nutritious, and sustainable blue future.

Acknowledgments This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) led by WorldFish.The program is supported by contributors to the CGIAR trust fund. The publication benefted from reviews by Philippa Cohen (WorldFish) and Carolyn Sachs (Pennsylvania State University).

Notes 1 Empowerment lite is “a version of empowerment pared of any confrontation with the embedded social and power relations that produce societal and material inequities” (Cornwall, 2018, p. 3). 2 Originally from Le Sauze, D. (2000).“A Community Approach…”, Yemaya, Issue 5, December 2000.

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Gender in fsh agri-food systems Aregu, L., Rajaratnam, S., McDougall, C., Johnstone, G.,Wah, Z.Z., Nwe, K.M.,Akester, M., Grantham, R., and Karim, M. (2017).“Gender in Myanmar’s small-scale aquaculture sector.” CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems. Program Brief: FISH-2017-12. Penang, Malaysia. Ashaletha, S., Ramachandran, C., Sheela, I., Diwan, A.D., and Sathiadhas, R. (2002). “Changing roles of fsherwomen of India - Issues and perspectives.”Proceedings of International Conference on Women in Fisheries, 21–43, Mumbai, India. Aswathy, P., and Kalpana, K. (2018). “Women’s work, survival strategies and capitalist modernization in South Indian small-scale fsheries: the case of Kerala.” Gender,Technology and Development 22(3):205–221. doi: 10.1080/09718524.2019.1576096. Aswathy, P., and Kalpana, K. (2019). “Good woman, bad woman: social control and self-regulation in Kerala’s artisanal fsheries.” Women’s Studies International Forum, 74(October 2018):196–203. doi: 10.1016/j.wsif.2019.04.006. Ayinla, O.A. (2003, December 8-12). “Integrated fsh farming: a veritable tool for poverty alleviation/ hunger eradication in the Niger delta region.” In 18th annual conference of the fsheries society of Nigeria (FISON), 41–50, Owerri, Nigeria. Ayoola, S. (2010). “Sustainable fsh production in Africa.” African Journal of Food Agriculture Nutrition and Development 10 (5):1–9. Belton, B., and Thilsted, S.H. (2014). “Fisheries in transition: food and nutrition security implications for the global South.” Global Food Security 3 (1):59–66. Béné, C., Arthur, R., Norbury, H., Allison, E.H., Beveridge, M., Bush, S., Campling, L., Leschen,W., Little, D., Squires, D.,Thilsted, S.H.,Troell, M., and Williams, M. (2016).“Contribution of fsheries and aquaculture to food security and poverty reduction: assessing the current evidence.” World Development 79:177–196. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.11.007. Bennett, E. (2005). “Gender, fsheries and development.” Marine Policy 29 (5):451–459. doi: 10.1016/j. marpol.2004.07.003. Biswas, N. (2011). “Turning the tide: women’s lives in fsheries and the assault of capital.” Economic and Political Weekly XLVI (51):53–60. Biswas, N. (2017). “Towards gender-equitable small-scale fsheries governance and development: a handbook in support of the implementation of the voluntary guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fsheries in the context of food security and poverty eradication.” Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Biswas, N. (2018). “Where have all the women gone?” Yemaya: ICSF’s Newsletter on Gender and Fisheries 57:7. Britwum, A.O. (2006). “The gendered dynamics of production relations in Ghanaian coastal fshing.” Feminist Africa 12:69–85. Available at: www.feministafrica.org/uploads/File/Issue_12/fa12_feature_br itwum.pdf. Browne, P.B. (2002). “Women do fsh : a case study on gender and the fshing industry in Sierra Leone.” Working Paper No. 36256, Penang, Malaysia:WorldFish. Brugere, C., and Allison, E.H. (2008). “Livelihood diversifcation in coastal and inland fshing communities : misconceptions, evidence and implications for fsheries management.”Available at: https://doi.org /10.13140/RG.2.2.15022.51523. Brugere, C., and Williams, M. (2017). “Profle: women in aquaculture.” Available at: https://genderaquaf sh.org/portfolio/women-in-aquaculture/. Campling, L., Havice, E., and Mccall Howard, P. (2012). “The political economy and ecology of capture fsheries: market dynamics, resource access and relations of exploitation and resistance.” Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (2–3):177–203. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-0366.2011.00356.x. Choudhury, A., and McDougall, C. (2018). “Gendered ownership of aquaculture resources: insights from two villages in Bangladesh. ” CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems, Penang. FISH-2018–19. Choudhury, A., McDougall, C., Rajaratnam, S., and Park, C.M.Y. (2017). Women’s empowerment in aquaculture: two case studies from Bangladesh. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation/Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish. Cole, S., McDougall, C., Kaminski, A., Kef, A., Chilala, A., and Chisule, G. (2018). “Postharvest fsh losses and unequal gender relations: drivers of the social-ecological trap in the Barotse Floodplain fshery, Zambia.” Ecology and Society 23 (2), 1-13. Cohen, P.J., Allison, E.H., Andrew, N.L., Cinner, J., Evan L.S., Fabinyi, M., Garces, L.R., Hall, S.J., Hicks, C.C., Hughes, T.P., Jentoft, S., Mills, D.J., Masu, R., Mbaru, E.K., Ratner, B.D. (2019). “Securing a

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Surendran Rajaratnam et al. just space for small-scale fsheries in the blue economy.” Frontiers in Marine Science 6 (April):1–8. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00171. Connelly, M.P., and MacDonald, M. (1983).“Women’s work: domestic and wage labour in a Nova Scotia Community.” Studies in Political Economy 10 (1):45–72. doi: 10.1080/19187033.1983.11675671. Cornwall, A. (2018). “Beyond ‘empowerment lite’: women’s empowerment, neoliberal development and global justice.” Cadernos Pagu 52, 1-30. Davies, R.M., and Davies, O.A. (2009). “Traditional and improved fsh processing technologies in Bayelsa state, Nigeria.” European Journal of Scientifc Research 26(4): 539–548. De, H.K., Chattopadhyay, D. N., Radheyshyam, Saha, G. S., Dash, A. K., Pal, S., & Satpati, T. S. (2012). “Strengthening the livelihoods of rural women through polyculture of carps in seasonal ponds.” Indian Journal of Fisheries 59 (3):137–141. De, H.K., and Pandey, D.K. (2014). “Constraints to women’s involvement in small scale aquaculture: an exploratory study.” International Journal of Agricultural Extension 2(1):81–88. dela Pena, L., and Marte, C.L. (2001). “The plight of older women in a fshing village : the women fsh traders of Bugtong Baton,Aklan, Central Philippines.” In M.J.Williams, M.C. Nandeesha,V.P. Corral, E. Tech, and P S. Choo (eds.), International symposium on women in Asian fsheries: ffth Asian fsheries forum, 13 November 1998, Chiang Mai,Thailand. Penang, Malaysia: ICLARM, 165–172. FAO. (2020). The state of world fsheries and aquaculture 2020: sustainability in action. Rome. https://doi. org/10.4060/ca9229en Fiorella, K.J., Camlin, C.S., Salmen, C.R., Omondi, R., Hickey, M.D., Omollo, D.O., …& Brashares, J.S. (2015).“Transactional fsh-for-sex relationships amid declining fsh access in Kenya.” World Development 74:323–332. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.05.015. Frangoudes, Katia, and Gerrard, S. (2018).“(En)Gendering change in small-scale fsheries and fshing communities in a globalized world.” Maritime Studies 17:117–124. Fröcklin, S., De La Torre-Castro, M., Lindström, L., & Jiddawi, N.S. (2013). “Fish traders as key actors in fsheries: gender and adaptive management.’ Ambio 42 (8):951–962. doi: 10.1007/s13280-013-0451-1. Funge-Smith, S., and Bennett,A. (2019).“A fresh look at inland fsheries and their role in food security and livelihoods.” Fish and Fisheries, 20(2), 1176–1195. 1–20. doi: 10.1111/faf.12403. Golden, C.D., Seto, K.L., Dey, M.M., Chen, O.L., Gephart, J.A., Myers, S.S., … & Allison, E.H. (2017). “Does aquaculture support the needs of nutritionally vulnerable nations?” Frontiers in Marine Science 4 (May). doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00159. Greenpeace International. (2019). “A waste of fsh: food security under threat from the fshmeal and fsh oil industry in West Africa.” Retrieved December 10, 2019 from https://www.greenpeace.org/internat ional/publication/22489/waste-of-fsh-report-west-africa/. Halim, S. (2004). “Marginalization or empowerment? Women’s involvement in shrimp cultivation and shrimp processing plants in Bangladesh.” Women, gender and discrimination, 95–112. Retrieved from https ://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4bc8/d2a6e3e80e2647b4c2a6569e3fcbe499544d.pdf Hapke, H.M., and Ayyankeril, D. (2004).“Gender, the work-life course, and livelihood strategies in a South Indian fsh market.” Gender, Place and Culture 11 (2):229–256. doi: 10.1080/0966369042000218473. Harper, S., Zeller, D., Hauzer, M., Pauly, D., & Sumaila, U.R. (2013). “Women and fsheries: contribution to food security and local economies.” Marine Policy 39 (1):56–63. doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2012. 10.018. Hicks, C.C., Cohen, P.J., Graham, N.A.J., Nash, K.L., Allison, E.H., D’Lima, C., … & MacNeil, M.A. (2019).“Harnessing global fsheries to tackle micronutrient defciencies.” Nature 574 (7776):95–98. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1592-6. Ibrahim, H.I., Kigbu,A.A., and Mohammed, R. (2011).“Women’s experiences in small scale fsh processing in Lake Feferuwa fshing community, Nasarawa State, Nigeria.” Livestock Research for Rural Development 23 (3):1–8. Islam, M.D.S. (2008). “From sea to shrimp processing factories in Bangladesh: gender and employment at the bottom of a global commodity chain.” Journal of South Asian Development 3 (2):211–236. doi: 10.1177/097317410800300202. Jeebhay, M.F., Robins,T.G., and Lopata,A.L. (2004).“World at work: fsh processing workers.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 61(5), 471–474. Kamau, P., and Ngigi, S. (2013). “Potential for women fsh traders to upgrade within the fsh trade value chain: evidence from Kenya.” DBA Africa Management Review 3 (2):93–107. Kleiber, D., Frangoudes, K., Snyder, H.T., Choudhury, A., Cole, S.M., Soejima, K., Pita, C., Santos, A., McDougall, C., Petrics, H., and Porter, M. (2017).“Promoting gender equity and equality through the

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Gender in fsh agri-food systems small-scale fsheries guidelines: experiences from multiple case studies.” In Jentoft, S., Chuenpagdee, R., Barragán-Paladines, M.J., Franz,N. (Eds.). The small-scale fsheries guidelines. Cham: Springer, 737–759. Kleiber, D., Harris, L.M., and Vincent, A.C.J. (2015).“Gender and small-scale fsheries: a case for counting women and beyond.” Fish and Fisheries 16 (4):547–562. doi: 10.1111/faf.12075. Kumar, P., and Dey, M.M. (2006).“Nutritional intake and dynamics of undernourishment of farm households in rural India.” Indian Development Review 4 (2):269–284. Kusakabe, K. (2002). “Gender issues in small scale inland fsheries in Asia: women as an important source of information. ” New approaches for the improvement of inland capture fshery statistics in the Mekong Basin. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Mekong River Commission, Government of Thailand and Government of the Netherlands. September 2002.Accessed 28 May 2019. Kusakabe, K., Sereyvath, P., Suntornratana, U., and Sriputinibondh, N. (2006). “Women in fsh border trade: the case of fsh trade between Cambodia and Thailand. ” In P.S. Choo, S.J. Hall, and M.J.Williams (eds.), Global symposium on gender and fsheries (Seventh Asian Fisheries Forum, 1–2 December 2004), Penang, Malaysia:WorldFish Center, 91–102. Kusakabe, K., Sereyvath, P., Suntornratana, U., and Sriputinibondh, N. (2008). “Gendering border spaces: impact of open border policy between Cambodia-Thailand on small-scale women fsh traders.” African and Asian Studies 7(1):1–17. doi: 10.1163/156921008x273079. Kwena, Z.A., Camlin, C.S., Shisanya, C.A., Mwanzo, I., & Bukusi, E.A. (2013). “Short-term mobility and the risk of HIV infection among married couples in the fshing communities along Lake Victoria, Kenya.” PLoS ONE 8 (1), 1–7. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054523. Lastarria-Cornhiel, S. (2006). “Feminization of agriculture: trends and driving forces.” Background Paper for the World Development Report 2008. Rimisp-Latin American Center for Rural Development. Accessed 24 May 2019. Retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDRS/Resourc es/477365-1327599046334/8394679-1327599874257/LastarriaCornhiel_FeminizationOfAgri.pdf. Lebel, L., Ganjanapan, S., Lebel, P., Somountha, M., Trinh, T.T.N., Bastakoti, G.B., Chitmanat, C. (2011). “Gender, commercialization and the fsheries-aquaculture divide in the Mekong region.” In Water rights and social justice in the Mekong Region, 115–147. doi: 10.4324/9781849775472. Lentisco, A., and Lee, R. (2015). A review of women’s access to fsh in small-scale fsheries. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Circular No. 1098, Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation. Locke, C., Muljono, P., McDougall, C., and Morgan, M. (2017). “Innovation and gendered negotiations: insights from six small-scale fshing communities.”Fish and Fisheries,18(5) :1–15. doi:10.1111/faf.12216. Msangi, S., Kobayashi, M., Batka, M.,Vannuccini, S., Dey, M.M. and Anderson, J.L., (2013). “Fish to 2030: prospects for fsheries and aquaculture. ” World Bank Report 83177 (1):102. Nandeesha, M.C. (1994).“Aquaculture in Cambodia.” Infofsh International (2):42–48. Overa, R. (2007). “When men do women’s work: structural adjustment, unemployment and changing gender relations in the informal economy of Accra, Ghana.” Journal of Modern African Studies 45 (4):539– 563. doi: 10.1017/S0022278X0700287X. Pini, Barbara, and Leach, B. (2011). “Transformations of class and gender in the globalized countryside.” 1–23. In Leach, Belinda (Ed.). Reshaping Gender and Class in Rural Spaces. London: Routledge. Rajaratnam, S. Cole, S.M., Longley, C., Kruijssen, F., & Sarapura, S. (2016).“Gender inequalities in access to and benefts derived from the natural fshery in the Barotse foodplain, Zambia, Southern Africa.” Asian Fisheries Science 29 (Special Issue):49–71. Rashid, M.U., Rahman, F., and Sultana, N. (2016). “Fish feed in Bangladesh: where are the women?” In Pyburn, Rhiannon, and Anouka van Eerdewijk (eds), A different kettle of fsh? Gender integration in livestock and fsh research.Volendam: LM Publishers. Resurreccion, B.P. (2006). “Rules, roles and rights : gender, participation and community fsheries management in Cambodia’s tonle sap region.” Water Resources Development 22 (3):433–447. doi: 10.1080/07900620500482949. Rubinoff, J.A. (1999).“Fishing for status: impact of development on Goa’s fsherwomen.” Women’s Studies International Forum 22 (6):631–644. doi: 10.1016/S0277-5395(99)00073-4. Sari, I., McDougall, C., and Rajaratnam, S. (2017).“Women’s empowerment in aquaculture: two case studies from Indonesia. ” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy/WorldFish, Penang, Malaysia. Scarborough, W.J., Risman, B.J., and Meola, C. (2017). “Women’s-group fshponds in Bangladesh: using gender structure theory to examine changes in the gender asset gap.” Socius 3:1–19. Shah, D. (2010). Women in fsheries. Case Studies: India. International Collective in Support of Fishworkers. Accessed on 30 May 2019. Retrieved from http://aquaticcommons.org/17143/.

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Surendran Rajaratnam et al. Siamomua-Momoemausu, M.J. (2005). Gender collaboration: a case study of local resource management in Safa’i village, Samoa, Pacifc voices: equity and sustainability in Pacifc Islands fsheries. I. Novaczek, J. Mitchell, and J. Veitayaki (ed.), University of the South Pacifc. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacifc Studies, 209–220. Smith, L.C., Ramakrishnan, U., Ndiaye,A., Haddad, L., Martorell, R. (2003).“The importance of women’s status for child nutrition in developing countries.” Research Report 131.Washington, DC.: International Food Policy Research Institute. Thilsted, S.H., Thorne-Lyman, A., Webb, P., Bogard, J.R., Subasinghe, R., Phillips, M.J., & Allison, E.H. (2016). “Sustaining healthy diets: the role of capture fsheries and aquaculture for improving nutrition in the post-2015 era.” Food Policy 61:126–131. doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.02.005. Tlusty, M.F. Tyedmers, P., Bailey, M., Ziegler, F., Henriksson, P. J. G., Béné, C., …& Jonell, M. (2019). “Reframing the sustainable seafood narrative.” Global Environmental Change 59 (September):101991. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101991. Wahed, T., and Bhuiya, A. (2007). “Battered bodies and shattered minds: violence against women in Bangladesh.” Indian Journal of Medical Research 126 (4):341–354. Weeratunge, N., Snyder, K.A., and Sze, C.P. (2010). “Gleaner, fsher, trader, processor: understanding gendered employment in fsheries and aquaculture.” Fish and Fisheries 11 (4):405–420. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-2979.2010.00368.x. Williams, M. (2010). “Gender dimensions in fsheries.” In R.Q. Grafton, R. Hilborn, D. Squires, M.Trait, and M.J. Williams (eds), Handbook of marine fsheries conservation and management. New York: Oxford University Press, 72–86. Williams, M. (2015). “Women in today’s fsheries economy.” Yemaya: ICSF’s Newsletter on Gender and Fisheries 50:2–4. Retrieved from http://aquaticcommons.org/19635/1/Yemaya%2050.pdf World Bank. (2019). “Oceans, fsheries, and coastal economies.” Blue Economy. The World Bank Group. Accessed 15 August 2019. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/oceans-fsheries-and -coastal-economies#1. World Bank, FAO, WorldFish and ARD. (2012). Hidden harvest: the global contribution of capture fsheries. Report No. 66469-GLB.The World Bank,Washington, DC. WorldFish Center. (2010). “Gender and fsheries: do women support, complement, or subsidize men’s small-scale fshing activities?” Issues Brief No. 2108, 1–8. Wrigley-Asante, C. (2011). “Women becoming bosses: changing gender roles and decision making in Dangme West District of Ghana.” Ghana Journal of Geography 3:60–87. Yea, S. (2012). “Troubled waters: traffcking of Filipino men into the long haul fshing industry through Singapore.” Singapore:Transient Workers Count, 2. Retrieved from https://twc2.org.sg/2013/01/06/ troubled-waters-traffcking-of-flipino-men-into-the-long-haul-fshing-industry-through-singapore/.

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14 GENDER, RACE, AND TRANSGENIC CROPS Amanda Shaw

Introduction Research on genetically modifed organisms (GMOs) is signifcantly polarized and especially controversial in relation to agriculture and the food system.1 For some, GMO crops epitomize the industrialized agrifood system, characterized by massive agglomeration, capital-, technology-, and input-intensive methods of damaging monocrop production (Beus and Dunlap, 1992; Pechlaner and Otero, 2008, 2010; Pechlaner, 2012;Altieri, 1998). For others, GMO crops—also known as transgenic crops—represent important ways to reduce hunger, spread effcient farming techniques, and combat climate change (Fukuda-Parr, 2007; Fukuda-Parr and Orr, 2012; Subramanian and Qaim, 2010). One of the principal challenges facing researchers in this area is the paucity of reliable, critical, and nuanced research exploring the issues raised with these crops and technologies (exceptions include the National Academy of Sciences [NAS] 2016; Fernandez-Cornejo, 2014). Such polarization represents a primary challenge for researchers, including scholars of gender and agriculture. Indeed, perhaps it is this lack of balanced and interdisciplinary research on GMOs that partially accounts for the somewhat curious underdevelopment of the scholarship on gender and GMOs in spite of several excellent and prior outlines of a robust research agenda for scholars of gender and agriculture (e.g., Bryant and Pini, 2006).What writing there is to date does suggest is that the effects of transgenic crops are heterogeneous, context-specifc, and depend on which traits are being modifed. Additionally, many scholars highlight the multiple ways in which non-scientifc perspectives—and the perspectives of people of color, indigenous people, and women especially—continue to be marginalized within debates surrounding transgenic crops and within the spaces and processes through which they are designed, developed, deployed, and regulated. However, even many years after the identifcation of this important research agenda by Pini and Bryant in 2006, much remains to be done to use the basic analytical tools from research on gender and agriculture within analyses of transgenic crops as well as to ensure that such work engages in conversation with writing from critical race, native, and indigenous studies scholars on the racializing aspects of genetic sciences, technologies, and GMOs. This pending research agenda is doubly pressing considering the rapid pace of new scientifc processes and technologies, with which both ethical and regulatory processes struggle to keep pace.Taking these gaps 185

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into account, the aim of this chapter is to highlight new directions in this research agenda by attending to the particular intersection of gender and race as they relate to GMOs, and specifcally, transgenic crops. The chapter seeks to address the following questions. 1) What analytical frameworks and approaches are available for making sense of the relationships between transgenic crops and gender and race in particular? 2) What does the existing literature say about these relationships? 3) What gaps and ways forward does this scholarship suggest? In order to address these questions, the chapter draws on literature from feminist and critical race, native, and indigenous studies concerning agriculture, science, and technologies. The chapter begins with some background on genetic engineering (GE) processes, the science and safety of transgenic crops, and the political economy of GMOs. It then discusses the politics of science, knowledge, and technologies as well as the gendered and social impact of transgenic crops before highlighting debates regarding their regulation and forms of social resistance to their use.The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

Background “Biotechnologies” refer to a broad array of technologies and techniques that have been used to modify biological processes. “Genetic modifcation” refers to the process of modifying the genome of an organism, and “genetic engineering” is one type of genetic modifcation process. In a GE process, proteins, DNA, or RNA are introduced or changed in an organism, causing that organism to express new traits or modifying the expression of an existing trait (NAS, n.d.). Thus, a GMO can refer to any plant, animal, bacteria, or virus that has been modifed using these techniques.The so-called “frst-generation GMOs” used the process of transgenesis: the removal of genetic material from one organism and its insertion into that of another organism2 (animal or plant) (Krimsky, 2019). In the case of “second generation” GMOs, new genetic material is not inserted, but the genes of an existing organism are edited, as in the case of the CRISPER3 technique, which is used to mutate specifc genes.4 Biotechnologies and genetic modifcation processes have a number of spheres of application across different areas of food, agriculture, medicine, and science; however, this chapter is particularly concerned with the development, deployment, and regulation of genetically engineered crops, also referred to as transgenic crops.5 The genetic modifcation process takes place at the molecular level within crop seeds or germplasm and thus differs from the process of breeding particular traits into seeds through traditional or conventional6 plant breeding techniques. In the genetic modifcation of plants, new traits are introduced through technological methods that work at the molecular, rather than cellular, level; the genetic modifcation of plants is thus often referred to as molecular plant breeding. New genetic modifcation techniques, however, can blend molecular and cellular processes and thus may challenge any simple defnition of genetic modifcation based on a particular process (Krimsky, 2019). For example, marker-assisted selection (MAS) is a process of gene editing that enables breeders to frst screen for desired genes using new technologies, after which plants are bred using conventional breeding techniques (Krimsky, 2019, p. 9). While the application of these “second generation” GM technologies is far-reaching, the current commercial production of GE crops encompasses only a small number of crops that have largely been modifed to resist weed-killers (herbicides) or insects (insecticides).7 These include plants modifed with genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, or the Bt bacterium (e.g., BT cotton) and plants such as corn modifed to resist the weed killer glyphosate or Roundup (e.g., Roundup Ready Corn).As of 2015, fewer than ten crops were engineered for herbicide resist186

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ance, insect resistance, or both (NAS, 2016, p. 5).While an area of growing interest concerns the development of new plant traits to deal with climate change (Qaim and Kouse, 2013; James, 2014), the majority of transgenic crops are engineered to be pesticide- or herbicide-resistant (NAS, 2016, pp. 73–75), including maize and soybean varieties.8 The most commonly grown GE crops in 2015 with one or both of those traits were soybean (83% of land in soybean production), cotton (75% of land in cotton production), maize (29% of land in maize production), and canola (24% of land in canola production) (James, 2015 cited in NAS, 2016, p. 5). Most GE food crops are grown in the US, Argentina, Brazil, and Canada, while China and India grow GE cotton.9 In the US, where approved GE crops can be grown without the need for registration or labeling, genetically modifed crops make up more than 90% of planted acres of corn, soybeans, and cotton (Fernandez-Cornejo et al., 2014, p. 2). GE crops also circulate globally as part of US-backed food aid and philanthropic support (Kleinman and Kloppenburg, 1991), and related patent protections are increasingly enshrined in international trade law (Lawson and Charnley, 2016).While some countries permit different GE crops for human or animal consumption, regulatory regimes differ substantially, from the more “permissive” (US, Canada, South Africa, and Argentina) to a range of more precautionary (EU) and pragmatic (China) approaches (Fukuda-Parr and Orr, 2012, p. 4).At the international level, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) aim to monitor the health and environmental risks of GMOs. In sum, transgenic crops are shaped by rapid changes in technological processes, are theoretically broad in application but mainly commercially produced to withstand herbicides or pesticides, and have been subject to a varying range of regulatory regimes.

Key debates on the science, safety, and ethics of transgenic crops The question of the safety of transgenic crops has been the subject of much debate (NAS, 2016, pp. 221, 469), including in relation to their effects on genetic biodiversity (NAS, 2016, pp. 140– 141; Krishna et al., 2015). Competing claims abound within the literature, but at least two recent reports have aimed to synthesize and critically examine the existing research on transgenic crops: a 2016 report from the US NAS and a 2014 report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service.10 The NAS (2016, p. 2) report concluded that there had been no clear evidence of adverse health effects of consuming GM ingredients in either humans or animals, although long-term studies have yet to be completed.The report also acknowledged that different GE traits are likely to have different effects (NAS, 2016, p. 9). Debate also remains about the relationships between crops that have been genetically altered to withstand certain agrochemicals, the effects of these chemicals, and the amounts and types of chemicals used. Proponents argue that fewer pesticides are needed for transgenic versus conventional crops (James, 2014; Federation of American Scientists, 2011), while in 2016, NAS found that this depended on the crop. In the case of BT crops, the report found small and large farms growing these crops appeared to use less insecticide compared with non-BT varieties (NAS, 2016, p. 1).The report also found that the use of BT crops appeared to reduce the presence of pests overall, but where insecticide resistance strategies were not followed, this led to “damaging levels” of resistance of certain key insect species (NAS, 2016, p. 2). Indeed, the 2014 USDA report echoed similar fndings from their review of research: transgenic seeds may protect against crop loss due to pests but may or may not increase the amount of pesticides that are used, depending on the crop and variety (Fernandez-Cornejo et al., 2014, p. 12). In relation to herbicide-resistant transgenic crops, the report found that studies suggest that glyphosate-resistant crops appeared to yield small increases compared with conventional vari187

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eties and did not appear to reduce plant diversity in felds surveyed but that problems with herbicide-resistant weeds or “superweeds” were found in places with heavy glyphosate application (NAS, 2016, p. 2).The superweed phenomenon is of particular concern in that resistance requires the use of different agrochemicals, including older and potentially more hazardous pesticides (e.g., 2-4 D, Dicamba) (Fernandez-Cornejo et al., 2014, p. 25). In short, the debate around the safety of different agrochemicals used with transgenic crops is ongoing and rapidly developing in some cases.11 Glyphosate has been defned as “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization (International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC], 2016). Recent independent studies confrmed a “compelling link between exposures to GBHs [glyphosate-based herbicides] and increased risk for NHL [non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma]” (Zhang et al., 2019, p. 18). Generally, it is the area of pesticide use in relation to transgenic varieties that has generated the most concern about health effects, and scholarship has concentrated on the relatively more known public health implications of agrochemicals (Lepegna, 2014; Oliveira and Hecht, 2016). At the same time, the broader conclusion that can be drawn from these studies echoes Schurman and Munro’s (2010) earlier assessment that transgenic technologies have proved neither as disastrous nor as miraculous as either opponents or proponents have tended to argue.

The political economy of transgenic crops and “integrated life industries” While debates about the science and effcacy of transgenic crops highlight heterogeneity,research on the political economy analyses of the development of these crops has demonstrated rather clearer links with biopower, nature/technology binaries, and processes of capital accumulation. Biotechnologies can be traced through the development of biological and genetic sciences and the operation of biology as a particular discourse (Foucault, 1979; Haraway, 2004;Thacker, 2006; Andrée, 2002) where genes come to stand for life itself (Alsina and Rennó, 2012, pp. 185–186). Some have seen this “geneticization of life” as an important expression of biopower (Alsina and Rennó, 2012, p. 185). Additionally, biotechnologies complicate boundaries between nature and technology (e.g., Haraway, 2013; Shiva and Moser, 1996). Political economy scholars have demonstrated how integrated life science industries, including seed industries within them, have used biotechnologies as strategies for capital accumulation (Carroll, 2017; Kloppenburg, 2005; Kleinman and Kloppenburg, 1991; Lapegna, 2014; Schurman and Munro, 2010;Wield et al., 2010; Schrager and Suryanata, 2018; Pechlaner, 2010).They outline how industrial, agricultural supply chains have become increasingly vertically integrated, combining biotechnology, seed, and pesticide companies (Wield et al., 2010).This vertical integration has been partly explained as a consequence of the public distrust of chemical companies and resultant falling profts, prompting shifts into new areas (e.g., seeds) (Schurman and Munro, 2010, pp. 900–909) as well as the potential for proft within seed industries as part of the postwar US regime of agricultural development and subsidization (McMichael, 2009). Indeed, seeds occupy an important node within agricultural supply chains and within processes of capital accumulation (Kloppenburg, 1988) since by controlling seed varieties (through breeding and patenting), seed companies are able to realize profts otherwise unavailable when farmers save their seed (Howard, 2009, pp. 1267–1268).The relative value of seed crops helps to explain the concentration of seed companies in high-value crops such as corn and soy, which are relatively expensive per hectare (Bonny, 2017, p. 9). Howard (2015) and others have argued that it was the combination of increased patent protection for seed varieties, reduced government intervention on anti-competitive practices, and declining revenues for agrochemicals that have led to the interest by oil, pharmaceutical, and grain trading companies in seed industries (Matson et al., 2014). 188

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The dramatic consolidation and agglomeration within these integrated life science industries took place largely through agrochemical companies acquiring hundreds of independent seed and biotechnology frms, while also merging with one another and adeptly navigating and shaping intellectual property and regulatory regimes (Schrager and Suryanata, 2018, p. 6; Kloppenburg, 2010). Growth within these industries has thus taken place through the acquisition of smaller frms, multiple mergers, and licensing agreements among companies (Howard, 2009).The scale of consolidation among global seed companies has been remarkable,12 with just four main companies controlling between 60% of the global seed and 76% of global agrochemical markets in 2019 (Howard, 2017).13 These companies are ChemChina (acquired Syngenta), BASF (acquired some of Bayer’s seed divisions), Bayer (acquired Monsanto), and Corteva Agriscience (merger of Dow-DuPont) (Howard, 2017). While the consolidation of the industries that have developed transgenic crops is relatively unquestioned, the question of the individual cost of transgenic crops for farmers remains an important and ongoing area of debate. Overall, the evidence appears to be heterogeneous regarding whether transgenic crops increase crop yields; some transgenic crops have been found to yield more than conventional varieties, thus potentially bringing economic benefts to producers if the gains farmers experience are higher than the costs of purchasing the related inputs (Fernandez-Cornejo et al., 2014, p. 13). At the same time, other research found that in the frst 15 years of commercial use, transgenic seeds have not increased yield potentials and that some herbicide- or insect-resistant seeds may sometimes yield less than conventional varieties because the modifed varieties were not always high-yielding cultivars like the ones grown conventionally (Fernandez-Cornejo et al., 2014, p. 12). The 2016 NAS report suggests that the adoption of GE varieties of soybean, cotton, and maize have generally been economically favorable to producers but that these outcomes have differed depending on the makeup of agricultural infrastructure, pest presence, and farming practices (NAS, 2016, p. 1). Additionally, costs may also accrue not simply through the purchase of inputs but through how the feld of agriculture is delimited through technology-intensive packages; some have argued that transgenic seeds introduce a “treadmill effect” wherein a few farmers pursue technological processes to increase yields, leaving the rest to increase yields in order to generate the same revenue (Levins and Cochrane, 1996). Overall, questions about whether transgenic crops increase costs, especially for small farmers, are also questions about the ways in which their use may contribute to, or re-entrench, economic and social inequalities, especially for small farmers (Kloppenburg, 2004 [1988]; Schrager and Suryanata, 2018; Schurman and Munro, 2010; Kinchy, 2012). Indeed, the introduction of transgenic crops appears to have reduced rates of seed saving among farmers, in some cases increased prices of purchased seeds, and increased costs of additional or proprietary inputs as part of the global seed-agrochemical package (Howard, 2015, p. 2; Fernandez-Cornejo, 2014). Since transgenic crops are framed by their patent-holders as the technologies that will allow farmers to produce more and “feed the world,” increases in crop yields and their relation to the prices of these inputs represent an important dimension from which to evaluate the economic impacts of these crops for different producers. At present, the differentiated effects of GE crops appear to depend widely on the cost and quality of GE seeds, and the relationship between the GE trait, plant variety, and farm environment (NAS, 2016, p. 2),

The politics of knowledge, science, and technologies in relation to transgenic crops Analyses of transgenic crops have highlighted the politics of knowledge, science, and technology that inform their design, development, and deployment. In the frst case, these scholars have outlined the relations of power that shape the knowledge and intellectual property paradigms in 189

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relation to transgenic crops, emphasizing diverging values and beliefs among different consumers, farmers, scientists, and regulators (Norton et al., 1998; Lyons and Lawrence, 1999; Lockie et al., 2002; Hindmarsh and Du Plessis, 2008; Bryant and Pini, 2006, p. 265).This literature, at times, includes gender and other social differences as variables in its analysis (e.g., Irani et al., 2001; Moerbeek et al., 2005; Lewis, 2010) but rarely theorizes the interrelated construction of social power, gender, and agricultural technologies (Bryant and Pini. 2006, p. 265). In relation to the sciences shaping transgenic crops, scholars have written about the epistemic ordering of scientifc knowledge, in which invisible phenomena are made visible (Jasanoff, 2004) while other forms of knowledge are excluded or disregarded in the analysis (Bonneuil et al., 2014; Böschen et al., 2006; Bonneuil, 2006; Böschen, 2009). Kinchy (2012) calls the epistemic privileging of science in public debates about transgenic crops the scientisation of politics, where the views of scientists and experts are privileged, and those with ethical concerns tend to be excluded from the process of their development. Other research has demonstrated how scientifc knowledge embedded in molecular biology, in particular, tends to dominate understandings of how transgenic crops are assessed, to the extent that other forms of scientifc and social knowledge are dismissed (Bonneuil et al., 2014; Böschen et al., 2006; Bonneuil, 2006; Böschen, 2009). For example, Bonneuil et al. (2014) provide an example of the case of the GE contamination of Mexican maize landraces, where molecular biology was considered as the arbitrating source of knowledge used to adjudicate the question of whether GE crops had mixed with landrace varieties.This meant that the introgression of GE crops was initially missed. These fndings are similar to what feminist, critical race, and indigenous scholars have highlighted within other areas of science and the environment where other ways of knowing, including the knowledge of people of color, especially women of color, have been dismissed or ignored (e.g., Seager, 2003; Newman et al., 2004; LaDuke, 2016).They highlight how Science with a capital S—as Haraway (1991) has called the knowledge and knowledge systems that are recognized as science over time and space—consolidates epistemic authority, defning and delimiting legitimate knowledge and ways of knowing. The ways in which this scientifc authority and legitimacy has been pursued, articulated, and secured has also taken place through colonialism (Hamilton et al., 2017, p. 614), the privatization of genetic resources (Hutchings, 2002; Hutchings et al., 2007; Cram et al., 2000; Santos, 2008; LaDuke, 2005; Cummings, 2008; Fitting, 2011), and customary or traditional knowledge (Amusan, 2017). These processes by which scientifc, corporate, and state actors colonize the genetic resources of people of color and indigenous people have been termed “biopiracy” (Shiva et al, 1998), “bioprospecting” (Greene, 2004; Rixecker and Tipene-Matua 2003), “biocolonialism” (Whitt, 1998; Goldberg-Hiller and Silva, 2015), and, more recently, “molecular imperialism” (Bonneil et al., 2014). People of color and women have then generally been excluded from participating in developing technologies related to these scientifc “discoveries” and related technologies (Harding, 2004; Haraway, 1991; 2000; Hamilton et al., 2017). Indeed, what gets recognized as technology often embodied white, Western masculine worldviews and values, even as theorists caution against outright dismissal of technologies as always already oppressive (Haraway, 2000), instead emphasizing the mutually constitutive relationships between social power, gender, and technologies as well as the role of agency in the actual use and adaptation of these technologies (Pini and Bryant, 2006, p. 268). In relation to agriculture, others have analyzed the relationships between different kinds of technologies and processes of gendering, fnding that there tends to be associations between men and machines, even while these nuances are highly contextspecifc (Brandth, 1995; Brandth and Haugen, 2000, 2016; Saugeres, 2002). 190

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Scholars have been critical about the benefts of GE technologies to different indigenous communities, highlighting the specifc struggles between commercial and scientifc actors over genetic resources and the politics of knowledge surrounding their development. In particular, indigenous groups across the world have been concerned with the commercial use, patenting, and planned genetic modifcation of seeds and plant varieties, including the wild rice of the Ojibwe (LaDuke, 2005), the maize of indigenous peoples in Mexico (Fitting, 2011), the taro plant for Native Hawaiians (Ritte et al, 2007; Guggagnig, 2017) and the hoodia plant of the San people of South Africa (Amusan, 2017), among others. Several Maori scholars, in particular, have been active in developing decolonizing and gender-aware approaches to assessing GE technologies (Baker, 2012; Hutchings, 2002). Baker’s (2012) work, for example, develops a kaupapa Māori14 approach called the Korowai framework, which she offers as an example of a tool through which different communities can investigate, conceptualize, and articulate their values and ethics in order to assess GE technologies. Baker (2012, p. 90) identifed a value of ngārara (insects and reptiles) in the confederation of tribes she worked with, which included a shared value on ensuring the health of ngārara to indicate the quality and health of the environment. Baker’s research found that even Maori involved with GE regulation processes felt they did not have a full understanding of the science behind the technologies they were involved in regulating.They also expressed concern that the benefts of these technologies were not likely to reach their communities, or would do so unevenly, due to the commercial nature of GE patents (Baker, 2012, p. 93). The development of indigenous knowledge-based frameworks provides important insights toward creating more inclusive and transformative spaces in which the benefts, problems, and appropriateness of transgenic technologies can be analyzed and assessed. Additionally, Hutchings (2002) has specifcally employed an indigenous Maori feminist (mana wahine)15 perspective on GM technologies, emphasizing the right of Maori to be consulted (Te Tiriti o Waitangi). She outlines Maori concerns that GM processes disrupt the basic structures of relationships between generations, the cosmos, and different species as well as obligations to steward and safeguard the natural world (kaitiakitanga) (Hutchings, 2002, pp. 121–123). Her research spotlights the particular role that Maori women play within these practices of protecting the natural world and caring for children, families, and human health (Hutchings, 2002, pp. 128–133). Her research with Maori women regarding transgenic technologies represents an important thread of research that prioritizes producing grounded theory based on indigenous women’s knowledge and experiences.

Encountering transgenic crops While the previous research and writing discussed has provided useful analytical frameworks for conceptualizing some of the issues raised by transgenic crops, there has also been a specifc body of research conceptualizing the specifc relationships between gender and GMOs. Some are highly critical of “new Green revolution” technologies (Shiva, 2001, 2008; Tandon, 2012), while others are somewhat optimistic about the possibilities for gender-responsive biotechnologies (Ezezika et al., 2013) and interrogate the multiple dimensions of gender, power, and difference related to agribiotechnologies (Di Chiro, 2004; Bryant and Pini, 2006; Hutchings, 2002). The majority of research on gender in relation to transgenic crops has focused on farmer and consumer attitudes (Mooerbeek and Casimir, 2005; Brandth et al., 1994; Zambrano et al., 2011), where gender is treated as a variable in understanding the different approaches to transgenic crops, where women in the studies tended toward greater caution in relation the growing or consumption of transgenic crops, although not universally. 191

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A second area of research has focused on the political economy of labor within transgenic (Fair Labor Association, 2011; Subramanian and Qaim, 2010) and hybrid seed production (Venkateshwarlu and Da Corta, 2011), including spatialized analyses of transgenic crops (Oliveira and Hecht, 2016; Stone, 2010). For example,Venkateshwarlu and Da Corta’s (2011) study found that hybrid cotton production in Andra Pradesh intensifed women’s and especially young women’s labor. Fukuda-Parr and Orr (2012) have argued that in order for the positive benefts of GM crops to be realized, the debate must be reframed to consider whether these technologies can help to improve productivity for poor, small-scale farmers and that this must include perspectives beyond scientifc considerations to include an understanding of the broader social, political, and economic shifts needed to achieve food security. Recently, Lee (2018) has analyzed new food technologies, including transgenic meat, through a framework for thinking through multiple gender dimensions for analysis. First, her work highlights that gender may infuence the context and processes through which transgenic technologies are designed and developed, including the selection of desired traits, including through constraints in participation. Second, she highlights that the effects of transgenic technologies must be contemplated in relation to the kinds of work performed, including how these technologies impact different people’s working time, intensity, and income.Third, Lee highlights that the processes of decision-making, risk assessment, and perception are all subject to gender and social differentiation given the history of the unequal distribution of harm and benefts enacted by different technologies. Lee’s work provides an important framework for assessing the effects of particular technologies in situ and linking them to wider issues of knowledge, power, and production. At the same time, her framework could be extended to consider the relationships between resistance and regulation that also shape the development of transgenic crops—the subject of the next section.

Regulation and resistance In addition to analyses of the multiple gender dimensions of transgenic crops, other scholars have shown how regulation and social contestation has shaped the development of transgenic crops themselves (Schurman and Munro, 2010). Researchers have analyzed the effects of anti-GMO activism in particular locations (Andree, 2007; Gupta, 2013; 2015; Herring, 2009; Kwieciński, 2009; Pigeon and Létourneau, 2014; Schurman, 2004; Schurman and Munro, 2010; Shaw, 2016), undertaken studies of how opposition to GMOs has been enacted legally (Pelcahnere, 2012), and case studies of resistance to particular companies such as Monsanto (Zacune et al., 2012; Glover, 2007) and DuPont (Griesse, 2007). Carroll (2017; 2018) has highlighted the ways in which antiGMO activism has relied upon discourses of natural purity and nature-culture dualisms, which have historically also been used to naturalize social inequalities and thus preclude outright any possibilities for benefcial forms of these biotechnologies. Carroll argues that, in fact, the development of transgenic crops has been “spatially variegated and contradictory,” where the same institutional structures and dynamics that enabled transgenic technologies to spread (e.g., law) have simultaneously been employed to contain their proliferation (2014, p. 2). Some researchers have analyzed the gendered nature of the resistance within anti-GMO activism, including the overrepresentation of women in some locations (Bloomfeld and Doolin, 2013; Shaw, 2016) and within GMO labeling and GMO-free certifcation movements (Dandachi, 2015; Kimura, 2015). Dandachi’s (2015) research emphasized how women who were mothers draw on discourses of good mothering in their blogging around support for GMO labeling. My research in the Hawaii context found that some forms of anti-GMO activism also relied on tropes of mothering, but that these needed to be understood in relation to differen192

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tially raced histories of motherhood and gender. While movements mobilized what appeared to be relatively normative framings of gender, I argued that doing so enabled public support for movements, which otherwise threatened the status quo, namely, highlighting the problematic history and relationships between corporate agribusiness and the neoliberal settler-colonial state. There remains a need for further research about how different anti-GMO movements frame gender, race, sexuality, and other differences and what forms of support, participation, and activist subjectivities these framings produce, sustain, and constrain. The regulation of transgenic crops showcases issues related to democratic, decision-making, approval, and oversight processes (NAS, 2016) and the dynamics of legal regulation (Schurman and Munro, 2010; Jaffe, 2004;Wolt et al., 2016; NAS, 2016; Fischer et al., 2015). However, these studies have not included the use of gender perspective. Indeed, while these studies have outlined various international and national regulatory approaches in terms of the degree to which they promote, permit, approach precautiously, or prevent the commercialization of transgenic crops (e.g., NAS, 2016, p. 465) only a few analyze the ways in which regulatory processes consider socioeconomic criteria (Binimelis and Myhr, 2016). No studies could be identifed that analyzed the different regulatory regimes for their gendered dimensions or distribution of effects.

Key directions in the research agenda In conclusion, this chapter has sought to provide an overview of the ways in which the gender and social dimensions of GMOs and specifcally transgenic crops have been theorized, identifying fve main areas for further research.These include 1) the differentiated human and environmental health dimensions of the use of transgenic crops and related agrochemicals, 2) critical analyses of the particular knowledge communities responsible for GMO and transgenic crop development, 3) gendered analyses of the circulation of molecular knowledge and their relationships to colonialism and racialization, 4) analyses of the intersectional labor dynamics that enable GMO and transgenic production and consumption networks, and 5) further research on the difference gender, race, and other aspects of difference make to the politics of GMO regulation and resistance movements in different sites. To these, we can add Pini and Bryant’s (2006) analysis of research needs for the feld written more than ten years ago.They identifed directions for future research on the relationships between embodiment and the production of new technologies, including biotechnologies and chemicals; how biotechnologies shape gender relations within and beyond farms, including in seedagrochemical organizations; and the constructions of masculinities in relation to biotechnologies, through their use or non-use. Indeed, given that these areas represent foundational questions about the relationships between gender and GMOs, an important question raises itself: what accounts for the relative disinterest in the feld of analyzing gender and GMOs, particularly transgenic crops? As outlined in the introduction, the overarching polarization that has affected scientifc writing on the subject has also affected social scientifc research. Additionally, a relative lack of spaces for interdisciplinary discussions among researchers working in related scientifc disciplines and gender, critical race, and social theory may also contribute to these challenges—in signifcant contrast to, for example, work on reproductive technologies where there appears to have been greater interdisciplinary engagement.16 For this reason, Jasanoff and Hurlbut’s (2018) comments on the knowledge needs for a related area—gene-editing processes—could also be relevant here. They propose a forum on gene editing that could create space for discussing a range of diverging ideas about the stakes of protecting the integrity of life and the role of new technologies—including non-scientifc perspectives that tend to be marginalized. Jasanoff and Hurlbut (2018) suggest that an international forum for such discussions could be benefcial. At the same time, they highlight 193

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the need for attending to the politics of research agendas, intellectual property rights, and how the likely benefts of technologies are imagined and distributed.Thus, in addition to the suggestions for an intersectional research agenda analyzing the multiple relationships between gender, race, and GMOs, the need for interdisciplinary fora also represents an important area for helping consider the difference that difference makes in relation to transgenic crops.

Notes 1 Debate remains about the extent to which different patent protections facilitate and inhibit independent research, knowledge-sharing, and innovation in relation to genetically engineered (GE) crops (NAS, 2016, p. 322).The vast majority of research on genetically modifed organisms and related technologies and techniques is industry-funded, making it diffcult for researchers to assess the credibility of publications.A 2016 US National Academy of Sciences report aimed to make information about these affliations visible in their review of this topic.The committee was also asked to assess emerging genetic engineering technologies, how they might contribute to crop improvement, and what technical and regulatory challenges they may present.The committee delved into the relevant literature, heard from 80 diverse speakers, and read more than 700 comments from members of the public to broaden its understanding of issues surrounding GE crops. It concluded that sweeping statements about GE crops are problematic because issues related to them are multidimensional. 2 There are other techniques used in relation to human tissues that are not dealt with in this introduction, such as xenotransplantation (transplantation of living tissues or organs from one species to another), the genetic manipulation of stem cells, and the derivation of therapeutic proteins used in the treatment of some illnesses. 3 CRISPER stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” 4 Krimsky (2019, p. 15) highlights four other main methods including oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM), cisgenesis and intragenesis, RNA-dependent DNA methylation (RdDM), and synthetic DNA. 5 There are a number of other applications of biotechnologies in relation to the food supply, such as new food technologies including GE meat. (See Lee, 2018). 6 Some traditional and conventional plant breeding techniques encompass natural or artifcial hybridization and selection, the use of chemicals or radiation to mutate plant gametes, protoplast fusion combining genes from different species, and other chemical processes (Krimsky, 2019, p. 8). 7 For a full report on the commercial approval of crops, see James (2015) and ISAAA (The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications) (2017). 8 As of 2015, commercially grown GE food crops for human consumption include maize, soybean, apple, canola, sugar beet, papaya, potato, squash, eggplant, and other agricultural crops (alfalfa, cotton, and poplar) (NAS, 2016, p. 74). 9 Information about the exact status of GM corps globally is diffcult as this information is not collected regularly by an independent source.The main source comes from industry. 10 An older EU funded study also reviewed the evidence on GMOs: EC (2010) “A decade of EU-funded GMO research (2001–2010)” https://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funde d_gmo_research.pdf. 11 For example, at the time of writing, a number of lawsuits had been recently settled or were ongoing against Bayer. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/19/judge-slash-billion-awar d-couple-with-cancer-roundup-lawsuit/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afda39c382b9. 12 See Howard, P. (2017) Seed Industry Structure 1996–2018. https://philhowardnet.fles.wordpress.co m/2018/12/Seed2018-1.pdf 13 See Howard, P. (2017) “Global Seed Industry Changes Since 2013.” https://philhoward.net/2018/12 /31/global-seed-industry-changes-since-2013/ 14 This methodology emphasizes the use of Maori analysis and theory to understandings and addressing issues. See Pihama, L., Cram, F., and Walker, S. (2002). “Creating methodological space: A literature review of Kaupapa Maori research,” Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26(1), pp. 30–43. 15 Mana wahine refers to a Maori framework for valuing Maori women’s knowledge. See Pihama, L. (2001). Tīhei mauri ora: honouring our voices: mana wahine as a kaupapa Māori: theoretical framework (Doctoral dissertation, ResearchSpace@ Auckland). 16 Thank you to Carolyn Sachs for highlighting this point.

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15 GENDER DIMENSIONS IN CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY UPTAKE Mamta Mehar

Introduction Farmers, in the last few years, are facing the increasing impact of climate change and variability1 on their farm produce, water availability, and livelihoods. The ways and scale in which impacts are experienced and responded to vary widely across countries, sectors, and cultures and environmental, economic, and social contexts. A growing feld of research has found that the adoption of many climate-resilience technologies and practices have the potential to withstand the changes, and new yield-enhancing technologies have the ability to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture (De Pinto, 2018; Rosegrant et al., 2014). These adaptation and mitigation strategies are part of the emerging paradigm of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), which was introduced in 2010. CSA offers a set of technologies and tools that provide solutions to the challenges of climate change and food security. Whether, how, and why these CSA adaptations or mitigation take place depends on structural2 and/or subjective3 factors. Because many decisions are made at the household level, farmers’ socio-demographic characteristics, including gender, are important and cannot be ignored.The differentiation in the roles of women and men give rise to different vulnerabilities and affects the ability of the different genders to adapt to climate change. The Fifth Assessment Report of AR5, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2014), documents the link between gender, agriculture, and climate change based on evidence. Forty years of gender research with a special focus on climate change in the past decade has ensured that gender is an important category that needs to be taken into account in environmental policy and practice (Arora-Jonsson, 2014). The majority of scientifc literature (41 papers), as reviewed by Djoudi et al. (2016), framed gender in a men-versus-women dichotomy, and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations about climate change adaptation. Although the need for gender disaggregation of the household’s individuals was seeded with the clarion call of “No climate justice without gender justice” at the Bali COP conference in 2007 (Terry 2009, p.15) until recently, very few researchers have elaborated on the defnition of gender and how approaches, principles, or ambitions will be achieved in their specifc context. Often, gender research slips into “gender as women,” entirely ignoring that men and masculinities are also gendered. Additionally, women are considered as victims or a vulnerable and 200

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homogenous group; focusing on these aspects ignores “the complex, dynamic and intersecting power relations and other structural and placed-based causes of inequality” (IPCC, 2014, p. 808). Despite these biases,“greater, differentiated, but equal access to CSA tools and techniques as well as climate services could potentially change how resources are used and improve the balance of gendered roles in agriculture” (Perch and Byrd, 2015, p. 4. This chapter will help to better understand how, where, and in which context CSA-relevant technologies and practices infuence gender with evidence from South Asia and Africa.

Climate-smart agriculture and gender Farmers have choices when it comes to coping with climate shocks. These choices can be divided into two categories: generic (such as additional jobs or reducing expenditure on education, income, health, etc.) and specifc (such as crop rotation, planting early, adoption of hybrid or stress-tolerant seed, using energy-saving cooking stoves, etc.) (Mehar et al., 2016). In a given setting, a whole host of institutional, attitudinal, social, economic, and contextual factors infuence the adoption of any of these coping strategies. All these factors are rooted in and driven by gendered livelihood and farming activities. CSA technology is a specifc category of choices. This concept, introduced in 2010, has been promoted by different national and international development organizations in recent years (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2013). CSA practices integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental) by jointly addressing food security and climate challenges. It is composed of three main pillars: 1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, 2) adapting and building resilience to climate change, and 3) reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible (Figure 15.1). CSA includes a whole set of technologies at different levels of production to consumption for crops, livestock, forestry, and aquaculture. In these levels and agriculture sub-sectors, gender-differentiated skills, roles, relations, and access to resources lead to different opportunities and constraints that may help or hinder the adoption of CSA. Although gender is not the only infuencing factor for CSA adoption and scaling-up, CSA technologies and practices, if implemented or designed considering gender, have more promising results. Recently, there has been considerable attention to promoting gender-responsive CSA. A number of guides, manuals, and briefs are available with policies, guidelines, and case studies of gender in CSA.These guides and evidence-based studies highlight gender-differentiated adoption behavior. However, these studies are built on local or anecdotal examples and mostly

Figure 15.1 Climate-smart agriculture pillars. Source: http://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infograp hics-details/en/c/224587/

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address gender as a men-women dichotomy.This implies that an integrated approach to addressing the factors driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity is necessary in order to support women’s access to CSA practices and approaches. Such an approach should analyze the uptake of technology by examining the extent of adoption (i.e., beyond the binary decision to adopt or not to adopt) with a focus on the intersectional factors that shape gender-differentiated perspectives and situated knowledge. Women, as compared to men, are less aware of CSA practices (Twyman et al., 2014; Kristjanson et al., 2017); if they are aware, they have low adoption rates (Rioux et al., 2016; Kristjanson et al., 2017) and adopt a smaller number of technologies (Iiyama et al., 2008; Nyasimi et al., 2016). For example, on average, male-headed households integrated twice as many CSA practices compared with women-headed households (Nayasimi et al., 2016). A range of factors contributes to differences in climate change vulnerabilities, coping capacities, and adoption of CSA technologies and practices of men and women working in agriculture. The factors are differences in gender-specifc roles in value chains, power imbalances between men and women leading to differentiation in access, ownership, and use rights over resources (for example, water, land, livestock) and technologies. However, CSA interventions by design vary in terms of resource and labor requirements, which implies different contributions from men and women (Bernier et al., 2015).Table 15.1 illustrates the CSA interventions with special emphasis on the interest of men and women and the expected impact on their labor and income. Zero-tillage (ZT) and laser land leveling (LLL) are CSA technologies that are very expensive and mostly available from service providers. By default, adoption of these technologies requires fnancial decisions and interaction with outsiders and is viewed as man-friendly as women have less access to credit and often have mobility constraints. On the one hand, in Tanzania, 80% of men compared to 20% of women cited the use of ZT (Nayasimi et al., 2016). On the other hand, as plowing with oxen is culturally unacceptable in Ethiopia, female-headed households found ZT more appealing (Aune et al., 2016).Women in India who learn about LLL through their networks have an immediate effect on household demand for LLL (Magnan et al., 2015). Technological change creates direct and indirect spill-over effects on other technology, crop stages, environment, and work activity. Both ZT (improving water retention) and LLL (ensuring uniform water distribution) are water-smart technologies.This reduces women’s labor, as they are often primarily responsible for water collection. However, this also increases women’s work as the application of these two technologies also results in more weeding, which is an activity often performed by women. Similarly, the CSA practice of direct-seeded rice and fertilizer application, though promising for reduced labor in rice transplanting, requires more labor for weeding (Beuchelt, 2016).The weeding problem can be resolved by adopting women-friendly Cono Weeder CSA technology, which reduces drudgery and saves time. Several CSA practices are recommended for the sowing stage for crops like crop rotation, early planting, kitchen garden, intercropping, and the adoption of stress-tolerant varieties. Women’s adoption rates for these are reported to be higher than men. Men are usually more engaged in agroforestry and tree plantations (Twyman et al., 2014). Recently, efforts to enhance the uptake of stress-tolerant varieties use interdisciplinary perspectives of gender-differentiated need for breeding, rice (Mehar et al., 2017), maize (Gebre et al., 2019), and potato (Gilligan et al., 2013). Women’s participation using green manuring was observed to be minimal or non-existent (Murray, 2016; Khatri-Chhatri, 2019).The adoption of advanced management technologies like leaf color charts and canopy sensors are not even examined with a gender dimension. Such technologies are often provided by service providers, extension workers, or some other initiatives such as demonstration.Women, who often lack information and access to extension services, are deprived of using these technologies. 202

Crops

Management

Sowing

Land preparation

Key activities Examples of gender-differentiated revelation to CSA

ZT (ES, WS)

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• Males prefer ZT more than women in Tanzania (Nyasimi, 2016). • Appealing to women as ZT means less use of oxen in Ethiopia (Aune et al., 2006). LLL: to ensures uniform water distribution (WS) • Signifcant gender-differentiated effect of the network on household’s demand on LLL in India (Magnan et al., 2015). Crop rotation, intercropping, on-farm tree • In India, crop rotation was selected by 60% of the male decision-makers in households (Mehar et al., 2016). planting (NS,YS) • In African countries (Cameroon,Tanzania, and Ethiopia), women were found to be less engaged in adaptation practices based on tree plantations (Deressa et al., 2009; Below et al., 2012; Molua, 2012). • Intercropping preferred by more women than men (Nayasimi, 2016). • In Ghana, gender-responsive participatory approaches reveal that men focus more on changing staple crop varieties, introducing new tree crops, intercropping, and rotation with legumes (Krijston, 2014). Improved high yielding/stress-tolerant variety of • Gender-differentiated preferences and adoption for rice (Mehar et al., 2017), maize (Gebre et al., 2019), orange-feshed sweet potatoes (Gilligan seeds (YS, KS) et al., 2013), potato (Gilligan et al., 2013), and drought-tolerant leguminous trees (Bernier et al., 2013). DSR(WS, ES) • DSR weeding increases and reduces transplanting. Early planting (KS) • Shifting of planting dates in Malawi (Pangapanga et al., 2012). Home/kitchen gardens (KS,WS) • Women need less water (Carr and Thompson, 2013). • Green manuring: GM (NS). • Minimal or no participation of women using GM was observed (Murray et • Leaf color chart (NS). al., 2016; Khatri- Chhetri, 2019). • Canopy sensors (NS). • Signifcant changes by gender for cover-cropping in Kenya (Bernier et al., • Cover crop methods (ES,WS), furrow irrigated 2015). bed planting (WS).

Key climate-smart interventionsi

Table 15.1 Gender considerations of various CSA interventions in South Asia and Africa

Gender and the uptake of CSA technology

• Improve milk production during adverse weather conditions. • Better livestock management leading to secured income, especially in cases of crop loss, reduced labor for livestock-related activities. • Increased nutrient supply for crop cultivation. • More women than men adopted improved feed management in Uganda and Kenya.Whereas more than women adopt tolerant livestock in Senegal and Kenya; for manure management there are mixed results across countries in context of men and women adoption (Twyman, 2014). • No gender-differentiated research found specifc to CSA in fsheries.

Reduction in labor hours and female-friendly technology. Reduction in water collection time for women and girls. Drip irrigation in Nepal (Upadhyay, 2004). Rainwater harvest (Carr and Thompson, 2013).

• • • •

Cono Weeder (ES) • Management of water control structures (drainage management). • Irrigation: drip irrigation, irrigation through solar pumps, rainwater harvesting (ES,WS). • Fodder cultivation and management (fodder bank, improved varieties, silage/hay preparation) (CS, KS). • Weather friendly housing for livestock (WS). • Livestock manure management. • Biogas for domestic energy.

Weeding Collection of water for domestic or irrigation purpose Livestock management (fodder collection and milking)

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i

Source: Bernier et al. (2015); Mehar et al. (2016); Mehar et al. (2014); FAO (2016); FAO module for CSA. Figures within brackets are a form of “smartness” in CSA. Smartness categories are: CS: carbon smart (reduces greenhouse gas); ES: energy smart; KS: knowledge smart; NS: nutrient smart;WS: water smart;YS: yield smart; Note: DSR: Direct-seeded rice; GM: Green Manuring; LLL: laser land leveling; ZT: zero-till.

Fisheries

• Better water management with improved Aquaculture and capture fsheries oxygen (WS,YS, CS). • Better feeds (YS, CS, NS). • Selective breeding/genetic improvements (KS). • Integrated multitrophic aquaculture (YS, CS). • Adjusting harvest and market schedules (KS). Post-harvest Post-harvest • Improved post-harvesting practices, such as • Reduced labor as well as food/crop losses during post-harvest operations. improved storage and processing methods (KS). • Weather information (KS). • Energy Stove more attractive to women (Ragasa, 2012; Bernier et al., 2013). Others Marketing, • Energy Stove (CS, ES). information, and better agricultureinduced practice

Livestock

Irrigation

Examples of gender-differentiated revelation to CSA

Key climate-smart interventionsi

Key activities

Table 15.1 Gender considerations of various CSA interventions in South Asia and Africa (Continued)

Mamta Mehar

Gender and the uptake of CSA technology

Even after accounting for other factors, CSA designed specifcally for women-dominant activities were few, have low adoption rate and also did not necessarily result in increasing women’s welfare.There are mixed experiences for CSA practices for water management, which tremendously reduces the drudgery, time, and energy of women, who often are responsible for water collection, which is used for household as well as feld and livestock requirements. In a few examples, the introduction of irrigation technologies increased women’s dependency on men (Nation, 2011). Practices like rainwater harvesting help men who are more vulnerable as they are more dependent on rain-fed agriculture compared to women with hand-irrigated small gardens (Carr and Thompson, 2013). Rural women rely more on biomass (e.g., agricultural crops, waste, wood, and other forest resources) and activities related to these have a huge impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Adaptation of CSA techniques and practices like biogas, livestock manure management practices, and Energy Stove could help to reduce GHG emissions. Energy Stove, a triple-win CSA practice for improving health (from diseases due to open-air fre/combustion, time- and labor-saving in collecting fuel, wood, and cooking time), improved income (reduced fuel consumption), and mitigation (reduced air pollution) are more attractive to women (Ragasa, 2012; Bernier et al., 2013). In the majority of rural societies across South Asia, women generally look after livestock. In fsheries (capture fsheries and aquaculture), activities are highly gendered, with women assuming a dominant role in fsh processing and backyard ponds. CSA practices are at a nascent stage in these two sectors. In 2015, the CultiAf project introduced improved fsh processing CSA technologies and trained 256 male and female fshers, processors, and traders from six fshing camps testing the new technologies (FAO and Care, 2019).

Caution and concern regarding the gender dimension in CSA uptake The majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from land use (30%), with the largest share from crop production (64%) (De Pinto, 2018). By now, it has become obvious from the research that long-term adaptation of CSA practices requires disentangling the CSA practices that would acknowledge gender-informed adaptation strategies. Such an approach needs research that considers women’s and men’s differentiated knowledge and experiences of climate change, the impact of climate change, and CSA and their capacities to respond, with attention to men, masculinities, and gender relations.

Gender mainstreaming: attention needed for inclusion in planning and policy While the needs of gender-inclusive climate change adaptation strategies have been documented and received some attention recently, serious limitations remain. Gender is not considered in the planning phase of projects. Budgeting for gender is a diffcult challenge.While gender is often considered in adaptation, it is often overlooked in the planning of mitigation strategies. Gender issues are still interpreted as biological differences undermining the importance of the imbalance in power structures. Few attempts have been made to design women-friendly technologies that address structural inequalities. Sometimes, available practices involve the risk of shifting control over resources and profts from female to male domains. While the available guides, to some extent, present ways to consider gender that can address structural inequalities, the research focuses only on examining the triad of experiences, vulnerability, and impact and, to some extent, CSA adoption decisions in a given time and space.The available education system does not focus on climate-smart agriculture, let alone gender inclusion. 205

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Gender analysis: slip-ups Men rarely suffer from gender-based discrimination, but they do face marginalization due to poverty and experience vulnerability in climate change due to their responsibility for household income. However, in gender research, often, the research slips into gender equals women, with women as the victim. Such assumptions need to be discarded. As the IPCC stated,“women are not inherently vulnerable because of their biological sex” (Framework Convention on Climate Change [FCCC], 2019, p. 7). Women, as traditionally responsible for household food, nutrition, energy, and water supplies, cannot be ignored. But rather than “counting women” as victims and/or “adding women” as adopters of CSA (with an adopt or not adopt decision), a nuanced approach requires capturing the multiple and intersecting identities, knowledge, and power. We cannot ignore every household member that is badly affected by climate change, such as the loss of crops, assets, and livestock, with varying degrees due to their age, gender, education, etc. Often women are considered as homogenous with the assumption that all women are equally vulnerable in a given context. However, intersectional inequalities based on age, class, and caste, as well as the relational analysis of men and women across social categories, infuence the impacts of and responses to climate change.

CSA practices: gender dichotomy Gender studies for CSA are mostly based on analyzing coping or adapting strategies with minimal focus on mitigation strategies, which are important for coping with the repeated hazards and ecological crisis.Women remain information-starved even for coping and adapting strategies. The prevailing channel of communication for CSA (i.e., through demonstration, agriservice providers) have a low effect on women’s awareness of climate-smart agriculture (World Bank et al., 2015). CSA practices are often designed for one crop stage and a single climate shock even though farmers in recent years have started facing multiple climate shocks in the same season. The effect of one CSA designed for one climatic shock can offset or reinforce another shock in situations of multiple shocks in the same setting and time. For example, in north India, rice farmers in 2019 faced more than one climate extreme. First, the timing of the onset of the monsoon was delayed, which resulted in water shortages for rice transplanting, and later the great intensity and frequency of the rainfall (fash foods in most places) destroyed the early crop. The role of a person and thus, the division of labor in farming varies across contexts, household needs, and norms. However, agricultural activities are predominantly defned based on the perception of “physical abilities” and are often obscured in favor of one gender. Men are considered suited for land preparation, crop sowing, and fertilizer application, whereas women are assumed to be primarily responsible for activities like rice transplanting, weeding, harvesting and threshing of crops, processing of fsh, and livestock management. To date, the majority of the CSA-designed technologies overlook the fnancial, resource, and masculine-power limitations of women compared to men. Furthermore, almost all CSAs with visible and direct effects on one gender of the associated CSA agriculture activity have an indirect effect on the other agriculture activities and perhaps the other gender. For example, ZT reduces labor and saves energy for clearing land, but increases labor (women) for weeding.This indirect burden on men or women does not ensure smartness in CSA. As stated by Perch and Byrd (2015, p. 1), “The

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determination of ‘smartness’ has to come from farmers as evidence that it is doable and brings returns and doesn’t have women bending, digging and doing more manual labor as CSA has done so far” [CSA Stakeholder]. In the debate of the relevance of CSA in addressing gender-specifc needs and resource-use patterns, the gender-differentiated power over resources needs to be examined. Mehar et al. (2016) found that the difference in adoption behavior is infuenced by the gender of the decision-maker and action-taker in the farm household. For the adoption and scaling of womenfriendly technology, working separately with women may not overcome men dominated infuence in decision-making (Bernier et al., 2013). Decision-making regarding the choice of practice, use of resources, and investment decisions rest with men and/or senior household members. Providing resources or training for mitigation strategies may lead to triple discrimination of women (Box 15.1).“Implementation of CSA will fail to beneft women, and in fact may entrench existing inequalities, without an adequate understanding of how gender roles and tasks in households and the community may be affected by new CSA technologies and practices” (FAO and CARE, 2019, p. 7).

Box 15.1: Triple discrimination of women Agrarian women face double discrimination as they belong to marginalized groups (the majority of farmers are from this group) and being women (thus constrained by cultural norms like “Pradah,” not talking to men other than one’s husband, and lack of mobility, access, and control over resources).Women are invisible, but they are actively contributing to family farming, as it is realized that a single male “providers for the household” with a low paying job is unable to suffciently provide for the family. Recognizing this need, several efforts (in terms of training and technology innovations/provision) have been made by governments as well as private initiatives to improve the skills of women in the past decade. It has been proven that trained women’s engagement in farming results in increased production, food nutrition security, increased savings, and an increase in the education of children at the household level.These women are found to be more confdent and managed than untrained groups. However, the training often has negative outcomes such as criticism from family for attending training, increased work burden, reduced sleep, and increased expectations.Thus, adding a third layer of discrimination to the frst two layers of discrimination of women as members of marginalized groups and as women. Technical training, often men-centric, does not have lasting positive empowerment-related impacts on women due to the following reasons frst, conventionally, almost all training or extension work/demonstration is men-centric due to the requirement of physical strength; some training programs pre-conditioned participant with access to land or other resources which women often have no access or control; and fnally, women’s involvement decisions as well as farming decision as a result of trainings are often challenged by men in their family..The challenging aspect that is overlooked is that technical training for women does not fundamentally change the strategic freedoms they have; even trained women’s ideas are not taken seriously by men.This is a major criticism of CSA technology’s inappropriate method of targeting women for training by ignoring the sensitivity of gender (normative) barriers.

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Lastly, the adoption of CSA practices does not always necessarily provide a solution for climate extremes. As argued by Bernier et al. (2015 cited in World Bank et al., 2015, p. 5), “CSA strategies are unlikely to be effective, let alone equitable or transformative, without active attention to gender.” Neufeldt et al. (2013) argued that CSA fails to recognize its possible impact on different actors, ecosystem services, and socio-cultural dynamics.This may be a reason behind the productivity paradox4 despite the evolution of a large number of CSA practices that are also integrated at different levels such as integrating crops, livestock, aquaculture, and trees; research, policy, and practices; or along the value chain from production to consumption (FAO and World Bank, 2017).

Integrating intersectional understandings in CSA Current CSA practices are not designed to break the barriers of structural inequalities. Convincing the communities about the value of this shift, with assuring changes in risk for climate extremes, reducing climate emissions, and even providing supporting technologies and services, is not suffcient as the people are mostly from marginalized groups with strong beliefs in social norms and traditional practice. Binary gender analysis overlooks the intersection with other social dimensions. A review by Thompson et al. (2016) of relevant literature on intersectionality argued that applying intersectional approaches concerning social dimensions can improve climate adaptation approaches. Intersectional framing recognizes identities and associated roles and responsibilities (within and outside the household sphere) that can infuence exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climate change. For example, a recent publication of case studies (Choudhury et al.,2017), focused on understanding the needs and issues of trained and untrained women, though training program were not directly related to CSA.5 They found that the inclusion of husbands and older female members in the household increased women’s participation in training programs. Similar fndings were discussed by Farnworth et al. (2016, p. 20), “Because our husbands, father-in-law and mothers-in-law were included in some sessions, it was easier for them to understand what we told them; they don’t create any barriers” [woman participant]. Thus, in order to address these constraints and enable women to gain benefts from the use of CSA practices, more gender transformative approaches are needed, such as involving men and other family members in the women targeted intervention programs, and using participatory action research and social messaging around gender. Another example discusses structural power imbalance within the same gender. The study argued, with seniority (age), older women are more dependent than junior women (Carr and Thompson, 2013 cited in Thompson et al., 2016) on sales of surplus rain-fed crops from handirrigated gardens.This contrasts with men, where junior men are more reliant on the sale of surplus rain-fed crops than senior men. If broader convergences of identity markers are taken into account, such as the intersection of gender and seniority, a more nuanced picture of vulnerability is revealed. We need to understand everyone’s perspective (identifying their identities in relation to their roles and priorities, how they perform their roles, with what resources, and who makes and infuences their decisions) so that wellbeing and production can be improved with improved practice. Scholars should not forget that gender does not equal women, but it means the inclusion of both men and women and intersectionality aspects in their relationships.

Conclusion There is little research that rigorously explores the association of CSA, gender, and agriculture so far, with very few examples of the adoption of individual CSA technology and practice. Drawing 208

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on training guides and selected examples, this chapter provides insights by analyzing the potential for adoption and impact of CSA interventions with meaningful consideration of the direct and indirect effect of these interventions on the complex and intersectional roles of men and women, power distance, and masculinity-femininity. The chapter provides a theoretical framework for analyzing climate change manifestations and policies from the perspective of genderdifferentiated roles in agriculture.The chapter elaborates cautions and concerns for conducting gender analysis on CSA technology adoption and scaling, and discusses the potential approaches to ensure that both men and women are able to learn, try out, take up, and beneft from CSA.

Acknowledgment The research presented here benefted from the comments and suggestions in the workshop organized for this book in June 2019, USA. Sincere appreciation to Carolyn and the team for leading this book.A special thanks to Margaret Abiodun Adesugba for giving detailed comments on the frst draft of the chapter.

Notes 1 Climate variability, according to IPCC (2007) refers to variations in the mean state and other statics (such as standard deviations, statistics of extremes) of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual weather events, whereas climate change refers to a statistically signifcant variation in either the mean state of the climate or its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer).. 2 Structural factors are those that infuence the capacity of society and its institutions to adapt to climate change impacts within the constraints of the broader economic–social–political arrangements (Vulturius et al., 2018). 3 Subjective factors are socioeconomic characteristics of individuals that infuence their behavior (such as age, gender, individual risk-taking behavior, access and control over resources, and decision-making). 4 Productivity paradox means a persistent slowdown in productivity growth despite technological advancements. 5 The case studies explored here are not specifc to CSA technologies and practices.

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16 GENDER AND URBAN AGRICULTURE Hannah Whitley

Introduction Since 2000, urban agriculture (UA) has experienced dramatic expansion, especially as its practice has played an instrumental role in the increase in local food production on a global, national, and regional scale. In 2014 alone, US local food sales totaled at least $12 billion, a signifcant increase from the $5 billion from local sales in 2008 (United States Department of Agriculture [USDA], 2016).This value is estimated to reach $20 billion by 2019, an amount largely attributed to increases in metropolitan food production (USDA, 2016). Defned briefy as “the growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities” (Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Forestry [RUAF], 2018), UA ventures include operations that participate in crop cultivation, animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture activities. Some UA operations are managed by non-proft organizations or private enterprises to grow food for sale at retail stores, or they may be smaller-sized operations that grow exclusively for sale at farmer’s markets (Johnson, 2017, p. 1). It is common for urban agriculture operators in the United States to market their products as “locally produced” or as part of a “local food system.”1 The FAO estimates that UA is practiced by more than 800 million people worldwide (2010), with production taking place on private, leased, borrowed, rented, or squatted land in inner-city, peri-urban, and suburban areas, in backyards, on rooftops, on vacant public lands, and semi-public land (Penniman, 2018; RUAF, 2018). A study by Thebo et al. (2014) estimates that global city dwellers are farming and gardening an area the size of the European Union.2 Though limited statistics and the lack of a consistent defnition for urban agriculture make it diffcult to obtain an accurate profle of global operators, regional studies by Adebisi and Monisola (2012) in Nigeria, Danso et al. (2003) in Ghana, Gamhewage et al. (2015) in Sri Lanka, Hovorka (2006) in Botswana, and Ngome and Foeken (2012) in Cameroon show that the majority of urban agriculturalists are women. A growing body of research strives to recognize how social identities, such as socioeconomic status, race, location, and gender, complicate barriers and opportunities for urban farmers, especially as contemporary scholarship calls for a focus on the intersectional issues that lie at the core of social justice in agriculture (Bowens, 2015; Penniman, 2018; Sachs et al., 2016). This chapter presents a review on the state of the knowledge of gender and urban agriculture on a global scale and suggests a research agenda that addresses the needs of women urban grow212

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ers. First, I discuss women’s motivations for involvement in urban agriculture opportunities and explore how these motivations have been linked to positive changes in local neighborhoods and communities. After providing a description of the seven challenges related to women’s urban agriculture operation I have identifed within academic literature, I conclude with a discussion of future research directions that will continue to insert urban agriculture within discussions of social issues, increase our understanding of women agriculturalists in urban contexts, and meet the needs of local growers.

Women’s motivations for involvement in urban agriculture Some scholars believe that the large number of women involved in urban agriculture is the result of agricultural feminization (Kelkar, 2009; Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2008; Lu, 2011; Pattnaik et al., 2017), referring to the increased participation or greater roles of women in leadership positions and decision-making processes that have been typically held by men within their community or household (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2008; Pattnaik et al., 2017; Sachs and Alston, 2010). As the feminization of agriculture takes place, women are increasingly required and expected to perform subsistence, undervalued, and precarious work (Allen and Sachs, 2007; Enloe, 2014; Patal Campillo, 2012). Geographically speaking, the majority of agricultural feminization scholarship has been conducted in rural communities, which speaks directly to the connection between agrarianism and rurality. A second school of thought contends that women have always been the main cultivators of urban spaces (Mbiba, 1994; Mudimu, 1996; Sanyal, 1987).These scholars argue that urban agriculture production is not experiencing feminization; rather, women have always represented the majority of primary operators in urban spaces. Over the past decade, scholars have documented the high prevalence of female urban growers in many countries, including Kenya, Mozambique, the Philippines, Senegal, Syria, Thailand, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (Abdelali-Martini and de Pryck, 2014; Adebisi and Monisola, 2012; Danso et al., 2003; Gamhewage et al., 2015; Hovorka et al., 2009; Lu, 2011; Ngome and Foeken, 2012; Simiyu, 2012). Gender and agriculture literature points to two motivations that explain the high number of women farming in urbanized areas: 1) that women tend to bear the responsibility for household sustenance, nutrition, and wellbeing and 2) women tend to have lower educational status than men, and therefore, more diffculties in fnding formal wage employment (Hovorka et al., 2009; Sachs and Alston, 2010). In her study of women agriculturalists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Whitley (2019) identifes four additional motivations for why women might be motivated to participate in urban agriculture activities: 1) connection to community, 2) advancing individual education, 3) self-fulfllment, and 4) occupational suitability. While some participants began growing food to connect their community or increase their education, others see urban agriculture as a way to satisfy their own goals or dreams, reconnect with the land, or fnd solace away from stressful work environments (Whitley, 2019). Globally, women’s participation in UA has been shown to boost household nutrition and community food security (Doss et al., 2011; Lu, 2011), generate income (Danso et al., 2003; Gamhewage et al., 2015; Sebata et al., 2014), improve women’s psychological wellbeing (Oliver and Heinecken, 2017), and build social inclusion with their local community (Adebisi and Monisola, 2012). Some scholars have attributed urban agriculture’s popularity among women due to its compatibility with traditional gender roles (Hovorka, 2006; Oliver and Heinecken, 2017; Tembo and Louw, 2013). In this way, international scholarship has shown that urban agriculture is often an accessible path for women to meet the challenges of poverty alleviation, family care, social isolation, food insecurity, and malnutrition (FAO, 2010; Hovorka et al., 2009). 213

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Challenges for women operators in urban agriculture spaces My reading of contemporary academic literature on gender and urban agriculture points to seven challenges related to women’s urban agriculture operation. These include: 1) lack of access to/and tenure on land; 2) limited access to and control over capital and resources; 3) lack of an agricultural background and restricted knowledge of technical and business skills; 4) lack of mentorship; 5) household structures and family responsibilities; 6) isolation; and 7) roles in decision-making.The next seven sections are dedicated to describing the literature on each of these challenges.

Lack of access to/and tenure on land Finding viable production plots is a strategic endeavor in any urban environment, especially as purchases are often limited due to the high value of urban acreage (Dorward et al., 2013). Urban farmers use their backyard, family land, borrowed land, community land, land trusts, vacant lots, government land, and squatting as sources for agricultural production (Penniman, 2018).Though lack of access to/and tenure on land for urban agriculture is a challenge for all operators regardless of gender, women are differentially affected by discriminatory policies and patriarchal ownership norms. In a study assessing the challenges of farming in urban areas, Adebisi and Monisola (2012) show that land access and tenure3 is one of the most pressing problems for women in urban agriculture. Non-ownership implies that a landlord may abruptly take over a plot from a farmer, even before harvest (Wilbers, 2003). This concern is especially high for urban crop producers, for example, as perennials are often not planted on non-tenured land for fear of pending eviction (Wilbers, 2003). In cities that do not yet have a designated urban agriculture policy, land tenure is particularly problematic for female operators. Kasanga et al. (1996) note that women are often the frst to lose their property rights when land is converted from customary tenure to private, individual tenure practices. Musiimenta (2000) argues that the biggest problem for urban women farmers is the uncertainty of land development. In most cases, when land is purchased by an external developer, farmers are given very short notice to vacate the premises, which results in signifcant losses in built capital, fnancial investments, and individual labor that has been invested in UA operations.There are fnancial implications for operating on non-tenured urban land as well. Kimani (2008) describes how urban women farmers have been barred from using non-tenured cultivated land as collateral to obtain loans, an asset necessary to obtain fnancial capital to improve the productivity and proftability of agricultural operations. Cultural traditions have also been identifed as one of the main barriers preventing women from inheriting and controlling land, crops, and animals on an equal basis with men (Adebisi and Monisola, 2012; Doss et al., 2011; Gamhewage et al., 2015; Hovorka et al., 2009; Maxwell et al., 1998).This challenge has been observed with both rural and urban women farm operators (Agarwal, 1988; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014; FAO, 2012; Johnson et al., 2016). Wilbers (2003) describes how traditions of patrilineal property inheritance frequently limit urban women’s access to a secure place to live, their ability to produce subsistence, and to generate income.

Limited access to and control over capital and resources Along with limited access to and tenure over land, urban women struggle with restricted access to and control over capital and resources. Some of the biggest limitations for fnancial capital 214

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include inadequate access to farm credit and loans (Dorward et al., 2013; Gamhewage et al., 2015; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014; Pattnaik et al., 2017; Sebata et al., 2014). Many urban female farmers cannot purchase land, animals, seed, equipment, or other operational necessities due to lack of credit, which limits both productivity and proftability (Birky, 2009; Kelkar, 2009; Maxwell et al., 1998). Access to and control over resources is an added constraint to women’s operational ability in urban agriculture spaces. Wilbers (2003) identifes two major concerns within this realm: access to and control over productive resources4 and control over the benefts of production.5 Maxwell et al. (1998, p. 2) detail how women urban farmers who are denied income from their husbands occasionally keep money from their produce sales without their spouse’s knowledge. Moreover, Moser (1993) describes how external factors like ideological, cultural, and economic reasons often underly the symmetries and asymmetries in intra-household, governmental, and non-governmental resource allocation, especially in urban spaces.Where traditions of patrilineal property inheritance limit women’s access to land, male-dominated perceptions of women as owners and managers of fnancial and built capital limit their access to fnancial support systems and lending services (Wilbers, 2003).With limited access to and control over capital and resources, urban women in agriculture are restricted in terms of proftability, productivity, and acquisition potential.

Limited agricultural background and restricted knowledge of technical and business skills In one of the few quantitative studies on this topic, Barau and Oladeji (2017) identifed the lack of awareness of cultivation, business, and technical opportunities as one of the top seven constraints faced in urban agricultural production in a survey of urban women involved in agricultural production activities in the Sokoto metropolis of Nigeria.The authors found a positive correlation between educational attainment and participation in urban agricultural production activities, which suggests that the more educated urban women are, the higher the likelihood that they participate in UA production (Barau and Oladeji, 2017).The survey by Gamhewage et al. (2015) of women’s participation in UA and its infuence on the family economy in Sri Lanka supports these fndings. Age, education level, number of family members, and land cultivability were found to be the most infuential socioeconomic factors affecting women’s participation in urban agriculture. Alongside the lack of awareness of opportunities within UA spaces, limited agricultural background and restricted knowledge of technical and business skills are barriers to women’s involvement in urban agriculture (Bardasi et al., 2007; RUAF, 2018; Simiyu, 2012; Wilbers, 2003). In response to the lack of adequate organizational support supplying technical, fnancial, and business resources in addition to social support, Sachs et al. describe how women farmers have created agricultural networks “that are intentionally focused on providing access to the resources they need to successfully overcome the challenges all farmers face, as well as the challenges women specifcally face” (2016, p. 116).Though Sachs and colleagues primarily discuss organizations created to meet the needs of rural women farmers, recent scholarship from Penniman (2018), Reynolds and Cohen (2016), and Rosan and Pearsall (2018) enhances the literature on community UA and grower support networks. Rosan and Pearsall (2018, p. 118) note that these urban grower support networks are often founded by and run by women, though the authors critique the overwhelming whiteness that typically dominates UA coalitions, networks, and organizations. 215

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Lack of mentorship Some women growers, especially growers of color, have identifed a lack of mentorship as being a signifcant challenge to their urban agriculture operations. In Whitley’s (2019, p. 100) study of women growers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one participant described how “Even though we’re in this place that’s technically urban, you still feel like you’re alone in the work that you’re doing and like there’s nobody to help you.” Some participants shared experiences of formal mentorship opportunities that had ended poorly, thus souring personal and professional relationships. For these individuals, many felt as if they could no longer operate in the same circles as their former mentors for fear of fnancial or social retaliation.

Home, family, and the agricultural division of labor Empirical studies examining household structures, family responsibilities, and their relationship to women and urban agriculture are limited in both breadth and depth. While the majority of academic scholarship on household structures, “women’s work,” and the division of labor in agricultural activities have been conducted in rural settings, studies by Doss et al. (2011), Hovorka et al. (2009), Ofei-Abagye (1997), Ragnekar (2002), and Wilbers (2003) add an urban perspective to the discussion. The literature by Doss et al. (2011) compiles fndings from 23 studies that examine differences between male and female farmers’ time spent on farm-, family-, and household-related activities.Though the review combines study fndings that range from 1982 to 2008, the authors conclude that, regardless of a woman farmer’s rurality or urbanity, the labor burden of women exceeds that of men and includes a higher proportion of unpaid household responsibilities related to preparing food, collecting fuel and water, and completing everyday tasks and chores (Dos et al., 2011). The authors do not specifcally call for an intersectional analysis of urban women’s agricultural labor; however, they end with a discussion of how income and time spent on family and household-related activities varies by geographic region, operator age, ethnic group, and their chosen production cycle, crop variety, and livestock species. This fnding is similar to Ragnekar’s (2002) case study comparison of gender, task division, and urban livestock cultivation.The author concludes that task division between men and women in urban livestock operations differ according to their respective cultural group(s), their socioeconomic status, the species and size of the livestock they raise, and the location of their operation. Along with differences in the amount of work performed by men and women involved in urban agriculture, variances in the division of responsibility for certain crops (Hovorka, 2006; Ofei-Abagye, 1997), variances in seasonal responsibilities (Ofei-Aboagye, 1997), and changes in cultivation, application, and technological preferences (Wilbers, 2003) have been observed in global urban agriculture settings.

Isolation Despite their residence in Pennsylvania’s second-largest urban center, participants in Whitley’s (2019) study of women agriculturalists in Pittsburgh found that isolation is one of the biggest challenges for growing food in the city. Many new and beginning women growers spoke of the diffculty they experienced “breaking into” established urban agriculture networks, especially those within non-proft sectors. Some respondents attributed their connection diffculties to their lack of a pre-established contact with someone currently working within the urban agriculture realm. Others hypothesized that a grower must already be part of a community garden or 216

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larger organization to successfully cultivate an urban agriculture operation. Feelings of isolation among women growers were common, regardless of their participation in agriculture education events and community workshops, and suggests that even though support programs exist, new and beginning urban growers still struggle to navigate the systems of non-proft, extension, and federal support organizations in place to support agriculturalists.Whitley (2019, p. 135) hypothesizes that these feelings of isolation are not unique to farming and gardening operations in Pittsburgh; rather, they are representative of broader challenges not yet identifed within urban agriculture literature. Barbercheck et al. (2009), Brasier et al. (2009), Sachs et al. (2016), and Trauger (2004), for example, have described how isolation and lack of mentorship negatively affect the operations of women agriculturalists who operate in rural locations. These barriers, however, have not yet been identifed in the literature that examines women who operate in urban spaces.

Roles in decision-making Wilbers (2003) describes how women’s control over resources and decision-making power are closely related yet distinguishable issues. She situates the role and bargaining power of women urban farmers on two different levels: on the land6 and in the community.7 Arguing that the decision-making power of women within communities “can be highly infuenced by the extent to which women’s group activities exist” (Wilbers, 2003, p. 3), she suggests that “group activities” and networking organizations are the best place for female farmers to pool resources, skills, information, time, and energy. Sachs et al. (2016) add that women-centered agricultural networking organizations are an excellent space for female farmers to create community and become empowered to make decisions in their roles as farm operators. Robertson (2013, p. 36) critiques Wilbers’ argument, noting that the problem with female-centered organization/network solutions is that “this view does not acknowledge mixed-sex [sic] groups who have come together [to pool resources].” There is a possibility that women urban agriculturalists experience similar levels of community and empowerment from mixed-gender UA organizations. At this time, though, published academic scholarship has yet to support this critique.

Future research directions Studies in numerous settings across the globe have shown that urban growers who struggle the most to establish and maintain sustainable practices are those who identify as members of historically marginalized communities, including women and women of color. Future scholarship should continue to explore how social identifers, such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender, infuence the sustainability of urban agriculture operations and offer suggestions for improvements needed to make UA institutional and social spaces more equitable. One glowing weakness in current critical urban agriculture scholarship is the lack of studies employing intersectional analyses within their work. Scholars and activists have argued that intersectional theory is a valuable and necessary framework for understanding how the multiple identities held by agriculturalists infuence their lived experiences, and how systems of power, privilege, oppression, and discrimination infuence their daily operations (Bowens, 2015; Reynolds and Cohen, 2016; Rosan and Pearsall, 2018; Sachs et al., 2016). Nevertheless, traditional scholarship on barriers to urban agriculture operation has existed in a single-variable, linear vacuum. Typically, scholars analyze issues that women farmers, urban farmers, and nonwhite farmers experience, while few have examined how race, ethnicity, gender, and location intersect in this context. Future urban agriculture scholarship must use intersectional theory to 217

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identify how the multiple identities held by agriculturalists infuence their lived experiences and how global systems of power, privilege, oppression, and discrimination affect the daily operation of their agricultural enterprises.8 An additional weakness in UA literature is that current scholarship on urban agriculture in the Global South tends to depoliticize women’s roles and goals for participating in UA.Though scholarship on urban agriculture in the Global North is still severely lacking in gender analyses, fndings conclude that UA is often a space for women to mobilize through political activism for social justice issues, such as land access, political representation, and food security and sovereignty (Penniman, 2018; Rosan and Pearsall, 2018). In contrast, UA research in the Global South emphasizes the economic and environmental benefts of urban agriculture, particularly UA’s role in enhancing individual and community health and nutrition. Future urban agriculture literature in the Global South would beneft from a gender analysis that seeks to identify UA’s role within political mobilization and community activism. Furthermore, to better understand the current state and needs of urban growers, urban agriculture-specifc censuses should take place globally and domestically. If full censuses are not realistic fnancial endeavors, growers, service providers, and funders would beneft in identifying results from city-level surveys, such as those conducted by Armstrong (2000) and Corrigan (2011). Efforts to identify urban growers and explore the characteristics, geographic location, and needs of local growers are needed to increase state, federal, and international support for UA budgets and programming. Moreover, to create more accessible and equitable spaces within urban agriculture systems, practitioners must acknowledge and amend the long-term historical, institutional, and cultural inequality endemic to global food systems. Studies have mentioned many future research directions that should be pursued, among them, connecting urban agriculture to themes of social justice and inclusion among historically marginalized growers (Cohen and Reynolds, 2014; Penniman, 2018; Ramirez, 2015; Rosan and Pearsall, 2018; Whitley, 2019). As gender-, race-, and ethnically-rooted coalitions rise from urban agriculture spaces, public and private offcials should support and encourage such organizations through representation on committees, task forces, and leadership positions, and via resource, fnance, and labor provisions.

Notes 1 Unlike organic or non-GMO food, there is no legal or universally accepted label or defnition of “local food,” though these terms are often used interchangeably to refer to food produced near its point of consumption in relation to the modern or mainstream food system (Martinez et al., 2010). 2 Approximately 1.7 million square miles (European Union, 2018). 3 Land tenure refers to “the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual” (USAID, 2018) who is said to “hold” the land. Land tenure determines who can use land, for how long, and under what conditions. 4 Such as land, water, inputs, credit, technical and market information, technology, contacts, interpersonal networks, and organizations (Wilbers, 2004, p. 2). 5 Referring to cash income, food, and other products (for home consumption, sale, or exchange) (Wilbers, 2004, p. 2). 6 “On the land” refers to the site of production in which urban agriculture takes place. Decisions might be related to deciding what to produce and when, decisions regarding infrastructure, and decisions regarding labor, among other things (Wilbers, 2003, p. 3). 7 Community decisions are mostly focused on organizations and networks that might add bargaining power to “on the land” decisions. These include resource pools, skills, information, time, and energy (Wilbers, 2003, p. 3). 8 For further discussion on the need for intersectional scholarship among issues of gender and agriculture, please see Leder’s chapter “Intersectionality on Farms” in this handbook.

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Gender and urban agriculture Reynolds, K., and Cohen, N. (2016). Beyond the Kale: urban agriculture and social justice activism in New York City.Athens: University of Georgia Press. Robertson, C. (2013). “The role of gender in urban agriculture: a case study of Cape Town’s urban and peri-urban townships.” Master’s thesis, The University of Guelph, Ontario. https://pdfs.semanticscho lar.org/b38f/6290ce95233fd9686f0a934f89b3cd72b2ae.pdf. Rosan, C., and Pearsall, H. (2018). Growing a sustainable city?: the question of urban agriculture Toronto: University of Toronto Press. RUAF. (2018).“Urban agriculture: what and why?” Report for the Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture & Forestry Foundation. RUAF Foundation, Leusden, the Netherlands. Sachs, C.E., Barbercheck, M.E., Brasier, K.J., Kiernan, N.E., and Terman,A.R. (2016). The rise of women and sustainable agriculture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Sanyal, B. (1987).“Urban cultivation amidst modernization: how should we interpret it?” Journal of Planning, Education, and Research 6 (3):187–207. Sebata, N., Mabhena, C., and Sithole, M. (2014).“Does urban agriculture help improve women`s resilience to poverty? Evidence from low-income generating women in Bulawayo.” Science 19 (4):128–136. Simiyu, R.R. (2012). “I don’t tell my husband about vegetable sales. Gender dynamics in urban agriculture in Eldoret, Kenya.” Report for the Netherlands Organisation for Scientifc Research – WOTRO Science for Global Development. Report no. WB 53-355. Leiden, the Netherlands: African Studies Centre. Tembo, R., and Louw, J. (2013). “Conceptualising and implementing two community gardening projects on the Cape Flats, Cape Town.” Development Southern Africa 30 (2):224–237. Thebol,A.L., Drechsel, P., and Lambin, E.F. (2014).“Global assessment of urban and peri-urban agriculture: irrigated and rainfed croplands.” Environmental Research Letters 9 (11):1–9. Trauger, A. (2004). “Because they can do the work’: women farmers in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA.” Gender, Place & Culture 2 (1):289–307. USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). (2016). “USDA Unveils New Urban Agriculture Toolkit.” Available at https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAOC/bulletins/14652de (accessed 23 September 2019). Whitley, H. (2019). “Power, privilege, and ‘Playing in the Dirt’: an intersectional exploration of women’s agricultural experiences in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” Master’s thesis,The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, viewed 1 January 2020. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/fles/fnal_submissions/20398. Wilbers, J. (2003). “Urban agriculture and gender: some key issues.” Report for the Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture & Forestry (RUAF) Foundation. RUAF Foundation, Leusden, the Netherlands.

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PART 3

Knowledge, methods, and access to information

17 GENDER AND AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Mary Barbercheck

Farming is a resource-intensive activity (United Nations Environment Program, 2016), requiring access to time, land and water, capital/credit, infrastructure, equipment, technology, markets, and information. Substantial gender gaps exist in access to and control of many of these key resources (Huyer, 2016, World Bank, 2012). Farmers beneft from education and training on technical developments that can improve production, environmental stewardship, business management and marketing, and other topics that can impact their success.Although farmers access information from many sources, in the US and elsewhere, agricultural extension has often been the main formalized resource for educational and technical support.Worldwide, the purpose of modern agricultural extension is to transfer science- or evidence-based knowledge and technologies to farmers and agriculture-related professionals (Lubbell and Niles, 2014) with the goal of promoting improvements in productivity, food security, rural livelihoods, and agriculture as an engine of economic growth (International Food Policy Research Institute [IFPRI], n.d.).

Purpose of this chapter In this chapter, I briefy review the history of extension, dominant approaches to information delivery, and how gender affects access to this information. I then review the “best ft” framework for the creation of extension programs in less-developed countries and use the case of the development of a local extension program targeting women in the US as an example of the best ft framework (Birner et al., 2009; Faure et al., 2016), illustrating how extension practices in the developing and developed world can inform each other to beneft historically underserved populations.

The development of modern agricultural extension services Agricultural advising long predates modern geopolitical arrangements, as evidenced by clay tablets dating at about 1800 BC inscribed with advice on how best to water crops and reduce grain spoilage due to rats in Mesopotamia.The frst modern agricultural extension services (ES) in Europe developed in response to the outbreak of potato blight in Europe in 1845 (Jones and Garforth, 1997). The term “extension” was used to describe teaching activities that extended the work of university researchers in nineteenth-century England beyond the campus (Davis et 225

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al., 2018). Parallel developments emerged in many European countries, and visitors from North America to Europe brought this concept to North America. In the US, agricultural extension had its beginnings in agricultural clubs and societies that emerged in the early 1800s (National Research Council, 1995). Today, extension in the US is typically associated with land grant universities (LGUs), which were instituted to serve specifc agricultural information needs appropriate to the nation in the second half of the nineteenth century and refected the nation’s largely rural population, farm-economy base, and social norms, including gender norms.The purpose of a formal LGU extension partnership was “to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same” (United States Department of Agriculture [USDA], n.d.). In the US, extension services developed different programs for men and women. Specifcally, extension focused on home economics education emphasizing the increased effciency of women’s work for adult women (Enns and Martin, 2015) and on science-based information for improving farming for men. The adoption of new technologies in the home encouraged more urban, middle-class lifestyles for farmwomen and, perhaps, the subsequent removal of some farmwomen from agricultural production activities (Neth, 1995; Jellison, 1993). The agricultural research extension link typically involves the development of new farming technologies and practices by researchers at universities or, more recently, by industry, followed by the dissemination of this information by extension educators or advisors, with the intended goal that farmers will adopt these technologies and practices. The basic assumption in this expert-to-farmer, top-down model of education is that new technologies and practices being promoted are generally appropriate. In the US, extension perceives itself as an essential contributor to national goals of food security and rural economic development and takes credit for contributing to agricultural progress that enabled fewer farmers to produce more food over the last century (USDA, n.d.). In the Global South, the history of agricultural extension is often linked with colonial administrations, and agricultural policy in pre- and early post-independence periods was often driven by an extractive philosophy (Green, 2009, Naswem and Ejembi, 2017). Colonized lands were considered a source of revenue for colonial administrations through the production of commodity crops on estates for export to developed nations. ES were concentrated in a few areas of commercial production, and subsistence agriculture was largely considered primitive and ineffcient. Colonial powers established agricultural experiment stations, centers, and demonstration farms that focused on the production of export crops such as rubber, tea, cotton, and sugar. Technical advice was provided to plantation managers and large landowners, while assistance to poor farmers and women, who grew subsistence crops, was rare, except in times of crisis. After colonial territories gained their independence, extension emerged from what remained of previous ES and commonly became administered by newly independent governments, usually ministries of agriculture.The establishment of national ES in the newly independent states during the mid-twentieth century led to expanded efforts to bring new agricultural knowledge to farmers.The approach was top-down and linear, an approach generally inherited from colonial predecessors. In recent decades, agricultural extension has evolved in many ways (Lubell et al., 2014). Over time, ES have become more diversifed, with the focus of extension expanding to include social and community issues, such as income, market linkages, food and nutrition security, and wellbeing. However, even with this broadening in issues, a focus on production remains, with agricultural production viewed both as a source of foreign exchange and subsistence, but with greater recognition of the need to serve both commercial agriculture 226

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and small, resource-poor farmers, including women, often with support from foreign donors (Swanson et al., 1997).

Approaches to the delivery of extension information In addition to changes in the types of information delivered by extension, the people who provide information and the ways in which it is provided have also changed, shifting from delivery mainly through public ES to pluralistic information exchange networks, and away from public extension “expert-to-learner” technology transfer to include more interactive approaches. Current ES and knowledge systems are comprised of a diverse network of actors and multiple learning pathways including facilitation, experiential learning from practice, technical learning from outreach materials, and social learning in which private industry, non-governmental agencies, and community-based organizations play major roles (Bartholomay et al., 2011).The benefts of pluralistic advisory services are their ability to overcome constraints, such as shortages in funding, staffng, and expertise that an individual provider might face, and to provide fexibility in delivering services and information to meet the needs of specifc sectors or regions. However, in many locales, including the US, the linear, technology transfer approach still dominates, as does the focus on increasing production. Reasons for this include the tendency of public organizations to avoid change, diffculties in changing organizational behavior, and public policies that continue to concentrate on increased production through the adoption of technology. Modern and innovative ES use a variety of approaches to deliver programming that ranges in a degree of linearity, including individual or group visits, organized meetings, use of model farms and farmers, demonstration plots, farmer feld schools (FFSs) and learning circles, mass media, videos, theater, radio, and information and communication technologies (ICTs).This diversity offers opportunities to reach diverse types of farmers with different needs in various settings.As a result, in theory, there should be greater opportunities for providing information in ways that allow both men and women farmers to access information. The following paragraphs outline some of these approaches and how they can interact with gender. The training and visit (T&V) approach is based on visits to targeted farmers by extension educators and subject matter specialists (Swanson et al., 1997). Generally, this public-sector or supply-driven mode of extension translates and transfers results of research via trained extension educators who are solely involved in technology transfer. Success is usually related to the adoption of Western technologies and increases in the production of commodity crops with little regard for indigenous practices.This approach has been criticized because the selection of contact farmers has been biased based on literacy, wealth, title to land, cooperative membership, readiness to change, and “progressiveness.” Therefore, non-commercial farmers who produce food crops (usually women) rather than export crops rarely received visits or direct advice from extension educators (Manfre et al., 2013). Within households, the adoption of agricultural technologies can be an outcome of intra-household decision-making (Hoel et al., 2017; Magnan et al., 2015) and targeting information to one household member may contribute to suboptimal adoption rates if the non-targeted member does not have the same level of information.Adoption rates are commonly very low among non-contact farmers, even within the same household.As such,T&V is now widely considered as ineffective (Davis, 2008). In a project approach, extension efforts are usually focused on a location and supported by donor agencies and NGOs as philanthropic outreach (Davis et al., 2018) and demonstrate the use of technologies and practices that could be sustained after the project period. The adoption of predetermined technology packages or practices in the short term are often measures of success. One example of participatory programming used in a project approach is the FFS 227

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(Choudhury and Castellanos, this volume; Davis, 2006).The FFS is a group-based, participatory method based on experiential learning that uses a learner-centered, problem-based approach involving feld observations, combining previous experience through group discussion with new information to make informed management decisions. In FFS, the role of extension is focused on facilitation, and farmers are encouraged to conduct their own research, diagnose problems, and develop solutions; therefore, participants are empowered to be their own technical experts. Farmers who participate in FFSs have trained other community members and continued working as a group after the FFS ended (van den Berg, 2004). FFSs can be conducted with single-sex or mixed-sex groups. However, Friis-Hansen et al. (2012) found that mixed-sex FFSs can generate important gender impacts because they empower women while providing opportunities for men to change their views on women. A mixed-sex approach provides an alternative to the strategies that seek to enhance the standing of women by targeting them as individuals. Another participatory approach is the farmer study circle (Chipeta et al., 2016). Like FFSs, study circles provide opportunities for group discussion and learning on member-selected topics. Usually, there is no ES involvement, although an educator or other person knowledgeable in the topic may be invited to facilitate or guide group discussions. Participants learn from their peers’ experiences and the technical information obtained through the experiences and studies of all participants. Study circles allow people to learn and solve their problems and can be especially benefcial for rural women’s participation and learning. In single-sex study circles, women can learn and contribute without being subject to the male bias of conventional ES. Study circles are most successful with homogenous groups of people in terms of gender, situations, and concerns, and similar in wealth, power, and education. Disadvantages of study circles include an ongoing commitment to voluntarism and a potentially limited perspective in discussion.The success of both the FFS and study circles can be measured by the number of farmers actively participating, the sustainability of the activity over time, and increased productivity or proftability of group members (Davis et al., 2012). A third extension approach is demand-driven private extension, where ES are provided by agribusinesses and input dealers, producer organizations, and other commercial entities. Increasingly, extension educators represent only one of many potential sources of information (Franz et al., 2015; Lindner and Dolly, 2013). In many countries, both not-for-proft and for-proft, private-sector-led extension is expanding because of shrinking government support for public extension (Jones and Garforth, 1997). Industry, understanding its role as a primary source of information, has undertaken a more defned educational role by providing production-related information, for example, basic pest management and use of agrichemicals, in addition to marketing their products. In a private demand-driven approach, farmers identify their educational needs for extension programs (Davis and Sulaiman, 2016). Because growers often pay for these services, service providers are accountable to users, and ideally, users should have a choice of service providers. However, as a result of the requirement to pay for services, resource-poor farmers may be too poor to participate, and non-commercial farmers may purchase fewer services (Anderson and Feder, 2004). A potential solution is to stratify farmers so that commercial farmers purchase demand-driven ES while poorer or non-commercial farmers receive public ES.There is skepticism about the private sector’s interest in participating in extension activities. For example, Ahearn et al. (2003, p. 7) suggests that educational information with a public-good nature, such as information that enhances environmental quality and food safety, is likely to be undersupplied by the private sector.The public-good nature of information makes it diffcult to place a value on it. 228

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ICTs and electronic communications have greatly changed the way that extension information is shared. Educational programs are increasingly focused on online videos and tutorials, webinars, and other electronic communications in part because of declining fnancial support for extension (Davis and Sulaiman, 2016). In the US, for example, since 2005, the extension system has collaborated nationally to develop eXtension.org, an internet-based learning platform where farmers, extension professionals, and the general public have continuous access to information from LGUs on a wide range of topics. Information is organized into articles, videos, professional development resources, news, frequently asked questions, and blog posts. Extension. org published a values statement comprised of six values, of which three are related to increasing the diversity of audiences that eXtension reaches, and include embracing diversity, inclusivity, and equitable governance (https://impact.extension.org/). Instructional videos delivered either through the internet or in a physical location can aid in the dissemination of information to farmers, including poor or marginalized farmers, women, and youth, who may typically not be reached through more conventional approaches (Abate et al., 2019).The benefts of video include entertainment value, convenient availability, and the ability to easily produce them in local languages.Additionally, one video can be shown multiple times to many people so that their cost-effectiveness can be very high (Gandhi et al., 2009). Barriers to the use of video include the need for equipment, funds, and technical ability to produce videos, as well as show them. The availability of other types of ICTs, including mobile phones, computers, and social media continues to grow and provides opportunities for collection, processing, storage, retrieval, managing, and sharing of information (Saravanan et al., 2015). ICTs can potentially reach wide audiences in a relatively inexpensive manner (Drill, 2012; Dvorak et al., 2012) and bring a wide array of useful information to bear on real-time farm management decisions (Kaske et al., 2018; Lubell et al., 2014). Mobile/cellular (cell) phones are rapidly becoming the dominant means of electronic communication worldwide. Groups that have traditionally been on the wrong side of the “digital divide,” such as minorities, young adults, and those with low household incomes, are more likely to use smartphones as their main source of internet access (Prieger, 2015). Delivery of information by mobile phone has the potential to reduce the knowledge gap between large and small farmers, and across gender by creating awareness about new technologies and best practices. Mittal (2016) reported that the listening rates of women and men farmers were equal. However, there are still numerous barriers to the use of ICT-based information dissemination, including poor IT infrastructure and internet coverage in remote rural areas, lack of technical support, lack of rigorous governance and quality controls, and lack of farmer skill in accessing, using, responding to, and acting on the information. Farmer ICT literacy, education level, farm size, knowledge, and awareness also infuence farmer access and use of ICT for agricultural information (Mittal, this volume; Mittal and Mehar, 2016). For information delivered through ICTs to reach women, women’s lack of fnancial resources to pay for ICT, levels of technology, and language illiteracy, norms that discourage women from using technology, and lack of control over or ownership of technologies must be considered (Manfre, 2011).

What are some barriers to women’s access to extension services? Women have historically had unequal access to agricultural ES in developed and developing countries (Jiggins et al., 1997). A World Bank (2010) review revealed that men’s and women’s access to extension continues to show relatively low levels of contact between both men and women farmers and extension agents, with disproportionally lower levels of access for women, although these differences varied by region and type of crop or livestock (Manfre et al., 2013, 229

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Ragasa et al., 2013). Unequal access is important because gender is often central for the success of agricultural interventions and development due to the specifc roles and responsibilities of women and men in the agricultural systems and value chains (Beuchelt, 2016; Carr, 2008). Even though gender is acknowledged as a critical area in the development and delivery of ES, relatively little is known about how agricultural development programs can most effectively deliver equitable outcomes of wellbeing and higher incomes (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2011).The reasons for the gender gap in access to ES are numerous. To develop extension programs that address gender inequality, extension educators must be aware of gender-related barriers. In the following paragraphs, we outline some common barriers that limit women’s access to extension programs.

Women not identifed as farmers For people to beneft from ES, they must be identifed as farmers, but many institutions still fail to recognize women as farmers (World Bank, 2010). If extension educators do not identify women as farmers, they may regard their training as unnecessary (Peterman et al., 2014). Gender relations that undervalue women’s roles and contributions to agricultural production sometimes promote the perception that men have the right to make decisions over women’s work and wellbeing without considering women’s needs and preferences, which can reinforce unequal access to extension information and training.“Farmer” can be defned in several ways, for example, as the head of a farming household, as the landowner, or as the individual who is entitled to the revenue earned from the sale of produce (Doss et al., 2015).These defnitions can limit women’s access to ES. Often, the man in a household is considered the head of the household. Whether a man or a woman is the head of household and therefore identifed as the primary farmer, it is assumed that by targeting the head of the household as the appropriate recipient of extension information that all household members will equally beneft from information or interventions. However, individuals in households often do not practice joint decision-making, and unequal exchange, power imbalances, and inequality exist within households and between husbands and wives (Magnan et al., 2015; Quisimbing and Pandolfelli, 2009). The use of land ownership as the defning characteristic of “farmer” can be problematic as most land is owned by men because of social, legal, or customary norms (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2011). If extension programs only target landowners, then many women will not have direct access to ES. ES may also target farmers according to the destination (market or household) of those crops (Cohen and Lemma, 2011).This false dichotomy of cash crops versus food crops is often characterized along gender lines as “men’s crops” and “women’s crops,” even though social norms as they relate to women’s and men’s crops can change over time. For example, crops or commodities that started in women’s domain may later become controlled by men as they are commercialized. In a study of men’s and women’s agricultural practices in Ghana, Doss (2002) found that no crops are grown exclusively or predominantly by women, only a few are grown predominantly by men, and concluded that cultural perceptions about men’s and women’s crops cannot be verifed. There is often variability in the extent to which men, in comparison with women, control the income from crop sales. Similarly, the level of collaboration between men and women in producing food can also vary depending on the crop being grown and how it is processed and marketed. An economics-oriented defnition that defnes a farmer as a person who earns most of their income from agricultural activities is problematic for many women because income may be pooled within the household. It also focuses on income rather than on activity, which may exclude consideration of food production for home use.Acceptance of any individual who calls him/herself a farmer would allow both women and men, including those who farm primarily for home consumption, to be considered as farmers. 230

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Lack of access to information provided to farmer groups Formal and informal producer organizations can help rural communities overcome poverty and facilitate access to resources, assets, markets, and services (Kaaria et al., 2016). Extension information is commonly provided through community meetings, community-based organizations, producer associations, and cooperatives. Women may face obstacles to joining male-dominated cooperatives and fare poorly when services are delivered by extension agents through these groups (Manfre et al., 2013). Due to unequal gender norms and relations, women often have a lower socioeconomic status than men, which limits women’s access and participation in formal groups. Membership may target one person per household, with the result being that participants may be limited to landowners or people of a higher education or social level.Women’s restricted access to, control over, and ownership of land, credit, and information is a disadvantage to them in meeting the conditions of formal group membership and leadership (Manfre et al., 2013; Ragasa et al., 2013;Tanwir and Safdar, 2013;Woldu et al., 2013). In addition, as groups become more formalized, women’s participation tends to decrease, while that of men increases (World Bank, 2010). In organizations that allow mixed-sex membership, men often participate more than women because gender norms deter women’s active participation in the company of men. Even so, women participating in mixed-sex groups can potentially beneft by tapping into men’s networks, resources, and information. As a result of working collaboratively over an extended period in mixed-sex farmer groups, women can gain confdence, and men can learn to work with and have greater respect for women’s contribution to their livelihoods. Studies have found that collaboration, solidarity, and confict resolution increase when farmer groups are mixed and include a substantial proportion of women (Westermann et al., 2005). However, in some situations, even if women can participate, it may be necessary to form gender-based subgroups to build capacity for women. Barriers to women’s participation can shift according to individual and social group characteristics, such as social and educational status, age, and location. In some situations, older, wealthier, more educated, unmarried, female household heads are more likely to be members of agricultural cooperatives compared to other women (Agarwal, 200l; Oxfam International, 2013).

Lack of time and mobility Rural women are simply overburdened (Tanwir and Safdar, 2013) and may have little free time as they are often responsible for many duties, including farming, housework, collecting water and frewood, tending to kitchen gardens, and informal income-generating and community activities (Budlender, 2010). Women’s labor burden can increase with new agricultural technologies and practices if women must take on additional tasks, or when technologies add to the complexity or time needed to complete their current tasks (Doss, 2001). Strategies for disseminating information must account for time constraints and be located at a convenient place for women to meet, or by conducting a series of short training sessions nearby, thus reducing the time that they would need to be away from home.Another way to encourage attendance by women is to provide childcare.

The best ft framework The role of extension has expanded from its focus on training and dissemination of information on agricultural practices and technologies to include a suite of activities that includes assisting farmers to form information-sharing and marketing groups, rural development activities, 231

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and partnering with a range of service providers, such as credit institutions. As such, extension activities take place within an “agricultural innovation system” that encompasses an increasingly pluralistic system comprised of diverse stakeholders along agricultural value chains (Birner et al., 2009). One conceptual framework developed to understand and analyze pluralistic ES within the perspective of a knowledge and innovation system is the “best ft” framework.The term “pluralistic” is used to capture the variety of approaches and organizations that characterize options for delivering ES. In this framework, extension is best understood as one of many options that can be combined in different ways, in contrast to standardized models, such as “train and visit” that may be viewed as a best practice in one situation but fail in another, and that can be fexible in overcoming constraints such as shortages in funding, staffng, and expertise (Rivera and Alex, 2005; Faure et al., 2016). The best ft framework recognizes interacting components in the design and assessment of extension programs that include frame conditions, characteristics of the agricultural research, education, and extension system, performance indicators, impacts on farm households, and overall impacts on target audiences (Birner et al., 2009). Frame conditions infuence the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different options and include the policy environment, the general capacity of potential service providers, and regional farming systems and socioeconomic conditions. Characteristics of the agricultural research, education, and extension system include governance structures, extension techniques, and capacity, management, and organization. Performance indicators are ideally identifed in collaboration with target groups and include assessments of the content and quality of programs and delivery, the ability to reach women and other disadvantaged groups, and the effciency of service provision. Impacts on farm households include increases in decision-making capacity and adoption of technologies, production, and marketing practices. Overall impacts are assessed with regards to policy objectives on farm households and the production system and environment. Examples of the assessment of the impact on target audiences include the effects on farm productivity and proftability, environmental quality, as well as gender-specifc impacts, such as empowerment.The best ft framework can be applied as a feedback loop, where extension impacts modify the frame conditions and cascade through the framework as systems evolve over time.

Case study: Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network as a best ft extension program To illustrate how the best ft framework can be used to ensure that agricultural ES are demanddriven and meet the diverse information needs of women farmers, I offer the example of the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN).

Frame conditions As in most places in the world, women in the US farm independently and alongside spouses, partners, or other family members. Even so, LGU-associated extension and farming organizations historically have had limited recognition of women as farmers because of the assumed stereotypical gender roles for women on farms (Sachs et al., 2016). Even so, women comprise a signifcant and rising number of farm operators in the US and are involved in agriculture not only as operators, but also as farmworkers, policymakers, and extension and other agricultural professionals.According to the 2017 US Census of Agriculture, 36% of all agricultural producers in the US are women, and 56% of all US farms have at least one female decision-maker (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service [NASS], 2019). Even as the role of women in agriculture 232

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in the US continues to grow, systematic bias against women as landowners and farmers persists due to discriminatory policies, practices, and social norms, rendering them largely invisible and often unacknowledged until relatively recently (Sachs et al., 2016). To address this bias, women farmers have increasingly worked together and with genderaware agricultural professionals to create women’s agricultural networks. These networks are redefning and expanding the defnition of what it means to be a farmer and provide a starting place for a structural response to the needs of women farmers.An example of one such network is a research and extension program affliated with the College of Agricultural Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Founded in 2003 by women farmers and agricultural professionals, PA-WAgN activities focus on integrating research, outreach, and educational efforts to better understand and meet the educational and networking needs of women farmers in Pennsylvania. University personnel affliated with PA-WAgN conduct needs assessments, interviews, focus groups, and continuous program evaluations as research activities with the goal of providing effective and appropriate extension programming for women farmers (Barbercheck et al., 2009; Sachs et al., 2016). Research fndings indicated that women farmers are isolated from other women farmers and farmers in general and that women want educational programs to improve their agricultural skills (Brasier et al., 2009; Kiernan et al., 2012;Trauger et al., 2008).The four main aspects of agricultural extension programs that thwarted women’s attempts to beneft from ES include: 1) women farmers found agricultural extension programs unwelcoming, if not hostile. Participants and instructors did not take women seriously. Unidirectional learning from “experts” predominated with little opportunity for hands-on learning, which is women’s preferred learning approach. 2) Educational programs focused heavily on a scale of farming that many women did not practice, i.e., large operations with single commodities such as swine, beef, dairy, agronomic crops, and turf grass. 3) Extension lacked a focus on women’s farms that are characterized by limited acreage; production of vegetables, fruits, cheese, or fowers; diverse herds; use of alternative marketing strategies; and organic and sustainable practices. 4) These women expressed a desire to learn from women who had experience with the same problems rather than from male educators.

Performance indicators PA-WAgN used evaluation surveys at 37 events conducted over four years to assess the effectiveness of programming using the following performance indicators: 1) knowledge gained, 2) intention to adopt practices, and 3) value of the network (Kiernan et al., 2012). To measure whether participants increased their knowledge on specifc topics at each educational event, PA-WAgN used a retrospective pre-post knowledge self-assessment question.To measure intention to take action, PA-WAgN used a four-point scale from “not inspired” to “very inspired,” asking if the event inspired them to “modify my operation in the next two years” and “seek information and people with expertise related to my farm business.”To measure the effect of an educational event on the expansion and enhancement of the network, we asked if participants met someone with whom they would stay in contact over the next year, and if so, what benefts they expected from this contact. And fnally, to assess the sustainability of the network, if the farmers would create learning opportunities for other women farmers in the future.

Overall impacts Even though they target women, extension events in the US are open to all.Women comprised 85% of the 313 participants who attended events and completed evaluation surveys. 233

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Participating women reported that peer-to-peer learning from other women farmers substantially increased their knowledge. A majority of women (54%) increased their understanding of three or more technical topics discussed at each event, 37% increased their understanding of one or two topics, and 9% reported no change in their understanding. Intention to act

In addition to technical knowledge acquired, a high percentage planned to take action in the next two years: 77% of women farmers were “very” or “moderately inspired” to modify their farm operation, and 89% planned to seek information and people with expertise related to their farm. Benefts of the network

Supporting the idea that an educational event can do more than provide technical information, 76% of the women said they had met someone with whom they would stay in contact over the next year for immediate social and entrepreneurial benefts such as collaboration, technical information, and business leads. Sustaining the network

The majority (58%) of the participating women farmers reported a strong interest to “organize and present an educational event on their farm experience.” Twenty-eight percent of the women farmers indicated at the beginning of the event that they came to be “a better educator for women in agriculture,” and participating in a PA-WAgN event increased women’s interest in educating other women by 30%.The high percentage of women farmers (76%) who said that they would “be more involved in WAgN in future,” also points to the effect of PA-WAgN events on participants and bodes well for the sustainability of the network. Overall, using the best ft framework, PA-WAgN learned that women want to attend educational events to learn about technical farming topics. In addition, they also look for other benefts from extension events, such as to meet women farmers in their area to alleviate a feeling of isolation; to hear from other women farmers as part of the learning process; to become a better educator for other women farmers; and to network for business and personal benefts. This research and the resulting activities demonstrated that it is critical for extension programs to use a process, such as the best ft model, to create, deliver, and evaluate programs that address what is important to the target audience and not only focus on the technology or practices that extension wants to promote.The research also demonstrates that women’s agricultural networks can create events that contribute to agricultural knowledge and dissemination and provide social support that women are eager to sustain.

Conclusion It has been 50 years since academic and development communities began to recognize and attend to women’s productive roles in agriculture (Boserup, 1970). Since that time, evidence has continued to build that past efforts in agricultural development have failed in part because of a lack of understanding about the role of gender inequalities in reducing agricultural productivity. According to an FAO (2010) report, reducing gender inequalities in access to productive resources and services could produce an increase in yields on women’s farms of between 20% 234

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and 30%, which could raise agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5% to 4%.To realize these changes and meet the growing challenges to food production in the face of climate change, all farmers, both men and women, must have access to information, skills, and technologies. To promote development goals, extension educators will need to gain knowledge, skills, and attitudes to empower them to assess gender dynamics and use approaches that foster women’s participation and provide for the educational needs of men and women in various contexts. Extension programs must be gender-aware, gender-inclusive, and gender-responsive. Genderaware extensionists understand that there are socially-determined differences between women and men based on learned behavior, which affects their ability to access and control resources; gender-inclusive is when they work together with women to create a supportive environment that gives each participant equal access to learning and programming that attends to the diverse background, learning styles, and abilities of all the participants; and gender-responsive is when responding to the specifc needs of women and men in the teaching and learning processes. Unfortunately, there are no standardized “best practices” for extension programs that can be implemented everywhere. However, using frameworks such as the best ft model, it is possible to develop effective and impactful extension programs that meet the unique contexts of different regions, farming systems, and social conditions to effectively deliver appropriate programming to ensure equitable access of both women and men to the information that they need (Manfre et al., 2013). In some situations, using single-sex programs or increasing the number of women extension agents may improve the ability of extension to meet women farmers’ needs (Kondylis et al., 2016; Quisumbing and Pandolfelli, 2009). Mainstreaming gender, or including a gender perspective, in all stages of extension program development, delivery, and evaluation, can raise the visibility and awareness of women’s contributions to agriculture and the constraints that impede their success and productivity. Fostering more gender-aware, -inclusive, and -responsive programming can improve women’s access to information, and other critical resources will help build women’s participation and leadership and improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods worldwide.

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18 FEMINIST METHODS AND METHODOLOGY IN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH Ann R. Tickamyer

Introduction Research informed by goals of gender equality, women’s empowerment, and transformative approaches to gender roles and relations of necessity imply employing feminist approaches to its conduct regardless of the specifc subject or setting. Much has been written about the topic over the last 40-plus years, including research on agriculture across a range of global settings, national income, and development levels.This chapter summarizes what a feminist approach to agricultural research means, especially in the Global South, and addresses some of the practical issues it raises by reference to exemplars and actual practices, many found in this volume, and a previous one compiling gender research in agriculture across the international Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system (Sachs 2019, Sachs et al. 2020). The basic assumption is that good gender research requires a feminist perspective on its design and implementation. Somewhat esoteric, nevertheless necessary to establishing feminist approaches to research, are distinctions between methods, methodology, and epistemology (Davis and Hattery, 2018; Tickamyer and Sexsmith, 2019). Methods are tools that, in essence, are gender-neutral. A survey, focus group, interview, content analysis, or any of the numerous means of collecting data to answer empirical questions or test hypotheses can be deployed for any type of research, regardless of its larger purpose or impact.1 Similarly, analytical techniques, whether quantitative, qualitative, or both, represent tools that in themselves are gender-neutral, despite the historical association with some populations and research questions (Fonow and Cook, 2005). Methodology and epistemology, however, shape the research design and its underlying theory of knowledge in ways that can be distinctly feminist. Thus, methodology and designs2 that prioritize depth of knowledge, uncovering sources of power differentials, lived experience, and participatory approaches, regardless of the tools employed, adhere to feminist epistemology. Of course, some tools are more adept at uncovering some kinds of information than others.

Feminist epistemology and methodology A fundamental tenet of a feminist epistemology or way of knowing is that all knowledge is situated and cannot be divorced from lived experience, including that of the individual or group 239

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seeking knowledge and understanding.Therefore, it is incumbent on researchers to interrogate their own experience and subjectivities, be introspective and refexive, and reject false binaries, including between subject and object and researcher and researched. While it is implied but sometimes slow to recognize, there are multiple versions of feminist perspectives, and therefore, there is not a unitary vision of feminist epistemology and methodology (Wolf, 1996). Critiques of Western white dominance of feminist discourse by women of color and postcolonial theorists point to power differentials embedded in these accounts and the importance of broader and more inclusive approaches (Mendez, 2015; Mohanty, 2003; Wolf, 1996). Gender forms a basic building block of such knowledge, but it is not alone and not compartmentalized. Intersectional identities and structural positions shape human behavior and their social circumstances. Age, race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexualities, region, language, and nationality, and many more components of culture and social structure create interwoven social locations that must be deconstructed to produce knowledge. Feminist standpoint theory, as elucidated by Harding (1991) and related feminist theories (Haraway, 1988; Smith, 1987), argues not only that knowledge is situated, but that the very factors that situate subordinate and marginalized groups in oppressive circumstances create the potential for a deeper form of knowledge than is available in the standard elevation of objectivity and misplaced claims of value neutrality. Strong objectivity replaces positivist versions of objectivity that imagine the researcher as a neutral producer of knowledge through the application of set protocols. Instead, the researcher’s positionality and the knowledge generated by subordinate social location are acknowledged and used to gain a deeper understanding, especially of the power differentials that pervade social life. Strong objectivity started with women as the center of feminist epistemology.With the addition of intersectional theories and methods (Cho et al., 2013; Collins, 2015; Dill and Zambrana, 2009), the salience of other sources of vulnerability and knowledge—race, class, sexuality, age, etc.—and how they interact become central to the approach. Tickamyer and Sexsmith (2019, p. 63) summarize the basic principles of feminist methodology found across the literature, and they are worth quoting here:3 • • • • • • •

Pursuit of new and neglected research questions. Refexivity and situated knowledge. Intersectionality and interdisciplinarity. Rejection of simple binaries. Distinction between difference, diversity, and deconstruction of gender and its components. Study of both women/femininities and men/masculinities and their construction and interactions. Emphasis on power dynamics, inequality, empowerment, and gender transformation.

Taken together, they shape the design and conduct of research using a feminist methodology and provide new avenues of information, understanding, and action.

Feminist research in agriculture The prescriptions of feminist epistemology and methodology can be validated in the history of agricultural research. This history is replete with both sins of omission and commission. What topics have not been studied? Who has been omitted from standard research? How are decisions made? What faulty assumptions and misperceptions have been perpetuated under the guise of objective research design? What questions remain unasked? At the most basic, these questions 240

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highlight past failures to recognize women as major agricultural producers, how they operate, and what issues and obstacles they face.Thus, women were long relegated to farmwives in the US (Sachs, 1996) and family labor elsewhere (Sachs and Alston, 2010) despite their central roles in farm operations. Data on agricultural production to this day often fail to gather or report sex-disaggregated data (Doss, 2014) or confate biological sex with socially constructed gender (Quisumbing et al., 2014). Gendered identities are confused or ignored. Distinctions between single women farmers, female household “heads,” married women in different types of households and marital and family arrangements, farm labor, and land ownership are recognized inconsistently in research designs if at all.Too often, a unitary model of household behavior that confates gender with household status lies behind the ways data are collected and analyzed (Quisumbing et al., 2014, pp. 13–14). Combined with the failure to recognize the importance of different social locations in conjunction with gender roles and relations, both research and policy suffer from bias and incomplete information. Most recently, the focus on gender has been extended and elaborated with recognition of the complexity of sexualities and its relationship to both sex and gender, and how this impacts and is impacted by agricultural pursuits (Hoffelmeyer 2020). At its most basic, the addition of a gender lens in agricultural research has meant that gender becomes a central component of understanding agricultural production practices, labor, household structure, gendered relations, and divisions of labor.The farmer in the feld may or may not be a woman, and what social arrangements lie behind this picture has important implications for how agriculture is conducted and food is produced, processed, distributed, and consumed. Whether male or female, behind this visible fgure, is a system of both agricultural and gender norms, values, beliefs, practices, and relations that compose the “gender and agriculture nexus” (Leder and Sachs. 2019). Thus, the most basic act is to collect and report sex-disaggregated data, a practice that remains shockingly less than the standard procedure in agricultural statistics and research (Doss, 2014). Even when sex is collected, reported, and analyzed, important distinctions that can have major reverberations in food and agriculture systems are often ignored. A prime example is in household surveys that assume a male head of household unless there is no adult male present, in which case, a female may be considered head. Ensuing comparisons of households with male and female heads are mistakenly classifed as gender analyses when, in fact, it is householder gender under scrutiny—an important but far from identical status, especially given the vast differences in resources, opportunities, and legal rights, depending on marital status and relationship to the head for women and men.With basic binary sex information remaining less than universal in much agricultural research, the incorporation of a constructionist and intersectional analysis of gender is even less likely. The complexities and necessity of intersectional understandings of gender construction and performance go unobserved and unanalyzed to the detriment of the research. A gender lens and sex-disaggregated data both guide and follow from the questions asked. Without knowledge of gender’s place in labor allocation, decision-making, reproductive roles, and care work, time budgets and constraints, and many more topics central to the “gender and agriculture nexus” (Leder and Sachs, 2019), it is unlikely that key issues will be addressed let alone that fndings will serve any useful function whether these are standard goals of increasing productivity and sustainability, mainstreaming and empowering women, or the more ambitious objective of gender transformation.The history of agricultural interventions, especially the design and introduction of new technology, is the history of the failure to understand the social systems that envelop them, with gender at the forefront of these failures. Embedding women in the agricultural research system has been necessary for raising and addressing the questions that these failures illustrate. More than 40 years after the initial calls and mandates to incorporate gender into agricultural research, if for no other reason than to under241

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stand the obstacles to improved productivity, gender remains a contested and unevenly integrated component of basic research in the international agricultural research institutes and organizations (Van der Berg, 2019).When explicit concern for women’s equality, health and wellbeing, mainstreaming, and empowerment are included, as repeatedly emphasized in supranational agendas and institutionalized in the sustainable development goals (SDG), the absence of well-designed gender research in agriculture becomes increasingly inexplicable and indefensible.

Feminist methodology and design in agriculture research A gender lens requires pursuing feminist perspectives and methodology in the conduct of agricultural research, raising the question of how this can be accomplished.The frst thing to note is that a feminist design is not synonymous with qualitative research designs or any particular application of research methods, but rather makes use of diverse methods appropriate to the problem and context.This may seem at odds with common associations of gender and feminist methods with in-depth qualitative research, but numerous examples demonstrate the value of different research designs incorporating qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods as well as various hybrid forms. Behrman et al. (2014) provide a basic overview of these and related approaches in agriculture, and key components are reviewed here. Numerous examples are found in both this volume (Sachs et al. 2020) and a previous one (Sachs 2019).

Qualitative research This is a very broad category encompassing virtually all non-numerically represented data, whether generated by interviews, focus groups, ethnography, autoethnography, or any other source. Much research that provides a depth of gender analysis has used qualitative methods. In part, this comes from the demand for depth, nuance, introspection, and refexivity on the part of investigators and participants in ways that prioritize narrative and visual forms. Partly, it refects a rejection of techniques that historically were associated with rigid models of positivist social science, including formal hypothesis testing via experimental and statistical analysis. These often were accompanied by claims of objectivity and value neutrality that, in fact, were at odds with the historical development of agricultural research as applied research with specifc goals, policy objectives, and politics (Box, 1976; Jakubek and Wood 2018;Williams, 2010). Additionally, much of the research on agricultural practices have come from anthropologists, sociologists, and development scholars schooled in qualitative methods. Finally, the struggle to recognize gender as a central component of agriculture has meant that researchers have often lacked access to resources that large-scale quantitative data collection requires.Thus, qualitative methods remain a dominant mode of doing gender and feminist research. As discussed below, typically, qualitative research is conducted as standalone or comparative case studies.Among the important fndings emerging from this work are gender differences in the division of labor on the farm, in the household, and the community; relative degrees of authority, decision-making, and empowerment; time allocation and time poverty; and crop and breeding preferences and practices in different contexts and food and agriculture systems (see the many examples in Sachs, 2019 and Sachs et al., 2020).

Quantitative research Despite the bad rap on quantitative approaches using data generated by censuses, surveys, and secondary data, these methods supply crucial information on the breadth of different attitudes 242

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and practices.With proper application, results can be generalized across social, spatial, and temporal categories not available from the case studies.Although quantitative techniques, especially as practiced by demographers and economists, have been slow to accommodate feminist perspectives and theory and contain longstanding assumptions and applications that are at odds with a feminist sensibility, they have started to come around and can be deployed in ways that are compatible with feminist theory (Williams, 2010). The development of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and its variants (Alkire et al., 2013; Malapit et al., 2015; Martinez et al. 2020) has provided an important tool for assessing women’s status in different food and agriculture systems and makes a case in point. It has been used to evaluate women vis-à-vis men and other women within and across nations. Although ongoing refnements and applications make it still a work in progress, it adds yet another tool for understanding gender relations under a wide variety of contexts. Another up-and-coming tool ties gender to geospatial techniques with the potential for mapping gender roles and relations with cropping and other agricultural data (Behrman et al., 2014, p. 38).The use of censuses and both individual and household surveys in agricultural research, if properly administered, can provide extensive and comprehensive information on both male and female farm operators and a clearer picture of women’s participation, demonstrating the importance and the potential of quantitative methods.

Mixed and multiple methods of research Recognition of the value of both quantitative and qualitative approaches has resulted in the increasing use of mixed methods designs. Both the literature delineating and prescribing mixed methods and the examples of their use have multiplied rapidly (Cresswell and Plano Clark, 2018; Axinn and Pierce, 2006; Behrman et al., 2014; Small, 2011; Johnson et al., 2006; Morgan, 2007). The advantages are obvious. Mixed methods permit triangulation that provides validation and affrmation of fndings from different sources and perspectives, strengthening confdence in outcomes. Alternatively, conficting results may point to the need for further study to resolve these issues. At their best, they operate in dialog with each other, supplying information not available in any single approach and mixing and alternating inductive and deductive theory construction and testing in a form sometimes called abduction (Morgan, 2007). An excellent example is found in Acosta et al. (2020) as described below under case studies or in the Gumucio et al. (2019) examination of gender equality in climate-smart agriculture approaches to tree farming in Nicaragua. Mixed methods designs are a form of multiple methods but distinguished from them by their deliberate integration. Other multiple method designs include combining several quantitative or qualitative sources of data rather than the various approaches to integration characteristic of true mixed designs (Cresswell and Plano Clark, 2018).

Participatory research Participatory designs primarily (but not exclusively) use qualitative techniques to involve participants in all stages of research, from formulating research objectives to collecting and analyzing data (Chambers, 2004). Qualitative techniques may include both standard methods, such as focus groups and interviews, and more inclusive techniques, such as cognitive mapping, drawing, and transect walks. Creative adaption of new technologies may be tapped, such as the use of photography as in PhotoVoice (Whitley 2019), and participant video production (Kawarazuka et al., 2019). While less common, quantitative methods may also be used with participants helping to determine survey construction and execution. Regardless of specifc methods, the involvement of research participants reduces distinctions between subject and object, power dif243

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ferentials between researcher and researched, and access to local knowledge, beliefs, and values that might not emerge in standard designs that reinforce the distance between researchers and their subjects.They are particularly useful when an explicit goal of the research is outreach that is to be transformative and empowering, such as empowering women in fsheries in Bangladesh (Choudhury and Castellanos, 2020 ). However, engaging participants in the design and implementation of research is often a slow, uneven, and sometimes contentious process that can challenge the researcher’s authority in ways that try their patience, timeline, and budgets.These constraints have limited their actual use.

Case studies Finally, case studies require consideration because of their pervasiveness in research on gender and agriculture. Case studies usually involve multiple methods of data collection, whether in a formally planned mixed methods study or through a variety of more independent but loosely related data generation procedures. Case studies provide an in-depth study of a particular unit—a community, region, group, organization, farming system, institution, etc. In agricultural research, it often involves substantial investment in studying a particular community or several locations with either implicit or explicit comparisons built into the design. Case comparative studies will make every effort to select cases (units) that are similar in as many characteristics as possible in order to determine the impact of some key difference on outcomes of interest. The result has been a depth of information on gendered processes, especially on context and intersectionality in keeping with feminist principles. However, it has also resulted in the proliferation of small-scale studies with little reference to scale or the ability to determine patterns and models beyond the specifc study.While it is possible to overemphasize the importance of scale and to advocate solutions inappropriate to the problem, it is also useful to seek insight with more general outcomes. The proliferation of case studies is important because of the great variation in food, agriculture, gender, and family/household systems across space and place. Thus, the accumulation of information with detailed knowledge of context and specifc arrangements add to the stock of information about different systems. However, it does little to address the tension between complexity and intersectionality on the one hand, and on the other, the desire to distinguish what is case-specifc, even idiosyncratic from what is more extensive, forming patterns that can be distinguished and identifed. One effort to address this issue is the exploration of case studies and big data, especially how the methods can be applied to qualitative and case studies (Hesse et al., 2019). GENNOVATE, coordinated qualitative case comparative research on gender norms and practices in 137 rural communities in 26 countries conducted by members of the CGIAR system, illustrates both the challenges and potential of this work (Petesch et al., 2018). Another approach that might be useful is the application of meta-analysis techniques to case study data. The value of case studies cannot be overemphasized, but there is also much need and potential for a more systematic analysis of their results.

Conceptualization and measurement within and across designs The above designs are rarely mutually exclusive as the popularity of mixed methods demonstrates. However, the better integrated and purposive the use of specifc designs, the more likely to have reliable fndings and new discoveries. A case in point comes in the expansive literature on decision-making in agricultural and agrarian households. Decision-making power in the household and agriculture is viewed as an indicator of women’s and men’s authority and stand244

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ing that is routinely measured by asking respondents who makes particular decisions on everything from the allocation of labor and resources to fnancial decisions, and which crops to grow. Although there are many variants, typically, household members are asked who makes decisions on a battery of items: men, women, or joint with women and joint decision-making interpreted as women’s empowerment. Sometimes these questions are only given to the putative household head, sometimes both women and men within the household are queried; sometimes, they are asked jointly, sometimes separately with or without efforts to prevent cross-contamination of answers. Not surprisingly, answers vary by who and how questions are asked. Careful design and multiple methods have been employed to avoid specious conclusions and to address these issues. For example,Acosta et al. (2020) describe a series of ever greater in-depth investigations that build on each other to determine who actually makes which decisions in a mixed-method case study conducted in Uganda. They begin with survey data that interviews two spouses within a household and follow with focus groups, a decision-making game, and participant observations that uncovered an ever more nuanced understanding of what “joint” decision-making actually means to the participants in the study.

Dilemmas and decisions: real-world issues Designing research from a feminist perspective may run into a variety of real-life challenges in practice.This is hardly unique to gender research. Although rarely formally documented, much research deviates from initial design in both small and large ways when confronted with reality. This is especially the case with feld research where direct engagement with participants can raise new issues or derail original plans in ways not anticipated. At the same time, new opportunities and insights may be available. In either case, pursuing a feminist methodology may raise additional issues with some of the more problematic noted here. These range from gender politics to personal safety and ethical dilemmas. There are not necessarily easy guidelines or solutions, especially since so many are not completely predictable. Feminist research with goals of equality, inclusivity, empowerment, and transformation is explicitly political and as far from value-neutral as is possible to imagine. Despite the widespread recognition that these are universal human rights issues with the backing of international forums and institutions, in practice, locally or within specifc groups, they may be viewed as irrelevant or threatening and met with both passive and direct resistance. How the researcher deals with this, whether and when deception is acceptable, even how language is employed and what terms can be used may all be problematic and require adjustment or accommodations that are at odds with research goals and values and researcher ethics.Thus, in some cultures and settings, research that engages women and girls may be suspect, resisted, or heavily monitored. Even seemingly standard English language terms and concepts such as “gender” may be nonexistent in some languages or may be politicized to the extent that it provokes resistance or refusal. Misunderstood and maligned terms such as feminism may be deemed “toxic” and viewed suspiciously or derogatorily in many settings and may evoke hostility and exclusion if used or suspected. Cross-gender contact, even for interviews or observation, may be counter to local norms. Acknowledgment or investigation of sexualities may be seen as threatening or taboo. Honesty about one’s own identities and beliefs may run counter to local norms and values and preclude access in the feld.And so on. Writing more than two decades ago, Diane Wolf (1996) addressed the many deceptions and dilemmas feld research in rural Java entailed and the diffculty of fnding a forum to address them more broadly. I encountered many similar issues in my feldwork there. Although largely protected by my respected status as an American professor, as well as my local contacts, (issues in 245

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themselves), I still struggled with personal and sometimes fraught questions about my religion, my family, and the core issues of our research—proper gender roles and relations.There are no defnitive prescriptions for how to prepare for these eventualities, but the more they can be acknowledged and anticipated, the more likely the researcher is to be prepared. Especially in feldwork, quick decisions and changes of course may be necessary about how to address such problems, including when to run, when to hide, and when to revise previous plans. Safety concerns for both researchers and participants may also be an issue. Until recently, harassment and even assault of women in the feld have gone under-reported and seldom discussed. This has started to change as the climate for what is acceptable or silenced behavior has changed dramatically. Especially in feldwork, both women and men researchers have been subject to serious misconduct on the part of supervisors and peers (Clancy et al., 2014; Nelson et al., 2017) with women, especially, the target of unwanted sexual behavior. Similarly, seldom reported are safety issues in the feld for both researchers from participants and for participants themselves. For the former, the degree of vulnerability and risk will vary depending on both researcher and study site culture and characteristics. At times this may seem to directly contravene ideals about diminishing power differentials between researcher and participant that women bring to their work, such as when female researchers are viewed as subordinate or sexualized by male subjects (Sharp and Kremer, 2006, p. 219).While there is an occasional offhand reference to safety measures taken in ethnographic accounts (Ashwood, 2018, p. 112) and some social science research on these issues, the subject remains under-reported and diffcult to address (Sharp and Kremer, 2006). It certainly is not routinely discussed as part of research design or execution. Threats to participants may be especially salient in places where issues of gender and sexuality are tense and politicized or extremely negatively sanctioned. Standard internal research boards (IRB) or human subjects protections protocols require safety measures to ensure anonymity or confdentiality and no harm for participants; however, especially in noninvasive research, these are more often conceived as threats from after-the-fact reporting the research rather than its realtime conduct. Although rare (at least from published reports), nevertheless, this is yet another source of possible danger in the feld, either to the researcher or to the ability to conduct the research. For example, depending on the topic and the degree of control exerted over women, their participation may be viewed with suspicion and provoke disapproval or negative sanctions. All of these situations raise ethical dilemmas for the researcher that are not always easily resolved. At the most extreme, balancing new knowledge against actual harm presents fairly straightforward decisions in theory, but as described above, not always in practice. There are many less dire issues that also create vexing ethical concerns.Who owns the data? Who can proft from its collection and dissemination? What obligation do researchers have to their participants? If there is a moral obligation arising from the very different statuses and resources available to the different parties, how does that affect the research? These and similar issues are not easy questions to answer and, refexivity, while fundamental, will not always solve the dilemmas they describe.

Who am I? Refexivity, situated knowledge, and false binaries This chapter is written by a cis woman whose life and work were profoundly infuenced by her youthful encounter with second-wave feminism, whose career has refected engagement with its changing forms and dimensions, and who has practiced most if not all of the methods and methodology described here. Refexivity and situated knowledge are primary prescriptions of feminist epistemology and methodology, creating the means for achieving strong 246

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objectivity. Interrogating one’s own subjectivities, understanding the circumstances and social locations that have shaped one’s personal and professional interests, and acknowledging power differentials that affect researcher and participant relations and interpretations fow from the emphasis on the social construction and contextual nature of knowledge. At the same time, these are ideals to strive for, but that may not be possible to fully realize in practice. Rather, it is a process that good scholars must pursue across their careers and life courses.The situational component of knowledge means that as one’s situation evolves, so does new insight and recognition of past blinders. As a feminist sociologist whose primary interests and training were initially in domestic US society and politics using quantitative methods, travel to Southeast Asia, and witnessing and ultimately conducting research, there was profoundly life-altering and, most importantly, transformative of my scholarship. Would I still be the same scholar if this path had not opened up? Undoubtedly not, although it is not possible to predict the path not taken.There is no question in my mind that my work was vastly improved by these experiences. On the surface, conducting research in one’s own society creates insider status, moving to a very different and alien culture underscores how “outside” one can be. However, as with other binaries, the insider-outsider distinction creates a false dichotomy that is destabilized by both deeper introspection and awareness of the many ways that any individual can occupy multiple locations simultaneously that create different positionalities with varying degrees of access to power and privilege. In other words, intersectionality is not just a theory to be applied to research design but characterizes all participants, including the researcher, in ways that may be contradictory and multidimensional (Naples and Sachs, 2000;Wolf, 1996). While there are no magic bullets for coming to grips with the infuence of one’s own positionality, one of the best lessons I learned, and one of the most useful for dealing with these issues is to take a collaborative and participatory approach. Whether the research is formally designed to be participatory or more traditional in distancing researchers and participants, the more dialog, feedback, and exchange, the more likely we are to achieve some sort of confdence and validity in the fndings. Again, this researcher’s experience may be enlightening. Conducting feld research in rural agricultural villages in Indonesia with an Indonesian collaborator, I learned quickly of my limitations, biases, and blind spots, but also became aware of those of my theoretical insider colleague (and vice versa). Two researchers with very different backgrounds but shared disciplines, training, and interest in the topic could assist each other to see beyond our limits and provide a window on each other’s knowledge through continuous interrogation of each other’s views (Tickamyer and Kusujiarti 2012).4 As has been described extensively elsewhere (Naples and Sachs, 2000;Wolf, 1996), insider knowledge provides access and awareness unavailable to the outsider, but it also creates its own obstructions. Outsider status brings new eyes and new insight to the feld but always with barriers, often unknown and unknowable. Collaboratively, as an ongoing process and negotiation, the result is more than the sum of individual perspectives. A couple of cautions: introspection can lead to paralysis or misgivings about the entire enterprise on the part of the researcher, and it certainly is no guarantee of complete or true understanding. It may also lead to an excessive focus on the researcher rather than the research, leading to the question of how much the frst person should be in the research, especially in the write-up and presentation.The researcher is a central actor in any research project but should be cognizant not to hog the stage, a temptation that may be hard to relinquish. Fortunately, proscriptions against frst-person pronouns in research reporting have fallen away, but too much “I” and “my” may be off-putting to those whose attention is sought, and they should be used judiciously. 247

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Conclusion A feminist methodology should be seen as standard practice that applies to all research without the need for the feminist label or modifying adjectives. In research on agriculture, this means that social structure and process should be integrated into all research with gender as a central but by no means the only social component. As greater recognition of the impact of intersectional identities and social locations become more standard, the methodology should incorporate greater attention to salient variables and seek to erase misplaced binary constructions. No apology is needed for placing women at the center of this work or for using feminist ways of knowing to make this happen and advance the goal of gender transformation.

Notes 1 One exception may be a formal experiment since this typically requires ignorance on the part of subjects and even researchers in double-blind experiments of treatments and expected outcomes. 2 “Design” and “methodology” are used interchangeably here. 3 Elaboration for each of these bullet points may be found at Tickamyer and Sexsmith (2019). In many ways this chapter is a further elaboration of that one. They should be read together as they provide guidance for conducting research from a gender perspective. 4 A full account can be found in Tickamyer and Kusujiarti (2011, pp. 9–17).

References Acosta, M., van Wessel, M., van Bommel, S.,Ampaire, E.L.,Twyman, J., Jassogne, L., and Feindt, P.H. (2020). “What does it mean to make a ‘Joint’ Decision? unpacking intra-household decision making in agriculture: implications for policy and practice.” The Journal of Development Studies 56 (6):1210–1229. doi: 10.1080/00220388.2019.1650169. Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G., and Vas, A. (2013). “The women’s empowerment in agriculture index.” World Development 52 (Dec):71–91. doi: 10.1016/j. worlddev.2013.06.007. Ashwood, L. (2018). For-proft democracy: why the government is losing the trust of rural America. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Axinn,W., and Pearce, L. (2006). Mixed method data collection strategies. New York: Cambridge. Behrman, J., Meinzen-Dick, R., and Quisumbing, A. (2014). “Understanding gender and culture in agriculture: the role of qualitative and quantitative approaches.” In Quisumbing, A., Meinzen-Dick, R., Raney, T.L., Croppenstedt, A., Behrman, J.A., Peterman, A. (eds), Gender in agriculture: closing the gender gap. New York: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Springer, 31–53. Box, G. (1976).“Science and statistics.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 71 (Dec):791–799. Burg, M. van der (2019).“‘Change in the making’: 1970s and 1980s building stones to gender integration in CGIAR agricultural research.” In C. Sachs (ed.), Gender, agriculture and Agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge, 35–56. Chambers, R. (2004). “Participatory rural appraisal (PRA): analysis of experience.” World Development 22 (9):1253–1268. Cho, S., Crenshaw, K., and McCall, L. (2013). “Toward a feld of intersectionality studies: theory, applications, and praxis.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38 (Summer):785–810. doi: 10.1086/669608. Choudhury, A., and Castellanos, P. (2020). “Empowering women through farmer feld schools.” Chapter 19 in Sachs, C., Jensen, L., Castellanos, P., and Sexsmith, K. (eds.). Gender and Agriculture Handbook. New York: Routledge. Clancy, K.B.H., Nelson, R.G., Rutherford, J.N., and Hinde, K. (2014). “Survey of academic feld experiences (SAFE): trainees report harassment and assault.” PLoS ONE 9 (7):e102172. doi: 10.1371/journal. pone.0102172. Collins, P. (2015).“Intersectionality’s defnitional Dilemmas.” Annual Review of Sociology 41:1–20.

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Feminist methods in agricultural research Cresswell, J., and Plano Clark,V. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Davis, S.N., and Hattery, A. (2018). “Teaching feminist research methods: a comment and an evaluation.” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 15 (Fall):49–60. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol15/iss15/5. Dill, B.T., and Zambrana, R.E. (2009).“Critical thinking about inequality: an emerging lens.” In B.T. Dill and R.E. Zambrana (eds), Emerging intersections: race, class, and gender in theory, policy, and practice. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1–21. Doss, C. (2014). “Data needs for gender analysis in agriculture.” In Quisumbing , A. Meinzen-Dick, R., Raney,T.L., Croppenstedt, A., Behrman, J.A., Peterman, A. (eds), Gender in agriculture: closing the gender gap. New York: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Springer, 55–68. Elena, M., Emily, M., and Pereira, A. (2020). “The women’s agricultural empowerment index.” Chapter 23 in Sachs, C., Jensen, L., Castellanos, P., and Sexsmith (eds.), K. Gender and agriculture handbook. New York: Routledge. Gumucio, T., Arora, D., Twyman, J., Tickamyer, A., and Clavijo, M. (2019). “Gender equality and trees on farms.” In C. Sachs (ed.), Gender, agriculture and Agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge, 203–220. Haraway, D. (1988). “Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3):575–99. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science, whose knowledge? Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hesse, A., Glenna, L., Hinrichs, C., Chiles, R., and Sachs, C. (2019).“Qualitative research ethics in the big data era.” American Behavioral Scientist 63 (5):560–583. doi: 10.1177/0002764218805806. Hoffelmeyer, M. (2020). “Queer farmers: sexuality on the farm.” Chapter 27 in Sachs, C., Jensen, L., Castellanos, P., and Sexsmith (eds.), K. Gender and agriculture handbook. New York: Routledge. Jakubek, J., and Wood, S. (2018). “Emancipatory empiricism: the rural sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 4 (1):14–34. Johnson, R.B., R. Burke, A.J. Onwuegbuzie, Lisa A.Turner. 2007.“Toward a defnition of mixed methods research.” Mixed Methods Research 1 (2):112–133. Kawarasuka, N., Van Ahn, N., Thai, V., and P. Thuong. (2019). “‘A bird locked in a cage’: among young women’s lives after marriage in northern Vietnam.” In C. Sachs (ed.), Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge, 111–125. Leder, S., and Sachs, C. (2019). “Intersectionality at the gender-agriculture nexus: relational life histories and additive sex-disaggregated indices.” In C. Sachs (ed.), Gender, agriculture and Agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge, 75–92. Malapit, H., Quisumbing, A., Meinzen-Dick, R., Seymour, G., Martinez, E., Heckert, J., Rubin, D.,Vaz, A., and Yount, K., and the Gender Agriculture Assets Project Phase 2 (GAAP2) Study Team. (2019). “Development of the project-level women’s empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI).” World Development 122:675–92. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.06.018 Mendez, X. (2015).“Notes toward a decolonial feminist methodology: revisiting the race/gender matrix.” Trans-Scripts 5 (2015): 41-59. Mohanty, C. (2003). Feminism without borders: decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Morgan, D. (2007).“Paradigms lost and pragmatism regained.” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 1 (1):48–76. Naples, N., and Sachs, C. 2000.“Standpoint epistemology and the uses of self-refection in feminist ethnography: lessons for rural sociology.” Rural Sociology 65 (2):194–214. Nelson, R.G., Rutherford, J.N., Hinde, K., and Clancy, K.B.H. (2017). “Signaling safety: characterizing feldwork experiences and their implications for career trajectories.” American Anthropologist 119 (4):710–722. doi: 10.1111/aman.1292. Petesch, P., Badstue, L., Prain, G. 2018. Gender norms, agency, and innovation in agriculture and natural resource management: the GENNOVATE methodology. Mexico: CIMMYT. Quisumbing, A., Meinzen-Dick, R., Raney, T.L., Croppenstedt, A., Behrman, J.A., Peterman, A. (eds). (2014). Gender in agriculture: closing the gender gap. New York: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Springer. Sachs, C. (1996). Gendered felds: rural women, agriculture and environment. Boulder, CO:Westview Press. Sachs, C. (ed.). (2019). Gender, agriculture and Agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge. Sachs, C., Jensen, L., Castellanos, P., and Sexsmith, K. (eds.) (2020). Gender and agriculture handbook. New York: Routledge. Sharp, G., and E. Kremer. (2006).“The safety dance: confronting harassment, intimidation, and violence in the feld.” Sociological Methodology 36 (1):217–27. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9531.2006.00183.x.

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Ann R. Tickamyer Small, M. (2011).“How to conduct a mixed methods study: recent trends in a rapidly growing literature.” Annual Review of Sociology 37:57–86. Smith, D. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: a feminist sociology. Boston, MA: Northeastern University. Tickamyer, A.R., and Kusujiarti, S. (2012). Power, change, and gender relations in rural Java. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Tickamyer, A.R., and Sexsmith, K. (2019). “How to do gender research? Feminist perspectives on gender research in agriculture.” In C. Sachs (ed.), Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations. New York: Routledge, 57–71. Whitley, H (2019). “Power, privilege, and “playing in the dirt”: an intersectional exploration of women’s agricultural experiences in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” Master’s thesis,The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/fles/fnal_submissions/20398. Wolfe, D. (1996). “Situating feminist Dilemmas in feld work.” In D.Wolf (ed.), Feminist Dilemmas in feldwork. Boulder, CO:Westview, 1–55.

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19 EMPOWERING WOMEN THROUGH FARMER FIELD SCHOOLS Afrina Choudhury and Paige Castellanos

Introduction to Farmer Field Schools Farmer Field Schools (FFS) are a non-formal education method used across the Global South to provide hands-on agricultural training and learning for agriculture producer groups (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2019).The earliest training, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, adopting the Farmer Field School name focused on integrated pest management (IPM) in Asia (FAO, 2019). Since then, the implementation of FFSs has spread across Africa, Latin America, and Eastern and Central Europe in over 90 different countries, focusing on a wide range of crop systems and aspects of agriculture (FAO, 2019). Generally, FFS programs intend to include participants’ own knowledge, experiences, and needs, rather than a top-down knowledge transfer (Price and Palis, 2016; Ajani and Onwubuya, 2010).To address issues of food insecurity and low production, FFSs support local knowledge while adapting scientifc concepts to the local context. Characterized by a farmer-centered approach, FFSs use demonstration plots throughout a growing season or productive cycle to test improved practices and allow farmers to come together in groups of about 20–30 members to share the experience (FAO, 2019). Evaluations of Farmer Field Schools demonstrate a reduction in expenditures on inputs (Sangestsawai et al., 2015), improved food security (Larsen and Lillear, 2014), improved production of specifc high-value crops such as cacao (Tsiboe et al., 2016), and improved income (Davis et al., 2010). In addition to production- and economic-related outcomes, Farmer Field Schools may also play a role in a broader social impact on traditions, norms, and relationships. In the evaluation of a long-running FFS in western Kenya, researchers found that participants reported individual transformation related to agency, work ethic, confdence, and community leadership (Duveskog et al., 2011;Taylor et al., 2012). Qualitative fndings in Indonesia reveal men and women farmers appreciate the social and human experiences provided by the FFS approach, reporting changes in self-confdence and social capital, among other things (Van den Berg and Jiggins, 2007). Beyond this, the FFS approach has also encouraged pro-adaptive behavior toward climate change in Jamaica (Tomlinson and Rhiney, 2017) and improving nutrition practices in East Africa (Kuria, 2014). Overall, FFSs have enabled a more scientifc, evaluation-based behavior among farmers (Van den Berg and Jiggins, 2007; David and Asamoah, 2011).The International Rice Research Institute found successful results from merging anthropological methods provided by FFS with IPM (Price and Palis, 2016). 251

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Despite the successes, Farmer Field School approaches also face their own set of criticisms. Participant inclusion by FFS programs has been found to be problematic. Phillips et al. (2014) reviewed participant targeting in FFS literature and found that many FFS programs succumbed to effectiveness-related inclusion rather than equity-related inclusion. This means that participants were targeted and met the criteria based on whether they were likely to succeed (e.g., due to their fulflling the resource requirements), automatically leaving out vulnerable groups, especially women.Various studies question the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of FFS approaches under budget and time constraints (Van den Berg and Jiggins, 2007), highlighting the challenges of translating a short-term FFS into long-term impacts with low resources. Furthermore, some question their ability to reach a large number of farmers, given the design of having smaller groups of farmers for more interactive participation (Tripp et al., 2005). However, despite the criticism,Van den Berg and Jiggins (2007, p. 680) argue that evaluating impact itself has proven to be diffcult and that “the empowerment of local communities to deal with complex and variable situations distinguishes the FFS from extension campaigns that can achieve quick and widespread coverage only in those instances where generally applicable solutions exist for common problems.” This chapter reviews the specifc gender impacts of the FFS approach and whether or how gender can be built into the curriculum under such a training method. Some of the impact studies in the FFS literature have been sex-disaggregated to look at participation while even less have looked at the impact on men and women participants separately. However, FFSs are seen as aligned with transformative learning theory (Friis-Hansen et al., 2012) and, given the necessity for internalization and critical refection in understanding and addressing gender issues, the FFS approach may be the exact setup that gender training needs to not only address gender but also provide the enabling environment that agricultural uptake requires.

Women’s participation in agricultural training It has long been recognized that men and women have different access to essential agricultural resources like land, credit (Okonya and Kroschel, 2014), and extension (Mudege et al., 2017, Mudege et al., 2017; Luther et al., 2005; Douthwaite et al., 2015), which in turn affects agricultural productivity and the ability to achieve benefts (FAO, 2011). Reducing gender gaps in access to training, information, and inputs has been an essential part of the gender-indevelopment approach. As demonstrated by Barbercheck (this volume), historically, women’s access to technical information, particularly formal extension services, is often limited. This may be due to women not being identifed as farmers, women’s exclusion from farmer producer groups, or women’s lack of time and mobility. One study in Ethiopia supports the fndings that women’s more limited participation and access to agricultural extension create disparities in women’s technology use and adoption (Ragasa et al., 2013). When able to receive technical training, the quality is often less than the information given to men, which also infuences crop productivity (Ragasa et al., 2013). Often, traditional gender norms and household responsibilities infuence whether or not women are able to access technical information. In many cases across different global regions, the man of the household is perceived as the representative when only one member of the household is able to attend, and women are often left out (Mudege et al., 2016). Given the challenges facing equitable participation in technical agricultural training and the added benefts of high-quality training in terms of productivity, it is imperative that programs focusing on knowledge transfer are able to incorporate a gender-aware approach that facilitates inclusive participation. Furthermore, alternative methods outside of the typical extension model 252

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of top-down training are useful in reaching varied audiences and having a broader impact on both productivity and other aspects of wellbeing. However, gender-equitable extension services are yet to be systematically integrated across extension services (Mbo’o-Tchouawou and Colverson, 2014). A number of qualitative and quantitative studies have critically analyzed extension services to see how gender equitably they have been designed and implemented or whether they brought benefts to both men and women (see Ragasa et al., 2013; Mudege et al., 2015; Morgan et al., 2015; Mbo’o-Tchouawou and Colverson, 2014). A study in Ethiopia went so far as to look at how the differences in access to extension services have impacted technological adoption and productivity in agriculture (Ragasa et al., 2013), while a study in Malawi used a social relations approach to see how gender relations impact extension services (Mudege et al., 2015). A study in northern Greece tried to understand women’s motivations in partaking in agricultural extension programs where selfactualization was found to be a key factor (Charatsari et al., 2013). A number of studies highlight the problematic nature of agricultural extension in reaching and benefting women. Ragasa et al. (2013, p. 437) recommend “stratifed productivity models by gender and crop in future research” to understand male/female differences in agricultural productivity as a result of the differences in access to inputs (including information). Findings from Malawi and Bangladesh emphasized the need to take into account gender relations and how they cause barriers to women’s participation in agriculture/aquaculture training (Mudege et al., 2015; Morgan et al., 2015).Trauger et al. (2008) point out how agricultural education in the United States is not meeting the needs of women farmers. Many of these studies (Ragasa et al., 2013; Mudege et al., 2015; Morgan et al., 2015; Charatsari et al., 2013; Mbo’o-Tchouawou and Colverson, 2014; Mudege et al., 2017; Kondylis et al., 2016; Bello-Bravo et al., 2011; Riley, 1995) provide valuable suggestions for extension services to be more gender-equitable. This includes quality improvement, exploring different channels of information dissemination (as men and women access information differently), recruitment methods that are gender-sensitive (additional efforts are usually required, depending on the context, for women, including taking consent from other family members), using female extension messengers, designing extension with self-actualization motivations in mind, and even merging social-consciousness-raising modules with technical training. Mbo’o-Tchouawou and Colverson (2014) recommend implementing and scaling out tested multidimensional innovative gender approaches so as to meet the gender gap in agriculture extension access. An interesting study in southern Ethiopia examined why extension services provided by the Bureau of Agriculture was failing to reduce the gaps in access to extension services, despite gender training and mainstreaming efforts. It revealed that gender-blind organizations such as this were not equipped enough to motivate staff to make the required effort or to even identify and address the very engrained gender-related problems at the feld level (Buchy and Basaznew, 2017).Waris’ (2017) study suggests analyzing the labor burdens perceived by women in India and trying to mitigate them to enable the successful adoption of rice intensifcation.

Changing practices around agricultural training Gender training gained ground in the 1990s as part of the gender-integration process following the Beijing conference of 1995 (Ahikire, 2007; Abou-Habib, 2007). As gap-flling approaches, meaning addressing critical areas otherwise missed, gained momentum, development projects started to engage more women in training programs either alongside men or in separate groups. This is when gender-sensitive training approaches also started to become popular. A gendersensitive approach is described as moving past sex-disaggregated data analysis and addressing 253

Afrina Choudhury and Paige Castellanos Table 19.1 Gender Approaches in Agricultural Training Programs Gender Approach

Description

Characteristics

Outcomes

Genderexploitative

Takes advantage of traditional gender roles and inequalities to reach project goals Is aware of women’s issues in project planning and outcomes These projects accommodate gender differences to achieve project outcomes

May target women for low quality work to enhance women’s participation rates Follows the do no harm principle

Perpetuates inequalities May have harmful consequences

Assesses gender roles, needs, and norms and works around them Targets women with technologies as a gapflling approach Applies a gender lens throughout the project from design to implementation and M&E Digs into root causes of inequalities Challenges harmful norms and stereotypes

May reinforce gender norms and stereotypes Changes may not sustain beyond the project

Gender-aware

Gender-sensitive

Gender-responsive Considers both interand intra-gender differences in project planning and implementation GenderCritical refection and transformative promoting new equitable gender norms

May not create concrete changes, gender norms persist

Allows gender mainstreaming across the project

Empowerment Changes in traditional gender attitudes Shifts norms and institutions Shifts power relations

gendered differences through targeted efforts (UNICEF, 2017) (See Table 19.1). This strategy was important to take women’s practical gender needs into consideration in order to involve them. Development project staff were provided with gender sensitivity training, and feld-level training was designed (to different extents) to accommodate, for example, women’s time-use patterns and availability, mobility constraints, their childcare responsibilities, and more. By simply involving women in a gender-sensitive manner, it was seen as empowering them. However, several studies have shown that gap-flling approaches or traditional training may not be enough to enable women to overcome gender relational obstacles at both the household and community level and to apply their training knowledge (Morgan et al., 2015). Morgan et al. (2015) conducted qualitative research with four communities in Bangladesh and found that gendered differences, including power dynamics, infuence the ability of individuals and households to adopt new innovations or technologies. If agricultural projects do not fully take into consideration structural gendered inequities and barriers to women’s participation, they will not be successful in training and implementing production-focused interventions. Meinzen-Dick et al. (2014, p. 373) claim, “a paradigm shift is required in agricultural research, development, and extension (R, D, & E) systems in developing countries,” throughout the entire agricultural extension, adoption of innovations, and evaluation processes to fully acknowledge and address women’s critical role. In a study by Farnworth and Colverson (2015) comparing different extension approaches, it was found that variation among women farmers and households with women must be taken 254

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into consideration when considering inclusion.They argue that it is necessary to modify extension to serve primarily as a mechanism for facilitation to allow for true gender-transformation and women’s empowerment.This can be done through an enabling process that addresses the critical issues related to gender norms and adapts to allow for women’s role as “an active change agent.” On the positive side, there have been efforts to reform extension services to enable better gender integration across extension services. Ragasa’s (2014) study examines reforms in India (Agricultural Technology Management Agency or ATMA model), Uganda (National Agricultural Advisory Services or NAADS),Venezuela (privatization), and Ethiopia (policies), and reviews of ICT-related extension.The study by Farnworth et al. (2015) examines aquaculture extension targeting women in Bangladesh to provide recommendations on the best methods to reach women more effectively. In Table 19.1, a comparison between the continuum of gendered approaches to agricultural training is presented.While not necessarily linear, projects shifting from “gender-aware” to “gender-transformative” can result in more radical changes in gender norms, whether within a household or at the community or societal level.The methodological approach of Farmer Field Schools can be one way to create more inclusive training for both men and women farmers across the Global South, and, depending on the content, design, and delivery, can attempt to be gender-transformative in approach.

Gendered impacts of Farmer Field School approaches Historically, varying fndings have emerged in FFS literature regarding the gendered impacts on men and women participants. One thing that is certain in the literature is that men and women are affected differently by the FFS experience (Mancini et al., 2008). Also clear is that the intersectional dimensions of the participants, such as their wealth and education, also lead to different impacts (Mancini et al., 2008). In an impact evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Davis et al. (2012) found an increased beneft of participating in FFS for female-headed households over male-headed households, indicating the potential for FFS to reach female producers and smallholder farmers. However, in analyzing the effectiveness of Farmer Field School methods on yield and livelihoods on tomato farmers in China, a greater impact was shown on men than on women.Apart from sex, the studies found differences in impact among different wealth groups and education levels; wealthier and more educated farmers were found to be better impacted (Cai et al., 2016). This highlights the importance of many external factors in the successful implementation of agricultural production, even when trained in a demonstrative and hands-on method such as the FFS. When FFS methods include women as participants, if they do not address many of the other barriers women face in agricultural production or provide strategies for overcoming these barriers, there will remain gendered differences in outcomes, such as yield and economic growth. Many Farmer Field School evaluations in agricultural sciences focus on practices, yield, and income changes, and sometimes the data is sex-disaggregated, but unintended consequences for women may also emerge. In an impact study done in Kenya, the FFS approach led to a positive impact on food security. However, when a separate qualitative study was conducted, it was found that while the farmers successfully adopted the technology, it created added labor burdens on women (Larsen and Lilleør, 2014). Given women’s traditional role related to taking care of the household, including food preparation, there may be impacts on her time use and added burdens related to changes or increases in production. However, another evaluation of the uptake of IPM 255

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techniques by smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda found unsuccessful results mainly because of the labor burdens it caused, especially to women (Ochago, 2018).Women’s time constraints and existing labor responsibilities leave little room for added tasks, particularly when related to home nutrition and food consumption, as those activities are traditionally women’s duties. Farmer Field Schools have been evidenced to bring about transformative changes in gender roles and relations (Duveskog et al., 2011). Interestingly, the very group-based, participatory nature of the FFS approach itself triggered transformations because it allowed for experiential learning among men and women participants, which enabled questioning long-held beliefs and rotating roles and leaderships (Duveskog et al., 2011;Taylor et al., 2012). In fact, the FFS setup allows addressing of community issues that relate to the technology being disseminated, e.g., gender (Luther et al., 2005; Kuria, 2014). The study by Duveskog et al. (2011) in western Kenya also found positive changes in terms of household responsibilities with evidence of increased collaboration and joint decision-making as a result of mixed-sex groups in Farmer Field Schools. In a later study, Friis-Hansen and Duveskog (2012) also reported gender impacts in terms of women’s empowerment and changes in men’s attitudes toward women.An analysis of data from 2,000 households across three countries in East Africa undeniably confrmed that FFS can bring empowerment impacts, i.e., better decision-making and choice among farmers, which has then been found to be linked to wellbeing, suggesting that extension efforts should focus on empowerment rather than disseminating technological solutions (Friis-Hansen and Duveskog, 2012).

Integrating gender content into technical training As previously mentioned, FFSs have the potential to target social inequities and become gendertransformative in intent.This requires strong intentionality in the programming and addressing many external constraints, such as childcare, household division of labor, and experience learning technical information. Social learning is instrumental to technological uptake, environmental sustainability (Najjar et al., 2013), or whatever the agricultural developmental goal may be. Beyond including women as participants, specifc content related to gender roles, norms, and practices, can be incorporated into production-focused agriculture training (Luther et al., 2005; Westendorp and Visser, 2015). Farmer Field Schools offer an easily accessible method for this, given their design for increasing farmer participation.Through the process of building technical agricultural skills, trust between participants and facilitators is developed.This trust can be used to expand the content topics to societal and household norms, in particular, gender. In doing so, women are able to discuss other constraints or barriers to improving their agriculture productivity, as well as foster increased self-effcacy. Numerous studies have pointed out the signifcance of gender relations for women’s technology adoption (Farnworth and Colverson, 2015). Including men is important in the discussion of gender norms, and dual-headed households require an understanding of gender inequities by both men and women. The study by Friis-Hansen et al. (2012) asserts the opportunity of changing the attitudes of men toward women through the FFS setting for gender impacts. Strategically combining gender discussions with technical training can also encourage men’s willingness to participate in such gender discussions. Furthermore, technology adoption may not be successful, i.e., farmers may not be able to apply the agricultural knowledge they gain, if underlying structural and social barriers are not addressed (Kantor et al., 2015). In fact, gender and social tradeoffs caused by the introduction of technologies can be better avoided if social and gender equity issues are taken into consideration when disseminating technologies (Beuchelt and Badstue, 2013). 256

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Case examples of gender-incorporated technical extension from Bangladesh and Honduras Gender-transformative approach in homestead smallholder aquaculture technology extension in Bangladesh In Bangladesh, women are targeted at the homestead level in an accommodating manner to bypass the sociocultural constraints they face in terms of mobility, security, and gender roles, among others. However, in targeting women for homestead pond aquaculture production, WorldFish researchers found that gender relations at multiple levels (see Morgan et al., 2015) hinder women’s ability to apply their training knowledge because they lack control over resources like the pond and fnance (Kantor et al., 2015) or the technology creates new roles for women. For example, when WorldFish introduced a conducive harvesting technology for women that allows them to catch micronutrient-dense small fsh from their homestead ponds, it created a new role for women that broke the rules of the gender stereotypes in that area. As a result, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project built gender-transformative social-consciousness-raising exercises into the gill net technology delivery package, and these exercises were designed at both the household and community level (Österblom et al 2020, p 18). In separate sessions, household members and community members (e.g., informal leaders and neighbors) met on a regular basis to discuss, debate, and refect on issues around gender biases, decision-making, stereotypes, masculinities, and respecting one another, among others. The exercises, derived from a number of manuals,1 helped spark critical refection through games, skits, storytelling, drawing, and role play. Mixed method designs helped evaluate the outcomes of incorporating gender-transformative approaches (GTA) into technical interventions.The emerging evidence is pointing toward positive attitudinal changes, enhanced consumption by target groups, and softening of backlash against technology uptake by women, among other outcomes.

Gender-integrated Farmer Field Schools in Western Honduras With funding from USAID’s Feed the Future Horticulture Innovation Lab (UC Davis), a team of researchers from the Pennsylvania State University (US) and Escuela Agrícola Panamericana Zamorano (Honduras) collaborated with a local non-government organization in Intibucá, Honduras, to investigate the potential impact of a gender-integrated Farmer Field School. In western Honduras, specifcally the dry corridor, dietary diversity is bleak with meals typically consisting of beans and tortillas, with some dairy and eggs occasionally (Larson et al., 2019). Issues of land availability, access to credit, and lack of water further exacerbate food insecurity, particularly for women (Larson et al., 2019). The Women in Agriculture Network (WAgN): Honduras project conducted mixed-methods research to understand the gendered differences in horticulture production and resource availability.The team then developed and implemented an FFS focused on horticulture home farm production for home consumption and marketing surplus with the goals of improving food security and nutrition. The team partnered with a local organization, Associación de Mujeres Intibucanas Renovadas (AMIR), to implement the FFS that incorporated gender-focused content into the production-oriented lessons. Each session focused on a topic, such as seed selection or installing irrigation systems; the facilitators also included discussion of traditional gender roles, leadership, and self-esteem.The FFS culminated in a celebratory graduation highlighting the accomplishments of the participants and the zeroattrition rate of the training. Post-evaluation demonstrated uptake of home farm practices and improved understanding of the gendered distribution of labor. Furthermore, both the process 257

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of holding the training and the sharing of the harvest resulted in increased social connectedness and community. However, time constraints, care responsibilities, and scarce water availability persisted and impacted women’s ability to maintain the production of the original wide variety of crops.

Increasing participatory methods beyond Farmer Field Schools Farmer Field Schools are one specifc approach for addressing agriculture production and can be a method for incorporating gender awareness, addressing gender inequities. Friis-Hansen and Duveskog (2012) have suggested that extension programs focus on empowerment rather than driving forth technical solutions. Other methods that embody the principles of empowerment and agency also exist and can advance FFS approaches. Participatory action research (PAR) provides an opportunity for further agency and ownership over the process for participants.The core idea behind community-led research in development (RinD) processes is that “better results can be achieved when communities are involved in development processes that affect them” (Douthwaite et al., 2015, p. 9). A good example can be drawn from the RinD process followed in the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems where the PAR consisted of “planning, acting, observing and refecting” and the whole process started with multidisciplinary teams using both a biophysical and social lens to identify the opportunities and challenges (Douthwaite et al., 2015, p. 10). Community driven development (CDD), an approach which the World Bank is a big proponent of, is also another approach that has gained popularity at a more macro level (see Casey, 2018; Humphreys et al., 2012). Despite the empowerment scope of such approaches, it is important to remember that social and gender change require added efforts beyond these participatory approaches. For example, in Zambia, when a communication for social change innovation was applied to a PAR on reducing postharvest fsh losses, it led to improved men’s attitudes toward gender equality and women’s intrahousehold decision-making regarding fnances; women’s involvement in fshing also enhanced signifcantly (Cole et al., 2018).The study by Aregu et al. (2019) reveals that while PAR can automatically bring some transformative change in itself, it may fail to address all levels of power unless gender-transformative approaches are built-in. Katherine Casey’s (2018) paper on community-driven development critiques this decentralized, participatory approach that leaves decision-making to the communities. In her review of seven CDD projects, she found that CDD approaches did not really change women’s status in any sustainable manner, and she argues that this may be because local institutions remain exclusionary. Technical solutions without social transformation may be limiting, especially for women. Multi-level institutional change needs to complement these efforts. GTA seeks to tackle societal inequities and power relations through sessions focused on community and household gender dynamics and norms.Wong et al. (2019, p. 11) point out the participatory strategies surrounding GTAs are based on “cycles of action and refection” but also emphasize that participatory approaches alone are not necessarily gender-aware. We propose merging social change efforts with technical solutions under a participatory framework. Social change topics also require a different set of facilitation skills that traditional extension lacks. However, PAR and Farmer Field School facilitators may share the same basic ingredients with social change facilitators where discussions are sparked through experiential learning, be they about technical topics or gender. A number of tools exist (Hillenbrand et al 2015; Promundo-US & CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems, 2016) that enable fairly smooth discussions around sensitive topics where the participants themselves engage in heated debates and dialog with the facilitator asking the right questions.These tools can also be 258

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used to build social consciousness among staff, not only farmers. Building the capacity of these facilitators remains important, keeping in mind the challenges of instilling an understanding of both biophysical and social issues in the same facilitators or hiring more resources with differentiated skill sets.Also, these facilitators need to invest a good amount of time and effort in building relationships and interacting with the communities.The success of participatory approaches largely depends on the “intensity of social facilitation,” and how much is actually enough still remains a question (Casey, 2018). Despite growing evidence of the instrumental importance of doing gender right in extension, there still remain large gaps in application.The need for numbers and quantifable impact, fast-paced extension delivery, and resource constraints make participatory approaches challenging, let alone bridging gender and social change topics. Social change also takes time, and shortterm projects may not be able to cater to that requirement. Donors need to be cognizant of time limitations and long-term needs when they seek results. More evidence is required to prove the instrumental advantage of social and gender change on development efforts in agriculture.The FAO data showing how much agricultural productivity can increase if women gain equal access to inputs have been shared widely by gender experts. However, social change is also hard to quantify, and qualitative science is still largely neglected. Multiple studies exist showing the importance of gender in agriculture, but these are scattered.The many gender-responsive extension methods that exist were experimental in nature and have not been scaled to date. Gap-flling, accommodative approaches remains an emerging trend that extension agents are still fguring out.

Note 1 Hillenbrand, E., Lindsey, D., Ridolf, R. and Von Kotze,A., 2015. Nurturing Connections:Adapted for Homestead Food Production and Nutrition. New York, NY: Helen Keller International. Retrieved from https://www.fsnnetwork.org/nurturing-connections-adapted-homestead-food-production-and-nut rition; Promundo-US and the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. (2016). Promoting gender-transformative change with men and boys: a manual to spark critical refection on harmful gender norms with men and boys in aquatic agricultural systems.Washington, DC: Promundo-US/Penang: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. Retrieved from http://pubs.iclarm.net/resourc e_centre/Promundo-AAS-Promoting-gender-transformative-change.pdf

References Abou-Habib, L. (2007).“Changing the unchangeable: refections on selected experiences in gender training in the Machreq/Maghreb region.” In Mukhopadhyay, M., and Wong, F. (eds), Revisiting gender training: the making and remaking of gender knowledge. Amsterdam: The Netherlands: KIT (Royal Tropical Institute), 47–60. Ahikire, J. (2007). “Gender training and the politics of mainstreaming in post-Beijing Uganda.” In Mukhopadhyay, M., and Wong, F. (eds), Revisiting gender training: the making and remaking of gender knowledge.The Netherlands: KIT (Royal Tropical Institute), 39–46. Ajani, E.N., and Onwubuya, A. (2010). “Farmer Field School (FFS) and Junior Farmer Field and Life School (JFFLS) as challenges to agricultural extension development and practice in Nigeria.” Journal of Agricultural Extension 14 (1), 53–61. doi: 10.4314/jae.v14i1.64069. Aregu, L., Choudhury, A., Rajaratnam, S., Burg, M. van der, and McDougall, C. (2019). “Implications of agricultural innovation on gender norms: gender approaches in aquatic agriculture in Bangladesh.” In Sachs, C. (ed.), Gender, agriculture and agrarian transformations: changing relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia. New York: Routledge, 162–180. Bello-Bravo, J., Seufferheld, F., and Agunbiade, T.A. (2011). “Gender and Farmer Field Schools in agricultural production systems in West Africa.” International Journal of Science in Society 2 (4):13–23. doi: 10.18848/1836-6236/CGP/v02i04/51280.

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Afrina Choudhury and Paige Castellanos Beuchelt,T.D., and Badstue, L. (2013).“Gender, nutrition- and climate-smart food production: opportunities and trade-offs.” Food Security 5 (5):709–721. doi: 10.1007/s12571-013-0290-8. Buchy, M., and Basaznew, F. (2005).“Gender-blind organizations deliver gender–biased services: the case of Awasa Bureau of Agriculture in Southern Ethiopia.” Gender,Technology and Development 9 (2):235–251. doi: 10.1177/097185240500900204. Cai, J., Shi, G., and Hu, R. (2016).“An impact analysis of Farmer Field School in China.” Sustainability; Basel 8 (2):137. doi: 10.3390/su8020137. Casey, K. (2018). “Radical decentralization: does community-driven development work?” Annual Review of Economics 10:139–163. Charatsari, C., Papadaki-Klavdianou, A., Michailidis, A., and Partalidou, M. (2013). “Great expectations? Antecedents of women farmers’ willingness to participate in agricultural education programmes.” Outlook on Agriculture 42 (3):193–199. doi: 10.5367/oa.2013.0134. Cole, S.M., McDougall, C.A., Kaminski, M., Kef, A.S., Chilala, A., and Chisule, G. (2018). “Postharvest fsh losses and unequal gender relations: drivers of the social-ecological trap in the Barotse Floodplain fshery, Zambia.” Ecology and Society 23(2):18. https://doi. org/10.5751/ES-09950-230218 David, S., and Asamoah, C. (2011). “The impact of Farmer Field Schools on human and social capital: a case study from Ghana.” The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 17 (3):239–252. doi: 10.1080/1389224X.2011.559076. Davis, K., Nkonya, E., Kato, E., Mekonnen, D.A., Odendo, M., Miiro, R., and Nkuba, J. (2012). “Impact of Farmer Field Schools on agricultural productivity and poverty in East Africa.” World Development 40 (2):402–413. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.05.019. Djeddah, C., Mavanga, R., and Hendrickx, L. (2006). “Junior farmer feld and life schools: experience from Mozambique.” In Gillespie S (ed) AIDS, Poverty, and Hunger: Challenges and Responses, 325–339. International Food Policy Research Institute,Washington DC. Douthwaite, B.,Apgar, J.M., Schwarz,A., McDougall, C.,Attwood, S., Senaratna Sellamuttu, S., and Clayton, T., (eds). (2015).“Research in development: learning from the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems.” Penang, Malaysia: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. Working Paper: AAS-2015–16. Duveskog, D., Friis-Hansen, E., and Taylor, E.W. (2011). “Farmer Field Schools in rural Kenya: a transformative learning experience.” Journal of Development Studies 47 (10):1529–1544. doi: 10.1080/00220388.2011.561328. Farnworth, C.R., and Colverson, K.E. (2015). “Building a gender-transformative extension and advisory facilitation system in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Retrieved from Journal of Gender,Agriculture and Food Security (Agri-Gender) website: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/246040. Farnworth, C.R., Sultana, N., Kantor, P., and Choudhury, A. (2015). “Gender integration in aquaculture research and technology adoption processes: lessons learned in Bangladesh.” Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish.Working Paper: 2015–17. http://pubs.iclarm.net/resource_centre/2015-17.pdf. FAO. (2011). The state of food and agriculture: women in agriculture, closing the gender gap for development. Rome, Italy: FAO. FAO. (2019). Farmers taking the lead – Thirty years of Farmer Field Schools. Rome, Italy: FAO. Friis-Hansen, E., and Duveskog, D. (2012).“The empowerment route to well-being: an analysis of Farmer Field Schools in East Africa.” World Development 40 (2):414–427. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.05.005. Friis-Hansen, E., Duveskog, D., and Taylor, E.W. (2012).“Less noise in the household: the impact of Farmer Field Schools on gender relations.” Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development 2 (2):44–55. Hillenbrand, E., Lindsey, D., Ridolf, R., and Von Kotze, A. (2015). “Nurturing connections: adapted for homestead food production and nutrition.” New York, NY: Helen Keller International. Retrieved from https://www.fsnnetwork.org/nurturing-connections-adapted-homestead-food-production-and-nut rition. Humphreys, M., Sanchez de la Sierra, R., and van der Windt, P. (2012). “Social and economic impacts of Tuungane.” Final report on the effects of a community driven reconstruction program in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo Report. Columbia Univ., New York. Jones, K., Williams, R.J., and Gill, T.B. (2017). “‘If you study, the last thing you want to be is working under the sun:’ an analysis of perceptions of agricultural education and occupations in four countries.” Agriculture and Human Values 34 (1):15–25. doi: 10.1007/s10460-016-9685-4. Kantor, P., Morgan, M., and Choudhury,A. (2015).“Amplifying outcomes by addressing inequality: the role of gender-transformative approaches in agricultural research for development.” Gender, Technology and Development, 19 (3):292–319. doi: 10.1177/0971852415596863.

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Empowering women with farmer feld schools Kondylis, F., Mueller,V., Sheriff, G., and Zhu, S. (2016). “Do female instructors reduce gender bias in diffusion of sustainable land management techniques? Experimental evidence from Mozambique.” World Development 78:436–449. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.10.036. Kuria, E. (2014). MEAS EVAL full report- integrating nutrition in FFS in Eastern Africa. Retrieved from http: //reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/fles/resources/MEAS%20EVAL%20Full%20Report-%20Integra ting%20Nutrition%20in%20FFS%20in%20Eastern%20Africa%20-%20Nov%20%202014.pdf. Larsen, A.F., and Lilleør, H.B. (2014). “Beyond the feld: the impact of Farmer Field Schools on food security and poverty alleviation.” World Development 64:843–859. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.07.003. Larson, J.B., Castellanos, P., and Jensen, L. (2019).“Gender, household food security, and dietary diversity in western Honduras.” Global Food Security 20:170–179. doi: 10.1016/j.gfs.2019.01.005. Luther, G.C., Harris, C., Sherwood, S., Gallagher, K., Mangan, J., and Gamby, K.T. (2005).“Developments and innovations in Farmer Field Schools and the training of trainers.” In G.W. Norton, E.A. Heinrichs, G.C. Luther, and M.E. Irwin (eds), Globalizing integrated pest management- A participatory research process. Blackwell Publishing,Ames, Iowa, pp. 159-190. chap. 9. doi:10.1002/9780470290163. Mancini, F., and Jiggins, J. (2008).“Appraisal of methods to evaluate Farmer Field Schools.” Development in Practice 18 (4/5):539–550. Mbo’o-Tchouawou, M., and Colverson, K. (2014). “Increasing access to agricultural extension and advisory services: how effective are new approaches in reaching women farmers in rural areas?” ILRI Project Report. Nairobi, Kenya: International Livestock Research Institute. Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing,A.R., and Behrman, J.A. (2014).“A system that delivers: integrating gender into agricultural research, development, and extension.” In A.R. Quisumbing, R. Meinzen-Dick, T.L. Raney,A. Croppenstedt, J.A. Behrman, and A. Peterman (eds), Gender in agriculture: closing the knowledge gap. Dordrecht: Springer, 373–391. doi: 10.1007/978-94-017-8616-4_15. Morgan, M., Choudhury, A., Braun, M., Beare, D., Benedict, J., and Kantor, P. (2015).“Understanding the gender dimensions of adopting climate-smart smallholder aquaculture innovations.” Penang, Malaysia: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems.Working Paper:AAS- 2015-08. Mudege, N.N., Chevo,T., Nyekanyeka,T., Kapalasa, E., and Demo, P. (2016).“Gender norms and access to extension services and training among potato farmers in Dedza and Ntcheu in Malawi.” The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 22 (3):291–305. doi: 10.1080/1389224X.2015.1038282. Najjar, D., Spaling, H., and Sinclair, A.J. (2013).“Learning about sustainability and gender through Farmer Field Schools in the Taita Hills, Kenya.” International Journal of Educational Development 33 (5):466–475. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.06.004. Ochago, R. (2018). “Gender and pest management: constraints to integrated pest management uptake among smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda.” Cogent Food & Agriculture 4(1), 1540093. https://doi.org /10.1080/23311932.2018.1540093 Österblom, H., Wabnitz, C.C.C., Tladi, D., Allison, E.H., Arnaud-Haond, S., Bebbington, J., Bennett, N., Blasiak, R., Boonstra, W., Choudhury, A., Cisneros-Montemayor, A., Daw, T., Fabinyi, M., Franz, N., Harden-Davies, H., Kleiber, D., Lopes, P., McDougall, C., Resosudarmo, B.P., and Selim, S.A. (2020). Towards ocean equity.Washington, DC:World Resources Institute. Available online at www.oceanpanel. org/how-distribute-benefts-ocean-equitably. Okonya, J.S., and Kroschel, J. (2014). “Gender differences in access and use of selected productive resources among sweet potato farmers in Uganda.” Agriculture & Food Security 3:1. doi: 10.1186/2048-7010-3-1. Phillips, D., Waddington, H., and White, H. (2014). “Better targeting of farmers as a channel for poverty reduction: a systematic review of Farmer Field Schools targeting.” Development Studies Research 1 (1):113–136. doi: 10.1080/21665095.2014.924841. Price, L.L., and Palis, F.G. (2016).“Bringing farmer knowledge and learning into agricultural research: how agricultural anthropologists transformed strategic research at the International Rice Research Institute.” Culture,Agriculture, Food and Environment 38 (2):123–130. doi: 10.1111/cuag.12067. Promundo-US and the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. (2016). Promoting gender-transformative change with men and boys: a manual to spark critical refection on harmful gender norms with men and boys in aquatic agricultural systems.Washington, DC: Promundo-US/Penang: CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. Retrieved from http://pubs.iclarm.net/resource_centre/P romundo-AAS-Promoting-gender-transformative-change.pdf Ragasa, C., Berhane, G., Tadesse, F., and Taffesse, A.S. (2013). “Gender differences in access to extension services and agricultural productivity.” The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 19 (5):437–468. doi: 10.1080/1389224X.2013.817343.

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Afrina Choudhury and Paige Castellanos Ragasa, C. (2014). “Improving gender responsiveness of agricultural extension.” In A.R. Quisumbing, R. Meinzen-Dick,T.L. Raney,A. Croppenstedt, J.A. Behrman, and A. Peterman (eds), Gender in agriculture: closing the knowledge gap.411–430. Netherlands: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-94-017-8616-4_17. Riley, P.J. (1995). “Gender issues and the training of agricultural extensionists in Malawi.” Agriculture and Human Values 12 (1):31–38. doi: 10.1007/BF02218072. Sanglestsawai, S., Rejesus, R.M., and Yorobe, J.M. (2015). “Economic impacts of integrated pest management (IPM) farmer feld schools (FFS): evidence from onion farmers in the Philippines.” Agricultural Economics 46 (2):149–162. doi: 10.1111/agec.12147. Taylor, E.W., Duveskog, D., and Friis-Hansen, E. (2012).“Fostering transformative learning in non-formal settings: Farmer-Field Schools in East Africa.” International Journal of Lifelong Education 31 (6):725–742. doi: 10.1080/02601370.2012.713035. Tomlinson, J., and Rhiney, K. (2017).“Assessing the role of farmer feld schools in promoting pro-adaptive behaviour towards climate change among Jamaican farmers.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 8 (1):86–98. doi: 10.1007/s13412-017-0461-6. Trauger, A., Sachs, C., Barbercheck, M., Kiernan, N.E., Brasier, K., and Findeis, J. (2008). “Agricultural education: gender identity and knowledge exchange.” Journal of Rural Studies 24 (4):432–439. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.03.007. Tripp, R., Wijeratne, M., and Piyadasa,V.H. (2005). “What should we expect from farmer feld schools? A Sri Lanka case study.” World Development 33 (10):1705–1720. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.04.012. Tsiboe, F., Dixon, B.L., Nalley, L.L., Popp, J.S., and Luckstead, J. (2016). “Estimating the impact of farmer feld schools in sub-Saharan Africa: the case of cocoa.” Agricultural Economics 47 (3):329–339. doi: 10.1111/agec.12233. Van den Berg, H., and Jiggins, J. (2007). “Investing in farmers—The impacts of Farmer Field Schools in relation to integrated pest management.” World Development 35 (4):663–686. doi: 10.1016/j. worlddev.2006.05.004. Waris, A. (2017).“Gender dimensions and training needs of farm women in system of rice intensifcation in selected districts of Bihar state.” Agriculture Update 12 (1):109–112. Westendorp, A., and Visser, L. (2015).“Farmer feld schools: unexpected outcomes of gendered empowerment in wartime Nepal.” Journal of Asian Development 1(1): 1–22. doi: 10.5296/jad.v1i1.7549 Wong, F., Vos, A., Pyburn, R., and Newton, J. (2019). “Implementing gender transformative approaches in agriculture.” CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research. A Discussion Paper for the European Commission.

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20 GENDER VIOLENCE AND FOOD-SERVICE WORKERS Bending toward justice Patricia Allen and Whitney Shervey1

“The arc of history bends toward justice, Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. But it won’t bend on its own.” Jason Hickel, The Divide (2018, p. 4) Indeed, justice does not produce itself.The arc of history and its consequences have such longstanding tensile strength that they are not easily malleable. Every curve in the arc toward justice has come from people standing together on the arc to get it to bend from the weight of their power. One of the arenas in which the arc of history has produced massive injustice is the food system, and at the vertex of the arc is gender injustice. In this chapter, we take one of the most genderexploitative domains of the food system—the food-service industry—and ask what it would take to bend it more toward justice. Gender injustice in the food-service industry has valence as a site for international social change. This is due to the scope and range of people who are affected by or participate in the food-service industry, the degree of injustice, and new efforts to address these injustices. Food service is an international industry, both because it is present in almost every nation and because workers, management, ownership, and patrons transcend national boundaries. Although much of the material in this chapter is drawn from the US and facts and fgures may vary in other regions, the conceptual and theoretical approaches we discuss are relevant globally. Similarly, while the food-service industry is a particular case of gender injustice in the food system, the principles we discuss pertain to gender injustice writ large, regardless of location or sector.We see gender not in the sense of a categorical binary or category, but as a spectrum and as a set of social relations. While gender is a spectrum in both biological and social terms, we sometimes use gender to mean women or men because that is often how studies are conducted and how data are collected and reported.These ontological categories are necessary to defne, describe, and solve problems related to gender equity. In patriarchal social relations, transgender and gender non-conforming people—not only cis women—are harmed and oppressed. The fact remains, however, that to discuss gender equity, we must discuss women.2 While in this chapter we focus primarily on gender and how the multiplicative effects of class and race-ethnicity intersect with gender injustice, we use violence as a conceptual framework for injustice and defne “justice” as the absence of violence.Violence is harm caused to another; often, this harm is caused because of the category to which one is assigned or the locus in the web of social relations one inhabits. Many categories of people, including women, live in a world of normalized violence. Participants in the food-service industry represent almost every nation, 263

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ethnicity, gender, class, and age. Injustice is a product of social relations among these categories. These categories have operated throughout history to create structural inequality and maintain social order (Kirk et al., 2013).The framework of intersectionality acknowledges the reality that the social systems of race-ethnicity, gender, and class work together to shape identity, determine overall life chances, and predict occupational inequalities. McCall’s (2001) empirical examination of poverty and the labor market disrupts the idea that race, class, or gender in isolation can explain inequality. These intersections are evident in the gender-based violences of the foodservice industry. Not only do these intersect structurally, but people always belong to more than one social group.3 The privileges and forms of oppression that pertain to these groups cannot be cleanly resected either conceptually or empirically. In this chapter, we frst explain what we mean by violence and its relationship to gender justice. We then review the ways in which gender violence is present and reproduced in the food-service industry and discuss forms of collective action that address it. In this, we focus on unions, worker centers, and collaborations and the ways in which they can help bend the arc toward gender justice.

Gender justice through the lens of violence Gender equity or gender justice is the antithesis of gender-based violence. Most often, violence is conceptualized as physical harm. While this is certainly a prevalent form of genderbased violence, we use a broader conceptualization of violence developed in the feld of peace studies. For Galtung (1969, p. 168),“Violence is that which increases the distance between the potential and the actual, and that which impedes the decrease of this distance.” In other words, violence is the action that determines the difference between the social conditions we have and the better conditions that are possible. Thus, not only is violence unjust, but injustice is violent. There are several types of violence: direct violence, cultural violence, and structural violence. In Galtung’s (1990) framework, direct violence is that which is perpetrated through physical or verbal abuse.This includes hitting, shouting, and bullying primarily perpetrated by one person against another. A person’s ability to perpetrate physical violence and intimidation requires that someone is already in a dominant position and another is in a subordinate position, which is related to cultural and structural violence. For Galtung (1990), cultural violence is beliefs and attitudes (and we would add the practices) that diminish and limit a category of people. An example he provides is that of gendered language and writing. Cultural violence related to gender is perpetrated through gender stereotypes and sexist behaviors. The third type of violence—structural violence—is that which causes harm by being embedded in policies, systems, and practices orchestrated by those in power. Structural violence is perpetrated through the “normal” operation of society that harms the life chances and social conditions for many people. It is what results in structural inequality in the present, past, and future. Structural inequality is a product of dominant-subordinate relations as determined by the social order of social groups. Structural violence and its consequences are nested in traditions, laws, tax policies, inheritances, discourses, and images that shape the ways in which groups, communities, institutions, and societies function.Thus, oppression and structural violence are not necessarily intentional or individual. In this sense, Galtung’s structural violence is analogous to Young’s conceptualization of structural oppression.4 For Young (1990, p. 56), the causes of oppression are “embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules.” While direct violence is overt and intentional, cultural and structural violences are often hidden 264

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and normalized, i.e., “just the way things work.” Direct, cultural, and structural violence map onto intersecting axes that are mutually constitutive and reinforcing. The ability to do harm through physical force, for example, requires asymmetries of power that are established through cultural and structural violence.

Axes of gender violence in the food-service industry All three types of gender violence—direct, cultural, and structural—are pervasive in the foodservice industry. Although they intersect, we emphasize here those particularly related to patriarchy and gender. Patriarchy is a system of violence that incorporates all three types and does particular harm based on gender.While gender-based violence intersects with violences related to socioeconomic class and race-ethnicity, we focus here on gender injustice through lenses of direct, cultural, and structural violence. Direct violence takes many forms. The US labor union, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), considers gender-based violence to include assault and rape, restrictions on freedom either at work or on the way to work, sexual harassment, stalking, traffcking, and coercion (Runge, 2016, p.3). According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), sexual harassment in the workplace includes “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature” (USEEOC, n.d., para. 1). Additionally, sexual harassment can include offensive comments that are made about women in general, environments that are hostile or offensive, or when women are fred or demoted as a result of being harassed (USEEOC, n.d.). Women food-service workers endure all forms of sexual harassment as defned by the EEOC from customers, supervisors, and coworkers. From 1995 to 2016, restaurant5 industry workers fled more sexual harassment complaints to the EEOC than any other industry, 83% of which were fled by women (Galarza, 2017).While direct violence may be perpetrated by owners and supervisors, restaurant workers have also experienced physical violence from customers.These forms of direct violence are made possible and are supported by gender-based cultural violence. Cultural violence in the restaurant industry can take the shape of toxic masculinity that creates powerlessness. Toxic masculinity includes both cultures of oppression and direct sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is used to prove one’s “manhood,” especially in service-related occupations like the restaurant industry that are associated with “women’s work.” To counter the assumption that cooking is women’s work and feminine, in the professional kitchen, men try to prove their dominance by asserting their masculinity (Harris et al., 2015).The resulting hypermasculine kitchen environments pre-determine what types of attributes are required to succeed and survive.Verbal and physical abuse in the back of the house (e.g., kitchen), as well as sexual harassment in the form of heavily sexualized banter that is endemic to food-service culture, is described in “The Pot Washers” (2019).6 Women must navigate and survive highly competitive environments that are rife with hypermasculinity that normalize sexual harassment and reinforce occupational segregation. Sexual harassment is so normalized that many women are not even aware of when they are being sexually harassed (Jayaraman, 2013). Even when women know they are being sexually harassed, they may be unaware of how to report sexual harassment or are afraid they will suffer retaliation.And, related to their low-wage circumstances, in most cases, women cannot afford to fght back and risk losing their jobs. Hypermasculine work environments maintain gender segregation by keeping women in lower-paying positions that have little opportunity for career advancement or meaningful wage increases. This maps onto structural violence. 265

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Structural violence in the form of exploitation creates and amplifes gender injustice in the restaurant industry. Exploitation is the economic relation in which an owner pays the worker less than the value of what they produce, and the owner captures the difference in value. In the food-service industry, this means that most workers earn very low wages. In the US, for example, restaurant workers earn about half of the annual average income of all workers in all US occupations (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2018a).These low wages are gendered. Although women are the majority of restaurant workers,7 men occupy the highest paying positions of power, such as owner, manager, and executive chef; when women and men hold the same positions, women make less than their male counterparts (Jayaraman, 2013, p. 131). In the front of the house (e.g., servers and greeters), where two-thirds of women work, women’s wages are 75% those of men doing the same job (Restaurant Opportunities Center [ROC] United, 2015, p. 4). Compounding this inequality, in the US, many restaurant workers are tipped workers.8 This means that the employer pays a very low wage to these workers that is below the legal minimum wage. To earn at least the minimum wage, restaurant workers then must meet the demands of a panoply of other employers—that is, each customer—to earn a living.9,10 This economic relation creates gendered power dynamics. For women, their ability to earn this wage can depend on their enacting stereotypical gender characteristics such as subservience and feminine gender expression. Indeed, women servers are often hired on the basis of their possessing these characteristics (Sachs et al., 2014), and it can infuence their being assigned to more or less lucrative shifts, which affects their income.Wage inequality is also intersectional with race-ethnicity. Women of color make less than their white counterparts and are more likely to work in the lowest-paying fast-food establishments (Jayaraman, 2013).This structural violence of exploitation enables and supports both direct and cultural violence. In addition to the violences endemic to the restaurant workplace itself, restaurant industry business owners use strategies of structural and cultural violence to maintain division among their workers so that workers remain powerless.11 Examples include contingent labor practices, expecting workers to work off the clock, and dividing and conquering workers. Together, these practices prevent workers from having a consistent schedule or income, knowing their rights, taking action against abuse, and organizing among those with shared interests. Of particular interest for this chapter is the divide and conquer strategy that encourages group formation and isolation that creates and perpetuates structural inequality. These “dog-eat-dog” business practices purposefully segregate labor by industry occupations based on gender and race (Oliva, 2011). Keeping workers divided prevents them from recognizing that owners are responsible for their working conditions and instead keeps them distracted as they fght among themselves over the few opportunities for higher wages and job mobility. This is a form of powerlessness when workers are unable to see structural and cultural violences that have created their circumstances and resulted in little control over their working and non-working lives. The concatenation and cumulative effects of these violences are such that an individual worker is not in a position to advocate for themselves on an individual basis. Structural violence has already dictated that restaurant workers are highly unlikely to become owners and that it is highly likely that they are living paycheck to paycheck. Low-wage restaurant workers cannot afford to lose their jobs,12 and often have few if any opportunities for employment elsewhere due to structural inequalities that have excluded them from higher education or a baseline of fnancial security.This structural violence intersects with the cultural violence of powerlessness in ways that limit workers’ abilities to self-organize. Improving the lives of workers in the present and life chances in the future requires collective action through labor organizing. 266

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Addressing gender violence through collective action Food service is a labor sector that is particularly suited to collective organizing.While there are parts of the economy that can be outsourced or for which workers can be eliminated,13 this is not the case in the many parts of the food-service industry. For example, restaurants occupy physical places, and part of the value proposition is the attention received from servers.That is, people patronize restaurants to be served and have someone else do the work.The non-virtual nature of food service, the large numbers of food-service workers, and the egregious injustices in the industry create the need and opportunity for labor organizing to address direct, cultural, and structural violence.

Unions Labor unions have a well-established and longstanding global history.The International Labor Organization was established in 1919 to advocate for social justice and better living standards for workers throughout the world. In the US, workers have been creating labor unions since the 1700s. Labor unions set working standards and utilize collective bargaining, work stoppages, and strikes as strategies to address the interests of workers. Unions matter more today than ever before because skyrocketing income inequality represents a deep power inequality that must be addressed (McAlevey, 2020).These inequalities embody direct, cultural, and structural violence. For example, the non-union employment arrangements of the growing gig and tech economies can mean that workers are making less than minimum wage and that individual employment contracts (e.g., with Google) can prevent claims regarding gender equity and sexual harassment (McAlevey, 2020). While labor unions have historically been most relevant in manufacturing and trades rather than the service economy, they have begun to focus on organizing foodservice workers. A number of unions have been prominent in the food-service industry in recent years, and here we mention three of them: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), UNITE HERE!, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The IWW has made efforts to organize restaurant industry workers, most recently unionizing the Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU). Founded in 1905, the IWW is a union that organizes by industry, as opposed to trade, and is committed to solidarity unionism, as opposed to business unionism, and refuses to affliate with political parties or anti-political sects (IWW, n.d.).The IWW’s organizing efforts have been in the fast-food and casual-dining sectors of the restaurant industry, including international frms, such as Starbucks, and US regional businesses, such as the Pacifc Northwest’s Burgerville chain. Labor organizing is done within the IWW Food and Retail Chain Workers campaign as well as the Restaurant, Hotel, and Catering Workers Industrial Union campaign (IWW, 2018).14 UNITE HERE! is a hospitality industry union that includes a focus on the food industry. One of UNITE HERE!’s signature campaigns, Real Food Real Jobs, aims to bring more nutritious food to educational institutions as well as improving workers’ rights and working conditions (UNITE HERE!, 2019a, 2019b). Another union relevant to restaurant workers is the SEIU and their Fight for $15 campaign that focuses on service workers across all sectors, including lowwage restaurant workers.15 Historically, unions have both acted against and for gender justice. In the US, union culture has been dominated by white men (Fletcher et al., 2000) and have not exactly been bastions of feminism. In the early 20th century, women worked in the margins of industrial work and were generally not included in union organizing. As women entered more positions in the textile, garment, and cigar industries, the IWW and the American Federation of Labor 267

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(AFL) saw more opportunities to organize women, yet women’s experiences with unions were problematic, with the IWW “rebel girls” and AFL “union maids” typecast as occupying domestic roles (Schofeld, 1983).Women organizers were not judged based on their political views or ability to organize; rather, they were judged based on their ability to align with the social expectations of what it meant to be a woman. In addition, the IWW took stances in opposition to women’s suffrage (Schofeld, 1983). Both the IWW’s and AFL’s shared vision of womanhood prevented them from addressing gender inequality in the context of the root cause of the system of patriarchy. Nonetheless, it was not all bleak for gender justice, and unions did take feminist positions that were not prevalent in society as a whole at the time. The IWW supported birth control, and the AFL supported women’s suffrage.These positions, combined with the power of the unions at the time, led to signifcant and persistent advances in US gender justice.Today it is not uncommon to see maternity leave, equal pay, and sexual harassment in articles during the collective bargaining process and a part of union contracts (Gould et al., 2017).This evidence of support for gender justice has been carried forward to food-service workers organizing. Union position statements indicate their commitment to addressing gendered violence in the framework of the intersectionalities that drive worker circumstances and causes. For example, the global IWW addresses together the cultural violences of sexism, racism, and transphobia embedded in societal norms. Their constitution forbids any of these acts of discrimination in its spaces (IWW, 2018).They specifcally address gender, in their “Resolution on Biology and Gender,” stating that gender is not linked to biology rather, it is a cultural construct and that the safety of all IWW members regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation should be safe and included in all IWW space. To further emphasize this, the IWW states, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that any and all spaces within the IWW (including, but not limited to, gender-based committees, caucuses, and events) should respect the right of individual members to self-identify and participate in all union activities according to that self-identifcation. (IWW 2018, 43) In making this statement, the IWW is claiming that they are striving to make all spaces within the IWW safer for people regardless of their gender identity.The constitution also describes the procedure members can take to report discrimination. Union position statements in the US also focus on gender through intersecting categories of oppression. For example, the foreword of UNITE HERE!’s constitution states, “Women, immigrants, and African Americans have built our union and our industries but remain overrepresented among the unorganized.There can be no freedom for workers in general until those specifc battles are won” (UNITE HERE!, 2014, p. i). The union also calls out their commitment to fghting sexual harassment and wage theft (UNITE HERE!, 2019a, 2019b). Culinary Union Local 226 (2019) addresses gender violence by providing a place where union members can make sexual harassment and discrimination claims and lists eight ways union members are protected from sexual harassment and discrimination. Further, they point out that, “Men and women in union positions are paid the same (while across the United States, women are paid $.79 cents for every dollar a man earns)” (Culinary Union Local 226, 2019, p. 1). This position is signifcant because it is acknowledging that women are paid less than men and that in order to counter this, the union purposefully ensures women and men get paid the same for the same type of work. As we have discussed, in an industry 268

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where wages are low for most workers, women receive wages that are disproportionately low. Culinary Union Local 226 is setting an important income standard for the restaurant industry by ensuring women get paid the same amount as men when working in the same position. Unions are also addressing direct violence for food-service workers.With support from the SEIU-backed Fight for $15, a class-action lawsuit was fled against McDonald’s in Chicago to address physical violence (Selyukh, 2019). Fast-food workers are disproportionately vulnerable to direct violence in the workplace from customers, partly due to late-night hours of operation and the lack of physical barriers when dealing with customers. In this suit, workers’ claims included being held at gunpoint, being punched, or having objects thrown at them, and customers jumping the counter. Fight for $15 has also supported lawsuits against McDonald’s for failing to address systemic sexual harassment (Selyukh, 2019). Unions have addressed structural violence by fghting for better wages for workers and have been effective in the food-service industry. For example, restaurant workers who belonged to unions in 2017 made a weekly average of $126 more than workers who were non-union (BLS, 2018a). Collective bargaining agreements often standardize wages for all workers so that women are paid the same amount as men when working in the same position and provide a place for workers to fle a formal grievance for members who have been discriminated against in their workplace (Thomason et al., 2018). Cultural forms of violence remain, however. While unions support gender justice, there is a distance to go to overcome the longstanding cultural violence of patriarchy and sexism. For example, when discussing positions in the restaurant industry, UNITE HERE! refers to servers as waiters and waitresses (UNITE HERE!, 2019a, 2019b). These gendered terms are exclusionary of trans and non-binary workers and additionally create further bias as to what a server should be. In addition, it creates unnecessary distinctions among workers doing the same job, which could contribute to the divide and conquer strategy of the restaurant industry. For labor organizations working for gender justice, the non-gender-specifc wait staff term “server” should be used. Thus, organizing for gender justice—against gender violence—in the restaurant industry requires attention to a wide range of cultural as well as material forms of violence. The multiple violences that create worker powerlessness can obstruct unionization.According to Fine (2006), it is diffcult to organize restaurant workers because of the small number of employees that are represented in each workplace, the high turnover rates of employees, and the proportion of workers who are not full-time. Other issues include fear of losing one’s job without other options for employment and randomized work schedules.According to the Food Chain Workers Alliance study on food worker organizations in the US, in 2012, there were 183 food-service unions (Food Chain Workers Alliance, 2012). Of the 14 million people who work in the restaurant industry in the US, only 300,000 (2.3%) of them are union members (BLS, 2018a). Recent efforts to organize fast-food establishments have faced signifcant challenges due to lower voter turnout when voting for union recognition and right-to-work laws that discourage workers from unionizing (Tripp, 2015, p. 2).Worker centers and collaborations with owners and customers can provide organizing and support opportunities for low-wage workers in addition to or outside of the formal union process. The struggle to reduce direct, cultural, and structural violence cannot be the domain of unions acting alone. In the same way that violences are intersectional, so too must the efforts to combat them; it is a long march that includes many types of institutions and collaborations. Here we discuss ways in which worker centers are addressing violences faced by restaurant workers by working with unions, restaurant business owners, and customers. 269

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Union and worker center collaboration Worker centers are grassroots organizations that support and organize workers outside of formal union organizing strategies.They provide a safe space for workers to learn their rights, problemsolve, and build power (Bobo and Pabellon, 2016). In the US, worker centers that serve restaurant workers include the national ROC United) and regional centers such as Young Workers United, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, and Brandworkers International. As of 2012, there were 29 food-service worker centers in the US (Food Chain Workers Alliance, 2012).Worker centers have the capacity to address gender-specifc challenges that women who work in lowwage sectors face.Women often do not value their own work and their voices can be unspoken or unheard in labor organizing.Additionally, many low-wage workers are immigrants who carry a wide range of gender social rules with them into their work in the US. Therefore, worker centers provide space for women to raise consciousness and self-confdence in the form of committees, projects, and caucuses (Fine, 2006, pp. 70–71).Worker centers amplify and complement their work through collaboration with unions on organizing against worker violence. Unions and worker centers are both focused on worker justice but have different rules,16 social locations, strategies, and resources. According to Bobo and Pabellon (2016), unions are interested in collaborating with worker centers because worker centers are creative and courageous, have young and diverse people in leadership positions, and are founded and connected to the community. Worker centers are often connected to organizations such as faith-based, social services, and immigrant non-governmental agencies (Fine, 2006) that can expand the audience and scope of issues addressed.They can draw attention to issues that workers face that might be overlooked by unions because of worker centers’ foundation in the problems of the community. Unions and worker centers often complement one another due to their different strengths in labor organizing. Unions look to worker centers for up and coming labor organizing leaders, especially young labor organizers of color, to increase workers of color in union leadership positions (Bobo and Pabellon, 2016, p. 133). For example, the youth-oriented Young Workers United (YWU) worker center collaborated with the union UNITE HERE!’s campaign to organize restaurant workers, and the Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) works primarily with low-income immigrant workers. These types of collaborations accelerate efforts to reduce inequality in the restaurant industry. Worker centers also need unions to make legal and binding changes as well as access resources. Unions are able to create collective power for specifc groups and industries through the collective bargaining process, which can result in union contracts.A contract is a binding legal agreement that owners and workers are required to follow. Union contracts address issues such as wages, health benefts, time off, and retirement.Worker centers do not have this legal ability and must work with unions to create legally binding changes in the workplace. In addition, worker centers are interested in collaborating with unions because unions have experience organizing workers, are connected with elected offcials, have extensive labor law knowledge, are generous, and have volunteer and donor sources (Bobo and Pabellon, 2016). Unions and workers’ centers complement each other in their efforts to reduce structural inequality. One US-based coalition, the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA), facilitates these types of collaborations. FCWA’s board of directors is comprised of representatives of unions, worker centers, and other groups committed to justice for food workers. These groups are spread throughout the nation, enabling the FCWA to build power through collaboration.The FCWA has 31 members in its coalition that, in total, represent 340,000 food workers in North America (FCWA, 2019). Founded in 2009, the purpose of the FCWA is to increase wages for food workers and to create better working conditions, thus addressing all forms of violence in the restaurant industry. FCWA focuses on movement building, research about inequality in the 270

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food industry, and worker empowerment.They create connections across all sectors of the food system, create space for groups to learn from one another, and reduce worker exploitation by developing food-institution purchasing agreements that support fair wages and working conditions.This is a type of collective activity that requires collaboration among a range of principals in the food-service industry.

Collaboration with owners and customers The restaurant industry is shaped by owners and grounded in serving customers, both of whom are essential allies in seeking justice for food-service workers. Members of ROC United and affliated chapters include both restaurant workers and restaurant owners who are committed to implanting “high road business” practices. Restaurants committed to high road business practices pledge to implement policies that fall into three categories, including providing livable wages, maintaining a healthy workplace (e.g., paid sick days and health insurance), and creating opportunities for training and promotions (ROC United 2019). Additionally, ROC United’s Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment (RAISE) program provides opportunities for “high road” employers to learn how to implement equitable business practices (ROC United, 2019). ROC United works on several campaigns that advocate for fair wages for tipped employees at the national level, focus on setting a new industry labor standard at the business level, unveil inequalities to consumers, train industry professionals to adopt practices at their cooperative incubator, and research in order to provide adequate information on restaurant industry labor (ROC United, n.d.). Customer demand can provide motivation for business owners to change practices that reproduce inequality. For example, the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) recognized the importance of consumer solidarity with workers when it organized the 1965–1970 grape boycott until employers met the UFW’s demands (UFW, 2019). ROC United engages consumers through a guide for diners that provides information about justice practices, in particular, restaurants. ROC United’s Diner’s Guide app offers a list of restaurants in a particular area that ROC United has determined are addressing gender, race, and class inequality in their establishment. According to the app,“The Diner’s Guide showcases food establishments who take the high road to proftability, providing livable wages, paid time off, racial equity, an environment free of sexual harassment, and opportunity for advancement high road restaurant” (ROC United, 2012, para. 1).The transparency that the Diner’s Guide gives to consumers allows them to make decisions about the restaurants they choose to patronize. Furthermore, the Diner’s Guide gives customers the awareness of inequality in the restaurant industry and challenges them to take a stand on whether they want to patronize restaurants that are not making attempts to address gender, race, or class inequality.The Diner’s Guide has the potential to inform consumers about social justice issues and galvanize consumer solidarity with restaurant workers in the same way that the consumer grape boycott supported social justice for farmworkers. Collaborations can also transcend sectors and national boundaries for low-wage workers. In 2019, the immigrant workers in “unskilled” jobs at the Marriot hotel chain went on strike in seven cities against a multinational employer and set new standards both for hotel workers and other low-wage workers (McAlevey, 2020). The arc of injustice is long and wide, and so must be the actions against its multiple types of violence.

Bending the arc Food-service workers are low-wage laborers and, as such, have limited degrees of freedom in how they can improve their lives.This is especially the case for women wage laborers. Patriarchy 271

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is a system of violence that simultaneously produces harm and privilege; the allocation of these harms and privileges is cumulative and not mutable in a short period of time. That is, the privileges of violence, e.g., wealth accumulated, the educations gained, the positions of power allocated, and the harms of violence tend to stick to themselves and reproduce. These harms and privileges are intersectional and must be recognized as such. Inequality is far too complex to be addressed by one social group, type of institution, or nation.To do so, would perpetuate inequality by continuously reestablishing differences on the basis of identity rather than uniting in solidarity against shared violences. Violence is created and perpetrated by people and can be changed by people. Collaborations among unions, worker centers, and worker allies are critical to this effort.While in the immediate term, it is essential for food-service workers to organize for better wages and working conditions, society as a whole must not lose sight of the direct, cultural, and structural violence that has made this struggle necessary in the frst place.This will not be easy, due to the pervasiveness of violence and the normalized systems and discourses that enable and reproduce it.The arc of history has bent in favor of patriarchal privilege and gender violence, class privilege, and the violence of exploitation. This arc has been forged over millennia and has incredible tensile strength. Ultimately, this arc must be melted down to create a platform of equity for all people.As part of this process, it must be weakened in places, so it can be bent in a different direction—toward justice. For it to bend toward justice, we must apply our torches of voice, critical thinking, and strategic action in organizing against all forms of violence. It will not bend by itself.

Notes 1 Both authors have worked in multiple domains of the restaurant and food-service industry. 2 We recognize that a focus on women highlights the experiences of cisgender women and excludes the experiences of transwomen, nonbinary women, transgender people who do not identify as women, and non-binary people who do not identify as women.While there are transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people who do identify as women, we realize that using “women” as an umbrella term excludes the injustices that people experience as a result of cissexism and the gender binary.This recognition does not, however, invalidate the importance of discussing the oppressions of women. 3 Belonging to a social group is not necessarily determined by the individual in the sense that the individual projects social group affliation; rather, society refects this identity back towards the individual through societal structures and social structures as a way to create social order.This is independent of a person’s interest in belonging to a social category. 4 We view violence as the central social relation that shapes all forms of oppression. In Young’s important work on oppression, physical violence is one form of oppression that includes four others: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, and cultural imperialism (Young, 2009). 5 Restaurants are a sub-sector of the food-service industry. 6 Workers have reported that they feel it is necessary to participate in this form of banter in order to keep their jobs even if they do not agree with it. It is a way in which the vulnerable abuse the more vulnerable to lessen their own vulnerability. 7 Almost 60% of American women have worked in restaurants at some point in their lives, and 55% of restaurant workers are women (BLS, 2018b). 8 In the US, 63% of restaurant workers are tipped workers and 66% of tipped workers are women (ROC United, 2014). 9 The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour; this means that they must earn 70% of their wage from customers in order to achieve the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. 10 This multiple boss phenomenon is exacerbated through the advent of internet-based, crowd-sourced review forums such as Yelp.Workers can lose their jobs due to poor reviews. 11 Wage workers in general experience powerlessness because they do not have a say in wages, working hours, time off, or other aspects that determine their working life (Young, 1990).This powerlessness is

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12

13 14 15 16

particularly salient for low-wage workers, many of whom are women, recent immigrants, or people of color in the country in which they are working. The fear of losing your job because you miss a shift is very real for restaurant industry workers, making working while sick the norm. According to a 2015 survey, over half or restaurant industry workers go to work while they are sick and many do so out of fear of losing their job or because they cannot afford to miss a day of work and do not have paid sick leave (Shallcross, 2015).While it is against food safety laws to have employees work while they are sick, workers feel powerless and work while sick out of fear of getting fred and to ensure that they maintain their income. In the US, for example, outsourcing labor to other countries and changes in technology have led to a decline in manufacturing jobs and given rise to the service economy (Richmon, 2017). Founded in 2018, the Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) is the frst federally recognized fast-food union in the US (Frane, 2018a). In October of 2018, with the backing of SEIU, there was a multi-state organized strike in the fast food industry. The strike took place in seven different states and included fast-food workers from McDonald’s,Wendy’s, and Burger King (Telford, 2018). In the US, unions are required to follow laws defned by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but worker centers are not. Being able to operate outside the rules of the NLRA allows worker centers to engage in a wider range of direct-action strategies (Sen, 2006).

References AFL-CIO. (2016).“Ending gender-based violence in the world of work in the United States.” BLS. (2018a).“Industries at a glance.” US Bureau of Labor Statistics online database. Last modifed May 11, 2018. https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag72.htm. BLS. (2018b).“Occupational outlook handbook.” US Bureau of Labor Statistics online database. Last modifed February 23, 2018. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/home.htm. Bobo, K., and Pabellon, M. (2016). The worker center handbook: a practical guide to starting and building the new labor movement. New York: Cornell University Press. Culinary Union Local 226. (2019). Last modifed 2019. https://www.culinaryunion226.org/members/ know-your-rights. Fine, J. (2006). Worker centers: organizing communities at the edge of the dream. New York: Cornell University Press. Fletcher, B., and Hurd, R. (2000). “Is organizing enough? Race, gender, and union culture.” New Labor Forum 6:58–67. https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/316/. Frane,A. (2018a).“Burgerville workers just became the frst offcially recognized fast-food union the election to be recognized as a federally recognized union was a landslide.” Eater. April 24, 2018. https://pd x.eater.com/2018/4/24/17275346/burgerville-workers-unionize-vote-fast-food. Frane, A. (2018b). “A third Burgerville location has formally unionized.” Eater. November 14, 2018. https ://pdx.eater.com/2018/11/14/18095989/third-burgerville-fling-union-recognition. FCWA. (2012). “Food workers organizations in the US” http://foodchainworkers.org/wp-content/u ploads/2012/11/2012-11-Food-Workers-Organizations-in-US-FCWA.pdf. Galarza, D. (2017). “Restaurant workers fle more sexual harassment claims than employees of any other industry.” Eater. December 7, 2017. https://www.eater.com/2017/12/7/16746064/2017/12/7/1674 6064/sexual-harassment-restaurant-workers-data-servers-cooks- bartenders. Galtung, J. (1969).“Violence, peace and peace research.” Journal of Peace Research 6 (3):167–191. Galtung, J. (1990).“Cultural violence.” Journal of Peace Research 27 (3):291–305. Gould, E., and McNicholas, C. (2017). “Unions help narrow the gender wage gap.” Economic Policy Institute. Last modifed 2019. https://www.epi.org/blog/unions-help-narrow-the-gender-wage-gap/. Guillaume, C., and Pochic, S. (2011).“The organisational nature of union careers: the touchstone of equality policies? comparing France and the UK.” European Societies 13 (4):607–631. Harris, A., and Giuffre, P. (2015). Taking the heat: women chefs and gender inequality in the professional kitchen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hickel, J. (2018). The divide: global inequality from conquest to free markets. New York:W.W. Norton & Company. IWW. (n.d.). “Industrial workers of the world: a union for all workers.” Accessed November 27, 2018. https://www.iww.org/. Jayaraman, S. (2013) “Women waiting on equality.” In Adrienne Davich (ed.), Behind the kitchen door. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 130–156.

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21 WOMEN’S FARM ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES Protecting and transforming agricultural power Angie Carter

Introduction This chapter provides an overview of women’s agricultural organizations in the United States (US). Women participating and leading these groups are redefning what it means to be an agricultural woman (Devine, 2013; Sachs et al., 2016) as well as redefning relationships across the agrifood system, offering the potential for an agriculture based in care and reciprocity rather than domination (Leslie et al., 2019; Carter et al., 2018). I frst provide a history of women’s agricultural organizations in relation to the status quo of US agriculture. I then summarize women’s agricultural organizations’ emergence and evolutions using existing literature. Specifcally, I discuss the importance of women-led sustainable agricultural organizations in connecting gender and agriculture to intersecting social justice movements that infuence agrifood systems change, drawing upon examples from the Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN).1 Finally, I recommend areas of needed and continued research and engagement. How agricultural women organize collectively is strategic, whether it be to maintain, contest, or reimagine current power over the material and symbolic resources of agricultural production. Here, I discuss women’s agricultural organizations as any formal or informal organization for women involved in agriculture; some of these organizations, but not all, are founded and led by women. These organizations’ orientations toward support for women in agriculture differ. Some, such as the now-defunct Iowa Porkettes, are auxiliary organizations of mainstream commodity groups. Others, such as the Women in Agriculture National Learning Network (WIA LN),2 operate as land-grant extension programs. Still, others, such as the sustainable agricultural women’s organizations WFAN and Pennsylvania Women’s Agriculture Network (PA-WAgN), were formed explicitly to change or challenge the status quo, and are innovative in their methods of confronting and overcoming gendered barriers in agriculture (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 117). In challenging the system, even sustainable agricultural women’s organizations grapple with avoiding the reifcation of heterosexism and white supremacy inherent in the normalization of the “family farm” in the US (Hoffelmeyer, 2020; Leslie et al., 2019;Tyler, 2020). 275

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The use of “women” throughout this chapter is intended as a description of women as a social collective (Young, 1994) rather than an implication that women—even those within a shared organization—are a homogenous group or that their identities are static. The concepts of gender seriality (Liepens and Schick, 1998) and intersectionality (Collins, 2008), used by Trauger et al. (2008) in their analysis of agricultural women’s educational needs, explain how social constructions of race, ethnicity, class, ability, gender, and gender expression present differing structural barriers for women and infuence women’s lived experience. Women bring this multiplicity of identity to their participation in agricultural organizations, and in response, some organizations are adapting to be inclusive of the many ways in which these experiences shape agricultural work. In my research with the Women, Food and Agriculture Network in Iowa, I found it not at all unusual that women may take part in a multitude of agricultural organizations, and even multiple agricultural women’s organizations, depending upon their needs (Carter, 2017). Other chapters in this collection detail how the gendering of agriculture is both interactional, occurring through social relationships, and structural, manifesting through institutions and policies. The continued insistence today upon the preservation of the “family farm”—a heteronormative and patriarchal social unit—continues to privilege gender and sexual relations long dominant in agriculture and US society at large. These privileges are protected and perpetuated through policies, institutions, and organizations that exclude women as leaders, thereby also excluding women’s “knowledge, experience, interests, and perspectives and prevents their becoming part of the systematic knowledge and techniques of a profession” (Smith, 1987, p. 25). In this way, agricultural organizations assist in the construction of power on the land by limiting or expanding who has access to needed resources, such as technical assistance or knowledge; the maintenance of this hierarchy requires the control of symbolic and material resources. Joan Acker (1991, p. 85) explains this process of gendered organizations as a complex set of processes controlling social relations: To say that an organization, or any other analytic unit, is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. In this overview of women’s agricultural organizations, I discuss how these groups actively maintain or challenge hegemonic norms of male-dominated agriculture. In the following section, I provide a brief overview of gender-based power in US agriculture to provide context for women’s agricultural organizations’ deep roots in US agricultural production and the potential for systemic transformations.

The emergence and evolution of women’s agricultural organizations in the United States US federal policies have long concentrated agricultural power among white men (Chang, 2010; Grant et al., 2012; Sachs, 1983). Gendered assumptions that women farmers are less serious about farming or less dependent upon its profts have led to diffculties for US women farmers in accessing loans, technical assistance, and needed equipment (Sachs et al., 2016). This institutionalized discrimination of women farmers is compounded for women of color (Grant et al., 2012; Tyler, 2020) and queer women (Hoffelmeyer, 2020; Wypler, 2019). The gender-based discrimination alleged in Love v Vilsack in 2000, combined with the racial dis276

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crimination cases brought forward by Latinx, Indigenous, and African American farmers, led to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Justice’s voluntary claims process of $1.33 billion that concluded in 2013 (Feder and Cowan, 2013). Despite this action, historic patterns of agricultural land control in the US continue to privilege white men and heteronormativity, presenting barriers to land, technical assistance, and knowledge networks for agricultural women (Carter, 2019;Wypler, 2019; McMillan Lequieu, 2015; Pilgeram and Amos, 2015). To navigate these challenges, agricultural women create alternative networks such as those among queer farmers (Leslie, 2019; Wypler, 2019), sustainable agricultural women (Carter et al., 2016; Sachs et al., 2016;Wells, 1998), and African American farmers (White, 2017). Historical analyses of US agriculture emphasize gender mutuality in agricultural labor (Neth, 1995; Devine, 2013); yet, women’s leadership in agricultural organizations historically depended upon men (Devine, 2013).The industrialization of agriculture eliminated the need for women’s work in production on the farm through the adoption of “professional” and “scientifc” technology, devaluing and feminizing production that had been women’s responsibility (Sachs, 1983). The changing technologies of “modern” farming in the mid-twentieth century inspired white, middle-class women to speak out more publicly about the importance of interdependence to the continuance of the family farm, speaking as heteronormative wives and mothers (Devine, 2013). As women gained greater platforms to speak publicly about agriculture, women’s inclusion in agricultural organizations did little to improve their “legal ownership, access to profits, or entitlement to access distinctly male spaces” (Devine, 2013, p. 143). Leaders of national groups, such as the National Farming Organization, “made no provisions for women’s auxiliaries, although some members organized women’s groups according to local preferences”; still, women’s participation in leadership required approval of husbands who determined the level of the couple’s engagement (Devine, 2013, pp. 92–93). Even as these organizations limited women’s involvement, “within these gendered locations women fostered unique, decidedly female identities and relationships with the land” (Devine, 2013, p. 140). Women’s agricultural organizations began and continue today in response to these new positionalities within the larger agricultural system.The approaches of those working to address gender-based inequality differ in their attention to individual or structural changes. Some organizations prioritize skills-based training to get women “up to speed” to be competitive within the industrialized food system and, it is implied, with men. Others are explicitly political in their prioritization of agricultural equity and systems change. For these organizations, gender-based inequality in agriculture is not symptomatic of skills or knowledge that women need to “catch up,” but part of the larger systemic intersecting inequalities of racism, sexism, and classism maintaining the current agricultural system (Kruzic, 2017).The women leading these organizations do so in the face of historic and ongoing systemic invisibility (Sachs, 1983) and continued vulnerability (Kruzic, 2017). To discuss these variations, I use a typology developed by Robin Ely and Debra Meyerson (2000) to categorize the different approaches organizations engage in addressing gender inequality. The frst two approaches focus on addressing perceived socialized differences at individualized levels, whereas the latter two target structural changes.These approaches, which Ely and Meyerson (2000) describe as “frames,” include both assumptions as well as visions for gender equity. The frst frame—Fix the Woman—assumes women are lacking in skills needed to better compete with men (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, pp. 105–106). In this approach, women are the sole targets of these interventions as organizations provide education and training to women so that they can obtain or compete in positions traditionally held by men. Annie’s Project,3 277

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a national non-proft organization, inspired by the life of Annette Kohlhagen Fleck, is an example of this approach.The organization’s materials describe Fleck as a “farm woman” from Northern Illinois who married a farmer and managed to keep their farm afoat through her farm management skills (Annie’s Project – Education for Farm Women [APFEW], “Annie’s Story,” n.d.). In 2003, Fleck’s daughter—Illinois extension educator Ruth Hambleton— launched Annie’s Project to provide educational programming for women wishing to be active business partners in their farm and ranching operations (APFEW, “About Us,” n.d.). Today, Annie’s Project coordinators offer farm business classes in 33 states with assistance from local partners, often land-grant extension (Hilgerson, 2018). Annie’s Project is funded through grants, in-kind support from industry and educational institutions, and registration fees from program participants (APFEW, 2018). Through Annie’s Project, women are taught and trained in the specifcs of agricultural business in order to compete in the world of men. This approach, however, has not translated into signifcant gains for women. Despite the emphasis of such programs in a myriad of disciplines, researchers do not yet see gains made, for example, in the representation of women as CEOs, faculty, board members, etc. because the approach leaves intact the institutional policies and structures that maintain status quo (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 108). The second frame—Value the Feminine—assumes that differences should not be eliminated, but instead celebrated (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 108). Programs within this frame aim to “give voice to a women’s perspective,” educating women and men alike about the importance of emphasizing, rather than devaluing, the unique contributions of women (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 109). An example of this approach can be found in the relatively recent formation of the FarmHer community, a group of agricultural women inspired by photographer Marji Guyler-Alaniz’s for-proft business. Guyler-Alaniz began photographing the stories of agricultural women and selling “FarmHer” t-shirts in 2013 following what she saw as the exclusion of women in the Dodge Ram’s “And God Made a Farmer” advertisement that played during Super Bowl XLVII (Donaldson, n.d.). Originally a photography project intended to make visible and elevate the important contributions of agricultural women, FarmHer has now expanded to include speaking tours, podcasts, a television show on RFD-TV, and a PBS documentary. A new extension of her work is the Grow by FarmHer programming, featuring events throughout the Midwest aiming to “inspire, educate, and empower” young women ages 16–22 who are excited about their future in agriculture (FarmHer, 2019). Sponsored by agribusiness, these day-long workshops focus on networking and connecting young women with industry leaders. FarmHer engages educational programming, art, and for-proft products to elevate the stories of agricultural women. Critiques of this frame argue that this approach may privilege white, heterosexual, and class-privileged women as the universal or default experience of all women (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 110). The third frame—Create Equal Opportunity—targets structural changes through the dismantling of gendered barriers in order to create an equal playing feld, such as control and access to resources or knowledge (Ely and Meyerson, 2000).WFAN provides two different programs for agricultural women that use this approach:Women Caring for the Land, for women farmland owners interested in conservation adoption, and Harvesting Our Potential, a mentoring program for aspiring farmers. Both programs engage peer-to-peer learning to create new networks of knowledge and resource exchange among women landowners and farmers who may experience exclusion and discrimination through traditional agricultural networks. To do this, WFAN uses learning circles, a methodology of popular education developed by WFAN that centers women’s experiences in a women-only space and builds power through the creation of community (Eells and Adcock, 2014). Ely and Meyerson (2000, pp. 112–113) theorize that 278

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interventions in this frame support improved material conditions in women’s lives, but do not extend far enough in changing social interactions to disrupt or remake power relations and shifting status quo. The fourth frame—Assess and Revise Work Culture—addresses gender as “a complex set of social relations enacted across a range of social practices that exist both within and outside of formal organizations” rather than an individual characteristic (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 113). In focusing on changing social practices, this frame disrupts and works to revise gendered social order (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 113).This form of intervention is more challenging to accomplish, as the work is both still embedded within the oppressive system while leading work to imagine and enact a new one. Examples of women’s agricultural organizations doing work using this fourth approach include WFAN, which I will discuss more in the subsequent section, as well as the Pennsylvania Women’s Agriculture Network (PA-WAgN).4 PA-WAgN began in 2003 by and for women interested in sustainable agriculture. PA-WAgN’s proximity to the land-grant cooperative extension program presents constraints; equal treatment can be confated with equal opportunity, leading to a failure to recognize the legacies of legalized historical discrimination in agricultural policy and use of technology transfer as a measure for success (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 109). As Sachs et al. (2016, p. 121) describe in their discussion of PA-WAgN’s work,“trying to form a feminist organization within the confnes of an organization that does not operate on feminist inclusive principles has resulted in persistent tension with university administration.” This tension exists for WFAN, too, although on a different front. As WFAN’s learning circle model grows in popularity, it is being adopted by land-grant cooperative extension and other non-profts, such as the American Farmland Trust (Petrzelka et al., 2019). I argue that these tensions refect the hard work of engaging in “a radical reframing of both gender and the role organizations play in shaping it” (Ely and Meyerson, 2000, p. 114). In the next section, I draw upon my research and experiences with the Women, Food and Agriculture Network as examples from which to analyze how one women’s agricultural organization works within these third and fourth approaches to reimagine and enact new relationalities in agriculture

Sustainable agricultural women’s organizations transforming power: examples from WFAN Women’s agricultural organizations may provide support as members navigate and, in some cases, work to dismantle the gendered barriers (Sachs et al., 2016).The social networks created through women’s agricultural organizations developed by and for women are critical to redefning and expanding normative expectations of agriculture (Carter, 2017).Through these networks, women share informal and formal knowledge that may be inaccessible or uncomfortable to obtain elsewhere (Hassanein, 1997). Despite their focus on systems change, gendered barriers persist in sustainable agricultural groups (Peter et al., 2000). In The Rise of Women in Sustainable Agriculture, Carolyn Sachs et al. (2016, p. 139) argue that women’s sustainable agriculture groups contribute to needed structural changes in the agrifood system by “redefning and expanding the defnition of what it means to be a farmer,” addressing the third and fourth frames for gender equity as defned by Ely and Meyerson (2000). Building upon Devine (2013) and the research of their team with Pennsylvania WAgN, Sachs et al. (2016, p. 141) detail how women farmers are transforming agrarian feminism and creating “a feminist agrifood system.” Yet, there remains much work to do; even women’s sustainable agricultural organizations struggle to acknowledge and to address greater inclusivity in discussions of gender expression and sexuality in agriculture (Hoffelmeyer, 2020;Wypler, 2019; Leslie, 2017; 2019). 279

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The Vermont Women’s Agricultural Network, Maine Women’s Agricultural Network, and Iowa’s WFAN were among the frst women’s agricultural networks in the US when formed in the 1990s (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 117).These groups work to address agricultural women’s needs by providing community, information, and resources while also advancing gender equity (Sachs et al., 2016). Not all women in these agricultural organizations may self-identify as feminist, but their claiming of a farming (rather than farmwife) identity is a feminist action (Sachs et al., 2016). PA-WAgN, like the networks in Vermont and Maine, is not explicitly advertised as feminist but offers feminist programs and inclusivity such as interactive education and childcare (Sachs et al., 2006, p. 118).WFAN, however, began as an explicitly ecofeminist network, drawing on the work of Karen Warren (1991) and other ecofeminists approaching the dominations of women and nature as interrelated (Wells, 1998, p. 380). To describe how sustainable agricultural women’s organizations in the US contest historic and contemporary gender-based oppression and intersect with larger justice movements, I will draw upon examples from WFAN. Like the Maine and Vermont Women in Agriculture Networks, WFAN was formed by and for women in the 1990s. WFAN differs from these groups, as well as the Pennsylvania Women in Agriculture Network, in that it began through a grassroots collective rather than through formal cooperation with a land-grant university or cooperative extension (Sachs et al. 2016). Similar to PA-WAgN,WFAN began as an explicitly feminist organization (Sachs et al., 2016), or, in WFAN’s case, an ecofeminist organization (Wells, 1998). Additionally,WFAN is the only national sustainable agricultural non-proft organization organized by and for women. The goals of WFAN’s ecofeminist founders included social and ecological justice for current and future human and more-than-human communities, alternatives to globalized economies and cultures of domination, experiential education, and respect for the spirituality of the land and people (Carter et al., 2016).WFAN’s ecofeminist framework draws upon hooks’ (1989, p. 22) argument that feminism is both separate from and a part of the larger struggle for social justice and the eradication of domination in all its forms while emphasizing the mutuality of oppression of people and Earth (Carter et al., 2018) and a mission to serve women in sustainable agriculture (Carter et al., 2016). It is not a coincidence that WFAN originated in Iowa, the testing grounds of large-scale extractive agriculture. Confned animal feeding operations and row crop agriculture dominate the landscape. European settlers began farming in Iowa in 1833 following the Black Hawk “Purchase”—actually, a violent removal of the Sauk and Meskwaki people following the Black Hawk War in order to vacate farmland for white settlers (Harlan, 1931). Today, the landscape refects the continued colonization of agricultural development. The majority of Iowa’s producers are white, and only one-third of them are women (United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistical Services [USDA NASS], 2019). Iowa is second only to California for the value of exported agricultural products and the frst in the nation in total exports of grain (corn and soybeans) (USDA NASS, 2017). The state’s land-grant university—Iowa State University—purports to “feed the world,”5 yet its surrounding communities struggle with hunger (Dankbar et al., 2017).This state’s dominant agricultural system is powered by fossil fuels, from the gasoline fueling tractors and grain trucks to the petroleum-based inputs used as fertilizers and chemicals in production. In 2017, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) became operational; the DAPL is a privately-owned oil pipeline crossing beneath Iowa’s two river borders—the Missouri and the Mississippi—and the majority of the state’s major rivers as it transports crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota to Patoka, IL, for eventual shipment to the Gulf for processing and export. It is within this symbolic and physical landscape of extractive production that WFAN coalesced and continues to organize. 280

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WFAN began in Iowa, and its strongest base has remained there; however, its members have always included agricultural and rural women who share “a feminist, activist, progressive agenda” from across and beyond the United States (Wells, 1998, p. 375). Engagement with global farmwomen inspired WFAN’s inception. In 1994, Denise O’Brien, an Iowan organic farmer, and Kathy Lawrence, a New York state food justice advocate, organized a working group to advocate for and inform the inclusion of agricultural and food issues within the Platform for Action at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China (Wells, 1998). Following the conference, O’Brien attended and assisted with the 1996 Rural Women’s Workshop at the World Food Summit in Rome (Wells, 1998). Upon her return, O’Brien began to intentionally build a community with other women engaged in sustainable agriculture and food systems work in Iowa.The group formalized in 1997 as a project of the Tides Foundation and became a 501(c)(3) (referring to the US Internal Revenue Code) non-proft organization in 2011 (Carter et al., 2016). WFAN amplifes members’ own experiences and knowledge, using these to craft a new narrative for agriculture and rural communities. Since 2010, I have partnered with WFAN in research and advocacy through my work as a scholar-activist, and currently, I serve on its board of directors. I frst became involved with the organization when Betty Wells, a cofounder and rural sociologist at Iowa State University, invited me to join WFAN’s board while I was a graduate student in rural sociology and sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University. My involvement with WFAN inspired my doctoral research studying women farmland ownership and conservation adoption in partnership with the organization. As a board member, I have served on the advocacy committee and represented WFAN in the Iowa-based Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition, a grassroots group that organized in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. I share this not only for transparency but as testament to the organization’s commitment to situated knowledge and to the intersecting concerns and collaborations of which agriculture is a part. My embeddedness within the organization informs the autoethnographic observations and examples which follow this section. I will briefy describe WFAN’s origins and evolution through the context of intersectionality and contesting paradigms. WFAN currently manages three areas of programming for women: Harvesting Our Potential, Women Caring for the Land, and Plate to Politics. Harvesting Our Potential, an aspiring farmer mentorship program providing stipends to both mentors and mentees, began in 2001.Women Caring for the Land, a program for women farmland owners, formed initially as Women, Land Legacy in 2009.The third and newest program—Plate to Politics—emerged following a 2011 national gathering of women in sustainable agriculture and aims to increase the political participation of rural and agricultural women through advocacy and leadership training (Carter et al., 2016). In addition to these,WFAN sponsors an annual conference and collaborates with other women’s sustainable agricultural groups, such as PA-WAgN, to offer a national Women in Sustainable Agriculture (WISA) conference every three years. Even as WFAN members are active members in other sustainable agricultural organizations at local, state, and national levels, they report in bi-annual member surveys that it is very important for them to also belong to an organization exclusively for women. In a 2006–2007 survey of members, Pennsylvania Women in Agriculture Network (PA-WAgN) too found this to be the case, as “almost two-thirds of women farmers reported that they were not taken as seriously as men farmers, and about half reported not being welcome in agricultural groups” (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 97). As Sachs et al. (2016) identifed as a challenge with PA-WAgN, engaging members from diverse backgrounds is a challenge for WFAN, too.The WFAN board adopted a gender inclusivity statement6 in May 2018, committing to inclusivity for all women 281

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and gender non-conforming people passionate about a healthier food system. This statement was drafted and adopted following critique at a conference calling into question WFAN’s heteronormativity. WFAN continues today to organize in solidarity with agricultural women from the Global South. In April 2018, two board members participated in a panel entitled Women, Agriculture, and the Vital Revolution of US Farming organized by the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and sponsored by Food First and WFAN at the 62nd session of the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women. Patti Naylor, a farmer from Churdan, Iowa, and Ahna Kruzic, an Iowan agricultural activist now living in the California Bay Area, called for ecofeminist orientations to agricultural systems change and stressed the urgency of action. Naylor emphasized,“To farm is a political act,” while Kruzic stressed, Even the much-heralded US family farm is, in many cases, dependent on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women—including sexual reproduction and the feeding, clothing, health and maintenance of households, in addition to the direct planting, harvesting, and caretaking of crops, livestock, and land. (Naylor and Kruzic, 2018) As a non-proft organization created and existing outside of institutionalized agriculture,WFAN is able to engage in change in ways that cooperative extension, land-grant universities, or federal agencies are not (Sachs et al., 2016).WFAN provides education in needed skills and celebrates women’s contributions to sustainable agriculture while advocating for transformational changes in agricultural power. In this way, WFAN moves beyond the frst and second frames to target the structural and relational power shifts emphasized in the third and fourth frames of organizational change.

Conclusion As Leslie et al. (2019) caution, the existence of agricultural organizations by and for those historically excluded is not enough to restructure the heteropatriarchy of the current agricultural system. Further, while groups such as WFAN evolve to acknowledge and work to address the heterosexism within its organization, women’s agricultural organizations, even those in sustainable agriculture, are overwhelmingly white. Applying Ely and Meyerson’s (2000) frames to an analysis of agricultural women’s organizations identifes how gender-based efforts may reinforce or challenge the status quo.To continue as transformative sites, these groups must work to radically redefne and remake intersecting relations across the agrifood system. Such transformation requires attention to both the context and to the relations that have brought us here in the frst place (Carter et al., 2016). Engaging in the third and fourth frames of organizational change for a more inclusive agrifood system will require WFAN to work in solidarity with other groups in the dismantling not only of the heteropatriarchy but also the white supremacy and classism inherent in the US agricultural system and exported globally through trade agreements and international aid. As these transformations take root and grow, how will they resist commodifcation or cooptation? For example, the Women, Food and Agriculture Network’s Women Caring for the Land program model has been adopted and modifed by other organizations and agencies such as the American Farmland Trust and land-grant extension. How true will these groups be to the model’s experiential and peer-to-peer learning when they are not explicitly feminist organizations? As John Gaventa and Andrea Cornwall (2008, p. 180) remind us,“great care must be taken 282

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not to replace one set of dominant voices with another—all in the name of participation.”The potential for co-optation is a real risk as grassroots organizations compete for limited funding alongside larger, more established organizations, but so too exists the potential for organizational shifts as the programs elevate new approaches to landscape change. The existence of women’s agricultural organizations alone is not enough to transform gender relations in the agrifood system; these groups must engage in the restructuring of gendered power as outlined in the third and fourth frames of organizational change. I argue for the continued evolutions of these organizations as they reimagine agriculture to be inclusive of not only women, but all genders, sexualities, and expressions of gender. The new relational agriculture called for by Leslie et al. (2019) echoes the pointed critique of sustainable agriculture that Allen and Sachs (1992, p. 33) offered over 25 years ago—we must go further in both our visions and practices if we are to subvert the status quo and reimagine new relations and systems.Women’s agricultural organizations can provide space in which women create a feminist agrifood system (Sachs et al., 2016) rooted in new ways of being in relation to one another and the Earth (Leslie et al., 2019; Carter et al., 2018). Given the dominance of the US agricultural model as a developmental aid and the increased consolidation of global agribusiness, systems change requires work beyond national borders to address structural inequalities.The women who created WFAN in the early 1990s did so in response to both local exclusion in agriculture and recognition of the global struggle for agricultural and rural women’s autonomy.Women’s agricultural organizations in the US working in the transformative third and fourth frames of power shifts, then, must continue the intentional work of solidarity-building across geographies if we are to do more than shift the burdens elsewhere.

Notes 1 The Women, Food and Agriculture Network is a 501(c)(3) non-proft organization with a mission “to engage women in building an ecological and just food and agricultural system through individual and community power” (WFAN, n.d.). 2 The Women in Agriculture National Learning Network (WIA LN) “helps women in agriculture improve their quality of life by providing them with resources to make better business decisions while maintaining a balance with family and personal obligations” through webinars, training, and online support (WIA LN, n.d.,“Helping farm and ranch women succeed.”) 3 Annie’s Project – Education for Farm Women (APEFW) is a national 501(c)(3) nonproft organization with a mission “to empower farm and ranch women to be better business partners through networks and by managing and organizing critical information” (APEFW, n.d.,“About Us”). 4 The Pennsylvania Women’s Agriculture Network (PA-WAgN) began in 2003 and is a program overseen by The Pennsylvania State University’s Cooperative Extension with a purpose “to encourage and support women in agriculture; provide and strengthen networks for women in agriculture; provide educational and mentoring opportunities for women in agriculture; raise community awareness of agricultural related issues and concerns; and sustain farming livelihoods” (PA-WagN, n.d., “About PA-WAgN”). 5 For one of many examples of this pervasive narrative at the land grant, see the Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (9ISU CALS) Feeding the World Seminar Series (ISU CALS, n.d.,“Feeding the World Seminar Series Fall 2017”). 6 See “Gender Inclusivity Statement” (WFAN, n.d.,“Gender inclusivity statement”).

References Acker, J. (1991). “Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations.” In J. Lorber and S. Farrell (ed.), The social construction of gender.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Allen, P., and Sachs, C. (1992). “The poverty of sustainability: an analysis of current positions.” Agriculture and Human Values 9 (4):29–35.

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22 GENDERED FARMING ORGANIZATIONS The value of North/South comparisons Sally Shortall and Margaret Adesugba

Introduction Globally, women are limited in their access to farmland and control of agriculture.Agriculture is one of the last remaining occupations that continues to exclude women.While most legal barriers have been removed, there are persistent cultural ones (Shortall et al., 2017; Shortall, 2016; Alston, 1995; Pini, 2002; Brandth, 2002). In the main, men inherit farms. They are the public face of farming, go to marts to buy and sell livestock, are represented in farming organizations, participate in agricultural training, and are seen as “the farmer.”Women’s role and women’s work tends to be invisible (Shortall, 2001;Trauger et al., 2010; Brandth et al., 2014). Parallel literatures and a body of research exist in the South, particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa (Kevane and Gray, 1999; Deere and Doss, 2006; Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO] 2011;Wanjala, 2014). Why, despite the vastly different contexts, is the unequal position of women in agriculture, so similar? Despite a very different context of more progressive moves toward gender equality in the Global North, it has not translated into gender equality in agriculture.The two literatures, Northern and Southern, demonstrate that the parallels are striking, and so too is the fact that these literatures rarely cross-reference or speak to each other (see Sachs and Garner, 2017, as an exception). This chapter is interested in the position of women in agricultural/ farming organizations. These have different names depending on where they are in the world: farming organizations, co-operatives, collectives, producers’ organizations, and informal groups.The main differences in terminology are between the Global North and South.The differences in terminology are not carried through to differences in representation; in neither context are women well represented in farming organizations.We review the literature to make some general North/South comparisons, although primarily focusing on Europe and Africa.Typically, comparative analysis tends to be what Locke and Thelen (1995) call “matched-comparisons,” that is, the tendency is to compare cases that share more similarities than not. However, they advocate that there is also value attached to a “contextualized” comparative analysis where institutions are very different, and the interests and identities of key actors are very different. Dissimilar starting points can help illuminate the issues that arise in each context.This is our intention. Usually, Global South gendered agricultural questions look to other Southern comparators, and the North does the same. Here, 287

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following Locke and Thelen (1995), we wish to illustrate the added value of comparing “apples and oranges,” women and men’s farming organizations in the North and South.The interaction between (male) farming organizations and women’s farming organizations is also considered. The chapter is structured as follows. First, we begin by outlining how power generally and organizational power, specifcally, shapes the role of women in agriculture. We defne organizations and offer some prototypes or Weber’s “ideal types.” The different needs of the actors operating in a commercial agricultural environment versus subsistence economies that rely on international aid are refected on and what this means for organizing.The literature on women and farming organizations is reviewed and North/South differences, and the considerable similarities, highlighted. We consider the role national and international actors can have in each context on trying to foster women’s inclusion in organizations. We focus on women’s farming organizations, women’s sections in farming organizations, and the “exceptional women” who rise in farming organizations. How mainstream, predominantly male, organizations interact with women’s organizations is questioned. Finally, we conclude by considering women’s positions in farming organizations in each context. Despite the gender equality achieved in the North, farming organizations are every bit as exclusionary as those of the South. Farmers are an extremely well-organized occupation and wield considerable political power because of this effective organization. This power is gendered, and women are not visible unless they organize separately in women’s farming groups or co-operatives. This, however, can have different implications in the North and South. In the North, on the one hand, it can serve to reinforce gender differences—women’s organizations always state their gender in their title, indicating that they are outside of the mainstream of farming organizations. In the South, on the other hand, most women co-operatives do so to showcase their identity as women participating in a male-dominated sector through women collectives, thus, making them feel more empowered to work collectively to get support from external sources.We question the implications of these different models for women’s equality.

Women in agriculture: the question of power Research on women in agriculture has long considered how power confgurations contribute to gendered inequalities in agriculture. Early research focused on the invisibility of women’s farm work and how to make this more visible (Sachs, 1983; Alston, 1995; 1998: Pini, 2002; Shortall, 1992; 1999;Whatmore, 1991).The global predominance of men, in the main, inheriting or having privileged access to land, shapes women’s position in the industry. Men are seen as the public face of farming, and while globally farming is a family activity, the perception is of an individual male occupation (Bock and Shortall, 2006; Sachs and Garner, 2017). In many developing countries, land is undoubtedly one of the most important productive resources since the majority of rural households depend on agriculture and land resources for their livelihoods (Ellis, 1998; Lipton, 2009). More than 80% of households in Sub-Saharan Africa are small-scale farmers (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa [AGRA], 2014), of which women form more than half of the active labor force (FAO, 2016).Women thus continue to contribute to the share of agricultural labor in most developing countries (Palacios-Lopez et al., 2017).Yet, very few women own land or have the rights to make major decisions on the land (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019). In most cases, where women own land, their holdings are usually smaller in size than men’s (FAO, 2011; Chigwenya and Ndhlovu, 2016), and in most cases, rely on men’s permission to acquire land. There is a reported feminization of agriculture with an increasing number of women taking responsibility for agriculture in the Global South when men migrate for employment, and in the Global North, where in some places, such as the US, there is an increasing 288

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number of women entering agriculture, but they tend to be on small farms, and in neither case is it necessarily translating into a position of empowerment (Sachs and Garner, 2017). In both the Global North and South, extension training services are generally geared at men (McGowan, 2011;Trauger et al., 2010; International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], 2015).The debate about the inadequacy of how women’s agricultural labor is reported in statistics has long vexed gender scholars in the Global North (Alston, 1995; Shortall, 1992; Poiner, 1994; Gasson, 1992; Alston and Wilkinson, 1998) and decades later it continues to do so (Barbercheck et al., 2009;Trauger et al., 2008;Trauger et al., 2010; Shortall, 2010; Shortall et al., 2017). Pini (2002) argued that women’s invisibility in statistics had been internalized by many women who struggled to defne themselves as farmers or even contributors to the farm enterprise. In the Global South, data on women in agriculture is better, but largely because aid organizations expect a better return on investments if they reach women, and they expect it to have more impact on alleviating poverty and hunger. For instance, the FAO (2011) states that if women had the same access as men to productive inputs, the yields from their farms could increase by 20–30% and total agricultural output by 2.5–4.0% in developing countries, thus helping to reduce the number of hungry people worldwide by 12–17%. Different theoretical frameworks have been offered to explain the exercise of power in the gendered construction of agriculture practice, Marxism (Whatmore, 1991), Lukes’ three faces of power (Shortall, 1992), and Habitus (Shucksmith, 1993). Regardless of the theoretical framework, what all scholars share is an interest in how ideological power becomes embedded in social structures, such as census data, training programs, farming organizations, and inheritance practices, and are accepted as norms and creating consensus about the world order. This is not to suggest structural determination and an absence of agency. Although patriarchal family structures and cultural traditions confne rural women, their subordination remains incomplete (Sachs, 2018, p. 7). When people cooperate to enhance their collective power, social organization emerges (Mann, 1986). Organizations exert power and constitute a form of collective agency (Bachrach and Baratz, 1962; Clegg, 1989). Following Weber (1978), we would expect farming organizations in the Global North, underpinned by rational-legal authority, to have greater representation of women than farming organizations in the Global South, where organizations are more likely to be underpinned by traditional authority.The fact that this is not the case is the subject of this chapter. Feminist critics of Weber argue that organizations, even when underpinned by rational-legal authority, are not gender-neutral, and male homosociability, that is, the socialization of men together, represents one way in which the management level of an organization becomes a closed, gendered circle (Witz and Savage, 1992). Organizations can also display inertia; through a common culture, individuals form common perceptions and establish norms and codes (Shortall, 2001). Michael Mann (1986) argues that organizations constitute a fundamental component of social power. Their power is enhanced when it is institutionalized in laws and norms of the social group in which it operates. It becomes diffcult for people excluded to collectively organize separately because of a lack of resources and social position. They are what Mann (1986, p. 8) calls “organizationally outfanked.”We return to these concepts throughout the chapter.

What is a farming organization? In the Global South, the terminology is more likely to call for collective action using such terms as “collectives,” “co-operatives,” “community groups,” “self-help groups,” or “producer organizations.” The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) (2005) defnes a co-operative as 289

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an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise. They are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity.Women farm organizations remain an integral part of co-operative organizations in the Global South, especially Africa.While not all farm organizations have formal cooperative status, many operate on the principles, values, and models of co-operatives (Wanyama et al., 2009), with culture playing a signifcant role in how groups are formed. Historically, co-operatives in the Global South emerged as state-led programs under state control used as a conduit for reaching the poor in order to execute government policy, then as voluntary self-help groups (Ortmann and King, 2007).As such, most continue to preserve their dual identity as selfhelp organizations that operate as formal co-operatives moving away from the unifed model of co-operative operation to a social economy model where co-operatives are reexamining their organizational form to meet the constantly changing market demands (Wanyama et al., 2009). Wanyama et al. (2009) present different models of co-operatives in the Global South, such as a unifed co-operative model, a social economy model, a social movement model, a producers’ model, and an indigenous model. These models keep evolving to meet the needs of the cooperatives.The IFAD describes the producer organizations they establish as not only providing access to resources and the market but also as strategic partners with IFAD initiatives. In the Global South, co-operatives enhance women’s access to seeds, credit, water, and markets. Women’s organizations are seen as not just about gender, but also advancing economic return on national and international aid investments, increased resources for the family, increased agricultural yields, and women’s earnings used to advance the human rights of the family. Reaching women reduces hunger and increases educational opportunities for children (Kaaria et al., 2016; Bacon, 2010). However, the question of gender equality in agriculture is not just about productivity but also self-realization, self-power, and freedom of choice. In the Global North, farming organizations tend to be powerful lobby groups on behalf of the industry and represent interests to government and legislators. They are extremely wellorganized. In Europe, for instance, the power of the farming organizations long thwarted European attempts to cease breaching World Trade rules with the dumping of heavily subsidized agriculture on Global South markets (Keeler, 1996). They protect farming interests and often special treatment—farms are not subject to the same health and safety or planning regulations as other industries, and this is fercely protected by farmers’ unions (Shortall, 2019).They usually provide training for members and access to farm insurance.Their concerns refect a globalized commercial agriculture and are completely different in nature to the Global South.The similarity is that there are few women represented.Where women’s organizations develop, they tend to have a training and networking function and are imbued with a gender ideology.There is not the same urgency in terms of preventing food poverty or enhancing the family livelihood as in the Global South.

Farming organizations in the Global South and North: similarities and differences Women-only organizations Co-operatives play different roles in the Global South for women either as producer groups, empowerment groups, social solidarity groups, or communal groups.Women face several challenges rooted in institutional dynamics that depict the social and economic realities among community and household members.As argued by Francis (2000), there is a higher tendency for 290

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women to face more precarious livelihood choices than their male counterparts. Co-operative networks are crucial for co-operative operation and resilience.These co-operatives provide livelihood opportunities and employment for secure income to enhance members’ resilience while reducing poverty (International Labor Organization [ILO], 2013; Borda-Rodriguez and Vicari, 2014; Chirwa et al., 2005; Shiferaw et al., 2011; Markelova and Mwangi, 2010).They provide an identity for women, agency and voice, and access to resources and equality (Msonganzila, 1994; Masabo, 2015). However, there are issues with women-only producer organizations.They tend to be smaller than men’s organizations in terms of size, organization capital, number of members, and volume of business (IFAD, 2015; Majurin, 2012). Women-only organizations focus on sectors that are dominated by women, and these tend to be informal and have poorer representation in wider social structures.They are empowering by bringing women together in a supportive environment where women can build self-confdence and gain leadership skills. In the context of economic development, however, there is the risk that these organizations result in the marginalization of women and their relegation to less signifcant and proftable value chains. (IFAD, 2015, pp. 23–24). Empowerment can also come with other limitations.Within households, the tendency for participation to affect spousal and gender relations increases as women become more aware of their rights but may be faced with a backlash from men within the household (Alemu et al., 2018). In the Global North, women’s farming organizations have also emerged. Sometimes these develop organically, such as the Canadian Farm Women’s Movement and Norwegian Women in Forestry (Teather, 1996; Shortall, 1994; Leach, 2014; Brandth et al., 2014). In other cases, it is a combination of a bottom-up response to state funding as in Australia (Panelli and Pini, 2005) or a top-down initiative as in Northern Ireland (Shortall, 1996). In the US, a women’s organization grew out of a partnership between women, extension workers, and a university in Pennsylvania (Trauger et al., 2008).The gender is always stated in women’s groups:Women in Forestry, North Antrim Farm Ladies Group, or Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network. In some instances where the exclusive gendered space of agricultural training has been recognized, agricultural advisers have established provisions specifcally targeted at women (Sachs, 1983; Shortall, 1996). In these instances, there is sometimes an exact reproduction of what is provided to the men’s groups, but with additional provisions that deal with women’s caring roles, such as the safety of children on farms.Women appreciate the opportunity to avail of this training where it is provided, and state that it legitimizes the knowledge they have obtained experientially (Shortall, 1996). Similar to the context of the Global South, the stated aims of these women’s networks are to provide women with a learning environment, networking, and empowerment opportunities. Again, similar to the Global South, the social construction of a specifc space for women’s organizations is double-edged. It underlines their identity as distinctive to that of male farmers. Issues of power arise. Men’s agricultural training groups do not have to state their gender; it is implicitly understood that the farming identity is owned by men (Shortall, 2016).The Women in Scotland group or the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network do not have the same access to government and legislators to lobby for their industry. They are, as Michael Mann (1986, p. 264) argued,“organizationally outfanked.”

Women in mainstream farming organizations In the Global South, mixed producer organizations usually have men in leadership positions. This authority structure refects cultural norms and makes them the major decision-makers in 291

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matters that affect both men and women (Rawlings and Shaw, 2016). Women in the Global South tend to face greater mobility constraints than men, and very time-consuming care and household duties (Mudege et al., 2015; Sachs and Garner, 2017; Kaaria et al., 2016;).Women’s underrepresentation in leadership positions also means that their voice is not heard in decisionmaking, and they do not beneft fully from co-operatives (Penunia, 2011; Majurin, 2012; IFAD, 2016). Farm organizations are presumably proactive agencies where leadership drives the nature of network and social capital that members can utilize. Thus, women need to build on social capital within mixed groups in most instances (Baden, 2013; Périlleux and Szafarz, 2015).While co-operatives provide the institutional framework that members can function under, the nature of power plays and networks by leaders again determines who gains and who loses out in mixed groups (Wedig, 2013).While women are marginalized in mixed groups, many aid organizations think it is better to increase their representation in these organizations rather than being sidelined in women’s organizations.The IFAD (2016) advocates creating “women’s wings” within producer organizations, which strengthen women’s access to and leadership in the organization. They see this type of development as providing a space for capacity development and leadership training and working longer-term toward fully integrating women into the organization and participating in decision-making. New co-operative models now allow for gender-transformative approaches to enhance inclusion by both men and women in programs by development agencies (Cole et al., 2015; Farnworth and Colverson, 2015; Hillenbrand et al., 2015). In the Global North, the marginalization of women in farming organizations has been well documented in the USA (Trauger et al., 2008; Trauger et al., 2010), Australia (Alston, 1995; Pini, 2002), Ireland, and Scotland (Shortall et al., 2019; Shortall, 1999) among other places. Male homosociability, the socialization of men together such that the management of organizations become closed gendered circles was evident in recent Scottish research where men reported that they would not vote for women to have positions of authority in farming unions and explained it as culture (Shortall et al., 2017; 2019). In the same study, women reported being asked to leave meetings when the social part was concluded and business was beginning. Even in sustainable agricultural organizations where women are active, many of the same gendered inequalities emerge (Sumner and Llewelyn, 2011). In the Irish Farmers’ Associations, both North and South, there are almost no women members, and where they are included, they are concentrated in the family farm committee.At the Irish National Ploughing Championships, the largest outdoor agricultural event in Europe, women do not compete in the various categories, but rather in the “farmerette” category. Awards for all the other categories are given at an awards ceremony, but the winning woman is crowned “Queen of the Plough” at the event’s banquet (Shortall, 2001), and this is still the case today. Through this verbal and non-verbal symbolic interaction, it is communicated that women do not belong.As Alston (2003) noted, attempts to ensure greater recognition of women are short-sighted if they do not also address masculinist agricultural discourse. Interestingly, there are some initiatives by governments and by farming organizations to increase the representation of women that almost exactly replicate initiatives in the Global South. The Scottish Government (2019) (https://news.gov.scot/news/women-in-agriculture-1) has invested in training programs for women on the basis not only of equality but because it will enhance the agricultural industry.Three programs have been launched; the frst is a women in agriculture leadership development program to empower women to develop their ability to take up leadership positions at board level in the industry; the second is to increase women’s knowledge, skills, tools, and confdence to help improve business performance, and the third is a personal development training program for women.The Irish Farmers’Association (IFA) launched a diversity strategy in 2019. They plan to establish talent banks of women to put forward for 292

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positions in the association when they become vacant.They will provide mentoring and shadowing, promote female role models, and they also plan to run gender awareness training for the association’s members. Farming organizations in the Global North have received bad press on social media when all-male delegations are pictured going to negotiate with government. At a branch meeting of the Scottish National Farmers’ Union in 2019, their Chief Executive told the audience that while they might not like it, they had to start taking gender equality seriously in order to ensure their credibility and bargaining position.1 Perhaps farming organizations will press for change if their power base to negotiate as an organization is threatened.

“Exceptional” women in farming organizations By exceptional women, we mean those women who have obtained a visible position of authority and leadership in a farming organization.This is only a phenomenon in the Global North because of traditional patriarchal customs in the South.The Irish National Ploughing Association has had a female president since 1973, and until the late 1990s, she was the only woman leader of a European farming organization (Shortall, 2001). Since then, the Norwegian Farmer’s Union elected a woman president, and the English National Farmers Union elected a woman president in 2018. In each case of an exceptional woman, their gender is constantly the focus of media attention. Reports read,“Anna is a lady in a man’s world,” and interviews focus heavily on their children and domestic life.While the focus on men is not their gender but rather their role in the farming organization, the focus for women is about being a woman, presumed heterosexual, and her children, husband, and home life. Her difference is underlined.

Conclusion We have shown that while farming organizations are different in the Global North and South, and the nature of agriculture is extremely different, remarkably, similar patterns emerge for women’s participation in farming organizations. In both instances, women who are excluded have organized separately, either as self-initiated groups or by the state and other bodies.These provide women with access to resources and training, but in each case, there is concern that women are marginalized into women’s organizations while the business of the farming industry continues to be conducted with the mainstream, mostly male, farming organizations. It is about organizational power and the agency of organizations (Clegg, 1989). The mainstream organizations have a longer history, network of power, and have the ability to “organizationally outfank” (Mann, 1986) other organizations to maintain their power.Where women do participate in farming organizations, the gendered critique of Weber’s (1978) theory of bureaucracy and organizations as gender blind is evident.Women are sidelined, rarely hold positions of authority, and participate in what is considered gender-appropriate space within the organization. In the few cases in the Global North where women have attained highly visible positions of authority, the fact that they are the exception is constantly underlined in the press and social media. It is their womanhood that is always the focus of attention rather than their role in the organization. To return to our original intention, we have tried to move away from the conventional approach to comparative research, which is to put similar cases together and identify differences (Locke and Thelen, 1995). This second approach is “contextual,” which involves putting very different contexts together and looking for similar social patterns. Contextualized case studies do not replace matched comparisons; rather, they complement them.They bring new insights to comparative analysis by illustrating unexpected parallels across cases that, at frst glance, seem far too different to put together (Locke and Thelen, 1995). Our contextual comparison shows 293

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remarkable similarities across two worlds that, at frst glance, seem too different to meaningfully compare. Despite differences in gender equality, wealth, and type of agricultural production, similarities in how women access and participate in farming organizations are clearly evident. What common macro-sociological processes are at play? It is concluded that at least a partial explanation lies with the ownership of property and access to land, which privileges men globally.As long as nation-states protect these rights to ownership and access, parallel equality strategies for the industry are likely to be limited.Women in both contexts continue to be primarily responsible for caring and domestic roles. In both contexts, this constrains women’s time and ability to participate in other activities. Our chapter has some limitations that we hope will spark further research. Global comparative analyses are always macro in nature and rely on ideal types (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Mann, 1986).We are not able in this chapter to undertake an analysis to identify the nuances and differences that exist in the vast categories of the Global North and Global South. Nor are we able to undertake an analysis of the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and citizenship in our macro comparative analysis. Clear-cut gender roles do not exist in agriculture, and a macro analysis cannot deal with that detail.We look forward to future research that will address these questions.

Note 1 Shetland meeting of the National Farmers’ Union Scotland, January 2019, Shortall attended.

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23 THE WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN AGRICULTURE INDEX Elena M. Martinez, Emily C. Myers, and Audrey Pereira

Gender equality and the sustainable development goals Gender equality and women’s empowerment were refected in a millennium development goal (MDG), goal three, that—despite signifcant progress—remained unfulflled by 2000. In turn, the ffth sustainable development goal (SDG) recommits to achieving gender equality as a development outcome. Gender equality, and specifcally women’s empowerment, is intrinsically linked to various other SDGs—including goal one, eliminating poverty, goal two, zero hunger and malnutrition, and goal three, good health and wellbeing for women and children (Cunningham et al., 2015; Malapit et al., 2015; Ruel et al., 2018; Sraboni et al., 2014). Overall, 11 of the 17 SDGs include indicators related to gender equity (Doss et al., 2018). Though participation in agricultural work is declining due to the growth of the nonfarm sector and migration to urban centers, agriculture remains a signifcant contributor to GDPs worldwide (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2019). In fact, 63% of workers in low-income countries are employed in the agricultural sector (ILO, 2019). On average, women comprise 43% of the agricultural labor force in low-resource settings (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2011). However, in most contexts, women are unable to participate in agricultural livelihoods as fully as men (FAO, 2011; Doss et al., 2019; Kilic et al., 2015). Closing gender gaps in agriculture will be essential to achieving several of the SDGs, though closing such gaps and enhancing women’s empowerment in agriculture has other merits as well. For instance, the FAO (2011) estimates that eliminating gender disparities could increase agricultural outputs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by 2.5% to 4%, which would reduce undernutrition. Further, reductions in gender inequalities are linked to increased agricultural productivity, reduced food insecurity, and reduced malnutrition (FAO, 2011; World Bank, 2014; Zereyesus, 2017; Ross et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2003).

Metrics for monitoring progress toward SDG 5 To evaluate progress toward SDG 5, we need direct, comparable metrics for measuring empowerment. Measuring empowerment is challenging, partly because it is a multidimensional concept that is inherently very personal.Various indices that typically measure women’s empowerment 298

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at the national level use aggregate or administrative data, which cannot be decomposed into sub-groups of interest (Alkire et al., 2013). Examples include the Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2020, and previous years), the Gender Development Index (GDI), and the Gender Inequality Index (GII) (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2019). These indices rely on indirect proxies (e.g., age, education level, percentage of parliamentary seats) of women’s empowerment, and lack the detail needed to draw meaningful and actionable conclusions to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality, particularly for women in agriculture (Malapit et al., 2019). Instruments designed specifcally for agriculture are essential for developing the evidence base needed to enact policies and programs to close gender gaps and achieve SGD 5. In response to this technical gap, researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), developed the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). This chapter describes the WEAI; chronicles the evolution of the WEAI to serve different purposes—including the Abbreviated WEAI (A-WEAI) and the project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI); other specialized measures geared to measure empowerment in specifc areas, such as livestock, nutrition, and value chains; and how the WEAI has been used to better understand empowerment in various settings.

Theoretical foundations for measuring empowerment All versions of WEAI draw from Naila Kabeer’s (1999) defnition of empowerment as a process of change across three dimensions: resources, agency, and achievements (Figure 23.1). Resources are the various material, human, and social resources that enable a person to make choices in their life. Agency is the ability to set one’s own goals and act upon them, particularly in a context where this ability was previously denied. Achievement means achieving one’s goals, like increasing income or improving nutrition.There are well-defned and validated ways to measure resources like physical, human, and social capital, as well as ways to measure achievements like yield, proft, expenditure, or nutritional status. For example, there are well-developed tools to measure age, education level, household assets, agricultural productivity, dietary intake, and other indicators that may be considered measures of resources and achievements. However, few measures exist to measure agency in agricultural contexts, so the focus of WEAI has been the measurement of agency.

Figure 23.1 Naila Kabeer (1999) defnes empowerment as a process of change across three dimensions: resources, agency, and achievements.

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Specifcally, all versions of WEAI measure three types of agency: intrinsic, instrumental, and collective (Malapit et al., 2019; Ibrahim and Alkire, 2007).These types of agency are rooted in the typologies of power that Rowlands (1995; 1997) framed in the context of gender and women’s empowerment. Intrinsic agency, or power within, is a person’s internal voice, self-respect, or self-confdence. Instrumental agency, or power to, is a person’s ability to make decisions in their own best interest. Collective agency, or power with, is the power that we get from acting together with others.There is also a fourth type of power in this framework: power over. Power over is often associated with negative expressions of power, like coercion and control over others. In the qualitative data from pro-WEAI pilot projects (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019), the WEAI research team found that power over was often viewed negatively by local communities and was not refected in their own understandings of empowerment.As such, pro-WEAI and other versions of WEAI do not include measures of power over.

A brief overview of the WEAI In 2012, IFPRI, OPHI, and USAID launched the WEAI, a survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector (Alkire et al., 2013). Although the WEAI was originally designed as a tool to capture the impacts of Feed the Future (FTF), a global food security and hunger initiative launched by the US government in 2010, it has since been adapted and applied for other uses. Unlike several other measures of empowerment that refect only a single domain or concept, the WEAI is an aggregate measure that captures agency across fve different domains of agricultural production.The WEAI combines the aforementioned different types of agency using the Alkire-Foster methodology (Alkire et al., 2015), and serves a twofold purpose: 1) It provides information on the absolute level of women’s and men’s empowerment in agriculture. 2) It captures women’s achievements relative to men within the same household, i.e., gender parity. The WEAI itself is made up of two sub-indices that address these two purposes: the Five Domains of Empowerment Index (5DE) and the Gender Parity Index (GPI).The 5DE captures the percentage of women who are empowered and the intensity of disempowerment or the extent of achievements among those who are disempowered.The GPI measures women’s empowerment relative to the empowerment of the man decision-maker in the same household. In other words, the GPI refects the proportion of households that do not achieve gender parity, and among these households, the extent of relative empowerment between women and men, also referred to as the average empowerment gap. Households achieve gender parity if the woman in the household is empowered or if she achieves the same or a higher empowerment score compared to the man in the same household. Both the 5DE and the GPI can be decomposed by subgroup. To calculate the 5DE and GPI, the WEAI survey is administered to the primary man and woman decision-makers in each household and collects information on fve domains that are of strategic importance to USAID’s programming: 1) agricultural production decisions; 2) access to and decision-making over productive resources; 3) control over use of income; 4) leadership in the community; and 5) time use. “Agricultural production decisions” refers to the decisionmakers and extent of input in decisions regarding various areas of agricultural production and marketing, such as the production of crops, livestock, and fsh, as well as whether respondents have autonomy over decisions related to agricultural production.“Access to and decision-mak300

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ing over productive resources” refers to the owners and decision-makers of household assets, as well as who makes decisions about credit.“Control over use of income” refers to the decisionmakers regarding income from agricultural production.“Leadership in the community” refers to whether the respondent is an active member of a community group and is comfortable speaking in public. “Time use” refers to whether the respondent is overburdened with work and if they are satisfed with the time that they are able to allocate to leisure activities (Table 23.1). Each of the fve domains receives an equal weight, and indicators within each domain are also weighted equally. The indicators are binary, and a respondent is categorized as adequate or inadequate in a particular indicator if they reach a pre-determined threshold for that indicator. (See Table 23.1 for details on adequacy for each of the ten indicators.) For example, a respondent is considered adequate in group membership if they are an active member of at least one group in the community. Building up from these indicators, each respondent is given an empowerment score, which is the weighted sum of the adequacies of the ten binary indicators. Based on this empowerment score, respondents are classifed as empowered if they are adequate in at least eight out of ten, or 80%, of the indicators.The structure of the WEAI, including the need for adequacy thresholds for the different indicators and empowerment cutoffs, is rooted in the Alkire-Foster method for multidimensional measurement (Alkire et al., 2015). The WEAI was frst piloted in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda. As part of the pilots, qualitative case studies were also conducted on women who were locally identifed as “empowered” or “disempowered,” and this was compared with quantitative WEAI data for the same individuals to better understand local defnitions of empowerment and how these related to the WEAI. Since then,WEAI has been rolled out across the FTF portfolio and beyond. More information about the WEAI can be found in Alkire et al. (2013).

Lessons learned and the motivation for creating the Abbreviated WEAI (A-WEAI) Following the initial implementation of the WEAI in three pilot countries, a learning event was held to share experiences and receive feedback on the successes and challenges of implementing the WEAI. Implementing teams reported several challenges: problems administering the modules on autonomy, speaking in public, and time use; the length of the survey, which led to respondent fatigue; and a lack of clarity on why questions on topics related to empowerment, such as health and freedom of movement, were excluded from the WEAI. (For a detailed list of challenges, see Malapit et al., 2017.) From this feedback emerged the need to create a more concise version of the WEAI, one that would address these issues while still capturing the different spheres of agency in agricultural production. To develop the A-WEAI, the WEAI team conducted cognitive interviews—a qualitative approach for identifying sources of error in how respondents interpret and formulate responses to surveys — in Bangladesh and Uganda in 2014 to refne the quality and accuracy of the WEAI survey instruments, with a strong focus on abstract terms and concepts that were diffcult to comprehend for both respondents and enumerators. Based on the results, the team revised questions across all domains and documented several lessons learned, including best practices around cognitive interviewing (Malapit et al., 2016). Although the A-WEAI retains the fve domains of the WEAI, it includes only six of the ten original indicators (Table 23.1). The autonomy and time-use modules were restructured, and the portion on speaking in public, which had negative connotations and extremely low response rates in countries with past political turmoil, was excluded (Malapit et al., 2017). One concern arising from moving from a longer to a shorter version of the same questionnaire is the abil301

Elena M. Martinez, Emily C. Myers, and Audrey Pereira Table 23.1 Defnitions of Indicators for WEAI and A-WEAI Domain

Indicator

WEAI defnition

A-WEAI defnition

Adequate if the individual participates Adequate if the individual participates in and makes in and makes decisions, has input decisions, has input in in decisions, or feels she/he could decisions, or feels she/he make decisions (if desired) about at could make decisions (if least two agricultural activities desired) about at least one agricultural activity Adequate if the individual has a Not included Autonomy in Relative Autonomy Index greater production than one in at least one activity linked to production Adequate if the individual owns Adequate if the individual owns at Resources Ownership of at least one major asset or at least one major asset or at least two assets least two minor assets minor assets Adequate if the individual participates Not included Purchase, sale, or can participate in decisions to or transfer of buy, sell, or transfer at least one assets asset either individually or jointly, conditional on the household’s owning it (excludes chickens and non-mechanized farming equipment) Adequate if the individual makes Access to and Adequate if the individual makes decisions about at least one decisions decisions about at least one source source of credit accessed by about credit of credit accessed by her/his her/his household household Income Control over use Adequate if the individual participates Adequate if the individual participates in and has input of income in and has input in decisions about in decisions about income income generated from an activity generated from an activity or she/he makes decisions, has input or she/he makes decisions, in decisions, or feels she/he could has input in decisions, or make decisions (if desired) about feels she/he could make employment or major household decisions (if desired) about expenditures employment or major household expenditures Leadership Group member Adequate if the individual is an active Adequate if the individual is an active member of at least one member of at least one group group Not included Adequate if the individual is Speaking in comfortable speaking in public public Adequate if the individual Adequate if the individual worked Time Workload worked fewer than 10.5 fewer than 10.5 hours during the hours during the previous previous day day Adequate if satisfed with leisure time Not included Leisure Production Input in productive decisions

Note: Each domain in the WEAI and A-WEAI is weighted equally; indicators are weighted equally within each domain.

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ity to arrive at similar conclusions or diagnoses with both tools. A series of robustness checks were conducted to compare the WEAI and A-WEAI; both versions of the tool showed that the same dimensions were the top contributors to disempowerment. Although the WEAI and A-WEAI are not perfect substitutes, each has a unique set of strengths. The WEAI provides a more detailed look at women’s and men’s empowerment by assessing more indicators of agency, while the A-WEAI provides a streamlined tool for organizations to more easily integrate measures of empowerment into their programs.

Pro-WEAI: a portfolio approach to measuring empowerment The original WEAI and A-WEAI were developed to measure women’s empowerment at the population level, as monitoring tools for the FTF program. Since their release, these tools have been taken up widely—to our knowledge, 107 organizations in 56 countries (as of July 2020) have used the WEAI or its versions. Many groups adopted and adapted WEAI, and many used the tools to measure empowerment at the project level rather than at the population level. Some projects wanted to shorten the interview time or to measure aspects of empowerment that were not included in the WEAI, such as decision-making about nutrition and health, intrahousehold harmony, freedom of movement, and domestic violence. However, the “off-brand” adaptations of WEAI meant that the results generated were not comparable across projects or countries. In 2016, IFPRI, OPHI, and 13 partner projects began developing the pro-WEAI, as part of the second phase of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). Through GAAP2, 13 agricultural development projects in Africa and South Asia piloted the pro-WEAI quantitative and qualitative tools. All the projects focused on crops and/or livestock and had nutrition and/or income objectives.They used a wide variety of strategies to increase empowerment, including providing goods and services, strengthening organizations, building knowledge and skills, and infuencing gender norms.The GAAP2 team used their pilot data to develop and validate the pro-WEAI tools. Representatives from these projects also remained in close contact with the GAAP2 team, providing their inputs and insights through a series of in-person and online workshops and webinars.This collaborative approach was designed to allow the GAAP2 team to learn which strategies do and do not work to increase empowerment. It also ensured that the project generated tools that allow for comparability across a portfolio of projects. Pro-WEAI is a tool intended to help agricultural development projects assess empowerment in a project setting, diagnose areas of women’s and men’s disempowerment, design strategies to address defciencies, and monitor and evaluate project outcomes. It includes a core set of quantitative and qualitative tools to draw on the strengths of mixed-methods approaches with greater intention than previous versions of WEAI. Pro-WEAI also includes a set of standardized add-on modules that can help projects investigate specifc areas of interest, such as nutrition and health, livestock, and market inclusion.

Pro-WEAI: what is in the index? Like WEAI and A-WEAI, pro-WEAI is a survey-based index that is calculated using interviews of men and women adults in the same household. In WEAI, the index is constructed based on interviews of the primary man and woman decision-makers in the household. For pro-WEAI, however, projects are instructed to choose respondents based on their program activities or objectives. For example, a project that targets young mothers may choose to interview the young woman who is the project benefciary and her spouse, even if she is not the primary woman decision-maker in the household. 303

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Figure 23.2 Pro-WEAI includes 12 indicators across three types of agency: intrinsic, instrumental, and collective.

Pro-WEAI includes 12 indicators across the three domains of empowerment. In pro-WEAI, the domains of empowerment are not the topical domains refected in the original WEAI and A-WEAI—production, resources, income, leadership, and time. Rather, the domains of proWEAI are more directly connected to the theoretical framework for measuring empowerment and more explicitly linked to the three types of agency, or three types of power, measured by all versions of WEAI—intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency (Figure 23.2). Indicators of intrinsic agency include autonomy in income, self-effcacy, attitudes about intimate partner violence against women, and respect among household members. Indicators of instrumental agency include input in productive decisions, ownership of land and other assets, control over use of income, access to and decisions on fnancial services, work balance, and visiting important locations. Indicators of collective agency include group membership and membership in infuential groups. Some of these indicators are adapted from the original WEAI, while others were added to pro-WEAI to measure dimensions of empowerment that were not previously captured in the WEAI or A-WEAI. Like original WEAI and A-WEAI, the pro-WEAI uses the Alkire-Foster method for multidimensional measurement in its construction. Each of the 12 indicators is binary, meaning that a respondent must reach a certain “threshold” to be considered adequate in the indicator. For example, a respondent must indicate that she/he is an active member of at least one community group to be considered adequate in group membership. Indicators are not calculated from a single binary survey item; rather, these thresholds are calculated by combining a set of survey items. For example, for each set of group or association types, respondents are asked whether a group exists in their community and whether they are an active member of that group.The respond304

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ent’s responses to this set of items are combined to determine if they are adequate in the group membership indicator.The thresholds used for pro-WEAI are typically stricter than those used in WEAI and A-WEAI to ensure that pro-WEAI can detect changes in empowerment over the period of a typical agricultural development project. Like previous versions of WEAI, pro-WEAI is made up of two sub-indices: the Three Domains of Empowerment Index (3DE) and the GPI. The 3DE measures women’s achievements across the 12 indicators.A respondent is considered “empowered” if she/he is adequate in at least 9 of the 12 indicators. Like the WEAI’s 5DE, the 3DE accounts for both the percentage of women who were not considered empowered and how far below the empowerment cutoff these women fell.Thus, using an empowerment cutoff based on a set of indicators allows us to determine who the least empowered individuals are and how disempowered they are—these distinctions are essential for projects that seek to effciently enhance women’s empowerment. The GPI measures women’s achievements compared to those of the men interviewed in their household.The GPI calculation includes both the percentage of households that achieved gender parity—households in which the woman was empowered or adequate in at least as many indicators as the man—and how large the gap in empowerment was for households that did not achieve gender parity.

A mixed-methods approach to measuring empowerment As mentioned above, pro-WEAI is made up of both quantitative and qualitative tools for measuring women’s empowerment in agricultural development projects. Pro-WEAI’s mixedmethods approach draws on the “Q Squared” (qualitative-quantitative) approach (Kanbur, 2003; Shaffer, 2013).As such, pro-WEAI uses qualitative methods to generate emic understandings of empowerment to validate the survey instrument (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019). Qualitative data may also contextualize the quantitative fndings (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019). Pro-WEAI uses a variety of protocols to ensure the qualitative data collected complements the indicators and types of agency used in the quantitative survey.These protocols include (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019): 1) Review of project documents to gather any relevant background material on the project area, or statistics. 2) Community profle to provide community-level social, economic, and agricultural information. 3) Seasonality patterns to create a production calendar that shows the gendered distribution of labor and determine how seasonal variations affect time use. 4) Sex-disaggregated focus groups on a local understanding of empowerment to elicit a local understanding of empowerment. 5) Semi-structured interviews to understand the perceptions and experiences of empowerment within the context of agricultural intervention projects. 6) Key informant interviews with market traders to provide context related to the operation of the relevant value chain, especially linked to assets being studied, and to determine any gendered barriers to market engagement. 7) Key informant interviews with project staff to gather basic contextual information about the projects and communities in which interventions take place and gain expert insights about the factors affecting how the project impacts women’s empowerment.

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The use of these sources is fexible; projects may slightly adapt these qualitative protocols or collect data using only some of these protocols in accordance with project needs and constraints.To date, the qualitative fndings from across the GAAP2 portfolio are being used to contextualize emerging quantitative fndings and inform additional adaptations to the questionnaire. Pro-WEAI’s mixed-methods approach demonstrates and reinforces the value of qualitative work.While the qualitative work is not a part of the questionnaire, all projects using pro-WEAI are recommended to sequence quantitative and qualitative data collection. Qualitative data are valuable for contextualizing the index scores, project implementation, and how participants perceive that the project impacts women’s empowerment (Malapit et al., 2019). Furthermore, qualitative work during the development of pro-WEAI showed that, though local understandings of empowerment vary between contexts, the underlying concepts can still be mapped to pro-WEAI’s three domains of empowerment: intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency (Malapit et al., 2019). Such information allows the WEAI team to validate the quantitative index and ensure domains and indicators accurately refect study participants’ understandings of empowerment and what they value. In addition, the qualitative pro-WEAI pilot data revealed how various aspects of (dis)empowerment are interrelated. For example, gender norms related to mobility and time use were connected—women were limited in both the types of agricultural work that they did and where they worked. In a project focusing on jute producers in Bangladesh, women only worked in jute production and processing close to their homes in fear of being perceived as disrespectful to their families if they worked farther away (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019).

Box 23.1: Specialized measures of empowerment Since its release in 2012, the utility and success of the WEAI have led to a proliferation of empowerment measurement tools that use similar methodologies but focus on measuring agency in specifc areas.These tools include add-on modules to be used in conjunction with the pro-WEAI, enhanced topic-specifc pro-WEAI modules that provide additional topic-specifc indicators and fully developed topic-specifc new indices.

Pro-WEAI health and nutrition add-on module Within the GAAP2 portfolio, several projects expressed interest in measuring women’s agency in health and nutrition domains, focusing both on the woman herself and her children. Heckert et al. (n.d.) provide an overview of the development and validation of this health and nutrition add-on module, which encompasses seven indicators on women’s ability to make decisions on eating certain foods and seeking healthcare for herself, in general and during pregnancy, and for her child, and her ability to procure health-related products such as medicines, soap, etc (Heckert et al., n.d.).

Pro-WEAI enhanced livestock module The enhanced livestock module can be used in projects that have livestock-related outcomes. Rather than an add-on module, the enhanced livestock module is an expanded version of the main pro-WEAI module that disaggregates information by animal species and adds questions on agency related to key aspects of livestock production. For example, the enhanced livestock module

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was piloted in an evaluation of a nutrition-sensitive poultry value chain intervention in Burkina Faso that also collected detailed data on decision-making related to poultry production (Gelli et al., 2017). The enhanced livestock module also benefted from the development of the Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), discussed below.

WELI Developed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the WELI adapts the WEAI for use in livestock-farming dominant settings.The WELI focuses on key areas of livestock production, including animal health, breeding, and feeding, as well as the use of livestock products, such as animal source food processing and marketing (Galiè et al., 2019).The WELI is currently being refned to incorporate all pro-WEAI indicators and include additional livestock-specifc indicators.

Pro-WEAI for Market Inclusion There is growing demand from development organizations to track empowerment along the value chain.While the WEAI and pro-WEAI primarily focus on agricultural production, the pro-WEAI for Market Inclusion seeks to expand this focus to include other nodes of agricultural value chains, such as processing, marketing, trading, and wage work. Using the pro-WEAI as the starting point, IFPRI is developing market inclusion indicators using pilot data from studies in Bangladesh, Benin, Malawi, and the Philippines.

Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index The Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) is a multidimensional index that measures nutritional empowerment or the process by which individuals gain the capacity to be well-fed and healthy.The WENI focuses on women’s agency, resources, and achievements related to nutrition and was developed based on qualitative and quantitative formative research in two sites in India (Narayanan et al., 2019). Like the WEAI and WELI, the WENI was developed based on the AlkireFoster methodology (Alkire et al., 2015).

Box 23.2: Bangladesh case study In the past decade, Bangladesh has been a leader in incorporating and promoting the measurement of women’s empowerment in agricultural development projects. Bangladesh was one of the three countries to pilot the original WEAI in 2012, and also participated in the cognitive interviewing, piloting, and development of the A-WEAI. In addition, 4 of the 13 projects in the GAAP2 portfolio that piloted the pro-WEAI have also been implemented in Bangladesh: the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project, the impact evaluation of the Bangladesh Agricultural Value Chains (AVC) program, Food and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition (FAARM), and Targeting and Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (TRAIN).

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Recent evidence from Bangladesh reveals remarkable improvements in women’s empowerment, and the effects of women’s empowerment on other individual- and household-level indicators. Between 2011–2012 and 2018–2019, women’s empowerment, as measured by WEAI, increased by 93% percent in the FTF zone of infuence. Improvements in women’s empowerment were also associated with decreased poverty; increased income; and improved diet quality, food security, and nutrition outcomes of children, women, and other household members (IFPRI, 2019; Sraboni et al., 2018; Malapit et al., 2015). One study, in particular, has had resounding success in Bangladesh. The ANGeL pilot study evaluated the impact of three different modalities—facilitating the production of nutrient-rich food, conducting high-quality behavior change communication, and undertaking gender sensitization activities—on nutrition outcomes and women’s empowerment to better understand the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus. In June 2018, approximately 140 participants from the government, NGOs, and donor agencies attended the ANGeL results dissemination event. Due to the success of this project, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Agriculture plans to use ANGeL data to 1) identify which interventions most effectively increase agricultural diversity, improve nutrition, and promote women’s empowerment; and 2) to scale up the most effective interventions all over Bangladesh.

WEAI since 2012: what have we learned? Since its release in 2012,WEAI has been widely used to measure empowerment and diagnose areas of disempowerment.Versions of WEAI have been used to diagnose and monitor empowerment at both the population and project levels. Furthermore,WEAI data have been used to examine connections between women’s empowerment and other outcomes of interest, look deeper into specifc areas of empowerment, and test which types of policies and interventions best empower women. The original WEAI and A-WEAI were used in USAID’s FTF program to measure women’s empowerment at the population level in the FTF Zone of Infuence Surveys. After being piloted in three FTF countries,WEAI was rolled out to the entire portfolio of 19 countries in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, and multiple rounds of data were collected in many of these countries. FTF has used WEAI to monitor progress in women’s empowerment over the course of the program, and WEAI results have also informed FTF’s intervention design by highlighting important aspects of disempowerment in FTF countries. WEAI results from FTF and other programs have also been used to look at associations between women’s empowerment and other outcomes, such as nutrition, diets, and agricultural production. Malapit and Quisumbing (2015) used FTF data from Ghana to look at associations between women’s empowerment and women’s and children’s nutritional status.They found that women’s empowerment was associated with infant and young child feeding practices but found only weak associations with child nutritional status. Their results also suggested that the relationships between empowerment and nutrition vary for different dimensions of empowerment. Malapit et al. (2015) looked at associations between women’s empowerment and women’s and children’s diet and nutrition using data from the USAID Suaahara project in Nepal.They found that the dimensions of empowerment that were associated with dietary diversity and nutritional status were different for mothers and children. Sraboni and Quisumbing (2018) assessed how the associations between empowerment and dietary quality and dietary diversity vary for people of 308

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different ages in the household. De Pinto et al. (2019) used WEAI data collected through the 2015 Bangladesh Integrated Household Study (BIHS) in a study focused on crop diversifcation.They found that some dimensions of women’s empowerment were associated with higher production diversity and transition from producing cereals to other crops, such as fruits and vegetables. WEAI data has also been used for in-depth analyses of specifc aspects of women’s empowerment, such as time use. For example, Komatsu et al. (2018) looked at associations between women’s time use and women’s and children’s dietary diversity using FTF datasets from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique. They found that time spent on domestic work and cooking was associated with higher dietary diversity, but results varied between countries. Ambler et al. (2017) took a different approach, using WEAI data to examine disagreement between spouses about who makes household decisions and owns household assets. WEAI, A-WEAI, and pro-WEAI have been used to measure empowerment in agricultural development projects.These tools allow projects to monitor empowerment over the course of the project to detect changes and ensure that interventions do not negatively impact women. They also help projects to test which interventions have the potential to increase empowerment and explore the pathways by which women’s empowerment can facilitate improvements in other areas. Results from GAAP2 projects will provide insights into which interventions are best for empowering women and how to make them successful. For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh used the research-based evidence from the ANGeL project to scale up the most effective country-wide interventions to improve nutrition and women’s empowerment (Ahmed and Ghostlaw, 2019). If we want to reach SDG 5 by 2030, we need meaningful measures of women’s empowerment to track our progress. Over time, different versions of WEAI have been developed and rigorously validated to account for a variety of different study and/or project evaluation needs. The WEAI family of indicators provides a set of comparable indicators that have been widely used to track, diagnose, and monitor empowerment. The next challenge for the WEAI research team will be to develop a more streamlined measure of women’s empowerment that can be felded in national surveys and implemented by national statistical agencies.

References Ahmed, A., and Ghostlaw, J. (2019). “2019 Global Food Policy Report Dhaka launch: lessons from Bangladesh on rural revitalization.” IFPRI Blog, 24 April.Available at: https://www.ifpri.org/blog/201 9-global-food-policy-report-dhaka-launch-lessons-bangladesh-rural-revitalization. Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R.S.S., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G., and Vaz, A. (2013). “The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index.” World Development 52:71–91. Alkire, S., Foster, J.E., Seth, S., Santos, M.E., Roche, J.M., and Ballon, P. (2015). Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 5.; Leeds University Business School Working Paper No. 15-01.Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2564787. Ambler, K., Doss, C., Kieran, C., and Passarelli, S. (2017). “He says, she says: exploring patterns of spousal agreement in Bangladesh.” IFPRI Discussion Paper 1616.Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/131097 Bryceson, D. (2002).“The scramble in Africa: reorienting rural livelihoods.” World Development 30 (5):725– 39. doi: 10.1016/S0305-750X(02)00006-2. Cunningham, K., Ploubidis, G.B., Menon, P., Ruel, M., Kadiyala, S., Uauy, R., and Ferguson, E. (2015). “Women’s empowerment in agriculture and child nutritional status in rural Nepal.” Public Health Nutrition 18 (17):3134–3145. De Pinto, A., Seymour, G., Bryan, E., and Bhandary, P. (2019).“Women’s empowerment and crop diversifcation in Bangladesh: a possible pathway to climate change adaptation and better nutrition.” IFPRI

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PART 4

Farming people and identities

24 FARM HOUSEHOLD LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES Margaret Adesugba, Elizabeth Oughton, and Sally Shortall

Introduction This chapter presents a Global North/South comparison of farm households’ livelihood strategies and gender relations, with particular reference to Europe and Africa. This might seem unusual, but we argue that this comparative approach allows us to see similarities in different contexts. The comparative method is complex, and how to do it properly is much debated. Smelser (2002) identifes the two extremes as radical positivism and radical relativism, both of which he views as misguided.The former presumes there are real social facts that have objective manifestations and can be counted. The extreme at the other end of radical relativism claims that nothing can be compared because of cultural relativism. The conventional approach to comparative research is to put similar cases together and identify differences (Locke and Thelen, 1995). This “matched-comparison” approach is useful and sheds light on the role played by national institutions. It is typical of quantitative social surveys and qualitative comparison.The other approach is “contextual,” which involves putting very different contexts together and looking for similar social patterns; this is our intention in this chapter (Locke and Thelen, 1995). Contextualized case studies do not replace matched comparisons; instead, they complement them.They bring new insights to comparative analysis by illustrating unexpected parallels across cases that, at frst glance, seem far too different to put together (Locke and Thelen, 1995). We propose that in order to do this, we adopt a framework of household social economy that accepts there are common institutions to the activities of provisioning within the household but that they may be enacted in very different ways in different contexts. This approach can raise questions about the various forms of social behavior, both similar and different, which in turn may generate new questions and deeper insights (Oughton and Wheelock, 2003). Gender presents crucial social relations that mediate livelihoods either by constraining or enhancing the livelihood choices and capacities of individuals and households as a whole (Ellis, 2000; Jackson, 2007). Globally, livelihoods are gendered, and this is equally true of agricultural households (Oberhauser et al., 2004). The literature on the complexity of livelihoods is vast, with different approaches to understanding the paths that farm households take globally. As demonstrated clearly in the chapters of this collection, gender relations among farm household members are invariably complex and diverse since household members are involved in different types of bargaining and competi315

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tion on how to achieve livelihood goals irrespective of their location (Agarwal, 1997; Francis, 2000;Whitehead and Kabeer, 2001; Bennett, 2006). As such, this complexity is what drives the decision-making processes around livelihood creation in addition to the external conditions, income, and assets that households have (Ellis, 2000; Barrett et al., 2001; Djurfeldt et al., 2018). As argued by Hussein and Nelson (1998), even within similar African contexts, men, women, and children within farm households have different types of power and autonomy that infuence the livelihood strategies that they pursue. A North/South comparison shows us not only how the contextual differences that shape livelihood strategies emerge, but also helps us understand some of the same processes that continue to shape livelihood decisions globally (Locke and Thelen, 1995). We begin with an overview of what we mean by farm family households and livelihood strategies among farm households in the North and South.We examine the different language used in each context, and also make some observations about the differences in context. Next, we examine the variations in the livelihood strategies among women and men in the North and South showing that based on space, assets, and culture, the same strategies are operationalized differently. Then we consider the gendered dimensions to livelihood paths to understand the motivations and mobility constraints to livelihood strategies. Livelihood identities created by the livelihood paths that farm households engage in are explored as well as the similarities in differences in the Global North and South with future research directions identifed.

Defning farm family households Farm family households represent over 75% of the farms in the world, with most of the subsistent farm households in the world located in developing countries, especially in Africa (Lowder et al., 2016). The defnition of a farm family household is still debated globally (Garner and O’Campos, 2014).1 More so, the varying North/South cultural, social, economic, and political backgrounds make it almost impossible to give a generalized defnition for households without the risk of excluding actual members or including members that are not part of the household. As a result, the expectation is that livelihood strategies among households in the North and South would differ given the place-based differences that they experience. But, irrespective of location, farm households are basic units of agricultural production that depend on land or farming for part or all of their income where decisions on agricultural production and business are made with major differences arising from differences in asset availability and market imperfections (Brandth and Haugen, 2010; Brookfeld and Parsons, 2007; Jirström et al., 2011). Barrett et al. (2001) argued that the lack of a shared terminology hinders research on livelihoods.There are many means of provisioning for the household so that livelihood needs may be met through self-production, kind transactions, and cash income. Incomes and cash incomes are different. Barrett refers to the terms “off-farm,”“non-farm,”“non-agricultural,” and “nontraditional” as sources of farm income diversifcation, but the state, family, or wider community may also play a role in income generation. Farm families in the Global North also pursue strategies of diversifcation; reference is made to farm diversifcation, multi-functionality, or off-farm work. Rarely is the term “livelihood strategy” used, although there are exceptions (see Gorman, 2006). Yet, in both contexts, the same attempts are made to undertake activities to diversify income sources. Farms in the North tend to be commercial agricultural businesses, and even for small farms, their relationship to the market is entirely different from the predominantly subsistence production and markets of the Global South.Yet, there are similarities. Smaller farms in both places have fewer resources to diversify, and off-farm or extra-farm income becomes critical. 316

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One of the most critical differences is women’s relationship to the labor market. Mobility is a much greater constraint for women in the South. In the North, with greater gender equality, women have become more permanently subsumed in the labor market, although women in both North and South remain responsible for the care and domestic work, which limits their choice of livelihood strategy (Rubery and Rafferty, 2013). As Kelly and Shortall found, even in particular instances where women’s off-farm income was maintaining the continuation of the farm, it did not lead to a change in childcare or household responsibilities. Women consider their work as contributing to the household rather than behaving as maximizing individuals (Kelly and Shortall, 2002).

Livelihood strategies Livelihood strategies are the “ways that individuals and households choose to use, transform, and reproduce their capital stock or resource base in pursuit of livelihood goals” (Turner, 2017, p. 4). The term “strategy” is highly contested, although livelihood “creation” tends to lack the dynamics of the former. Individuals within the farm households behave in ways to ensure the viability, resilience, sustainability, and security of the households’ livelihood. However, the institutional, cultural, locational, and economic contexts also shape the decisions individuals within the household make as well as the capital and assets that they have.There are three broad categorizations of the livelihood strategies among farm households identifed using the sustainable livelihood framework in the South2: agricultural intensifcation/extensifcation, diversifcation, and migration (Scoones, 1998; Ellis, 2000). Historically, agricultural intensifcation was achieved in the South through land expansion with the use of household and non-household labor. Ellis (2000, p. 15) defnes livelihood diversifcation as “the process by which rural households construct an increasingly diverse portfolio of activities and assets in order to survive and to improve their standard of living.” Different types of diversifcation strategies present different opportunities and are either constrained or enhanced by the investment requirement for diversifcation as well as the rationale behind the move into diversifcation. In the Global North, diversifcation strategies depend on resources and include, for example, farm tourism, food production, and wind farming (Brandth and Haugen, 2010; 2011; Bock, 2004; Kelly and Shortall, 2002). As in the South, the activities undertaken depend on educational levels and farm size. Often, the most proftable activity is an off-farm wage income. Other research found that women choose smaller-scale farm diversifcation activities than men in the North in order to accommodate their childcare roles and farm work (Bock, 2004).With diversifcation and migration, farm households are exposed to more livelihood options in the South. Farm households engaged in seasonal agricultural production are more likely to diversify than households where on-farm production runs for a longer time in every production year, especially when time and wages from on-farm employment are considered (McNally, 2001; Jongeneel et al., 2008). Migration is more common among farm households, especially by male members and an increasing number of women in poor households (De Haan, 2000). Pluriactivity is increasingly becoming common among farm households in the North and is infuenced by both sociocultural and economic factors (Marsden, 1990). Kinsella et al. (2000) identify three types of pluriactivity—old, new, and modern pluriactivity.With old pluriactivity, farm households have been engaged in off-farm employment for more than one generation. In modern pluriactivity, off-farm employment is a relatively new phenomenon, and in new pluriactivity, farming is a new way of life among farm households who have entered farming either through inheritance or by purchasing land. Pluriactive households are more likely to have one or more household members involved in non-farm employment for additional income. 317

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In addition to diversifcation and pluriactivity in the North and South, farm households are also engaging in other livelihood strategies, such as joint farm venture and multi-family farm systems. In the South, particularly in Morocco, farm households with larger farm holdings are adapting a multi-family3 farm system where members leverage on improved management strategies without compromising on local kinship arrangements to achieve economies of scale by using male family labor and skills in strategic farm positions (Sippel, 2016). Joint farm ventures are less common in the Global North, although there are some isolated cases and some proponents of it as a way forward in countries where holdings are small (Macken-Walsh and Roche, 2012; Cush and Macken-Walsh, 2016).This allows for shared control among men and women involved in the venture.

Gendered livelihood decisions and power With the differences in livelihood strategies in the North and South, gendered decisions and power relations also vary. Migration as a means of livelihood diversifcation not only presents a multi-spatial dimension to decision-making in how livelihood activities are carried out (Turner, 2017) but may also be gendered. Migration has differential effects on households and labor allocation depending on who migrates and the livelihood strategies of those left behind.When men migrate in the South, women may take over operating the farm but still have limited power to make major decisions. Findings from East and Southern Africa suggest that the infuence of gender relations goes beyond male household head and female spouse decision-making (Francis, 2002). In the absence of the male household head, female spouses may be still be subjected to decision-making by other male relatives. In the South, Djurfeldt et al. (2013) fnd that unequal access to resources rather than differences in income generation abilities among men and women is a major cause of the differential effects of gender among farm households.The fact that land ownership lies mostly with men both in the South and North reinforces women’s inability to make livelihood decisions independently. The nature of assets that farm households have determines how strategies are developed both in the long and short term. A distinction should, however, be made between households where women manage their own farms and where women are considered as farmwives since they live in farm households headed by men. While the inability to produce for commercial purposes is inhibited by limited access to resources when women manage their own farm, commercialization by women in households headed by men is constrained by the limited control over production outcomes (Djurfeldt, 2018). Despite differences in access to resources and assets as well as livelihood options, similar patriarchal dichotomies still exist irrespective of space that infuences gendered power relations among farm household members (Kabeer, 1994). The responsibilities to improve a household’s means of survival and livelihood goals reinforce patriarchal gender roles where women still combine production and reproduction roles but also show evolving gender roles that vary based on livelihood paths globally. When women in the North take up off-farm employment to support farm income, it is often to protect men’s identity as the farmer, and the continuation of the farm (O’Laoire, 2005; Kelly and Shortall, 2002). In Norway, Brandth and Haugen (2010) fnd shifting power dynamics among couples involved in farm tourism with increasing fexibility in work considered to be traditionally done by women shared with men. However, joint ventures in the North show some evidence of inclusive decision-making and balanced power relations among members involved (Cush et al., 2018). The imbalance in power to make decisions is also prominent in other types of livelihood strategies in the South. For example, with the multi-family livelihood system in the South, women within households have lower farm shares than men, and men 318

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occupy all the strategic decision-making positions. Sons are usually well integrated into the farm business to ensure successful farm succession by male children with preferential selection of men and sons for participation in the export market with limited emphasis on women (Sippel, 2016). While there is some increase in the number of women farm owners in the North, this needs to be carefully examined, as the tendency is for these to be small and less economically viable than farms owned by men. In the South, women work as agricultural laborers and in non-agricultural employment. It is less the case that women work as agricultural laborers in the North, although they often have non-agricultural employment. The very different economic and cultural context means that sometimes women’s off-farm work is a career in their own right, although their income is often not only contributing to household resources but actually subsidizing the farm (Shortall et al., 2017; Kelly and Shortall, 2002).Women in the North are also often involved in farm diversifcation activities, such as businesses that develop from the farm but are distinct or vaguely connected to farming activity (yogurt production, farm tourism, rental accommodation). In the South, women’s livelihood diversifcation is defned less by whether it is on or off the farm but rather whether it is a wage or sale. Commercial activities such as egg production, milk processing, or processing shea butter for soap or cosmetics are important livelihood activities. Changing livelihood strategies show a changing pattern of gendered labor allocation among individuals in farm households (Van den Broeck and Kilic, 2019). However, in both North and South, the bulk of household and caring duties continue to fall to women, impacting their available time to make alternative decisions, and this infuences the livelihood path that they take. Educational levels, in turn, impact on individuals’ abilities to make decisions but with different effects (Porter et al., 2011). Women in the South, especially those dwelling in rural areas, are less likely to be educated than their female counterparts in the North, thereby limiting their participation in formal off-farm jobs.

Gendered livelihood paths: motivations and mobility The increasing amount of feminist research on gender and livelihood issues shows that farm households make decisions based on complex motivations.The livelihood paths that individuals within farm households take are constantly evolving and have been argued to be motivated by several factors and social relations that are also dynamic globally (De Haan and Zoomers, 2005). In analyzing how livelihood strategies are developed, scholars have questioned the suggestion that livelihood strategies are a result of rational choices as this may place more emphasis on individual agencies and ignore other factors that infuence how livelihood strategies are pursued (De Haan and Zoomers, 2005; Turner, 2017). Although there is a greater level of gender equality in the North than in the South, gendered decisions are usually governed by tradition, economics, politics, religion, marriage type, and power relations (Bryceson, 2002).The classical generalization is that farm households’ livelihood paths are motivated by push and pull factors to either reduce risk and shocks or enhance their income status or improve business opportunities (Kinsella et al., 2000; Barrett et al., 2001). Push factors represent the negative factors that push people to diversify, while pull factors represent positive factors that draw people to diversify. In the Global North, the main motivation for women who diversify into off-farm employment is to generate more income for both household and farm maintenance (Shortall, 2002).This is also the case for both men and women in the Global South as women take on non-farm jobs to support their households. However, while women in the Global North can take up waged employment with a certainty that they will get at least the minimum wage rate, women in the Global South do not usually have this option due to uneven remunerative opportunities, espe319

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cially if they are uneducated (Barrett et al., 2001).This also implies that their off-farm work may not give them fnancial independence, thereby reinforcing gender inequality. Households with greater access to resources are more likely to exploit opportunities in both the farm and nonfarm sectors (Alobo Loison, 2015). Political factors also play a crucial role and the priorities of international politics, such as aid organizations and the European Union. In addition, national policies in both places shape decisions made at the household level through a variety of incentives. For example, with the shifting priorities for the subsidy system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Europe, the European Union has specifcally invested in farm diversifcation programs and provided funds to assist farm families to diversify. Sometimes these are targeted at women, as they tend to drive diversifcation practices as they are not wedded to the more traditional methods of farming (Seuneke and Bock, 2015). However, European policies encourage large diversifcation projects and view smaller activities as less successful.This has gendered implications as women prefer to undertake smaller-scale farm diversifcation activities and wish to access fewer resources than the programs offered by the European Union (Bock, 2004).The common effects of the impact of subsidies mean that, in most instances, gendered decisions have to be made to ensure that the farm is maintained. In the Global South, the policy system is somewhat uneven, with different political motives driving the policy arena.As a result, decisions on livelihood strategies are usually geared toward survival, especially in rural communities where poverty levels may be higher (Banerjee and Dufo, 2011). In multi-farm households, however, in the Global South, livelihood path decisions are made to enhance participation in larger export markets and businesses to ensure the expansion and sustainability of the farm households (Sippel, 2016). Gendered decision-making on livelihood strategies is also infuenced by mobility (Hanson, 2010). Men and women face mobility constraints differently, and this may not necessarily mean that those with greater mobility constraints have less power within the household (Gilbert, 1998). Some studies in the South have shown that increased mobility is associated with the pursuit of livelihood strategies that bring higher incomes and increased autonomy for the women involved (Mandel, 2004; 2006). However, the majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa still face greater mobility constraints than their male counterparts, and this is rooted in patriarchal household institutional arrangements (Porter, 2011; Fox, 2016). This reinforces certain gender roles and stereotypes that make it diffcult for women to develop and participate in innovative livelihood strategies beyond their homestead (Lodin et al., 2019). Overall, there appears to be more restricted mobility to achieve livelihood goals among women in the Global South than in the North, although there are some exceptions.Women in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland often took over the small farms when their partners migrated for work, and they engaged in small-scale farm diversifcation activities such as jam making, baking, or knitting. Their sole motivation was to supplement family income (Shortall et al., 2017).When marginally poor or subsistent farms are compared, either in the North or South, diversifcation is usually used as a strategy for survival and income generation to support farm earnings. In Belgium, Meert et al. (2005) found that marginal households often depend on off-farm employment for the survival of their households.This is also the case for poor farm households in the South (Banerjee and Dufo, 2011).

Livelihood identities and formalization The gendered structure that farm households have infuences the livelihood identities created within the household (Haugen, 1998; Shortall, 2014). Gender frames how identity is produced 320

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and reproduced among men and women either in conformity or defance of normative expectations of social relations (Ridgeway, 2009).While there are increasing variations globally among farm households, men in farm households are mostly identifed as the farmer while women are considered to provide support on the farm except when they are the farm owner (Sachs, 1983; 2018; Alston, 1998). This has implications for the type of livelihood strategy that women and men undertake. Both in the North and South, while women’s identities are still linked to their partner’s livelihood path, women are constructing new identities and labor market participation (Silvasti, 2003). However, persistent farm masculinity still exists due to cultural norms, gender inequality, and differential access to assets (Djurfeldt et al., 2013; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014). Policies and programs to empower women are gradually enabling women to create their own farm identity as they become empowered (Johnson et al., 2016). Patriarchal norms still shape gender identity among farm households in the Global North as well (Shortall, 2014). However, the livelihood paths that farm households take in the North are also contributing to a shift in norms. Women’s work provides fnancial independence and autonomy in the North, and they also create new identities and farm positions when involved in, for example, farm tourism. It gives them the opportunity to be involved in management, but their contributions may still be underestimated, making it diffcult to “undo” gender stereotypical roles (Brandth and Haugen, 2011). Livelihood identities could also be linked to the formalization of the status of livelihood opportunities that men and women have.The informal sector still plays a signifcant role in the livelihood strategies that households in the Global North and South pursue.While the informal sector has been described as an area of contestation and source of tax revenue loss in both the North and South (Williams and Windebank, 1998; McMichael, 2012), it presents an opportunity for livelihood resilience, information exchange, and employment in the Global South (Rogerson, 2007). Most economic livelihood activities in the South still depend on informality, whether they are done on- or off-farm (Davis, 2006; Neves and du Toit, 2013).Women rely on informal social ties as a bridge to explore opportunities in the off-farm sector. As such, their identities are also associated with the informal sector and the local norms that infuence how livelihood goals are achieved.Women particularly depend on informal social solidarity and ties to break through gendered barriers emanating from immobility constraints to livelihood choices (Bank, 2002).While women can leverage within informality for income from their livelihood options, it also implies that they are exposed to lower incomes and are unable to ft into the formal economy (Torkelsson, 2007). Hence, women’s identities are bounded by localized social capital that frequently depends on men’s networks to grow. Despite the higher levels of formalization in the Global North, an increasing level of informality is also experienced among rural households (Williams, 2001). As with the Global South, the tendency for women from farm households to engage in informal work for extra income is higher when compared to men (Windebank and Williams, 2010).

Similarities in differences Despite global differences, farm families are developing diversifcation strategies.While this can get lost in the different terminologies of livelihood strategies, diversifcation, off-farm work, or pluriactivity, similar types of strategies are pursued to sustain the viability of the farm and the family income. The livelihood strategies pursued are different, and the opportunities are very different, depending on where people are located, which is linked to wealth and opportunities. What is clear in both places is that the livelihood strategies pursued are gendered. There are signifcant differences too. While women’s off-farm employment augments family income and, in some instances, in the Global North, subsidizes the farm, the employment opportunities 321

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for women are completely different.Women in the Global North often have careers and have better employment opportunities compared to the South, where women are often exploited agricultural laborers or seasonal migrants with poor conditions.While livelihood decisions are gendered, they are made as a family household, and what one person decides to do will be affected by the choices other people make. Globally, we can see that the majority of farm family households do not depend on a single source of livelihood.

Conclusions, limitations, and future research directions Gendered power relations continue to shape how livelihoods are forged. Despite the differences and complexities of the actions that farm households take to ensure their livelihoods, both between and within different locations, we argue that there is beneft in drawing comparisons between cases taken from very different contexts.The institutional structures of the family, community, state, and market operate in both North and South. Moreover, the processes through which these institutions affect the power, opportunities, and motivations of individuals within households and their freedom and ability to operate in both are similar despite subtle differences. Differences arise in the qualitative, substantive operation of these social processes that offer the potential to better understand the persistence of gender inequalities in farm households. Although there is greater gender equality in the North than in the South, the pattern of gendered decision-making and options for men and women on farm livelihood strategies suggests that there remains an inequality in access to farm resources to diversify.Women in the North’s greater equality comes from access to education, the labor market, and independent income. It has not led to any signifcant renegotiation of caring roles or household duties. Research on gender and agricultural intensifcation, as well as the emerging variations of livelihood strategies, is only gradually developing since most of the emphasis on livelihood strategies in the literature is on diversifcation.The impact of rural complexities, political interventions, and the interplay between individual identity, marriage, and partnership patterns still needs much greater exploration in the South.The nuances and similarities between the North and South from a gendered dimension also call for new thinking on how gender roles can be better understood to ensure equality among household members. This macro comparative analysis allows us to identify the similar gendered sociological patterns at play in the Global North and South as well as the differences.A limitation of this type of analysis is that it cannot take account of the nuances and differences within each place, of which there are many.That should be the subject of future research.

Notes 1 See Garner, E. and O’Campos, A. (2014) for a review of several defnitions of farm families in the Global North and South. 2 The sustainable livelihood framework provides a holistic way of analyzing the complexity of how individuals and households forge their livelihoods (Ellis, 1998). 3 This can be vertical or horizontal multifamily farms.Vertical multifamily farms “involves two households that live separately and linked by an intergenerational relationship". Horizontal multifamily farms “are similar to vertical ones but can involve more than two households linked by a collateral relationship such as siblings or parents and thus involve more than one generation” (Moreno-Pérez et al., 2011, p 501).

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25 GENDER AND PRECARIOUS WORK IN AGRICULTURE Kathleen Sexsmith and Megan A. M. Griffn

Introduction In 2005, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) fled a lawsuit against Central Coast Packing, a Salinas, California, packing plant, on behalf of Maria Cejas, a feldworker who alleged that her manager sexually harassed her (Akkad, 2005).According to reporting by Dania Akkad for the Monterey County Herald, Cejas claims to have been inappropriately touched by a supervisor while packing broccoli in 2002.Though Cejas objected, the supervisor persisted, exposed himself, and made lewd comments to her. According to the lawsuit, the supervisor went on to fre her after she continued to object to the harassment the following season; furthermore, Central Coast Packing did not take action to stop the harassment.Women feldworkers are especially vulnerable to sexual harassment and often fear they will be fred or deported if they complain about incidents of abuse. Daniella Payes of California Rural Legal Assistance, who was cited in the Monterey County Herald article, asserts that Latin American machista culture may play a part in the issue, arguing that women may blame themselves for their own abuse.While Cejas’ case moved to mediation in 2006, most women farmworkers are not so lucky in seeing justice served when they experience sexual violence. The case against Central Coast Packing illustrates that women farmworkers in US agriculture are vulnerable to severe forms of reproductive injustice, which functions to control and discipline their labor and to keep food cheap. Reproductive justice is a theoretical framework originally coined by grassroots women’s organizations in the US to highlight, from an intersectional lens, the systemic constraints on women’s access to the conditions necessary to secure their reproductive needs and rights. Indeed, several major non-proft organizations recently released reports on the shocking labor conditions faced by women farmworkers in the US, and on the systemic nature of sexual harassment against Latina farmworkers (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010; Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. [CDM] and Penn Law, 2018; CDM, 2020; Meng, 2012; Kominers, 2015). Workplace sexual harassment implicates both individual incidents of abuse and the structural inequalities that undergird them. Although its popular and theoretical treatment has tended to favor an individualized treatment of violence as deviant behavior, data on women farmworkers in the US reveals that sexual violence is systemic to agricultural industries.The legal system that immigrant victims of sexual violence in the US might otherwise use to access justice is by and 326

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large inaccessible to female farmworkers because it puts the burden on them to come forward and report their situation (Block, 2014). In this chapter, we employ a reproductive justice framework to assess the gendered forms of labor control that keeps women farmworkers vulnerable and their labor cheap. Our review of the literature on migrant farmworkers in US agriculture demonstrates that sexual violence functions to discipline women workers into conforming to precarious forms of work. Precarious labor conditions—by which we mean non-permanent, low-wage, and unsafe work—makes it diffcult for women to protest against discrimination or harassment. Moreover, patriarchal norms in Latin American cultures intersect with the social and economic vulnerabilities that place farmworkers in precarious labor conditions, making it more diffcult for women to respond to incidents of abuse.

Reproductive injustice and labor control Reproductive justice is a theoretical framework originally developed in the 1990s by a coalition of organizations of women of color in the US, today known as SisterSong, to demonstrate the inadequacy of the reproductive rights movement, led by white middle-class women, to properly address their reproductive concerns (SisterSong, n.d.).The SisterSong Collective (n.d., para. 1) defnes reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”Through its intervention in the abortion debate, the reproductive justice movement succeeded in pushing the women’s rights agenda forward from a narrow focus on family planning to a more expansive view addressing questions of access, intersectionality, and the broader set of human rights that impede reproductive needs and choices. SisterSong’s defnition of reproductive justice is applied in this chapter as a framework for analyzing how agricultural employment conditions and contexts can function to control women’s labor. The right to “maintain bodily autonomy” is analyzed below with respect to farmworkers’ rights to live and work free of sexual violence and to express their sexuality.The rights to “have (or not have) children and to parent children in safe and sustainable communities” is analyzed with respect to the health concerns arising from the inadequacy of wages to support families, pesticide exposure among pregnant women and children (as well as men), unsafe and indecent housing conditions, and extended family separation intrinsic to guest worker programs in agriculture. In this way, this chapter follows Cohen and Caxaj (2018) in using a reproductive justice framework to reveal the labor struggles of migrant farmworker women but employs a more expansive use of the concept to assess not only issues of bodily autonomy (sexuality and biological reproduction), but also the ways that living and working conditions for farmworkers impede on their rights to safely and securely parent their children. The reproductive justice framework is apt for an intersectional analysis of how precarity is produced and reproduced in the labor force.As Silvia Walby (1988) argued three decades ago, in most sectors of the economy, women and men partake in distinct types of work commensurate with differences in pay, working conditions, and power relations. According to Walby, gendered inequities in workplaces have less to do with differences in training and education between women and men, and more to do with the gendered requirements of the unpaid work of social reproduction that awaits many women (and few men) outside of the workplace. This classic argument about gender segregation in the workforce is brought into sharp relief in agricultural industries. Mexican immigrant women began to cross over to the US in higher numbers in 1964, following the end of the Bracero program, a trend that increased signifcantly in the 1980s (Waugh, 2010).While in Mexico, many worksites are segregated by gender, farm labor in the US places women and men workers in close proximity. Because this contradicts 327

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paternalistic norms in the household, women feel more at risk working alongside men (Waugh, 2010). Poverty, migration, and new ways of working all serve to isolate women from their social networks and supports, increasing their vulnerability to gendered forms of violence (Waugh, 2010). For Latin American women in US agriculture, traditional gender hierarchies are compounded by their race, class, age, and citizenship status vulnerabilities, enabling new and exacerbated forms of labor abuse.

Intersectional dimensions of precarious farm work in North American agriculture The US hired farm workforce is changing. As border policies have tightened, immigrant farmworker communities from Mexico and Central America are moving away from historical livelihood practices based on circulatory and migratory agricultural work in the US. An estimated 80% of farmworkers in the US are “settled,” meaning that they work at one agricultural business that is located within 75 miles from their home, representing a doubling of the settled share of the farmworker population in the last 20 years (United States Department of Agriculture, 2020).This means that farmworkers are more likely than in earlier periods to live in family units and raise children in the US, often in mixed-status households (households with both undocumented parents -- meaning they are not formally authorized to live and work in the US -- and children who hold US citizenship because they were born in the US). The US hired farm workforce is also increasingly feminized. Data from the 2018 American Community Survey shows that 25% of farm laborers are women, up from approximately 18% in 2009 (USDA, 2020). Although this number may represent an increase over earlier periods, it is still signifcantly lower than women’s 45% share of all US private wage and salary workers (USDA, 2020).Thus, women represent a minority in the agricultural workforce, which makes them more vulnerable to labor abuses because they have little recourse to support from other female coworkers or from the men in authority fgures who control the terms of their work. Other salient characteristics of the US hired farm workforce relate to ethnicity and citizenship status; 64% of waged agricultural workers are of Hispanic ethnicity (a vast majority of whom are of Mexican origin), and an estimated 48% are undocumented (USDA, 2020). In parallel with these demographic transitions in the farm workforce, agricultural employers have increasingly come to depend on a seasonal guest worker program, called the H-2A visa program, to gain access to workers for short periods on an annual basis.There is no legal limit on the number of H-2A visas that can be issued in the US in any given year.The rising sense of labor shortage in US agriculture—at least partly due to the same border tightening patterns that have given rise to more settled immigrant work patterns—has created an explosion in employer demand for foreign agricultural guest workers. Indeed, the number of H-2A visas issued in 2018, was close to 200,000, more than three times higher than the number issued a decade before (US consular affairs data cited in Weiler et al., n.d.).Women are sorely under-represented among H-2A workers, at only 6% of all participants in the program, due to the well-known practice of gender discrimination during recruitment and hiring (CDM, 2020). Farm employers draw on socially constructed gender roles and gender stereotypes to construct what they believe to be the ideal workforce for different agricultural jobs (for a study in the Canadian context, see Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010).The conventional association of farm labor with a “man’s” job has produced a greater demand for male than female labor.There is evidence that agricultural employers using the H-2A visa program advertise abroad for workers of a specifc gender (even though this is illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967), a practice that is silenced by the US government 328

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through its refusal to investigate abuses that take place during foreign labor recruitment (CDM, 2020). Gender is not the only determinant of workplace segregation. Walby (1998) observed that workplaces tend to employ minority women in “ethnic niches,” paying them lower wages and subjecting them to higher rates of job insecurity and informality. In agriculture, gender intersects with citizenship status, ethnicity, and age to shape the occupational hierarchy (Block, 2014; Holmes, 2013; Kim et al., 2016;Thomas, 1985;Wells, 1996).The review of the literature for this chapter fnds that citizenship status, ethnicity, and age are all signifcant risk factors for sexual violence for farmworker women (Meng, 2012). Several studies have found that being a racial minority and having low-class status increases one’s vulnerability to sexual harassment (Krieger et al., 2006; 2008, cited in Murphy et al., 2015).The vulnerability of farmworker women to sexual violence is compounded for undocumented women, whose fear of detention and deportation gives powerful men a leverage point to control their labor (Kim et al., 2016). The combination of their citizenship status and the geographical isolation of their workplaces renders their suffering invisible, even in the age of #MeToo (Fitzgerald, 2020). Indigenous Mexican and Central American farmworkers comprise an increasingly important share of the US farm labor force and face severe discrimination, particularly those who are undocumented (Stephen, 2001; Murphy et al., 2015). Indigenous women farmworkers are even more vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault due to language barriers, lower levels of education that undermine their access to workplace training and education, and the continued perpetration of discrimination they face in their home countries by non-indigenous immigrants once in the US (Meng, 2012; Murphy et al., 2015). Age also appears to be a determinant of vulnerability to sexual violence for Latina women (Salzinger, 2000;Wilson, 2003). Murphy et al. (2015) found in their study of indigenous women workers in Washington state that young women experienced more cases of sexual harassment, subjugation to which sometimes coincided with lighter work or preferential treatment in other realms. The fact that children may work on any farm in the US when they reach the age of 14 without requiring parental consent demonstrates that young girls are at particular risk (Fitzgerald, 2020). In the section that follows, we apply the reproductive justice framework to assess gendered forms of precarious work and labor control among the migrant and immigrant populations working in North American agricultural industries.

Reproductive injustices on the farm Sexual violence Agricultural workers, and particularly female agricultural workers, face a severely high incidence of sexual violence, most often perpetrated by supervisors, employers, or male coworkers (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010; Meng, 2012; Kominers, 2015; Waugh, 2020). Fitzgerald et al., (1995, cited in Waugh, 2010) separate sexual harassment into three categories: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention or assault, and sexual coercion. In her study of 150 women farmworkers,Waugh (2010) found that 80% had experienced at least one of these forms of sexual violence at work. Data on women farmworkers’ experiences of sexual violence may undercount the real incidence of sexual violence due to the signifcant fear of retaliation and the seasonal nature of the work (CDM, 2020; Meng, 2012; Kominers, 2015). A vast majority of the time (97%, according to Waugh, 2010), the perpetrator of sexual violence is a supervisor or a coworker. Meng (2012) fnds that other actors with the power to give or take away work or benefts are also com329

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mon perpetrators, including foremen, owners, and farm labor contractors.These men, who are often of Latin American origin themselves, can leverage their authority to hire and fre women workers—and often also their frearms or other weapons—as a means of achieving their ends (Kominers, 2015). Several factors help explain the extreme vulnerabilities of women farmworkers to workplace sexual violence, including the disproportionate representation of men in supervisory roles, the geographical isolation of work in remote felds, the requirement to bend while working in close proximity to men, machista gender norms that put women in subordinate positions relative to men in Latin American cultures, and economic vulnerability (Waugh, 2020; Kominers, 2015). Additionally, for many women farmworkers, their coworkers are their neighbors or otherwise a part of their social networks in the United States, complicating their responses to sexual harassment, or silencing them completely (Waugh, 2020; Kominers, 2015). Social and labor supports, such as workplace policies on sexual harassment and gender equity, may be too fimsy to undo women’s oppression on the feld, forcing Latina farmworkers to navigate uncomfortable and dangerous experiences on their own (Waugh, 2010). Sexual harassment policies and managerial oversight often do not make it as far as remote felds (Waugh, 2010), in large part, because they are not required under federal law to do so (Kominers, 2015). Moreover, Latina women farm laborers depend on often meager pay to support themselves and their households, so when the men that work alongside these women subject them to sexually degrading comments and behavior, many women farm laborers cannot leave their jobs (Waugh, 2010). Pottenger et al. (2019) shared an interview Dolores Bustamante, a farmworker who was a single mom who worked alongside many men.The men thought she was promiscuous and harassed her at work. After years of harassment, she began a relationship with one man in order to protect herself but suffered domestic abuse as a result. She and her family moved often to follow seasonal farm work, and each move precipitated more domestic abuse.“I had to choose between living with this man or leaving him and enduring the harassment by men at work. Being a single woman made me a target” (Pottenger et al., 2019, 93). She further stated that education on sexual harassment was especially lacking for women participating in the H-2A guest worker program. “Sometimes when workers are told not to harass women in the workplace they will say ‘after work I can tell you whatever I want because I am not going to be working’” (Pottenger et al., 2019, 93). Bustamante learned about sexual harassment, the rights of farmworkers, and the responsibilities of farm owners after she began working with women’s groups and worker advocacy groups (see below). Such forms of sexual violence have serious, often long-term impacts on victims.These effects may include psychological trauma, including but not limited to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; physical pain and discomfort; disruption of family life when husbands and other family members react negatively to women who share their experiences; and workplace effects for refusing to engage in sexual activities with authority fgures, such as cutting hours and pay, termination of employment, loss of a seasonal job in the season following the harassment, and wrongful eviction from employer-owned housing (Meng, 2012).

Constraints on sexual expression Freedom of sexual expression is another facet of bodily autonomy that is often undermined by the living and working conditions faced by farmworkers. Several studies in the Canadian context have found that migrant women farmworkers are impeded from forming sexual relationships due to employer surveillance of farmworker labor camps and attempts to control 330

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their mobility (Cohen and Caxaj, 2018; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Moreover, LGBT farmworkers face additional layers of discrimination when their sexuality is disclosed to others (Meng, 2012). The documentary Migrant Dreams demonstrated how powerful labor contractors leveraged power over LGBT temporary guest workers on Canadian farms by threatening to tell their family members in traditionally conservative countries of origin (Sook Lee, 2016). However, there is some evidence that women farmworkers from conservative Latin American cultures, where their sexuality is controlled by traditional patriarchal norms, enjoy greater sexual freedom in the US, although they still face sexualization in the workplace as a means of labor control (Castañeda and Zavalla, 2003).

Inadequate wages to raise families Settled farmworker families within the US also face concerns with respect to the safety and security of the conditions under which their children are raised.The average farm wage in 2019 was just under $14 per hour, only 60% of the average non-farm wage (USDA, 2020).The very low wages paid to US farmworkers create signifcant concerns for parents with young children. Farmworker families often do not have enough left over to pay for childcare after paying for food and rent, forcing some without local support networks to make the diffcult decision to bring their children to work in the felds, sometimes having to hide children from their employers (Stephen, 2001). Agricultural workplaces are among the most dangerous in the US, and young children face signifcant health risks such as pesticides, equipment, and heat when they are brought to work by their parents (Mohan and Walker, 2016).A more recent study with farmworker women about their childcare needs found that women are aware of these risks and that 97.5% missed work rather than bring their children to the workplace, although the authors warned that these results may be biased due to the disincentives to participants of disclosing such practices to the researchers (Liebman et al., 2017). Moreover, even though undocumented immigrants are still covered by some federal labor laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, they are often fearful of standing up for their rights when they are violated (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010).A survey of 150 women farmworkers who were currently or had at some point been undocumented found that virtually all had experienced some form of wage theft (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010). Furthermore, farmworkers in most states are excluded from critical protections that other workers enjoy, such as overtime pay, collective bargaining, workers’ compensation, and some basic health and safety protections (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010).

Pesticide exposure There are several aspects of the working and living conditions of farmworkers that can undermine the health, safety, and security of pregnant women and farmworkers’ children. In the frst place, agricultural working conditions can create signifcant risks for pregnant women. Research has demonstrated that physically demanding work under extreme heat can cause pregnant farmworker women to experience dizziness, fainting, negative effects on their blood pressure, sunstroke, agitated fetal movement, dehydration that is passed along to the fetus, and other negative health consequences (Flocks et al., 2013). Women farmworkers’ exposure to pesticides—sometimes applied to felds even while men, women, and children are working outdoors—was connected to a series of severe birth deformities among workers in south Florida tomato felds in 2004 (Bauer and Ramírez, 2010). Elvira Carvajal, who was interviewed by Pottenger et al. (2019), explained that even pregnant workers at her farm workplace are 331

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directly exposed to many chemicals, and restroom facilities are not kept clean. According to Pottenger et al (2019), bathroom breaks were granted sparingly, and Carvajal was singled out for needing more bathroom breaks as a result of her pregnancy.Workers also had to bring their own water.

Indecent housing conditions Farmworker housing conditions present another impediment to safely raising children.A study of farmworker family housing conditions in North Carolina identifed deteriorated housing conditions, overcrowding (too many residents for the available space inside the home), a lack of basic appliances for keeping the home and clothing clean, and proximity to agricultural felds as common risk factors that can undermine the health of workers and their children growing up in the homes (Early et al., 2006). Moreover, farmworkers are regularly exposed to pesticides on the job that either drift into farmworker homes (which are often located close to felds) or are carried inside on work gear and clothing, posing health risks to children (Rao et al., 2007). Moreover, since women are most often responsible for domestic work, their exposure to pesticides may be increased when washing work clothes. Farmworker women are often not provided with complete and adequate education on the health risks of pesticide exposure and may engage in behaviors that exacerbate these risks (Rao et al., 2007).

Family separation Temporary visa work programs interfere with the right to raise families to the extent that they sanction and even require extended periods of family separation. In the H-2A program, although workers are technically allowed to bring their dependent family members to the US with them, they would have to apply on their own for their H-4 (dependent) visas and most likely reside in the farm labor camps or seek their own housing.As such, while offcially permitting families to stay together, the program in practice denies it (CDM, 2020). Most often, male migrant farmworkers are separated from their families, inducing signifcant emotional suffering (Schmalzbauer. 2015).

Resistances to gendered forms of labor control Farmworker women suffer under oppressive structural forces in the food chain and immigration system that impede their access to reproductive justice, but they are anything but passive victims. Many women are taking actions that promote systemic change.This section looks at these resistances at different scales—workplace mitigation and resistance and community and national level organizing—to demonstrate the efforts women farmworkers and their supporters are taking to transform the structures that opress them.

Mitigation practices and resistances in the agricultural workplace Women farmworkers are resourceful in fnding ways to mitigate the risk of sexual harassment in the workplace. For example, they cover their bodies—sometimes with only eyes and ears showing—both to protect themselves from the environmental dangers of agricultural work and to insulate themselves from sexual harassment (Kim et al., 2016;Waugh, 2010). Given their geographical isolation and small numbers relative to large male crews and supervisors, however, mitigation of harassment is extremely diffcult. 332

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Women also fnd direct and indirect ways to respond to their harassers. In Waugh’s (2010) study, women used several strategies, including confronting the perpetrator directly (verbally or physically), ignoring the person or walking away, avoiding the person, reporting perpetrators to other people in authority, telling coworkers or family members, or quitting their jobs. In the absence of suffcient protective measures in the workplace, women farmworkers sometimes educate each other about their rights and engage in mutual encouragement to fle complaints against abusers (Kim et al., 2016). However, there is evidence that women farmworkers often do not receive information from their employers on what to do in the case of sexual harassment, leaving them without access to support (Murphy et al., 2015). Moreover, as described above, women sometimes face severe forms of retaliation when confronting or fling complaints against individual abusers, thus making community-level organizing and support systems all the more important.

Resistances at the community level Dolores Huerta, one of the co-founders of the famed United Farm Workers union that won signifcant labor rights for California farmworkers, reminds us that women are consistently in leadership roles in labor organizing but “when the history gets written, they only recognize men” (Huerta and Rosenbloom, 2018, p. 518). Indeed, women have long played an essential role in organizing farmworkers to resist the structural causes of their exploitation. In Texas, for example, with its large share of settled families among the migrant farmworker population, women provide leadership in an organizing movement focused not only on the workplace but also on family needs and women’s roles in social reproduction, and have done so for decades (Edwards, 2011; Jepson, 2005). The hidden nature of women’s roles in labor organizing is changing as the farmworker organizing movement increasingly takes on a female face. The Alianza Nacional de Campesinas is the frst national women’s farmworker organization in the US created by women farmworkers and women from farmworker families (Pottenger et al., 2019). The Alianza particularly focuses on ending sexual harassment for women farmworkers, as well as helping pregnant workers address discrimination and receive maternity leave (Pottenger et al., 2019).The Alianza famously published a letter in Time magazine when the #MeToo movement was emerging in 2017 to draw attention to the plight of women farmworkers and proclaim solidarity with victims in Hollywood and across the US (Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, 2017).Another salient example is the female-led organization Community to Community in Washington state, which explicitly adopts ecofeminism in its guiding framework and integrates women’s and family-oriented concerns throughout its approach to transforming the food system (Community to Community, 2020).

Conclusions and recommendations for future research As this chapter has demonstrated, farmworkers in the US are subject to gendered forms of labor control and oppression. An intersectional approach has helped to demonstrate how gender, citizenship status, ethnicity, and age all work to compound these vulnerabilities in agricultural workplaces. These experiences of subordination and labor discipline can be theorized as reproductive injustices that create lasting and harmful effects on working bodies and on families. Using the reproductive justice framework, we have demonstrated that rights to bodily autonomy and to raise children in safe and secure conditions are violated among farmworkers through sexual violence, constraints on the expression of sexuality, pesticide exposure among pregnant women and children (as well as men), indecent housing conditions, and extended family separation. However, we have also sought to demonstrate that women farmworkers should 333

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be construed as anything but passive victims of violence and oppression. Rather, they act at multiple scales—from the workplace to community and national organizing strategies—to resist and transform the structures that oppress them. We conclude with several recommendations for future research on the reproductive injustices faced by US farmworkers and their families.This feld is underexamined in the literature in general, and resources should be dedicated to better understanding how to promote reproductive justice—which SisterSong reminds us is a human right—among those who produce our food. First, the rising labor shortage in US agriculture has encouraged agricultural employers to turn more and more toward the H-2A agricultural guest worker program (Martin, 2018), which research has shown to be rife with abuse, including gendered forms of abuse (CDM, 2020; Newman, 2011). Researchers should explore how the isolated conditions faced by participants in this guest worker program, where workers migrate alone and have few opportunities to develop any supportive networks in the communities where they live and work, shape particular forms of reproductive injustice as well as opportunities to resist. Second, the labor shortage has also increased employers’ reliance on labor contractors to meet labor demand on short-term contracts. Such contracts strip away a layer of institutional protection by further removing workers from farm owners.This creates a context that is ripe for labor and sex traffcking, reduced pay, and more limited access to healthcare, all of which compound existing reproductive injustices faced by farmworkers.We advocate for a research agenda that adjusts to the rapidly changing farm labor context in the US and gendered forms of labor control and discipline as they emerge and evolve.

References Akkad, D. (2005, September 28). “Packing plant faces lawsuit.” Monterey County Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, San Jose. http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=h ttps://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/461504806?accountid=13158 Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. (2017, November 10).“700,000 female farmworkers say they stand with Hollywood actors against sexual assault.” Time Magazine. https://time.com/5018813/farmworkers-sol idarity-hollywood-sexual-assault/. Bauer, M. and Ramírez, M. (2010). Injustice on our plates: immigrant women in the food industry. Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center. Block, S. (2014).“Invisible survivors: female farmworkers in the United States and the systematic failure to report workplace harassment and abuse.” Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law 24 (1):127–149. Castañeda, X. and Zavella, P. (2003). “Changing constructions of sexuality and risk: migrant Mexican women farmworkers in California.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (2):126–150. CDM (Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc.) and Penn Law. (2018). Engendering exploitation: gender inequality in U.S. labor migration programs. Policy Brief. Baltimore, MD: Centro de los Derechos del Migrante and Philadelphia: Penn Law Transnational Legal Clinic. CDM (Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc.). (2020). Ripe for reform: abuses of agricultural workers in the H-2A visa program. Baltimore, Mexico City, and Oaxaca: Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. Cohen, A. and Caxaj, S. (2018). “Bodies and borders: migrant women farmworkers and the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice in British Columbia, Canada.” Alternate Routes:A Journal of Critical Social Research 29:90–117. Community to Community. (2020). http://www.foodjustice.org/. Early, J., Davis, S., Quandt, S., Rao, P., Snively, B., and Arcury,T. (2006). “Housing characteristics of farmworker families in North Carolina.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 8 (2):173–184. Edwards, M. (2011). “‘Our people are still resisting’: farmworker community organizing and the Texas agricultural system.” Organization and Environment 24 (2):175–191. Fitzgerald, L., Gelfand, M., and Drasgow, F. (1995).“Measuring sexual harassment: theoretical and psychometric advances.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 17 (4):425–445. Fitzgerald, L. (2020).“Unseen: the sexual harassment of low-income women in America.” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:An International Journal 39 (1):5–16.

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Gender and precarious work in agriculture Flocks, J.,Thien Mac,V., Runkle, J.,Tovar-Aguilar, J.A., Economos, J., and McCauley, L.A. (2013).“Female farmworkers’ perceptions of heat-related illness and pregnancy health.” Journal of Agromedicine 18 (4):350–358. Holmes, S. (2013). Fresh fruit, broken bodies: migrant farmworkers in the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Huerta, D. and Rosenbloom, R. (2019).“Ask a feminist: Dolores Huerta and Rachel Rosenbloom discuss gender and immigrant rights.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (2):515–525. Jepson,W. (2005). “Spaces of labor activism, Mexican‐American women and the farm worker movement in South Texas since 1966.” Antipode 37 (4):679–702. Kim, N., Breckwich Vásquez,V.,Torres, E., Bud Nicola, R.M., and Karr, C. (2016). “Breaking the silence: sexual harassment of Mexican women farmworkers.” Journal of Agromedicine 21 (1):154–162. Kominers, S. (2015). Working in fear: sexual violence against women farmworkers in the United States: a literature review. Oxfam America. Krieger, N.,Waterman, P., Hartman, C., Bates, L., Stoddard, A., Quinn, M., Sorensen, G., and Barbeau, E. (2006).“Social hazards on the job: workplace abuse, sexual harassment, and racial discrimination: a study of black, Latino and white low-income women and men workers in the United States.” International Journal of Health Services 36 (1):51–85. Krieger, N., Chen, J., Waterman, P., Hartman, C., Stoddard, A., Quinn, M., Sorensen, G., and Barbeau, E. (2008). “The inverse hazard law: blood pressure, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, workplace abuse and occupational exposures in US low-income black, white and Latino workers.” Social Science and Medicine 67:1970–81. Liebman, A., Simmons, J., Salzwedel, M.,Tovar-Aguilar, A., and Lee, B. (2017).“Caring for children while working in agriculture—the perspective of farmworker parents.” Journal of Agromedicine 22 (4):406–415. Martin, P. (2017).“Trump, immigration, and agriculture.” Choices 32 (1):1–5. Meng, G. (2012). Cultivating fear: the vulnerability of immigrant farmworkers in the U.S. to sexual violence and sexual harassment. New York: Human Rights Watch. Murphy, J., Samples, J., Morales, M., and Shadbeh, N. (2015). “‘They talk like that, but we keep working’: sexual harassment and sexual assault experiences among Mexican indigenous farmworker women in Oregon.” Journal of Immigrant Minority Health 17:1834–1839. Newman, E. (2011).“No way to treat a guest: why the H-2A agricultural visa program fails U.S. and foreign workers.” Farmworker Justice. Available at: https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/sites/default/files/d ocuments/7.2.a.6 percent20fwj.pdf. Pottenger, K., Bustamante, D., Carvajal, E., and Treviño-Saucedo, M. (2019).“Women farmworkers fight to secure their rights and end sexual harassment.” New Labor Forum 28 (3):92–97. Preibisch, K. and Grez, E. (2010).“The other side of el otro lado: Mexican migrant women and labor flexibility in Canadian agriculture.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35 (2):289–316. Salzinger, L. (2000). “Manufacturing sexual subjects: ‘harassment’, desire and discipline on a Maquiladora shopfloor.” Ethnography 1 (1):67–92. Sook Lee, M. (2016). Migrant dreams. Documentary Film. Montreal: Cinema Politica. Schmalzbauer, L. (2015).“Temporary and transnational: gender and emotion in the lives of Mexican guest worker fathers.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (2):211–226. SisterSong Collective (n.d.).“Reproductive Justice.” SisterSong, Inc. https://www.sistersong.net/reproduc tive-justice Stephen, L. (2001).“Globalization, the state, and the creation of flexible indigenous workers: Mixtec farmworkers in Oregon.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 30 (2–3):189–214. Thomas, R. (1985). Citizenship, gender, and work: social organization of industrial agriculture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. USDA. (2020).“Farm labor.” https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/#employment (accessed April 23, 2020). Waugh, I.M. (2010). “Examining the sexual harassment experiences of Mexican immigrant farmworking women.” Violence Against Women 16 (3):237–261. Weiler, A., Minkoff-Zern, L.A., and Sexsmith, K. (n.d.) “Parallel precarity: a comparison of U.S. and Canadian agricultural guestworker programs.” Forthcoming in International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Wells, M. (1996). Strawberry fields: politics, class, and work in California agriculture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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26 INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE Focus on Latin America Diana Gabriela Lope-Alzina

Introduction Predictions about the survival of non-industrialized agriculture date back to “the agrarian question” set in the late 1800s by Karl Kautsky, who, in one way or another, had the vision that social organization and non-capitalist concepts of value were the underlying force for the maintenance and survival of peasant agriculture. Nowadays, amidst a world where agriculture seems to have reached an industrialized and capitalist peak, a vast portion of the indigenous and local people across the globe still remain attached to traditional forms of agriculture.What are the underlying factors, and who are the actors contributing to the prevalence of traditional agriculture? Indigenous peoples have been acknowledged in the biodiversity conservation agenda since the publication of article 8 (j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity1 (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992). Simultaneously, the role of indigenous women garnered attention from feminist scholars due to women´s evident contribution to biodiversity management, yet these women often face poverty, exclusion, and even violence (e.g., Shiva, 1992; Jackson, 1993; Rocheleau, 1995).This seems to be an ongoing issue in the international agenda, promoting that policymakers around the world can actually support women as key stakeholders in the conservation and maintenance of biodiversity. For example, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has voiced its commitment to the acknowledgment of indigenous and local knowledge as a means to safeguard ecosystems and biodiversity across the world2 (IPBES Secretariat, 2016, p. 4). Also, 2019–2028 has been designated the “UN Decade of Family Farming,” acknowledging as key facts that: 1) Family occupies 70–80% of farmland worldwide; 2) women hold only 15% of farmland while they provide almost 50% of farm labor; and 3) more than 90% of farms are run by individual or a family who rely primarily on family labor (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2019, para. 5). Despite such advances, indigenous women seem to be still holding a secondary role in agriculture across Latin America, for instance, with limited land entitlement and scarce access to direct government support for agricultural inputs. Such neglect seems to be related to the “cult

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of domesticity” that predominated the ideologies during the previous three centuries, as stated by Howard3 (2003, p. 6): The “domestic” realm is portrayed in contemporary theory as a “reproductive” sphere where women, as principal agents and managers, carry out unpaid, home-based activities that ensure the maintenance and functioning of people within households. The household in turn, is characterized as the site of principal collective consumption.The reproductive domestic archetype is embedded within the “cult of domesticity” that prevailed in Europe and its colonies from the 18th-20th centuries.These are features of a powerful system of ideas that serves to obscure rather than to illuminate those fundamental aspects of contemporary human-nature relations that are the source of social and environmental instability and crisis … What is characterized as the “reproductive” domestic sphere, is in reality tremendously productive, albeit largely invisible realm. It contributes the majority of subsistence resources in many rural areas. It involves a highly demanding and holistic level of technical and environmental knowledge and skills related to plants that can require at least a third of a lifetime to accrue, as well as frequent innovation. Based on published literature and with the purpose of illustrating the role of indigenous women in agriculture across Latin America, through this paper, frst, I aim to illustrate how traditional agriculture intertwines with gendered labor, knowledge, and property relations, and that such interrelations underline decision-making in land-use systems. Then, I provide an overview of the gender bias that, for a long time, has prevented indigenous women from being actually supported in research, development initiatives, and policies concerning agriculture.While the focus is on Latin America, many of these issues certainly apply to other regions of the world.

Gendered social relations in traditional agriculture Indigenous societies are characterized by living expressions of the coevolution between biological resources and culture, expressed, for example, in language, local customs, territory, and local forms of social organization (Maff, 2005), and concerning this chapter, in traditional forms of agriculture. Traditional agricultural systems intertwine with local forms of social organization, for which the household is the building block.The household, defned as “the basic residential unit where economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out” (Haviland et al., 2010, p. 417) is characterized by differentiated knowledge and labor inputs as well as rights, access, and decision-making across its members. Such differentiations are posited to be related to their social position4 (see Peluso, 1996), in turn, defned by local norms and uncontested “rules” that are deeply rooted in local social norms. In the following sections, I defne gendered labor, knowledge, and property relations while providing some examples of the role of indigenous women across Latin America.Then, I aim to illustrate the interrelations among these three social dimensions through a case study I carried out among the Yucatec Mayas in Southeast Mexico.

Labor relations Labor represents the investment of time, skills, and physical activities. In traditional societies, such as those of the indigenous peoples across Latin America, agricultural labor is gender337

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disaggregated; household members organize according to sex, age, and hierarchies. Differences are rooted in cultural concepts (worldviews) of what is considered to be appropriate (or inappropriate) behaviors (Howard, 2006). As reported by Howard (2006) in a review about homegardens and swidden gardens across Latin America, homegardens are largely considered as a female gender domain, presumably, because, more often than not, they are part of the habitational unit. Labor is mostly provided by household members for the food this system provides to the household throughout the year. In the referred review, Howard (2006) identifes that the gender division of labor is the aspect most frequently documented and that it is entrenched with the other two dimensions discussed here: knowledge and property relations.Through the reviewed cases by Howard, labor has been measured taking into account one or more dimensions: the sex and age group of the main gardener, the different tasks or activities carried out by men and women, and the gendered cultural associations to a land-use system, a given crop, species, or variety, among others. Howard (2006) highlights that, as women tend to carry out most of the gardening labor and as gardens hold most of the plant diversity and, therefore, a diversity of micro-environment, women tend to have broader plant knowledge than men. Here, I would like to provide examples of the referred work by Howard (2006) by focusing on Mayan Mesoamerica since most research about homegardens in the Americas has been about this region (Lope-Alzina, 2017a).According to the reviewed case studies (Stavrakis, 1979; Greenberg, 1996; Keys, 1999; Benjamin, 2000; Patterson, 2000; Murray, 2001; Gillespie et al., 2004; Lope-Alzina, 2007, all cited by Howard, 2006) in Mayan Mesoamerica homegardens, women are the exclusive gardener or principal gardener responsible for homegardening, in general, and small livestock production. Men carry out land clearing, tree pruning and thinning, chopping for undesirable growth, and the construction of structures and fences. Both men and women share decisions, yet women are the primary decision-makers (e.g., for garden location and design, selection and arrangement of species, practices, destination, and end-use of outputs). In some cases, women may be excluded from certain crop species cultivation and management, yet, as stated by Howard (2006, p. 167), “they are responsible for a myriad of so-called ‘minor’ crops.”5 In other cases, women have been found to be subject to social sanctions and gossip if they enter a male, gender-bounded production space (Lope Alzina, 2007).

Knowledge relations Knowledge refers to the information embodied in the agent that he or she needs in order to perform certain tasks (Bourdieu, 1988).The technical, environmental knowledge held by indigenous women may take “at least a third of a lifetime to accrue” (Howard, 2003, p. 5), and it is transmitted mostly—but not necessarily only—via practical and oral means (Ellen and Harris, 2000). As such, this type of knowledge is characterized by (at least) the following features (Howard, 2003): 1) much of it is specialized, 2) it is guided by the use and functions given to the land-use system or to the species therein contained, 3) it varies across people due to factors such as age, sex, and social affliations, and, as said before, 4) it may take a lifetime to be acquired. Such knowledge may often be unconsciously expressed in daily life as part of habitus6 (LopeAlzina, 2017b, p. 6). Across traditional agricultural systems in Latin America, research has demonstrated that women’s knowledge is likely to be related to a higher number of plant species and their distinctive traits. For example, for the Aguaruna people of the Peruvian Amazonia, Boster (1985) provided evidence that knowledge is unequally distributed across household and community members, depending on the contact the agent has with the crops to which they are constantly exposed. 338

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For instance, older indigenous women and their close kin were able to distinguish more manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz) varieties than other women and men who had less contact with the same crops. Other bold evidence of indigenous women’s knowledge in agriculture is linked to varietal selection criteria, especially in post-harvest processes. For example, 1) in the central valleys of Oaxaca State of Mexico, Smale et al. (1999) documented that seed selection and cleaning for the continuous cultivation of maize landraces is carried out by Zapotec women during maize degraining. 2) In the Peruvian Andes, the center of origin and diversity of potato and the center of maize diversity, Zimmerer (1996) showed that most of the local crop diversity is conserved due to culinary and post-harvest characteristics; Quechua women are the principle knowledge holders, and their varietal preferences predominate, largely informed by local cuisine requirements. 3) In the Colombian Amazon, toxic “bitter” cassava (M. esculenta) varieties are preferred over the “sweet” non-toxic ones despite the labor-intensive detoxifcation process that is required. Although the high yields and insect resistance of the “bitter” cassava may infuence cultivar selection, it is the foods that can be made from it that constitute the most important consideration by Tukanoan women (Wilson, 1997). 4) For the Piaroa of Venezuela, Heckler (2004) reports that women are the primary holders for the cultivation and maintenance of over 100 varieties of manioc in a relatively small area around the Orinoco River; these women process a highly valued manioc beer, which yields social status not only for them as beer manufactures, but also the men who sell the beer. 5) For the Yucatec Mayas in Mexico, Lope-Alzina (2007) has shown that women enter subtle negotiations with men about which maize and squash varieties to grow, where, and in what amounts; they do that as largely guided by their selection criteria in postharvest management (storage, food processing, and food preparation). Similarly, Greenberg (2003) documented that Yucatec Maya women who migrated from their hometown to a tourist development area, select many of the species from their previous gardens to grow at the new place; the motivation is their reliance on ingredients for the dishes they are used to cooking.

Property relations In the context of resource management, rights and access are concepts interrelated with property: rights are either formal—entitlement recognized by formal law—or customary—privileges often gained through labor, knowledge, and specifc uses and applications given to the resource. In other words,“access” means that the individual has “room” to make use of the resource and derived goods, thus receiving a beneft without necessarily being the “entitled” owner (Howard and Nabanoga, 2007). Ribot and Peluso (2003) make an interesting distinction between the concepts of “rights” and “access,” where the former refers to the “the right to beneft from things” and the latter is defned as “the ability to derive benefts from things” (Ribot and Peluso, 2003, p. 153). “Access” therefore refers to “who does (and who does not) get to use what, in what ways, and when (that is, in what circumstances)” (Ribot and Peluso, 2003, p. 154). Howard and Nabanoga (2007) have extended such a premise by linking plants’ rights and their use to the dimensions of forms of use (by part of the plant), time, space, life forms, and agents’ positions in social spheres. As posited by Ribot and Peluso (2003), a given individual (e.g., a woman) can make a given use (e.g., food preparation) of a given part (e.g., fruits) of a given plant that is grown in a given place or land-use system (e.g., home garden), in a given season (e.g., spring and/or summer). The Yucatec Mayas provide a clear example of property rights and access as differentiated for men and women.While de jure rights over land are by tradition allocated to men, women establish de facto or customary rights over homegardens (Lope-Alzina, 2007). Furthermore, inside homegardens, not only in the Yucatan but in general in Mesoamerica, differences in rights and 339

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access for men and women of different ages and social status can be appreciated due to factors such as time (age of the garden, age of the household, season of the year, chronological and/or historical events, and ongoing household needs), space (location of the zone within the garden, location of the garden within the village, size of the garden), plant life forms (trees, shrubs, herbs, vines), end-use forms, and destiny of the produce (food for own consumption or sale, medicinal, etc.).The above assertions are supported by research carried out by Kimber (1973) for the Jíbaro in Puerto Rico, Anderson (1996) with the Yucatec Mayas in Quintana Roo, Mexico, Murray (2002) for Tzotsil Mayas in Chiapas, Mexico, and Finnerman and Sacket (2003) for the Saraguro of Ecuador; also, for non-Indian populations such as Afro-Americans in the West Indies (Brierley, 1985), traditional households in Costa Rica (Lok, 1998; Méndez et al., 2001), and Ladino (Mestizo) populations in Chiapas, Mexico (Gasco, 2008).

Labor, knowledge, and property relations underlying decision-making in traditional land-use systems Across Latin America and especially in Mesoamerica, the geography covering the south of Mexico and Central America inhabited by indigenous groups such as the Mayas, Nahuas, Mixtec, Zapotecs, Garifuna, Xinca, and Miskito, among many others, land-use systems tend to show a strong attachment to either men or women (that is, a male or female gender boundary). In these production spaces, labor, knowledge, and property relations interrelate with local norms of behavior, informing decision-making about what to grow, where, in what amounts, for what, and by whom. Indeed, men are likely to be guided by criteria such as yields, resistance to drought, history of the seeds in the family,7 and market value; women are likely to be guided by the cultivar’s characteristics to the senses (taste, color, odor, textures) and specifc uses, mostly at the household level. Men and women are guided by the context of deeply rooted cosmologies about permissions and prohibitions (Howard, 2006). In such a gendered myriad of knowledge, labor, practices, preferences, and criteria, traditional land-use systems are likely maintained despite the growing exposure of indigenous people to globalized forms of economy, and so are the functions that these provide to the same people that have procured these productive spaces day by day in a very intimate relationship with that same land (e.g., preparing the terrain, growing the crops, and providing all of the care that the agricultural work requires). I have documented this among Yucatec Mayas in a relatively commoditized village in Southeast Mexico (Lope-Alzina, 2007). In the Yucatan, agricultural felds, homegardens, the forest, and other traditional and nontraditional land-use systems are all components of a broader agricultural system, which provides a means of subsistence in both cash and kind.To illustrate how Yucatec Maya men and women interrelate to maintain this system, I focus on the varietal selection of local varieties of maize (Zea mays L.) and squash (Cucurbita spp.) in agricultural felds (locally called milpas) genderbounded to men, and in homegardens, considered a women’s domain. Agricultural felds (milpas) provide relatively large amounts of staple crops consumed in several forms during the year. At the same time, homegardens, besides providing products all year round for consumption, exchange, and petty sales, also serve as experimental felds for testing varieties. The interaction between the two spaces and the gendered differences in selection criteria further depends on demands within the domestic sphere (own consumption) and, to a lesser extent, to markets, labor availability and labor demands, and men’s and women’s needs, interests, and preferences. Such interactions are related to different steps in the production-consumption chain: production, selection, storage and preservation, food processing, and food preparation.These steps 340

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are actually informed by the available technology and environmental conditions, indeed a determining factor in local cuisine (e.g., fermented beverages). Since most of the production is for consumption and small-scale exchange (including petty sales), most of the criteria for varietal selection is posited to be established within the domestic realm, and therefore, largely relying on women’s decision-making.As stated by this author: women may prefer a variety for its shorter cooking time, ease of degraining and/or the possibility of grinding it at home rather than at the community mill (therefore saving money); women leave the maize dough at room temperature overnight to obtain the sour favor – the product of fermentation – that is culturally preferred for the daily maize beverage and some forms of tortilla [maize pancake]. (Lope-Alzina, 2007, p. 32) While men and women have different criteria for varietal selection, it is important to highlight that these are actually complementary, just as milpas and homegardens are within the Yucatec Maya agricultural system: Decision-making is identifed as a prerogative exercised by both men and women and based on the knowledge and skills that each hold, and the trust and recognition of these by their partners. For the cultivars grown in the milpa or traditional agricultural feld, men recognize the competence of women’s labour, knowledge and skills, especially in post-harvest processing, including food preparation. In homegardens, the decision-making differs for the two targeted staples.The decision to grow maize in the homegarden is taken by men and women, or by men alone, taking into consideration the availability of women’s labour for plant care.Women control all decision-making about growing or maintaining squash cultivars in the homegarden ...The interaction between production spaces confrms that as homegardens are principally considered to be a woman’s domain and agricultural felds a man’s domain, gendered codes of behaviour are observed in these two tradition-bound spaces. (Lope-Alzina, 2007, p. 34) As evidenced by the above research, men and women infuence each other’s selection criteria through their labor, knowledge, and decision-making. For example, while the most appropriate space to grow maize (food staple) is the milpas, due to the land extension, men do use homegardens to trial new varieties or cultivar protection against predators or pests. Similarly, indigenous Yucatec Maya women exert their infuence in three main ways: selecting seed at the time of processing, asking men to plant specifc varieties and/or quantities, and cultivating and taking care of plants on their own. The above is especially relevant for women in a social context where land is usually allocated to men.Through their knowledge, labor, and decision-making, women gain customary rights, being able to exert their knowledge, and even to gain and maintain status and prestige and social capital, without competing with men.

The gender bias preventing the acknowledgment of indigenous women’s contributions to agriculture Latin America’s indigenous women have been acknowledged as one of the most vulnerable groups, facing labor burnouts, extreme poverty, lack of education and health services, and lim341

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ited access to land and other resources, among other constraints (UN, 2017).They are said to be “invisible as indigenous and invisible as women,” often “framed as ethnographic and ‘folkloric’ rather than as a core policy concern” (Radcliffe and Pequeño, 2010, pp. 985, 988). Such neglect has been acknowledged for a long time by scholars. For example, in the in-situ conservation approach, which is concerned with the maintenance of crop diversity in the places where the crop has originated and/or evolved, these regions are usually located in the tropics and very often, managed by indigenous and local people (Thrupp, 1997). This approach is compatible with and has made important contributions to article 8 (j) of the CBD. However, at least when it was coined, the approach showed strong gender bias in understanding the role of indigenous women, presumably due to the association of women’s knowledge, labor, criteria, and decisionmaking as part of the domestic realm (Howard, 2003; Lope-Alzina, 2004; Moyle, 2018). As stated by Howard (2003) citing Brush (1995), farmers are likely to conserve traditional varieties in situ for four main reasons: 1) landholding fragmentation (several felds or plots, where traditional varieties are cultivated in at least one of them); 2) marginal agronomic conditions (“risky” environments where traditional varieties perform better than others); 3) the relative isolation of many traditional farming systems (market imperfections where traditional varieties have local value); and 4) farmers’ cultural diversity and their preferences for maintaining genetic diversity, promoting the active maintenance of traditional varieties. Nevertheless, while these arguments are indeed valid and worthy, they do not seem to take gender relations into account. Howard (2003, p. 24) goes on to argue that, regarding point 1, men and women often manage different felds, with different responsibilities for providing plant resources and different access to technology, labour, credit, knowledge and markets. The pressures on plant biodiversity in one feld may therefore be quite different from those on another feld, and for different reasons. Regarding point 2, Howard (2003, p. 24) says, “it has frequently been shown that the land to which women have access for feld crop production is more marginal in agronomic terms than that to which men have access.” In relation to point 3, Howard (2003, pp. 24, 25) says, men and women often have access to different markets, where women are mainly able to access local markets where the demand for local varieties is often greater, and men have greater access to urban and national markets, where the demand for modern varieties is higher … production for subsistence is more oriented toward varieties and species that are traditionally consumed in the local diet, and is also often in the hands of women. Lastly, concerning point 4, Howard goes on to argue that, in biodiversity-rich regions, women manage most of the plant diversity mainly within what is often socially defned as the “domestic” realm. More recently, Howard (2017) argued that gender bias in traditional onfarm storage systems neglected women’s labor and knowledge as their inputs in post-harvest management are categorized as “housework.” As a result of this neglect, research and development policies seek to develop and promote the use of “modern” storage technologies and external inputs among indigenous peoples rather than supporting local technologies largely managed by women (Ibid.). Most of the above-mentioned gender biases about indigenous women in agriculture were set at least a decade ago. Currently, many efforts have been made, and funding has been invested in empowering indigenous and local women across the globe, especially by mechanisms of 342

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international cooperation, implemented by, e.g., the FAO, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the United Nations (UN). As it is increasingly known and as illustrated in previous sections through case studies in the literature, women are increasingly acknowledged in the maintenance of agricultural systems, land-use systems, and the diversity of species contained therein. Indeed, FAO (2011) mentions that rural women (indigenous and non-indigenous) contribute 60% to 80% of the agricultural labor across the globe.Therefore, it may be the case that, as the gender bias and hardship faced by indigenous women in agriculture have been addressed, it may be eventually reduced. Indeed, improvements are expected, as set in Agenda 2030 and its sustainable development goals (SDG), especially by means of SDG 5, which calls for gender equality. Nowadays, we can fnd a number of grassroots initiatives across Latin America where indigenous women join together for an active voice and participation in issues such as agriculture and food sovereignty. For example, a group of indigenous women that started in Ecuador gave life to the Red Mujeres Indígenas sobre Biodiversidad (RMIB, Indigenous Women Network on Biodiversity). Currently, the association includes women from other indigenous groups in Latin America (International Union of Nature Conservation, IUCN, 2019). Similarly, in México a group of indigenous women in the province of Queretaro, “Mujeres y Ambiente” (women and environment) are very active in addressing issues such as “the access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefts arising from their utilization” contributing to building self-regulation mechanisms (e.g., biocultural community protocols) for the well-being not only of their households but for the communities to which they belong (UNDP, 2018, p. 200).

Conclusions In order to understand how traditional agriculture is still alive across the world, frst, it is necessary to acknowledge that the land-use systems composing those agricultural systems have been procured by local indigenous people.As recently acknowledged by FAO (2019, para. 1),“thanks to their wisdom and care for the earth, family farmers are the agents of change we need to achieve Zero Hunger, a more balanced and resilient planet, and the Sustainable Development Goals.” This chapter was built on the premise that traditional agriculture and local social dynamics are intertwined, and that as part of such dynamics, labor, knowledge, and property relations are gender-disaggregated, informing and informed by factors such as sex, age, and hierarchies in the household and the community. Therefore, someone’s social position infuences the “opportunities” himself or herself has “to learn,” “to do,” “to have,” “to give,” and “to get” (as linked to labor, knowledge, and property relations).Trends inform the decision-making about who does what, where, why, and for which reasons (for what, for whom). Following these arguments, I have aimed to build a deeper understanding of the often-neglected role of indigenous women in agriculture.The focus of this is Latin America, where indigenous women are acknowledged as one of the most disadvantaged groups facing extreme poverty and several other forms of gender inequality. By referring to work carried out since the 1980s until recently, I argue that labor, knowledge, and property relations are drivers for decision-making about what to grow or cultivate, when, where, for what, by whom, and for whom; such drivers are further grounded on cosmologies and local norms of behavior. Examples of these complex interrelations have been documented across Latin America and are readily visible in homegardens (Howard, 2006). Homegardens, a land-use system that extends across the region, is largely considered a female, gender-bounded 343

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production space, presumably because of its proximity to the household unit and household labor inputs. Homegardens allow women to develop livelihood strategies for the overall family well-being, for food security, family health, and potential petty cash generation. Often, home gardens are also a way to assure social capital by means of exchange of goods and knowledge (Lope-Alzina, 2014). The strategic role of indigenous women in agriculture has been jeopardized because of a gender bias rooted in the “cult of domesticity” where women’s inputs (labor, knowledge, decision-making) are perceived as “reproductive” rather than as “productive” (Howard, 2003). Of special concern in agriculture is that while neglecting the domestic sphere as an area of biodiversity maintenance, the kitchen (traditional cuisine) is overlooked as an arena for biodiversity conservation. So, the use and continuous cultivation of the widest range of domesticated plant species or varieties are undermined (Howard, 2003). Although efforts and funding for empowering indigenous and local women have not been scarce, the gender bias addressed in this paper is still an ongoing challenge for research, development interventions, and policy implementation. Nevertheless, indigenous women have increased their voice and participation, as can be seen across Latin America. Highlighting the knowledge, selection criteria, preferences, management practices, and decision-making of indigenous women in agriculture is essential to understanding how traditional agricultural systems have survived across Latin America despite continuous hardships, such as environmental hazards, social and economic instability, gender inequalities, and even social discrimination. Programs and policies implemented by intergovernmental platforms such as IPBES and multilateral efforts for gender equity and other sustainable goals set as part of Agenda 2030 are still building up. For these initiatives to accomplish their expected outcomes, it remains necessary to ensure the involvement and participation of different groups of stakeholders, from grassroots organizations to national governments. It is key to overcome gender inequalities, such as those faced by agriculturalist indigenous women across Latin America.

Notes 1 Article 8 (j)—Traditional Knowledge, Innovations and Practices states that “each contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate: Subject to national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefts arising from the utilization of such knowledge innovations and practices.” 2 “Indigenous and local knowledge systems are understood to be dynamic bodies of integrated, holistic, social and ecological knowledge, practices and beliefs pertaining to the relationship of living beings, including people, with one another and with their environment. Indigenous and local knowledge is grounded in territory, is highly diverse and is continuously evolving through the interaction of experiences, innovations and different types of knowledge (written, oral, visual, tacit, practical and scientifc). Such knowledge can provide information, methods, theory and practice for sustainable ecosystem management. Indigenous and local knowledge systems have been, and continue to be empirically tested, applied, contested and validated through different means in different contexts” (IPBES Secretariat, 2016, p. 4). 3 Patricia L. Howard is Professor in Gender and Agriculture in the context of developing countries and indigenous societies at Wageningen University and the University of Kent Canterbury. She has advised the research developed by the author as both her master’s and PhD thesis director. 4 Social position is here understood as “an individual’s position in society, that is, their membership and relative autonomy (power) in different social networks” (Peluso 1996, p. 513 citing Blaikie 1985; Berry

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Indigenous women in agriculture 1989; Okoth-Ogendo 1989). Social position is therefore based on factors such as age, sex, position within the household, within the village, ethnic background, social standing, among other. 5 The term “minor crops” refers to those species that have received little investment in conservation and improvement in comparison with major crops such as wheat, rice, and maize. Examples of “minor crops” are cassava (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), plantain (Musa × paradisiaca), ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus), yautia or new cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium), and giant swamp taro (Cyrtosperma paeonifolius) (FAO, 2010). All of these crops are considered to be of low economic value at the national-level yet are usually important in terms of local consumption, cultural values (e.g., in local cuisine), and small-scale sales, not only across Latin America but may also be important in other regions of the world if also found there. 6 “Habitus” is defned as “a system of durable and transposable dispositions (schemes of perception, appreciation, and action) produced by particular social environments, which functions as the principle of the generation and structuring of practices and representations” (Bourdieu, 1988, X). 7 Landrace seeds are, more often than not, passed from generation to generation as some form of family asset. In the Yucatan (Mexico), for example, Lope-Alzina (2010) tracked that seeds of maize landraces that have been passed along the family continuously, for at least 77 years.

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Diana Gabriela Lope-Alzina IPBES Secretariat. (2016). Indigenous and local knowledge systems (deliverable 1 (c)), IPBES/5/4. . Available at: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/fles/downloads/pdf/ipbes-5-4-en.pdf (retrieved 07.07.2020). IUCN. (2019). Red Mujeres Indígenas sobre Biodiversidad. Portal sobre conservación y equidad social. International Union of Nature Conservation. Available at: https://www.portalces.org/biblioteca/distribucion-equit ativa-de-costos-benefcios/red-mujeres-indigenas-sobre-biodiversidad (retrieved 30.08.2019). Jackson, C. (1993). “Doing what comes naturally? Women and environment in development.” World Development 21 (12):1947–1963. Kimber, C.T. (1973). “Spatial patterning in the dooryard gardens of Puerto Rico.” Geographical Review 6:6–26. Lok, R. (1998). Huertos caseros tradicionales de América Central. Características, benefcios, e importancia, desde un enfoque multidisciplinario. Turrialba, Costa Rica: Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza. 232 pp. Lope-Alzina, D.G. (2004). Gender relations as a basis for varietal selection in production spaces in Yucatan, Mexico. Thesis, Master of Science. Management of Agroecological Knowledge Systems and Social Change. Wageningen University Research, Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen, the Netherlands. 115 pp. Lope-Alzina, D.G. (2007).“Gendered production spaces and crop varietal selection: case study in Yucatan, Mexico.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 28 (1):21–38. Lope-Alzina, D.G. and Howard, P.L. (2012). “The structure, composition, and functions of homegardens: focus on the Yucatán Peninsula.” Etnoecológica 9 (1):17–41. Lope-Alzina, D.G. (2014). “Una red comunal de acceso a alimentos: el huerto familiar como principal proveedor de productos para intercambio en una comunidad maya-yucateca.” GAIA Scientia 8:199–215. Lope-Alzina, D.G. (2017a).“Cuatro décadas de estudio en huertos familiares maya-yucatecos: hacia la comprensión de su variación y complejidad.” GAIA Scientia 11 (3):160–184. doi: 10.21707/gs.v11.n03a013. Lope-Alzina, D.G. (2017b).“A conceptual approach to unveil homegardens as felds of social practice.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Conservation 6:19. doi: 10.15451/ec2017-11-6.19-1-16. Maff, L. (2005).“Linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (1):599–617. Méndez, V., Lok, R., and Somarriba, E. (2001).“Interdisciplinary analysis of homegardens in Nicaragua: micro-zonation, plant use and socioeconomic importance.” Agroforestry Systems 51:85–96. Moyle, T. (2018). Women who dig: farming, feminism, and the fght to feed the world. Regina, Canada: University of Regina Press. 271 pp. Murray, S.J. (2002). Plants in the “Patxokon N”:Tzolzil Maya homegardens in the highlands of Southeast Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation.Wayne State University.Ann Arbor: University Microflms International. Peluso, N.L. (1996).“Fruit trees and family trees in an anthropogenic forest: ethics of access, property zones, and environmental change in Indonesia” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38 (3):510–548. Radcliffe, S. and Pequeño, A. (2010). “Ethnicity, development and gender:Tsáchila indigenous women in Ecuador.” Development and Change 41 (6):983–1016, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2010.01671.x. Ribot, J.C. and Peluso, N. (2003).“A theory of access.” Rural Sociology 68:153–181. Rocheleau, D. (1995). “Gender and biodiversity: a feminist political ecology perspective.” IDS Bulletin 26:9–16. doi: 10.1111/j.1759-5436.1995.mp26001002.x. SCBD. (1992). Article 8(j) - Traditional knowledge, innovations and practices. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.Available at: https://www.cbd.int/traditional/ (retrieved 30.08.2019). Shiva,V. (1992).“Women’s indigenous knowledge and biodiversity conservation.” India International Centre Quarterly 19 (1/2):205–214. Smale, M., Aguirre, A., Bellón, M., Mendoza, J., and Rosas, I.M. (1999). “Farmer management of maize diversity in the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico.” Economics Working Paper 99-09. Mexico: CIMMYT. Thrupp, L. (1997). Keeping options alive: the scientifc basis for conserving biodiversity. Chronica Botanica, Vol 13. Waltham, Massachusetts; adapted from Reid, W. and Kenton M. (1989). World Resources Institute, Washington, DC. UN. (2017).“Empowering indigenous women strengthens their communities, nations in face of adversity, speakers tell permanent forum as session continues.” Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Sixteenth Session. United Nations, Economic and Social Council. HR/5354, 27. Available at: https://www.un. org/press/en/2017/hr5354.doc.htm (retrieved 21.08.2019). UNDP. (2018). “ABS is genetic resources for sustainable development. UNDP–Global Environmental Finance, Sustainable Development Cluster, Bureau for Policy and Programme Support.” New York: United Nations Development Programme. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/libraryp

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27 QUEER FARMERS Sexuality on the farm Michaela Hoffelmeyer

Introduction Agricultural research and programming have largely overlooked the role of gender and sexuality in farming. In contrast, burgeoning feminist research, focused primarily on cisgender1 women farmers, has exposed gender-based discrimination and exclusion in terms of access to land, education, capital, and even the ability to claim the farmer2 identity (Sachs, 1983; Friedmann, 1990;Alsgaard, 2012; Brasier et al., 2014; Sachs et al., 2016).These growing efforts to understand gender-based barriers to accessing agricultural resources have opened the door for exploring the intersection of agriculture and queer identities, specifcally LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other non-cisgender and non-heterosexual identities, herein referred to as queer3). Practitioners and scholars of gender and agriculture often do not interrogate sexuality— instead, heterosexuality is the implicit context (Little, 2003). Sexuality research has traditionally been on the fringe of rural (Keller and Bell, 2014) and agricultural studies, thus neglecting how queerness infuences involvement in farming (Leslie et al., 2019).While queer sexualities are worthy of study themselves, there is a pressing need to understand how heterosexuality is enforced and enacted in agricultural spaces. Just as understanding gender in agriculture requires an interrogation of unquestioned norms of masculinity, sexuality studies also entail an investigation of heterosexuality. Building on feminist analyses of the agrifood system, recent scholarship on queer farmers demonstrates that heteronormativity and heterosexism impede the visibility and participation of queer farmers in agriculture (Durán Gurnsey, 2016; Leslie, 2017; 2019; Edward, 2018; Wypler, 2019). Heterosexism4 refers to the systematic prejudice and oppression of queer people through cultural, economic, and political structures that privilege heterosexuality (Jeppesen, 2010). Jackson (2006, p. 108) describes heteronormativity as the ways in which “heterosexual privilege is woven into the fabric of social life, pervasively and insidiously ordering everyday existence” through institutions, norms, values, beliefs, and assumptions.The presence of heterosexism in agriculture demonstrates that without interrogating the mechanisms that support or reject queer individuals’ participation in farming, further marginalization of queer populations in agriculture will go unfettered.

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The limited scholarship on queer farmers has taken place within the alternative agriculture context and suggests that these spaces may reify heterosexism (Durán Gurnsey, 2016; Leslie, 2017; 2019; Edward, 2018; Wypler, 2019). Given sustainability’s foundational pillars of environment, economic, and social aspects, long-term sustainability is undermined as social injustices persist. In a study of queer farmers in New England, Leslie (2017) found that the close-knit, relationship-based nature of direct marketing in sustainable food systems prevented some queer farmers from confronting heterosexism because they feared doing so would harm their farm business. Wypler (2019) found that some queer women farmers experienced exclusion in women’s agricultural groups—illustrating that a gender lens alone may be inadequate for addressing queer farmers’ needs. In a study of lesbians on agroecological farms in Spain, Durán Gurnsey (2016) illustrated how the intersection of gender and sexuality prevented women from being welcomed and accepted in rural and agricultural communities. This research suggests the need for more attention to diverse sexualities as an area of social equity within alternative agriculture discourse, spaces, and practice. Moreover, queer farmers also operate within conventional agriculture where heterosexism may be more prevalent, but there is a lack of research on queer conventional farmers. In this chapter, I demonstrate that examinations of gender identity and discrimination have been critical in opening new pathways to understand queerness in farming since gender and sexual identities are intimately related. However, feminist critiques of agriculture’s gender hierarchy must incorporate considerations of sexual and gender binary oppressions. Sexuality is not merely derived from gender alone, but rather carries a unique set of implications. As such, agricultural organizations must also consider how barriers and opportunities to access land, resources, and capital are shaped by heteronormativity and heterosexism. I begin by building on feminist and queer theories to offer insights on queer-agroecological relations. Next, I use a queer lens to reevaluate the “family farm” to understand the implications for sustainability. I then demonstrate that socio-spatial relations substantially inform queer livelihoods, thus having implications for where and how queer farmers participate in agriculture. Finally, I offer methodological considerations and suggestions for future research.The geographic scope of this literature review is predominately the US and Global North due to my own research area as well as the limited scholarship on queerness and agriculture in the Global South.

Queer agricultural theorizing The rich history of feminist theorizing about human and environmental relations allows for an examination of queer environmental interactions, in particular, connecting queer studies and sustainable agriculture. Ecofeminism, deep ecology, and feminist political ecology have called attention to the relationship between gender—primarily of cisgender women—and the environment. Despite acknowledging problems associated with heterosexism, there has been limited exploration of sexuality within feminist-environmental theories (Gaard, 1997; 2004). Simultaneously, in queer environmental theories, such as queer ecology, there is a lack of attention to agriculture as a critical vector of human-environment relations. Thus, insights from queer farmers’ experiences contribute to the growing bodies of feminist and queer environmental theorizing. Due to the lack of literature on queer-agroecological relations, I use queer theory as a starting point for understanding how sexuality, agriculture, and nature are related. Queer theory, stemming from feminist theory and gay and lesbian studies, challenges heterosexual norms and gender binaries. Queer theory has three primary components: 1) the decoupling and deconstruction of sex, gender, and sexuality, 2) the role of performance in identity formation, and 3) the critique of identity politics (Seidman, 1996). First, sex, gender, and sexuality are not merely naturally occurring, mutually reinforcing mechanisms.This means, for 349

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example, that one’s sex does not determine one’s gender and/or sexuality, but rather sex, gender, and sexuality are infuenced by social norms (Butler, 1990). Deconstructing these ideas begins by examining how these concepts are socially constructed, often into idealized binary categories, which marginalize those who do not align with societal expectations. Second, (Butler, 1990; 1993) argues that individuals are conditioned to emulate socially desirable forms of gendered behavior (i.e., masculinity and femininity) through repetitive actions and reinforcing signals.The expression of gender behavior is learned through habits over time and those who conform to normative gender performance garner power (Butler, 1993). Lastly, queer theory critiques identity politics: individuals with similar identities forming alliances for political goals (Kauffman, 2001). The US women’s movement applied identity politics to advocate on behalf of women. However, this movement was also criticized for universalizing the identity of women to exclude and erase the concerns of women of color (Lorde, 1997) and lesbians (Taylor and Rupp, 1996). Similarly, in the 1970s and 1980s, gay politics were criticized for the erasure of lesbians and gays of color (Stein and Plummer, 1994;Valocchi, 2005).The reclamation of “queer” to encompass a multitude of different identities challenges previous social movements’ use of a singular identity, thereby encouraging coalitions based on power structures. Moreover, transgender theorizing is closely aligned with queer theory but centers transgender experiences, embodiment, and identity. Although queer theory more broadly aims to be encompassing of the entire queer community, attention to transgender-specifc needs and perspectives may be overlooked (Stryker, 2004).Throughout this chapter, I use “queerness” rather than sexuality to call attention to the inclusion of both sexual and gender identities within the queer community. Transgender identities traverse sexual identities and vice versa. Thus, queer theory with application and consideration of transgender theory is required for a holistic understanding of queerness.

Reexamining the family farm The widespread use of the “family farm” rhetoric and discourse is perhaps the most prominent way in which heteronormativity embeds heterosexual practices within agriculture. The nature of farming heavily intertwines household dynamics of economics, labor, and land access. Therefore, the overlap between what is typically distinct (work and home, production and reproduction) becomes nearly inextricable; thus, the family farm encapsulates this relationship. Through a queer lens, I demonstrate how the promotion of the “family farm” is a heterosexist tool to maintain a particular type of farming organization. Furthermore, the assumption that the family farm is a positive model for environmental sustainability assumes heteronuclear family units are superior stewards of the land—regardless of size or production practices—raising concerns about ecological sustainability. Family farms are not defned by production type nor land size, but rather, by the operators’ relationship ties of blood, marriage, or adoption. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), 98% of farms in the US are family-operated, but these farms vary dramatically in economic scale and commodity production (USDA, 2018). The USDA (2018) categorizes these farms based on gross cash farm income (GCFI) rather than land size. Small family farms have a GCFI of less than $350,000, while large-scale family farms have a GCFI of $1,000,000 or greater.The substantial difference in GCFI between small and large family farm categorizations demonstrates the wide range of farms included in this defnition. Historically within rural and agrarian scholarship, there is a deep-seated interest in supporting farm households for the beneft of rural communities (Lobao and Meyer, 2001).The family farm is presented as a desirable form of production that supports rural population growth, 350

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community vitality, and traditional cultural and family values (Sachs and Allen, 1992; Lobao and Meyer, 2001; Rosenberg, 2016). Furthermore, farmers’ privileged position as landowners stereotypically designates them as key decision-makers making their persistence infuential for rural communities. However, the label “family farm” is often a haphazard stand-in for subsistence, small-scale, peasantry, or even oppositional to corporate agriculture. In this way, the bucolic imagery of farms throughout the countryside reinforces a vision of rural spaces that requires the presence of a particular type of white heterosexual farming population. Feminist scholars have critiqued proponents of the family farm based on the subordination of women in this unit5 (Friedmann, 1990; Sachs and Allen, 1992). Similarly, farm labor scholarship has called attention to family farms’ heavy reliance on hired labor, including precarious transnational labor (Gray, 2014). Only more recently have scholars brought queer lenses to reexamining the family farm (Keller, 2015; Rosenberg, 2016).

Queering the family farm Today, the “family farm” is considered a “natural” way to organize agricultural production, and as such, this model has undergone little scrutiny in terms of the implications for diverse populations in farming (Leslie et al., 2019). The word “queer” is often an adjective, but “queer” as a verb or the process of queering entails “interrogating relations of knowledge and power by which certain ‘truths’ about ourselves have been allowed to pass, unnoticed, without question” (Sandilands, 1994, p. 22). In this way, queering the family farm requires a reexamination of the power and norms associated with this type of production. Actions by the US government and appendage organizations successfully engrained the family farm unit into the American imaginary.As historian Gabriel Rosenberg (2016) demonstrates, the family farm ideology was carefully crafted and socially constructed by the USDA, among others, to bolster traditional values.The term “family farm,” as it is conceived of today, took form around the 1930s and is steeped in traditional gender norms, which promoted the male farmer and female “farmwife” (Rosenberg, 2016, p. 89).These rigid gender norms not only subordinate women on the farm, but institutionally enforce heterosexuality as the ideal way to organize farm production. Although the family farm is widely considered a benign and even wholesome way to organize farm life, the fetishization of the family farm has likely hampered the participation of queer farmers and other underserved groups engaging in agriculture. Through a queer perspective, the oppression of queer farmers within the family farm narrative is revealed. The normative Western view of the family as a nuclear unit defned by a heterosexual partnership raises questions as to how queer farmers might relate to this narrative. However, Keller (2015) cautions that despite normative meanings of the family as heterosexual, this may not equate to the dismissal of the family farm rhetoric by all queer farmers. For example, some queer farmers may embrace the label “family farm,” especially with the assumptions of local, sustainable production. However, the family farm as an institution is imbued with heteronormativity and whiteness, which marginalizes participation from queer farmers.Wypler (2019) suggests that queer farmers’ economic viability in terms of access to loans may depend on government agencies’ inability to consider the unique attributes of queer farmers, including varying types of non-heteronormative household structures. For example, Western norms of monogamy obscure how alternative familial structures, such as polyamorous households, may relate to the family farm. Moreover, family farms have historically included a multigenerational component through land inheritance. However, Leslie (2019) asserts that queer farmers may be marginalized by these traditional forms of land access and must develop alternative pathways to access farmland. 351

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Equating “family” with sustainability Maintaining the family farm—synonymous with heterosexual relationships in agriculture—has remained a critical discourse and goal in powerful agricultural circles. This rhetoric is applied in an array of spaces from the USDA, the sustainable agriculture movement, and globally in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), albeit in slightly different ways. The FAO named 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (FAO, 2014). Both the FAO and broader alternative agriculture discourse regard the family farm as a unit of production assumed to be desirable for environmental sustainability and community longevity (Berry, 1977; FAO, 2014). Within sustainable agriculture, family farms are assumed to be better stewards of the land (Strange, 1988) and serve as an alternative to large-scale and corporate agriculture (Berry, 1977). However, as demonstrated by the economic diversity among family farm categories within the USDA, family farms are not limited to small-scale nor diversifed production.Therefore, the ambiguity of the family farm raises serious questions about who and what is being supported. Family farms, being based solely on the relationship status of operators rather than farm practices or production, means these farms are not inherently more ecologically sustainable than “non-family” farms.A queer perspective suggests that the association of environmental benefts with the family farm is related to the belief that heterosexuality is “natural.”As the “family farm” is equated to wholesome, pure, sustainable production, this hides the real ecological implications of these farms. For example, Friedmann (1990) shows that family farms arose post-WWII primarily due to US-based interest in expanding world grain markets and staple crop specialization, rather than for the motivation to protect the natural environment. In other words, the attention to the family farm appears to assume that heteronormative family structures are somehow more prone to long-term sustainable food production than non-familial or queer family structures. Another assumption of family farms is that the multigenerational aspect supports increased investment in land stewardship—regardless of production practices. However, sustainable farmers, rather than family farmers, expand the multigenerational aspect of conventional agriculture—passing farmland to children—into a consideration of “long-term chemical consequences to the food chain, aquifer contamination, and ecosystem diversity” far beyond a familial generational view (Barlett and Conger, 2004, p. 221). In this way, the family farm category is analytically inept at offering useful observations about the ecological outcomes of these farms. Therefore, a more useful effort to promote ecologically benefcial practices is to support sustainable farms regardless of whether they are heterosexual family-run or not, rather than assuming all family farms are intrinsically benefcial for the environment. The wide range of ways in which the discourse of the family farm is applied raises questions about how this ideal maintains power structures related to agriculture. Considering the ambiguous nature of family farms, it is time that scholars and practitioners of sustainable agriculture critically examine the assumptions associated with family farms. Using family farms as a proxy for sustainability may, in fact, be detrimental to other, equally, or more environmentally benefcial types of farming that more accurately measure ecological outcomes.A more in-depth examination is needed both in the US and globally as to what the term “family farm” means, particularly for those who do not conform to traditional Western views of the heteronuclear family.

Invisible farmers: rurality and sexuality Overall, agricultural scholarship and organizations have rarely engaged with questions of how sexuality and gender (outside of cisgender identities) might infuence participation in agriculture. Considering this gap in the literature, queer scholarship would ideally be positioned to 352

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offer insight into the experiences of queer farmers. However, the dominant paradigm within queer culture and scholarship in the US has valued urbanicity over rurality, what Halberstam (2005, p. 36) labeled “metronormativity.” Queer scholarship—despite its foundation in diverse sexualities—has often neglected rural spaces as an area worthy of study (Herring, 2010). The metronormativity of queer scholarship thus far largely assumes rural spaces are backward, dangerous, and ultimately inhospitable for queer people (Halberstam, 2005; Herring, 2010). This urban-centric assumption of queer life is based on the oversimplifed notion of the “rural” as heterosexist and the “urban” as accepting. Nevertheless, the presence of queer people pursuing a rural farming livelihood suggests that many queer farmers reject the metronormative framework and its implicit efforts to displace us from rural areas. The heteronormativity embedded in farming has largely erased the contributions of queer people to agriculture. Although queerness is more recently being considered in the literature, queer people have long been involved in agriculture with varying levels of outness. Fellows (1998) and Shah (2011) document the existence of queer individuals in agriculture going back to the early twentieth century. In the 1970s, the lesbian separatist movement included efforts, often by urban, white, middle-class lesbians, to create intentional communities or Landdyke settlements in rural areas (Sandilands, 2002; Anahita, 2009). Often participating in subsistence agricultural production or direct markets, these communities primarily consisted of lesbians living in rural locations, as a social movement (Anahita, 2009). Similarly, in the 1980s, the Radical Faeries, a rural gay men’s separatist movement, included mostly men who actively relocated to rural areas to reject urban gay life and reconnect with nature (Bell, 2000; Hennen, 2004). Rural queer communities such as the Radical Faeries and Landdykes demonstrate that not all queer people desire an urban lifestyle. Furthermore, the reclamation of self-suffciency and self-determinism is reminiscent of social justice movements led by other groups of marginalized farmers, such as Black farmers (White, 2018; Leslie, 2019).Today, queer agricultural communities exist to varying degrees across the US and illustrate a collective effort to enter and re-envision farming. These queer intentional communities offer a sharp contrast with the traditional heteronuclear model of the “family farm,” and suggest alternative approaches to organizing food production. Queer farmers must navigate heteronormative processes that shape access to land, similar to women farmers operating in patriarchal land rights systems. Scholars demonstrate how women farmers have developed different strategies to access land, including pooling resources with male-partners, gaining access through marriage, or participating in small-scale, less capitalintensive agriculture (Pilgeram and Amos, 2015; Sachs et al., 2016). Building on this scholarship, Leslie (2019) found that queer farmers’ identity heavily infuenced farm location and land access.The history of living and working on the same plot of land may differ for queer farmers due to perceptions of rural heterosexism and desires for larger queer communities, which have historically been more visible in urban areas (Leslie, 2017; 2019). Unlike heterosexual marriage,6 which facilitates access to farmland and capital, same-sex marriage was not federally legal until 2015, having long-term implications for loan access and land tenure. Additionally, some queer farmers may reject the idea of land inheritance through marriage. Some queer people view marriage as “state sanctioning normative relationship patterns such as monogamy, excluding single and polyamorous people from accessing state benefts” (Leslie, 2019, p. 5).Thus traditional— heteronormative—methods of access to farmland are further complicated for queer individuals.

Rural resistance: queer farmer mobilization For queer farmers who reside in rural geographies, the urban-centric LGBT movement suggests these farmers must rely upon different networks, including non-queer and non-agricultural 353

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organizations.The lack of scholarship and data about queerness in farming has resulted in limited formal agricultural support for queer populations. Local and regional farming organizations have long been a way for marginalized farmers to share resources and support one another (White, 2018). Women’s farming networks across the US have developed to support women’s participation in agriculture, but scholarship suggests queer farmers may be othered in womencentric spaces (Wypler, 2019). Given the potential lack of visibility or acceptance in other farming organizations, queer farmers have sought to relieve isolation and cultivate their own queer-centric networks (Hoffelmeyer, 2019). In rural New York, queer farmers organized to host the frst annual Northeast Queer Farmers Alliance to mobilize support for one another with attention to farmers of color and indigenous farmers (Hoffelmeyer, 2019). The Northeast Queer Farmer Alliance illustrates an alternative network that queer farmers use outside of urban LGBTQ pathways and traditional agriculture networks, such as the USDA and women farmer groups. These more formal mobilizing efforts are complemented by informal networks of queer farmers who support one another (Hoffelmeyer, 2019; Wypler, 2019). Informal support between queer farm owners and queer farm employees, such as apprentices and interns, provides technical farming skills and identity affrmation that bolsters continued participation in farming for employees (Hoffelmeyer, 2019;Wypler, 2019). As aging farmers continue to be a concern for the agriculture sector, it is necessary to bolster the farming pipeline by supporting access to technical skills training and social support for diverse populations. Furthermore, these in-person relationships may be supplemented by new online forms of community building. Gray (2009) suggests that increasing contact via the internet facilitates connections between rural queer populations.This is potentially the case as queer farmers gather in public and private social media pages and LISTSERVs (Hoffelmeyer, 2019).While informal and queer support networks offer powerful benefts for farmers, these efforts have primarily arisen in reaction to the lack of support from urban LGBT movements and agriculture networks.The combination of metronormativity in LGBT spaces, coupled with heteronormativity in agriculture, has primarily left queer farmers to develop their own methods for remaining on the farm.

Conclusion: the future queer “AG”enda The opportunities for better understanding and attending to the needs of gender and sexually diverse farmers are vast. Keller (2015) argues that a queer lens can critically view rural heterosexuality in a way that does not confate heterosexual practices with heteronormativity. Interrogating and naming heterosexuality is a critical step in this process. Researchers and practitioners should refect upon their own internalized heteronormativity in constructing research instruments and analyzing households by asking oneself, does the research instrument assume that participants are heterosexual, monogamous, etc.? Are surveys designed in a way in which gender and sex are not confated? Using multiple gender response categories in surveys and allowing for emergent topics through qualitative research approaches are steps toward allowing queerness to emerge as an object of academic inquiry. Scholars should seek new and innovative ways to build trust with participants. Walk-and-talk farm tours, multiple repeat interviews, or interviews during workdays allow the participant to be in their own environment, facilitating their comfort and an open discussion. Although some participants may be hesitant to discuss personal life during a study about their occupation (farming), others may appreciate the attention to the relational nature of agriculture, especially if presented in a non-heteronormative way. 354

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Although agricultural organizations largely disregard queer populations as potential farmers (Leslie, 2017), research engaging queer farmers adds new insights into farming models, sustainability, and community.The opportunities to apply queer theories and approaches to non-queer populations are expansive. Through a reexamination of the family farm, I have demonstrated one mechanism to expand gender and agriculture studies. Feminist and labor scholars have critiqued the idealization of the family farm; I expanded this critique to demonstrate that queer farmers are marginalized by this approach as well.Additional analysis of how heteronormativity and the gender binary system infuence other areas of agriculture will provide further insights. There are several avenues for future research on queerness in agriculture, including farm laborers and employees, conventional farmers, agribusiness, urban farmers, and global or regional variations. Farm laborers play a vital role in the global food system, but the implications of LGBTQ identities among farm laborers are only beginning to be examined. The Sexualidades Campesinas digital storytelling project collects stories of sexually diverse farmworkers to combat discrimination and increase access to support services (Lizarazo et al., 2017).There are approximately 2.5 million farm laborers in the US alone (NCFH, 2018). The large number of farm laborers both in the US and globally suggests this is a substantial area for further investigation. Similarly, the nature of sustainable agriculture, relying heavily on interns and apprentices (Ekers et al., 2016), raises questions about how employment and training opportunities for new and beginning farmers are infuenced by heterosexism.These opportunities serve as a vital pipeline for future farmers and landowners; however, we know little about if and how queerness infuences farm employees’ well-being, safety, and future farming intentions. Initial research suggests that queer farm owners support involvement from queer farm employees in future farming engagement, but that working on non-queer owned farms may expose queer employees to heterosexism from owners and fellow farmers (Wypler, 2019). Research on queer farmers has predominately studied those involved in sustainability. It is less clear how queer identities participate in conventional agriculture or agribusiness. For example, the Cultivating Change Foundation is a non-proft organization that started in 2016 with the purpose of acknowledging and raising awareness of the presence of LGBT people working in the agriculture industry (Cultivating Change Foundation, 2018). How these agriculturalists connect their queerness to agriculture may be vastly different compared to sustainable farmers. Furthermore, existing research has predominately engaged rural queer farmers. Given the linkage between urban LGBTQ resources and acceptance, how do urban queer farmers fare in comparison to rural ones? Additionally, how do urban farming organizations and communities consider queerness in relation to farming practices? Urban agriculture, especially that which is grounded in Black and Brown community empowerment, appears to be already queering agriculture through challenging dominant forms of food distribution and power inequity (White, 2018). Are these urban agriculture organizations more broadly working to disassemble heterosexism as well as racism and classism? Queer theory primarily developed and applied in the Global North has been slow to examine cross-cultural queer identities (Hawley, 2001). Similarly, postcolonial studies have investigated class, race, gender, and to a much lesser extent, sexuality (Hawley, 2001). The urban and Western bias of queer theory combined with the heteronormativity of postcolonial studies leads to the erasure of queer experiences in the Global South (Spurlin, 2001). The need to understand variations in cultural expressions of queerness is critical to avoid the monolithic queer identity as synonymous with Western and white. Places where it is illegal to be queer certainly create barriers in terms of land access, training, and resources. La Vía Campesina (LVC) has begun engaging in dialogs that connect queer oppression to agrarian landlessness (LVC, 2015; 2016), demonstrating potential areas for further cross-cultural coalition building. Despite 355

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forward-thinking organizations like La Vía Campesina, scholars and practitioners, to date, know virtually nothing about queer farmers in the Global South, and still have very limited information on queer farmers in the Global North. The queer umbrella aims to be inclusive of numerous identities; however, it is likely that intra-queer differences exist. For example, within Native American culture, the Two-Spirit identity (also referred to as berdache or “third gender”) includes individuals who encompassed both male and female characteristics (Jacobs et al., 1997). Rather than being forced to assimilate into the Western colonial gender binary system, Two-Spirit individuals are valued for their diverse identity within Native American culture (Jacobs et al., 1997). How do Two-Spirit farmers connect to farming, given the history of colonization and displacement? In other cases, cisgender privilege may allow for gay men and lesbian women to access farming resources, where transgender and non-binary farmers may face additional exclusion (Hoffelmeyer, 2019). Even among similar queer identities, racial privilege among white queer farmers may mediate the impacts of heterosexism (Hoffelmeyer, 2019). Further attention to differences within queer identities will add a crucial understanding of other privileges and the degree to which queer farmers are working beyond identity politics. Understanding the multiple axes of oppression is critical to gaining a holistic understanding of multiple areas of identity (Crenshaw, 1991). Sandilands (1994, p. 21) asserts,“It is not enough simply to add ‘heterosexism’ to the long list of dominations … to pretend we can just ‘add queers and stir.’” Likewise, studies only examining sexuality are incomplete without incorporating race, gender, and class in how these identities intersect with one another to infuence participation in agriculture. Overall, heteronormativity and heterosexism in farming make queer people involved in agriculture largely invisible to farm organizations, researchers, and the public. Public policy7 and research must improve to effectively meet the needs of queer farmers who have historically been excluded.Theory and application must begin to explore the potential barriers and contributions unique to queer populations. Future theorizing expanding on existing gender, sexuality, and nature relations should consider agriculture as a critical part of nature. Similarly, sustainability initiatives within agriculture must also confront heterosexism to realize a truly sustainable food system.The alternative standpoint of queer people offers new visions for agriculture bolstering efforts for ecological food production.

Notes 1 Cisgender refers to when birth sex and gender identity align. Although specifying cisgender men or women is not common in academic nor applied literature, I acknowledge it here to call attention to cisgender privilege. 2 Leslie et al. (2019) rejects the category of “farmer” to refer to farm owners or operators of capital explicitly. Because the traditional usage of “farmer” has negative racialized and gendered implications, it devalues contributions from underserved groups in agriculture. I follow this model throughout this chapter. I reference farm laborers explicitly as a way to call for more research and consideration of this population but use “farmer” broadly to encompass people working the land and/or producing food. 3 I use “queer” to denote individuals who do not identify as heterosexual or cisgender. Historically a slur, “queer” has been reclaimed by the LGBT community. 4 I use heterosexism rather than homophobia here following Weston’s (1991) rejection of the use of “homophobia” due to its roots in psychiatric diagnosis of pathology and burden upon queer individuals with the source of oppression. Instead,“heterosexism” acknowledges that queer oppression is socially constructed. 5 See Chapter 4 for an extended feminist critique of the family farm. 6 I contend that all marriage between cisgender men and women is not “heterosexual” as bisexual and transgender identities challenge the narrative of “same sex marriage” as equating to queer marriage. Nevertheless, prior legal and social structures maintain marriage as purely heterosexual. 7 See Leslie et al. (2019, pp. 867–868) for US policy recommendations relevant to LGBTQ farmers.

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Michaela Hoffelmeyer Kauffman, L.A. (2001). “The anti-politics of identity.” In Ryan, Barb (ed.), Identity politics in the women’s movement. New York: New York University Press, 23–34. Keller, J. and Bell, M. (2014). “Rolling in the hay: the rural as sexual space.” In Bailey, C., Jensen, L., and Ransom, E. (eds.), Rural America In A Globalizing World: Problems And Prospects For the 2010s. Morgantown:West Virginia University Press, 506–522. Keller, J. (2015). “Rural queer theory.” In Pini, B., Brandth, B., and Little, J. (eds.), Feminisms and ruralities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 141–151. Leslie, I.S. (2017).“Queer farmers: sexuality and the transition to sustainable agriculture.” Rural Sociology 82 (4):747–771. doi: 10.1111/ruso.12153. Leslie, I.S. (2019). “Queer farmland: land access strategies for small-scale agriculture.” Society and Natural Resources 32 (8): 928–946 . doi: 10.1080/08941920.2018.1561964. Leslie, I.S., Wypler, J., and Bell, M.M. (2019). “Relational agriculture: gender, sexuality, and sustainability in U.S. farming.” Society and Natural Resources. Routledge, 32 (8):853–874. doi: 10.1080/08941920.2019.1610626. Little, J. (2003). “‘Riding the rural love train’: heterosexuality and the rural community.” Sociologia Ruralis 43 (4):401–417. doi: 10.1046/j.1467-9523.2003.00252.x. Lizarazo, T., Oceguera, E., Tenorio, D., Pedraza, D.P., and R. M. Irwin. (2017). “Ethics, collaboration, and knowledge production: digital storytelling with sexually diverse farmworkers in California.” Lateral 6 (1). doi: 10.25158/l6.1.5. Lobao, L. and Meyer, K. (2001). “The great agricultural transition: crisis, change, and social consequences of twentieth century US farming.” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1):103–124. Lorde,A. (1997).“The uses of anger.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 25 (1):278–285. LVC. (2015).“Brazil: I am gay. I am lesbian. I am transsexual. I am bisexual; I am landless. I am human. I am like you.” Available at: https://viacampesina.org/en/brazil-i-am-gay-i-am-lesbian-i-am-transsexual-i -am-bisexual-i-am-landless-i-am-human-i-am-like-you/ (accessed 10 April 2019). LVC. (2016). “Gender diversity in the peasant movement.” Available at: https://viacampesina.org/en/ge nder-diversity-in-the-peasant-movement/ (accessed 10 April 2019). NCFH (National Center for Farmworker Health). (2018). “Agricultural workers factsheet.’ Available at: http://www.ncfh.org/uploads/3/8/6/8/38685499/fs-facts_about_ag_workers_2018.pdf. Pilgeram, R. and Amos, B. (2015).“Beyond ‘inherit it or marry it’: exploring how women engaged in sustainable agriculture access farmland.” Rural Sociology 80 (1):18–38. doi: 10.1111/ruso.12054. Rosenberg, G. (2016). The 4-H harvest: sexuality and the state in rural America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sachs, C. (1983). The invisible farmers.Totowa: Rowman & Allanheld. Sachs, C. and Allen, P. (1992).“The poverty of sustainability: an analysis of current positions.” Agriculture and Human Values 9:29–35. doi: 10.1007/BF02217962. Sachs, C., Barbercheck, M., Brasier, K., Kiernan, N.E., and A.R.Terman (2016). The rise of women farmers and sustainable agriculture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Sandilands, C. (1994). “Lavender’s green? Some thoughts on queer(y)ing environmental.” UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies 6:20–25. Sandilands, C. (2002).“Lesbian separatist communities and the experiences of nature: toward a queer ecology.” Organization & Environment 15 (2):131–163. Seidman, S. (ed.). (1996). Queer theory/sociology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Shah, N. (2011). Stranger intimacy: contesting race, sexuality, and the law in the North American West. Berkeley: University of California Press. Spurlin,W.J. (2001).“Broadening postcolonial studies/decolonizing queer studies: emerging “queer” identities and cultures in Southern Africa.” In Hawley, J.C. (ed.), Postcolonial, queer: theoretical intersections. Albany: State University of New York Press, 185–206. Stein,A. and Plummer, K. (1994).“‘I can’t even think straight’‘queer’ theory and the missing sexual revolution in sociology.” Sociological Theory 12 (2):178–187. Strange, M. (1988). Family farming: a new economic vision. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Stryker, S. (2004).“Transgender studies: queer theory’s evil twin.” GLQ:A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10 (2):212–215. doi: 10.1215/10642684-10-2-212. Taylor,V. and Rupp, L.J. (1996). “Lesbian existence and the women’s movement: researching the ‘lavender herring’.” In Gottfried, H. (ed.), Feminism and social change: bridging theory and practice. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 143–159.

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28 WOMEN FARMERS AND WOMEN FARMER’S IDENTITIES Hannah Whitley and Kathryn Brasier

Introduction Women have always played instrumental roles in agricultural operations, though they have not always taken on the identity of primary operator or farmer. Men’s identities as farmers are typically tied to their land ownership, and their role identity as farmers is usually linked to their owning the means of production (Hoppe and Korb, 2013;Trauger, 2004;Trauger et al., 2009). Consequently, men typically inhabit the occupational position of “farmer” and are seen to be on the front lines of productive agricultural work. Heterosexual women’s farm identities, however, have been typically tied to their marital status, which emphasizes women’s identities as “spouse of the farmer” (Hoppe and Korb, 2013; Trauger, 2004; Trauger et al., 2009) and ignores their capacity for on-farm labor and decision-making agency. As the context of farming continues to shift in Europe and the United States, however, the roles of men and women in modern farming are changing (Jarosz, 2011; Keller, 2014; Lequieu, 2015; Pilgeram and Amos, 2015;Trauger, 2004). Experiencing greater autonomy in agricultural spaces, women’s identities have gradually transitioned from “helpers” or “farmwives” toward that of owners and primary operators (Beach, 2013; Brasier et al., 2014). The changing farm identities of women agriculturalists have been well documented in Europe and the United States. Prior to 2002, women accounted for only 5% of farm operators in the US (Hoppe and Korb, 2013). Over the past two decades, however, researchers have observed a signifcant shift in women’s farm identities. In 2012, 30% of all US farm operators who completed the US Census of Agriculture identifed as women (United States Department of Agriculture [USDA], 2014). In Europe, farm operator demographics are shifting, though much slower in comparison to the United States. In 2005, 26% of all EU farm operators identifed as women, compared to 28% of women farm operators in 2016 (Eurostat, 2016).The most recent data (Eurostat, 2016) show that, on average, women operate 30% of farms across EU countries. In Lithuania and Latvia, nearly half of all farms are managed by women. In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported weighted averages for the share of women active in the agricultural labor force in fve regions of the world: East and Southeast Asia, Near East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. According to these data, women comprise just over 40% of the labor force in the Global South,

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a fgure that has risen slightly since 1980 and ranges from about 20% in the Americas to almost 50% in Africa (FAO, 2011, p. 3). Theories positing the shifting demographics of global agriculturalists in the United States and Europe have benefted from rich scholarship on women farmers and women farmer identities. This chapter offers a picture of these shifting identities. We address the structural and demographic changes in who is farming in the US and Europe and explore how these changes are linked with women’s on-farm identities. After providing a description of social psychology’s identity theory, we conclude with an examination of the current literature on women’s farm identities and present a brief discussion of future research directions that will increase our understanding of and support for women farmers in Europe and the United States.

Women farmers, shifting agriculture As the global context of farming continues to change, women and men involved in agriculture continue to defne and redefne their relationships to farming. In Europe, farming has changed tremendously over the last half-century, often described as the transformation from productivist to post-productivist or multifunctional agriculture (Potter and Tilzey, 2005). Post-productivist agriculture is characterized by governmental policies focused on reducing overproduction, increasing environmental conservation, and enhancing rural places (Potter and Tilzey, 2005, p. 581). In the United States, structural changes in agricultural operations have led to an increase in the scale of farming and a broader concentration of production in a smaller proportion of farms (Lobao and Stofferahn, 2008; O’Donoghue et al., 2011).The simultaneous growth in farm production for local markets, emphasizing sustainable and organic agricultural practices, and using direct marketing strategies, have transformed the United States’ traditional model of agricultural production, processing, and distribution (Lobao and Meyer, 2001). Sustainable agriculture communities and organic production methods have been shown to provide space that promotes and is compatible with women’s identities as farmers (Trauger, 2004). These global structural agricultural shifts have led to social change, as well. Shortall (2014) has described how women farmers are more likely to be active in the labor market and are reporting higher rates of visible, paid employment than they were 40 years ago.Though demographic shifts have emerged, however, women remain embedded within patriarchal family farm structures. Feminist scholars have documented the political ideologies of family farms with gender politics.These farm structures typically construct agriculture as an exclusively masculine space that regularly excludes women from agricultural production and reinforces the hegemonic position of men (Barlett and Conger, 2004; Brandth, 1994; Saugeres, 2002). Despite the number of cultural, social, and institutional challenges that hinder their participation, women, in particular, are an increasing proportion of farmers (Hoppe and Korb, 2013). In 1978, women were 5% of the principal operators in the United States (Hoppe and Korb, 2013). This number has grown steadily, to 9.5% in 1997 to 13.7% in 2012. The most recent US Census of Agriculture, from 2017, indicates women are 23.9% of all primary producers (National Agricultural Statistics Service [NASS], n.d., table 52).1 In 2002, the agricultural census began collecting data for multiple operators on each farm; in that year, women constituted 26.4% of all farm operators, growing to 36.1% by 2017. The 2017 census counts 1,139,675 farms (55.8% of all farms in the census) in which a woman is counted as one of up to four producers, and 766,474 farms (37.5% of all farms) in which a woman reports acting as a principal producer or someone responsible for decisionmaking over farm activities (NASS, 2007,Table 57). Furthermore, 32.5% of the 2,950,329 producers who make day-to-day decisions on the farm are women (NASS, n.d., Table 54). The 361

Hannah Whitley and Kathryn Brasier Table 28.1 US Census of Agriculture, Percentage Women on Farmsa 1997 Total principal operators (1997–2012)/ primary producers (2017)b Number of women principal operators/ primary producers Percentage women principal operators/ primary producers Total farm operators (2002–2012)/producers (2017)c Number of women operators/ producers Percentage of women operators/producers

2002

2007

2012

2017

2,215,876 2,128,982 2,204,792 2,109,303 2,042,220 209,784

237,819

306,209

288,264

489,000

9.5%

11.2%

13.9%

13.7%

23.9%

NA

3,115,172 3,281,534 3,180,074 3,399,834

NA NA

822,383 26.4%

985,192 30.0%

969,672 30.5%

1,227,461 36.1%

Data are drawn from US Summary tables 1, 52, and 57 from each census year, available at: https://www. nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/ b There can be only one principal operator or primary producer per farm. c There can be multiple operators/producers per farm. From 2002 through 2012, the census counted up to three per farm. In 2017, the census counted up to four per farm. a

new methodologies employed in the 2017 census—demographic details about more producers per farm—reveals the larger role that women play on US farms. As NASS (2019, p. 1) suggests, “While the number of male producers declined 1.7 percent, the number of female producers increased nearly 27 percent, underscoring the effectiveness of the attempt to better represent all people involved in farm decision-making” (Table 28.1). In addition to the methodological changes that revealed the greater representation of women in farming, Sachs et al. (2016) hypothesize two additional reasons for these increases in women farmers. First, the largest increase in women farmers has been among women ages 55 to 75, which might suggest that women are choosing farming as a second career by purchasing, renting, or inheriting farms, and are now assuming the role of principal operator (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 1).The second reason is that the rise might also represent an increase in the number of women on family-operated farms who are now claiming the role of farmer when, historically, they were seldom recognized as such, deferring to their husbands, fathers, or sons as “the farmers” in the family or household (Sachs et al., 2016, p. 1). Brasier et al. (2014) examine this shift, concentrating on how women farmers’ identities are built and reinforced through the performance of farming roles.The authors theorize that these factors—what work is done on the farm and by whom—are critical components of farmer identity and have signifcant implications for public perceptions of who is a farmer (Brandth, 2002; Trauger et al., 2009). They draw on identity theory (Stryker, 1968) to describe how women recognize themselves as farmers and claim this as an identity through public and private acts, such as identifying themselves on the Census of Agriculture form.This raises a critical question about how women in agriculture construct and express their identities and how those identities are received and sanctioned (positively or negatively) by those with whom they interact regularly and by broader social systems.

How identities are created and reinforced Identity theory asserts that “the self ” is refexive in that it can take itself as an object and categorize, classify, and name itself in particular ways regarding other social categories or classifcations. 362

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Through this process of self-categorization, one’s identities are formed. “The self ” comprises multiple identities that are structured, hierarchical, and tied to the different roles and positions one occupies within their social context (Stryker, 1968). One’s identities are constructed through experiences, emotions, connections, and rejections, and are attached to all of the meanings that a person attaches to themselves while performing a role.These meanings, Stets (2006, p. 89) argues, “are, in part, derived from culture and the social structure, in that individuals are socialized into what it means to be a worker, wife, or mother, for example.” In this way, individual identities refect the expectations of how we are to act and structurally connect individuals to the broader society (Stryker, 1980). Individuals have multiple identities that are “organized into a salience hierarchy which determines the probability with which the identity will be invoked in any given situation or across a range of situations” (Burton and Wilson, 2006, p. 98). Stets (2006) and Stryker (1980) maintain that the salience of an identity within the identity hierarchy is related to the frequency with which it is verifed in social interactions.As a result, individuals invoke their identities based on their perceived expectations of the relevant social network with whom they are interacting in a given context (Stryker and Burke, 2000). McFarland and Pals (2005, p. 292) contend that, when used in personal, day-to-day relationships, these networks act as “an immediate context, defning the salience of particular roles.” Identity is a continuous process rather than a trait of an individual; it is not static and is verifed or questioned through social relations and social interactions over time (Burke, 1991; Burke and Harrod, 2005; Jenkins, 2008; Shortall, 2014; Stets and Burke, 2005). One’s identities may relate to their roles (for example, occupation), to groups and categories (marital status, gender), and our personal attributes (friendly, kind) (Shortall, 2014, p. 69). Shortall (2014) has demonstrated how a considerable amount of academic scholarship has explored how farming shapes the farm family, gender roles, and the identity of family members. Shorthall (2014, p. 71) notes, “All of these [family, farm, gender, identity] are bound up together … it is deeply embedded in culture and traditional practices.” To understand women farmers’ identities, we must track the roles they play in relation to the farm and the household (and other occupations if they have them) and their position within the household and family (e.g., wife, mother, daughter).These roles and positions refect, and reinforce, the broader structural and demographic changes occurring within society.

The literature on farming women’s identities Early scholarly work on women’s farmer identities in the United States focused on women’s self-identity in relation to the work they do on farms. In the nineteenth century, gendered divisions of labor were generally present though the boundaries between men’s spheres and women’s spheres were more or less permeable based on type of farming, scale, ethnicity, religion, and region (Adams, 1994).Women were generally responsible for the home, garden, poultry, and proximate activities; men were generally responsible for commercial production, livestock, felds, and equipment. As markets and commercial production expanded, women brought income to the farm household and were important producers of agricultural products themselves (Adams, 1994).According to Adams, this work carried an important identity as a worker, a family member, a contributor to the farm household—and the ways that these roles are interrelated. It also brought cash income to the family, and perhaps a degree of (limited) autonomy in an otherwise patriarchal culture. As agriculture became increasingly mechanized and capitalized in the midtwentieth century, women were systematically removed from agricultural production and into secondary roles, modeled after suburban housewives and with a distinct gendered division of 363

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labor and a push toward off-farm jobs. Adams argues that work is a central organizing tenet of one’s identity: It is the world of work that seems to provide the organizing principle around which social life revolved and through which individual identities were created … work, more than any other activity, organized and gave meaning to people’s lives – work enacted in the specifc location of farm, family, community, and, in the background, nation. (1994, p. 4) Although the work performed on the farm is essential, most scholarship adds familial relationships in describing women’s farm identities. In 1979, Pearson distinguished between those who acted as independent agricultural producers, partners in production, and agricultural helpers. She found that most women on farms defned themselves as agricultural helpers who contributed agricultural labor only during peak times of the year (Pearson, 1979). Rosenfeld (1985) similarly asked farm women to respond to categories of the farm operator, farmwife, bookkeeper, farm helper, and not involved in farming. Bokemeier and Garkovich’s (1987) exploration of women’s farm identities asked women on farms to identify themselves in one of fve categories: farm homemaker, agricultural helper, business manager, full agricultural partner, or independent agricultural producer.They found that farming women’s identities are signifcantly related to their task involvement and decision-making, with few women having decision-making authority on their farms.These results suggest a correlation between decision-making, labor, and farm identity for women. Subsequent studies distinguished between the identities of women farmers and farmwives, drawing in explicit consideration of women’s roles in relation to the patriarchal, heteronormative family structure.This nomenclature draws on the circumscribed roles of women on farms due to land ownership laws and inheritance customs that limited women’s ability to own land (Brandth, 2002).“Farmwives” then were identifed frst with their husbands and then with the farm, regardless of their actual roles, decision-making, and on-farm activities. These identities were further cemented and sanctioned by the limitations placed on women’s participation in farming groups, often as auxiliary or “women’s committee” members (Sachs et al., 2016). Whatmore (1991), Fink (1992), and Sachs (1996) questioned why women on farms continue to defne their role as “farmwife” regardless of the extent of their participation in the family or household’s farm enterprise. Fink (1992) reasoned that women often gain access to farms and farming through marriage; as women marry farmers, they become “farmwives.”Whatmore (1991, p. 47) theorized that women make sense of their world through an “ideological apparatus of a patriarchal sex-gender order,” meaning that “women’s sense of belonging on farm communities operates through heteronormative nuclear families and their associated gender norms.” In assuming the identity of “farmwife” or “helper,” women defended patriarchal production regimes and traditional gender roles on farms. Doing so supported their individual identities and maintained their status within their families and relevant cultural reference groups. Furthermore, Brasier et al. (2014) fnd that the continued strength of the farmwife identity lies at least partially in continued inheritance patterns and gendered divisions of labor on farms. In their study, women who identify as farmwives tend to be on larger, more traditional farms in which the male partner inherited or purchased the farm. The intertwined nature of marital status and farm work infuence the gendered division of labor and the degree of authority women have on the farm. Barlett’s (1993) study of Georgia farmers’ experiences during the farm crisis of the 1980s identifed what she termed three “mari364

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tal models” that refect different value systems and gender-based roles for men and women in relation to the farm.The agrarian model “sees both spouses as partners in a joint family enterprise-oriented around the farm.Though there is a gendered division of labor, its spheres are seen as interdependent, and both spouses have fnancial responsibilities to the family” (Bartlett, 1993, p. 141).There is a degree of shared decision-making and relative independence for both men and women within their respective areas of responsibility in a traditional gendered division of labor. In contrast, the industrial model treats the farm as the occupation of the male, with women’s roles “redefned away from production and toward consumption, domesticity, and responsibility for the family” (Bartlett, 1993, p. 141). This model entails a more hierarchical and patriarchal relationship, in which women have little decision-making authority, and farm work is seen as men’s work.A third model,“symmetrical orientation,” emerged among the younger participants in Barlett’s study in response to broader societal shifts. This model refects that both partners should pursue occupations to fulfll their individual aspirations and goals. Decision-making and farm and household work are negotiated based on preference and skill, not purely based on gender. Barlett fnds that adherence to these models refects generational changes, differences in farm type and scale, and individual attitudes about gender roles and lifestyle preferences that infuence the orientation couples have toward the operation of the farm and household. Relatedly, Byrne et al. (2014) and Cush et al. (2018) have demonstrated how formal legal arrangements that enable power-sharing between men and women facilitate a reconstruction of roles on farms while simultaneously encouraging shifts in farm women’s self-perceptions. In Ireland, joint farming ventures—formal arrangements for the co-management of farms—give women’s agency and farm identity a “legal shape and an institutional structure in which they [can] develop themselves as central actors on the farm and occupy self and social identities as farmers” (Cush et al., 2018, p. 62). Many women who enter into these formal legal arrangements with male farm partners believe that the structure seemingly “severed traditional patterns of discriminatory behavior” (Cush et al., 2018, p. 62), and created spaces where women feel that their male partners support and reinforce their identity as farmers. These fndings are echoed by Shortall (2014), who hypothesizes that as material arrangements between men and women agriculturalists change, so too will social and cultural beliefs about women’s role on family farms. Recent research illustrates changes in the structure and operation of United States agriculture have likely played a role in the increasing number of women identifying as farmers. In particular, the growth of local, sustainable, and organic farms, a movement that has tended to have women at the forefront, may play a role in women’s identities as farmers (Abatemarco, 2017; DeLind and Ferguson, 1999; Leslie, 2017; Sachs et al., 2016;Trauger, 2008). Brasier and colleagues’ fndings (2014) suggest that women can and do play multiple roles on US farms, including working on the farm, keeping the books, developing entrepreneurial opportunities, and working off the farm. These changes refect a theoretical shift in how researchers think about the identities of farm women: “Although women may perform multiple roles,” Brasier et al. (2014, p. 306) assert, “some are more central to their identities and have greater infuence on their long-term behavior and decision making.” Smyth et al. (2018) add that women’s involvement in farm ranch tasks is associated with their gender self-perception; women who view their primary role as independent agricultural producers or full partners also perceive themselves as more masculine than women who view their primary role as homemaker. Such studies reveal how, as women’s farm identities evolve, so, too, do women farmer’s identifcation with feminine and masculine traits. Shisler and Sbicca’s (2019, p. 3) research with farmers in Colorado reveals how some women adapt a variety of predominantly feminine-coded work—such as education, customer service, and feeding work—to make agriculture space for feminine “care work.” 365

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Farming remains a male-dominated occupation in the United States, with gendered responsibilities evident on family farms (Carter, 2016; Smyth et al., 2018; Shisler and Sbica, 2019), educational gaps visible between genders (Stoneman and Jinnah, 2017), and cultural narratives that are maintained through hetero-patriarchal social interactions (Carter, 2016). Nevertheless, women farmers are increasingly establishing themselves and being recognized, as agricultural decision-makers, carving a space for themselves within the profession, and taking on the identity of farmer and principal operator.

Looking toward the future As a non-static, continuous process, identity formation involves the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks, and expressions that make a person who they are. Identity formation is tied to the type of work one performs, their amount of decision-making authority, their family roles, and other social processes and institutions.These identities are refexive of broader social expectations for gendered behavior and directly associate with the type of identities one takes on. As women continue to take on more diverse roles within society, it makes sense that the roles they play in these spheres and what this looks like on farms have also expanded. Farming remains a male-dominated occupation in the United States, with gendered responsibilities evident on family farms (Carter, 2016; Smyth et al., 2018; Shisler and Sbica, 2019), educational gaps visible between genders (Stoneman and Jinnah, 2016), and cultural narratives that are maintained through hetero-patriarchal social interactions. Still, women farmers are increasingly establishing themselves and are increasingly recognized as agricultural decision-makers, carving a space for themselves within the profession and taking on the identity of farmer and principal operator. As an increasing number of women identify as farmers, extension professionals, NGOs, academic researchers, and governmental agencies are tasked with supporting these socially disadvantaged farmers. Academic fndings suggest that women can and do play multiple roles on the farm (Brasier et al., 2014; Sachs et al., 2016), and as these roles continue to shift alongside women’s farm identities, so, too, must support services and agencies. Knowledge of the multiple roles women perform on farms and their related educational and technical assistance needs could enhance how service providers and support organizations market to and aid women farmers (Barbercheck et al., 2009; Brasier et al., 2009; Brasier et al., 2014; Kiernan et al., 2012). Future research should continue outlining the paths and processes by which farm women’s identities are formed, placing a particular emphasis on the degree of alignment between farming women’s identities and the specifc roles and behaviors performed by women. Brasier and colleagues suggest that future studies explore how farming women manage their performances and identities “in relation to the perceived lack of approval from relevant social groups, such as family members, other farmers, other women, agricultural service providers, and educators” (2014, p. 307).Another trend to consider is the growing number of women agricultural landowners who have inherited land but are not actively operating their land (see Petrzelka et al., 2018; Eels and Soulis, 2013).As women take on more signifcant roles in management and decision-making for farmland, to what extent do their identities shift with these new tasks and roles? Furthermore, contemporary research on queer, trans, and non-binary farmers has challenged long-standing notions of gender and sexuality in agricultural scholarship (Leslie, 2017; 2019; Leslie et al., 2019; Wypler, 2019). Binaries of male/female, man/woman, and masculine/feminine are cultural constructs that “imperfectly represent a broad range of complicated social processes surrounding the meaning of bodies and the social cues, practices, and subjectivities associated with gender and sexuality” (Valocchi, 2005, p. 753).Accordingly, future scholars must 366

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interrogate assumptions of biological determinism related to sex and gender within farmer identities and seek to understand how socially constructed identities complicate barriers and opportunities for agriculturalists who exist outside of the gender binary.2

Notes 1 The 2017 Census of Agriculture changed its terminology and data collection procedures to collect more demographic data on all decision-makers on a farm. Multiple people per farm could be designated as “principals” instead of one single “principal operator” per farm, as in previous censuses. NASS developed the “primary producer” statistic, which identifes a single primary producer per farm, to allow comparison between 2017 and previous censuses’ “principal operator” designation (NASS, “About the Census of Agriculture”, n.d.). 2 For further discussion on the need for scholarship on issues of sexuality and agriculture, please see Hoffelmeyer’s chapter “Queer Farmers: Sexuality on the Farm” in this handbook.

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29 HEALTH AND FARM HOUSEHOLDS Nari Senanayake and Celia Ritter

Introduction In this chapter, we review a subset of literature that integrates thematic interests in gender, health, and farming to identify current strengths, as well as new directions for future work. We argue that the majority of existing research can be grouped into three topical clusters, which broadly examine: 1) the impact of women’s “empowerment” on food security and nutrition outcomes, 2) the gendered perceptions and burdens of agrichemical exposure, and 3) the uneven impacts of emerging infectious diseases and interspecies health in agrarian settings.Together, we argue that this work provides renewed focus on the dynamic relationships between health, gender, and farming and highlights how these variables restructure interactions with agrarian environments and among farming households. However, while this work productively grapples with questions of gender, most studies tend to limit their focus to how men and women are differentially vulnerable to agrarian health risks. As a result, explanations of uneven health burdens rarely move beyond “gender-only” or “class-only” accounts. In addition, much of this literature has helped to naturalize certain “archetypal” and gendered spaces of agrarian health risk, for example, the feld (farm) or the kitchen (table) (see Herrick, 2017, for an excellent discussion of archetypal spaces of health risks in the context of global health).Yet, emerging scholarship in feminist geography suggests that these spatial and identity categories and their boundaries are routinely reworked through everyday experiences of health risks and practices of resource use.Thus, often missing from existing accounts is an engagement with the wider transformative potential of feminist theory and critique.As a consequence, the chapter asks what happens if we look beyond analyses of gender relations to also consider how recent feminist scholarship on intersectionality and social reproduction can extend debates about gender and health in agrarian environments. We use these two concepts—intersectionality and social reproduction—as points of entry to reveal new dimensions of the gender-health-farming nexus.To do this, we signal several interventions in the cognate felds of feminist political ecology, feminist geography, and critical development studies, which open up new questions and lines of inquiry for literature on gender and health in agrarian environments. Specifcally, and in dialog with scholars who theorize intersectionality and social reproduction as spatial concepts, the chapter suggests future work might fruitfully explore how health risks in agrarian settings are often refracted by multiple dimensions of difference (social, ecological, and bodily) and routinely rework distinctions between repro370

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ductive and productive spaces and spheres of labor.We argue that in order to develop a richer topography of the relationships between gender, farming, and health, we need to simultaneously challenge simplistic understandings of gender divisions and pluralize the spaces that count in producing both health and harm for farming households. Together, we argue that broadening engagement with feminist scholarship provides critical tools for this project and expands our understanding of the relationships between health, gender, and agriculture in new and meaningful ways.

Thematic strengths In what follows, we argue that scholarship on the interactions of gender, health, and farming can be grouped into three strands: 1) the impacts of women’s empowerment on nutrition security within farming households, 2) gender dimensions of agrichemical exposure, and 3) emerging health risks.We do not offer an exhaustive review of these bodies of literature, but rather seek to identify general trends and key conceptual and empirical shifts in this body of work over time and across disciplines. As part of this analysis, we make a two-fold critique of existing literature on gender-health-farming. First, we argue that this work tends to reproduce narrow gender binaries, and second, we illustrate that it suffers from key spatial blind spots and occlusions. Drawing from recent work in feminist geography (Winders and Smith, 2019) and critical global health (Herrick, 2017), we argue that by zooming in on particular sites of health risk, namely the feld and the kitchen, scholars might overlook how these spaces and the boundaries between them are reworked by pervasive experiences of economic precarity.

The ag-nutrition-gender nexus The nutritional health and security of farming households remain a key focus of scholarship that falls at the intersection of gender, agriculture, and health. Much of this literature evaluates how various metrics of women’s empowerment, such as increases in women’s education, decisionmaking power, or social status, impact nutrition outcomes among farming households.1 This literature is vast and is primarily based on the assumption that rural “women are more likely than men to spend the income they control on food, healthcare, and education of their children” (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2012, 1). Many studies support this claim (Ajani, 2008; Imai et al., 2014; Malapit et al., 2015; Smith, 2004; Sraboni et al., 2014). For example, Imai et al. (2014) attempt to identify the aspects of women’s empowerment that relate to child nutrition status in rural India.Their study uses three measures of women’s empowerment: educational attainment, the presence of domestic violence, and autonomy in everyday decision-making. Findings from this study demonstrate that when women have access to education (relative to their husband), it results in signifcant improvements in childhood nutritional status. Indeed, while studies that fall under this broad research cluster vary in the specifc metrics that they use to determine empowerment and nutritional security, they all contribute to the widely accepted notion that women’s empowerment positively affects household nutritional security. However, more recently, scholars have troubled simplistic relationships between women’s agency and nutrition security, highlighting the social, political, and economic factors that interact and affect nutritional health. One example is Sraboni and Quisumbing’s (2018) recent work that revisits these relationships in Bangladesh by focusing on the dietary quality of specifc individuals throughout their lifetime. While the study supports arguments that women’s empowerment is generally benefcial to overall household nutrition, they discover a gender bias in 371

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nutritional improvements toward male children in adolescence. By focusing more closely on nutrition across a lifetime and gender-specifc differences, Sraboni and Quisumbing identify how gendered social norms complicate the assumption that empowerment leads to nutritional security for all (see also Nichols, 2016). While many nutrition and development programs focus solely on the status of women, the work by Kerr et al. (2016) analyzes a community based participatory program in a foodinsecure region of Malawi that endeavored to educate both men and women on nutrition and food preparation. By encouraging a transformation in traditional defnitions of masculinity and gender roles, the community program attempted to promote caregiving and nutritional education among men, shifting responsibilities to improve food security through reshaping gender relations.Their analysis found that the program created new “emerging” masculinities, in which men began taking on and sharing the traditionally feminine tasks of cooking and caring for children. An implication of this research is that in many cases, nutritional security cannot be achieved solely by addressing the empowerment of women. Sraboni and Quisumbing’s (2018) work shows how gender norms help reproduce gendered differences in nutritional security, even when women are “empowered.”The fndings in work by Kerr et al. (2016) reinforce the conclusions of this piece, as the nutrition intervention program accounted for specifc cultural standards and involved the careful altering of both men’s and women’s traditional childcare roles. While recent scholarship is changing the direction of this literature, the majority of existing work within the nutrition-gender-agriculture nexus seems to simplify complex gendered household dynamics in the interest of fnding quantitative and concrete connections between the variables of women’s empowerment and nutritional security. Given many of the assumptions of this literature, scholars inevitably concentrate on both intervention and analysis in the space of the kitchen.As we will argue below, these tendencies mask other important experiences and spaces that profoundly shape rural women’s encounters with empowerment programs and their highly uneven abilities to translate them into nutritional dividends.

Agrichemical exposure A relatively smaller but signifcant body of literature that integrates gender, agriculture, and health discusses the gendered burdens and perceptions of agrichemical exposure. Several studies investigate differences in exposure to agrichemicals due to gendered divisions of labor among farm households (Mrema et al., 2017; Nyantakyi-Frimpong et al., 2016). For instance, in their study of pesticide-related health impacts among Kenyan horticultural workers, Tsimbiri et al. (2015) found that negative health outcomes were concentrated among female agricultural workers.While men often carry out the spraying of pesticides, women work closely with treated crops, breathing in contaminated air and handling pesticide residues while weeding and harvesting. In both of these studies, gendered divisions of labor create multiple pathways that put women at an increased risk of agrochemical exposure. Another cluster of work investigates gendered differences in risk perception, and how this produces uneven exposure to agrichemicals. Several studies investigate the ways masculine gender norms lead to unsafe behaviors in contaminated agrarian environments. In an important example, Cabrera and Leckie (2009) provide insights into how gendered social norms and perceptions of risk contribute to differences in behaviors among farmworkers working with pesticides in the Salinas Valley.Through a survey that asked farm workers questions about pesticide education, pesticide risk perception, and self-protective behaviors, they found that women, regardless of the level of pesticide education received, had higher perceptions of risk 372

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and performed more self-protective behaviors.The authors attribute these gendered differences to social norms, noting that a “machismo” attitude among male farmworkers may sometimes lead these farmers to work against the interest of protecting their own bodies. Several other studies investigate gendered pesticide risk perceptions and how this contributes to differences in protective behaviors (Atreya, 2007; Galt, 2013). Kimura and Katano’s (2014) work also provides insight into the impact of masculinity on chemical risk perception. In their study analyzing the effects of the Fukushima accident on organic agriculture, the authors discovered important differences in the way men and women perceived radiation risk. As masculinity is deeply bound with farming in this context, many men chose to stay in the region after the accident.Women were more apprehensive and showed great concern about the possible contamination risks their families would face if they were to stay. Gendered differences in risk perception and the emotional stress surrounding the social stigmatization of illness also lead to disproportionate health effects among women living in contaminated environments. Several studies remark on the issues of stigmatization and marriageability (Nyantakyi-Frimpong et al., 2016; Sultana, 2012).The stigmatization of being ill and visible signs of contamination are cause for concern for many women living in contaminated agrarian environments, as they fear this will affect their own and/or their children’s ability to marry in the future. Due to the social stigma of illness, this work also investigates how and why women hide symptoms of contamination and avoid seeking medical treatment. The work on agrichemical exposure and gender expand our understanding of the social, economic, and political factors that affect health outcomes in agrarian communities. Each of these studies grapples with questions of stigmatization, risk perception, and masculinity to provide insights into gendered perceptions of risk and vulnerability, and how this creates uneven physical and mental health burdens.

Emerging health risks Over the past 15 years, farming households increasingly grapple with novel health issues, largely related to emerging infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance, and climate-change-related health threats. As agriculture becomes more globalized and industrial, scholars have begun to engage with these issues in a number of interesting ways, investigating social factors that affect the risk of emerging diseases (Farmer, 1996) and analyzing the feld through frameworks such as political ecology (Orzech and Nichter, 2008) and critical global health (Craddock and Hinchliffe, 2015; Hinchliffe et al., 2016; Lorimer, 2017; Nading, 2014). However, within this body of scholarship, only a handful of studies engage with gendered patterns of risk. Of these studies, most work focuses on gendered divisions of labor and how they lead to differing levels of exposure to infectious diseases. For example, Kimani et al. (2012) document gendered patterns of disease burden in the case of cryptosporidiosis, an emerging infectious disease involved with urban dairy farming in Nairobi, Kenya. Not unlike the literature on agrichemical risk, their work fnds that women have higher levels of exposure to cryptosporidiosis, due to the disproportionate amount of time they spend working with livestock and caring for infected family members. In addition, public health institutions increasingly incorporate some form of gender analysis when creating plans for emerging agrarian health issues. For instance, a 2012 World Health Organization report documents the disproportionate number of leptospirosis cases, an infectious disease linked to agricultural work, among male farmers. For some time, public health offcials attributed this difference to increased male occupational and recreational exposure. However, household surveys revealed that the uneven disease burden among men existed 373

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even in areas where males and females participated equally in agricultural work.This fnding has led offcials to speculate that there may be biological differences in the manifestation of the disease or that the disproportional amount of cases could be due to gender differences in healthcare accessibility, i.e., women being unable to report their illness. As a consequence, this report identifes the importance of recognizing the gendered contexts of data collection and surveillance in the feld of public health. Similarly, a report sponsored by the European Commission (Velasco, 2008) investigated the gender aspects of the avian fu crisis in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.The study focused on gender divisions of labor in poultry production and how these can lead to disproportionate levels of exposure, as well as gendered vulnerabilities in other spheres, including access to education and resources.The authors conclude that avian infuenza interventions must prioritize the education of women as the main defense against the spread of avian fu, given their roles in the healthcare of their families and overseeing household poultry operations.Together this work suggests that there are important, albeit relatively understudied, gendered dimensions to emerging infectious diseases. By foregrounding gender differences in disease risk, Kimani et al. (2012),WHO (2011), and Velasco (2008) improve our understanding of how novel agrarian health risks may affect men and women in distinct ways. Curiously, the literature on the gender-health-farming nexus has rarely been extended to climate-change-related health risks even though climate change promises to rework the gendered labor burdens and perceptions of risk that shape different health possibilities for farming households.While reviewing the literature on climate change, we were surprised to fnd a lack of studies integrating a focus on health, agriculture, and gender. Instead, scholars have either investigated the health impacts of climate change in urban settings (Curtis and Oven, 2012) or focused on gendered experiences of other non-health-related impacts of climate change (Goh, 2012; Jost et al., 2016;Tibesigwa et al., n.d.).As a consequence, future research could extend the empirical scope of scholarship on the gender-health-farming nexus to investigate how one of the most formidable socioecological challenges of our time reconfgures interactions between health, gender, and farming. While reading across existing literature on gender and nutrition, agrichemical risk, and emerging infectious diseases, several key insights emerge. First, much of this work has expanded our understanding of the gendered dimensions within agrarian health risks. Existing scholarship on household nutrition security, agrichemical use, and emerging infectious diseases are underpinned by an admirable commitment to tackling or revealing gender disadvantage and creating more equitable health outcomes for women and children in farming households.Also germane are new empirical research frontiers for the feld centered on the gendered dimensions of novel agrarian health risks such as emerging infectious diseases and climate change. However, while acknowledging the critical strengths and empirical frontiers of this literature, we also point to some conceptual blind spots within current work. As a whole, this literature tends to focus on women as a universal, homogenous, and undifferentiated category of analysis, particularly in relation to the distribution and perception of agrarian health risks. This mode of scholarship has important spatial consequences, namely naturalizing the feld and the kitchen as archetypal spaces of agrarian health risk.While these sites are undoubtedly important, we ask what happens if we also look beyond them and begin to consider how other spaces and sources of insecurity might also shape gendered health outcomes for farming households. In broader work on gender, environment, and development, the tendencies of this literature have given way to new insights informed by theories of intersectional subjectivity and social reproduction. We now turn to the potential of this work to understand agrarian health risks. 374

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Future directions: rethinking the relations between gender, health, and agriculture Intersectionality In recent years, several scholars have taken pains to “trouble” the primary focus on gender in feminist scholarship on natural resource struggle. This work instead directs attention to “the multiple kinds of oppressions and privileges people face” in struggles over resource access and control (Mollett, 2017, p. 150).As Collins and Blige (2016, p. 2) argue, when it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and infuence each other. Gendered outcomes are thus a refection of “existing forms of discrimination that arise from the intersection of different identity categories ranging from socioeconomic status to ethnicity … race, class and the materialities of non-human nature” (Elmhirst, 2015, p. 545). Informed by these perspectives, we argue that literature on the gender-health-agrarian nexus can move beyond a focus on how agrarian health risks affect men and women in distinct ways to an interest in how multiple forms of power and positionings shape gendered possibilities for health. Central to this analytical shift is the concept of intersectionality, which, at its core, investigates how race, gender, class, and other dimensions of difference work as “interdependent and interlocking rather than disparate and exclusive social categories” (Mollett and Faria, 2013, p. 120). Emerging as an important analytic in black feminist thought in the late nineteenth century (Gines, 2011), and coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the theory of intersectionality responded to blind spots and occlusions in existing activism for civil rights and women’s empowerment in the United States. As Crenshaw (1990) takes pains to point out, while these movements were motivated by important social justice goals, they all failed to grapple with the complex discrimination experienced by African American women.As a consequence, intersectional frameworks arose to better account for the particular constellation of oppression African American women faced as simultaneously black and workers and women (Collins, 1998; Collins and Bilge, 2016; also see: Crenshaw, 1989; 1990; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; hooks, 2000). Owing a signifcant intellectual debt to this history of black feminist thought, intersectional approaches have become increasingly wide-ranging in their ambit, taking up questions on colonialism (Lugones, 2007; 2010), migration and development (Bastia, 2014), transnational feminism (Mohanty, 2003), and environments (Nightingale, 2011). Cutting across all of these case studies, however, is the promise of intersectional analyses to shed light on how “power operates not only in two dimensions, but rather in multiple dimensions that can have lateral and unexpected consequences for bodies … subjectivities” and indeed, health (Nightingale, 2011, p. 155, emphasis added). The importance of these ideas for this chapter can be seen in two clusters of work. First, in the feld of feminist political ecology, an important review by Mollett and Faria (2013, p. 117) concludes that among the greatest strengths of an intersectional approach is that it “acknowledges the way that patriarchy and racialized processes (including whiteness) are consistently bound up in national and international development practice.” Central to their account of how “racialized genders” emerge among the Miskito people of Honduras is an analytical strategy that re-embeds gender relations within “local hierarchies of race and religion.” In a sister 375

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study, Mollett (2017) illustrates how different constellations of gender, age, race, and religious affliation can draw out, intensify, or indeed mitigate the “material and symbolic” constraints and opportunities that Miskito women encounter.This kind of work holds important implications for existing scholarship on gender and health in agrarian settings. Not only does the theory of intersectionality promise to explain why rural women embody such uneven experiences of nutritional security programs, but it also reveals how in some cases, participation in these programs can create new differentiated harms, such as increased labor burdens for poor women (see: Nichols, 2016). By zooming in on interdependent and interlocking forms of social difference, an intersectional approach better accounts for rural women’s uneven abilities to enact health and maintain access to land rights and other critical life opportunities (also see: Nightingale, 2011; Senanayake, 2018). Second, and in dialog with this work, Elmhirst (2015, p. 523, emphasis added) argues that part of the strength of intersectionality as an analytical tool is that it explores: how gender is constituted in different contexts as a component of multiple and complex subjectivities, as the performance of masculinities and femininities construct and reconstruct the gendered subject through people’s everyday practices. The emphasis on fuidity and “becoming” challenges essentialist and binary views of relations between men and women that may overemphasize difference and opposition, and that may also essentialize particular patterns of gendered disadvantage. As a consequence, we argue that this approach provides important conceptual armory for recalibrating and pluralizing “received wisdom” about the relations between gender, farming, and health. Specifcally, using intersectionality as an analytical lens can foster a better understanding of agrarian health risks as shaped by what black feminist theorists call “paradoxical space” (hooks, 2000). Linked to Elmhirst’s (2015) emphasis on sidestepping essentialist and binary views of gender, paradoxical space gestures to experiences of occupying “a place on the margins and the center simultaneously” depending on the context in question (Mollett, 2017, p. 148). For example, paradoxical spatialities help explain complex patterns of resource struggle for men who “may be at the patriarchal center of the household and village life, but due to their racialized identities in the nation as tribal, black, nomadic and/or indigenous … may simultaneously exist at the margins of societies” (Mollett, 2017, p. 148). What this means is that the focus of inquiry and intervention shifts from a focus on singular power relations to investigating how experiences of both privilege and oppression shape the lives and health possibilities of residents in agrarian environments (also see Nightingale, 2011). This nuanced understanding of intersectional subjectivity pushes current approaches to situate the production of uneven agrarian health risks within multiple and intersecting power relations. For instance, the concept of paradoxical space promises to generate new insights in the cases of emerging infectious diseases where gendered patterns of risk are artifacts of patriarchal bias in health data collection systems as well as farm labor relations that are variously shaped by class, gender, tribal, and race identities. Similarly, intersectional theoretical approaches may also push future work to engage with agrochemical risk in more nuanced ways, highlighting how it is often simultaneously toxic and enabling of livelihood security in agrarian economies tied to chemically dependent agriculture (Senanayake, in preparation). Taken together, these studies suggest how scholarship on gender and health in farming communities can be informed by and expanded through theories of intersectionality. Integrating an intersectional analytic can create space for 1) integrating a wider range of intersecting axes of power (social, ecological, and bodily) into existing work on agrarian health, 2) attending to how 376

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these multiple and compounding dimensions of difference produce unexpected and uneven possibilities for health and, 3) analyzing the ways in which gendered subjects and differences are (re)-produced and maintained through interactions with agrarian ecologies and shifting health risks.

Social reproduction Much of the literature reviewed above spatializes gendered health outcomes within a normative and gendered binary of productive (the feld) or reproductive (the kitchen) space. And yet, in feminist scholarship writ large, the spatial boundaries of “work and home” and “private and public” have long been criticized for “reifying production and social reproduction as distinct spaces of daily life … [ and normalizing] the idea of separate gendered spheres” (Winders and Smith, 2019, p. 872; also see: Landes, 1998). Central to this critique is a broader feminist effort “to expose hegemonic spatial imaginations and the work that they do in shaping how we see and act upon the world” (Hyndman, 2004, cited in Winders and Smith, 2019, p. 3). In dialog with this larger project, we explore the potential of feminist work on social reproduction to reconceptualize and pluralize the spaces that count in the existing literature on gendered agrarian health risks.Anchored frmly in ongoing struggles to value the “socially necessary, but often unwaged and invisible, forms of labour” required for the maintenance of life on a daily basis and across generations, feminist theorizations of social reproduction disrupt deeply normative ideas about labor, space, and gender (Winders and Smith, 2019, p. 1). Most work in this vein proceeds from broadly defned notions of social reproduction. For instance, Chung (2017, p. 103) defnes the concept as “an assemblage of diverse labour processes – both paid and unpaid, material and symbolic, individual and communal – which are necessary for the sustenance and resilience of human life” across intergenerational timescales. We use these broad conceptualizations of social reproduction as a springboard for future analysis in three ways. First, for many agrarian households, particularly in the Global South, the feld or the farm “can be a site of production for some and of social reproduction for others at the same time, an overlap that has shaped the lived realities … [of farming households] across spaces and time” (Winders and Smith, 2019, p. 11). As a result, understanding gendered health risks in many agrarian settings requires that we account for a “much more malleable and fuid defnition of the household as the presumed site of social reproduction” and health risk (Winders and Smith, 2019, p. 11).This strand of feminist work is generative of new questions for scholarship on the gender-health-farming nexus.Through it, we ask what other spaces and dimensions of agrarian health risks become visible when we disrupt the normative and gendered binary of the feld and the kitchen and instead consider them as collapsed spheres and interconnected sites. For instance, empirical research conducted by the frst author pairs feminist theorizations of social reproduction with critical agrarian studies to highlight the embodied brutality of the simple reproduction squeeze in rural Sri Lanka. First elaborated by Henry Bernstein (1981), the simple reproduction squeeze is used widely by critical agrarian scholars to understand how the dispossessory and exploitative effects of agrarian capitalism are experienced within the realm of social reproduction (see also Wilson, 2010). Specifcally, this analytic describes how agrarian households compensate for different production crises—such as declining productivity or market uncertainty—by tightening the conditions necessary for maintaining life on a daily basis, such as feeding, clothing, and schooling the family. In short, this concept rethinks assumptions about the boundaries and thresholds of the productive-reproductive binary and also explores the analytical potential of collapsing these spheres and foregrounding their dynamic interconnec377

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tions.Yet, despite its obvious signifcance, few studies investigate how vulnerabilities to reproductive squeezes impact patterns and struggles for health in agrarian settings. Responding to this gap, Senanayake (2018) illustrates what is at stake in rethinking the relationships between health and the agrarian environment through the concept of the simple reproduction squeeze.As her work in Sri Lanka’s dry zone demonstrates, kidney health improvement schemes, while important, do not address the myriad structures that systematically create vulnerability to reproductive squeezes and devalue life and agrarian-based livelihoods in kidney disease hotspots.Yet as her work takes pains to illustrate, these exclusions shape the uptake and adoption of “healthful” consumption and cultivation practices and thus profoundly co-construct health outcomes and conceptions of health risk in the area. More broadly, by centering residents’ experience of precarity and how it mediates health decision-making, this work argues that we need to fundamentally rethink the spatio-temporality of risk and pathology embodied by dry zone residents to better encapsulate their complex struggles for health. These emerging conversations offer new potential avenues for work at the agrarian-healthgender nexus. Specifcally, our contention is that this line of inquiry might lead us to various other sites of health risk and sources of insecurity, such as the now pervasive experiences of precarity rooted in the increasing neoliberalization of agrarian systems and rural livelihoods. Additionally, and informed by recent work in the feld of critical global health (Herrick, 2017, Hinchliffe et al., 2016), we also maintain that by looking beyond archetypal spaces of health risk in the literature, other spaces and relations that are important in producing gendered health outcomes for farming households (in addition to the farm and the table) might be brought into view, spaces such as unstable commodity markets, take-out vendors, and more. Second, we posit that scholarship that focuses on the “feshy, messy, and indeterminate stuff of everyday life” (Katz, 2001, p. 711), can illuminate how schemes to promote health in agrarian communities are often incompatible with pre-existing modes of social reproduction and, in some cases, undermine the abilities of households to reproduce themselves.The concept of social reproduction thus creates space for distilling the multiple temporalities of health risks that shape health decision-making in agrarian households and reveals pressing health concerns linked to poverty, gendered labor burdens, and precarious livelihoods. For example, in her work on food insecurity in India, Nichols (2016) illustrates how health interventions that seek to empower women and foster nutrition security practices actually impair pre-existing modes of social reproduction because they intensify gendered labor burdens and, in turn, restrict the time many poor women have to devote to food and nutritional security. In short, policy initiatives that arose to “empower” women resulted in greater burdens and exacerbated gender injustice. This kind of work not only helps explain why health improvement strategies in the agrarian context often produce paradoxical effects but also how they reproduce gendered identities and outcomes, thereby signaling promising directions for future work. Third, integrating a focus on social reproduction into existing literature promises to draw our attention to the conceptions of health that rural people identify as signifcant to their lives. As has been shown in other contexts, social reproduction is analytically useful because it reveals the polyvalence of human-environment relationships (Chung, 2017). Stated simply, for many rural households, health includes, but also transcends, gender hierarchies, chemical or disease risk, and nutritional security. Instead, residents’ encounters with agrarian health risks and health improvement schemes are shaped by multiple other challenges, including simple reproduction squeezes, the de-agrarianization of the labor force, and complex and dynamic co-disease burdens. Against reductionist analyses, these dynamics draw attention to the necessity of analyzing the gender-agrarian-health nexus as a state conceived and experienced within broader struggles for social reproduction. 378

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Together, this work brings into relief important conceptual opportunities for research that integrates thematic interests in gender, health, and agriculture. First, it encourages scholars to rethink assumptions about the archetypal spaces of health risk for farming households and also explore the analytical potential inherent in concepts that transgress these neat categorizations, such as the simple reproduction squeeze and social dispossession (Paprocki, 2016). Second, this work expands our understanding of how public health interventions in farm households are experienced as dispossessions in the realm of social reproduction, often by intensifying gendered labor burdens or compromising livelihood security.And fnally, by foregrounding how gendered health risks and outcomes are shaped by polyvalent relationships to land and labor in agrarian settings, the concept of social reproduction provokes the recognition of plural conceptions of health for farming households.

Conclusion The key strength of existing literature on gender, health, and farming is its attention to how these three variables restructure interactions with agrarian environments and among farming households.Yet, as many of the examples discussed here suggest, this literature has not yet fully grappled with how health risks in agrarian settings are often refracted by multiple and shifting dimensions of difference and routinely rework distinctions between archetypal spaces of health risk. Instead, most of this literature tends to work within narrow man-women and productivereproductive binaries, without fully accounting for both the malleability and fuidity of identities and spaces in producing uneven health risks for farming households.We agree that gendered differences in health outcomes are critically important but suggest that we must also engage with broader feminist approaches to avoid essentializing particular patterns of gendered disadvantage and privilege. In this regard, an extended engagement with intersectional feminist scholarship can open up new questions and lines of analysis in scholarship on gender, health, and agriculture. In this chapter, we take cues from several social science approaches that have mobilized feminist concepts of intersectionality and social reproduction to complicate “gender-only” explanations of uneven agrarian health risks. Rather than seeing health patterns as the outcome of either gender or race or class dynamics, the concept of intersectionality situates differences in health outcomes within simultaneous and fuid experiences of privilege and oppression, allowing for more nuanced explanations of who is placed at risk, why, and with what effects.With its emphasis on how experiences of both privilege and oppression shape the lives and health possibilities of residents in agrarian environments, the theory of intersectionality suggests the need to re-embed analyses of gendered inequality within interlocking experiences of social difference. At the same time, feminist scholarship on social reproduction points to other promising avenues for work at the gender, health, and farming nexus.This work troubles any neat distinction between production and reproductive space and instead illustrates how this distinction routinely collapses in everyday life for many farming households. As we argued, social reproduction as a concept and lived experience, remains a neglected domain of research when it comes to the gender-health-farming nexus.This oversight is lamented by feminist geographers (see:Winders and Smith, 2019) who call more scholarship on how sites and practices of social reproduction shape diverse struggles, including those over uneven health outcomes and possibilities for farming communities. Taken together, feminist scholarship on intersectionality and social reproduction are important points of entry that reveal new dimensions of the gender-health-farming nexus.These concepts complicate the simplistic understandings of gender divisions while offering new avenues 379

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for expanding and deepening our understanding of the relationships between health, gender, and agriculture in meaningful ways.

Note 1 Within the literature that encompasses agriculture, gender, and nutrition, women’s empowerment is generally defned as women’s control over their rights and decisions. The studies in this body of literature measure empowerment in a variety of ways, some using metrics such as the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) (Malapit et al., 2015), and others using alternative combinations of more specifc measures, such as level of education (Imai et al., 2014) or access to fnancial resources (Ajani, 2008), among many others. We recognize that “empowerment” is a contested term but will continue to use it in this discussion due to its prevalence in this body of literature.

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30 EMBODIED WORK IN AGRICULTURE Berit Brandth

Introduction Embodiment has not been a particularly visible topic of interest in agricultural gender studies, even though bodies are an important source of labor power in farm work. In the 1990s, men’s bodies came under particular scrutiny in sociology and geography, but this trend did not immediately affect research on agriculture. A search in Sociologia Ruralis over the last 20 years using the keywords “bodies”/“embodiment” yielded fve articles with “embodiment”/“body” in the title (Roe, 2006; Carolan, 2008; Little, 2012; Farrugia et al., 2016; Castro, 2017), but none of them dealt with gender and agricultural work, which is the focus of interest in this chapter.As is generally the case in the social sciences (Shilling, 2007; Crossley, 2007, p. 80), agricultural studies may take the embodiment of work practices for granted and thus overlook it. During the 2000s, there was a furry of interest in farming and embodiment (Brandth, 2006a; 2006b; Brandth and Haugen, 2005a; 2005b; Bryant, 2003; 2006; Little, 2003; 2006; Little and Leyshon, 2003; Saugeres, 2002a;Trauger, 2004), but this interest has not continued to fourish. Agricultural gender studies can nevertheless be read with the aim of drawing out information about embodiment even though embodiment is not an explicit focus of exploration.This chapter examines relevant themes of embodiment that are present in the literature on gender and work in agriculture from the early period of the mid-2000s until today. The connections between farm work and embodiment on both the symbolic and the practical level are foregrounded. Salient topics include the organization of family farms, women and men’s work, technology, and occupational injuries or disease. Embodiment is a complex concept that is situated within different theoretical frameworks. Bourdieu’s (1977; 1984) work on the incorporation of the social into the body is foundational. Bourdieu did not see the body as a fxed category but recognized it as negotiable and changeable, which means that embodiment is experienced and understood differently across social formations and spaces. He also emphasized the durable aspects of embodiment related to the principle of continuity and regularity in social life. He described this combination of enduring and transformative aspects as “habitus”—a system of embodied dispositions or tendencies to act in a particular way. Habitus involves a practical sense, a “feel for the game” in a feld of activity. A related concept is “body techniques” (Crossley, 2007, p. 80), which draws attention to the “socio-cultural variability of particular ways of acting” and is applicable in empirical analysis. 383

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In explicitly linking work and embodiment, Bourdieu’s theory posits a connection between work and social position, in which the body also becomes a bearer of symbolic value (Shilling, 2007). In addition, habitus signifes the deportment, manner, and style in which actors carry themselves through their dress, speech, walk, and conduct with others in various spaces (Cregan, 2006). Moreover, individuals develop their course of action through interaction, in relation to the ways people feel they should be acting, and anticipate others will react. For farmers, interactions both among humans and between humans and non-humans affect their embodiment. Habitus is not only an individual, but also a collective phenomenon in which people with similar life conditions share a habitus, or tendencies to act a certain way. Based on this theoretical perspective, this chapter focuses on continuity and change in the gendered embodiment of agricultural work.

Family farms: an embodied organization of work One of the fundamental ways in which agriculture is embodied is through the organizational form of family farms that are based on emotional attachment and sexual relations between husband and wife. It is a strong form of heterosexual embodiment in which the marital relationship organizes and regulates farm production.What is at stake becomes visible in studies of the marriage market for single male farmers (Little, 2003; Little and Panelli, 2007; Kaberis and Koutsouris, 2012); men who have not managed to ft into the conventional norm of a family farmer are described as vulnerable.The importance of this cornerstone is also demonstrated in studies of farm divorce or breakup; the farm itself, as well as the farmers’ self-respect and standing in the eyes of others, may be endangered by the breakup of the family (Haugen and Brandth, 2015; 2017). Given the dominant practice of patrilineal inheritance, which passes farms and land from fathers to sons, women have conventionally gained access to farms and farming through marriage, which has meant moving to their husband’s farm.The implicit context of heteronormativity (see Hoffelmeyer’s chapter in this book) has incited a concern with women’s disadvantage in terms of land ownership, decision-making authority, and autonomy. Marriage is a key to understanding the stability of the complementary organization of family farming, but it is through giving birth that women’s bodies become essential to the continuation of the family farm. As mothers, they are responsible not just for biological reproduction, but for the whole process of care and upbringing of the next generation that is central to reproducing family farming as a social form (Brandth and Haugen, 2005a, p. 93).Yet, farmers’ daughters have long been marginalized as successors, relegated to default status in the absence of sons. Patrilineal organization is linked to an agrarian ideology that reinforces men’s control of both property and family labor, generating unequal power relations between men and women. Bryant and Garnham (2014) argue that these unequal, structural relations of power are concealed by gendered discourses of the body. One consequence of the conventional model of the gendered division of work on family farms is that men’s and women’s bodies are defned as situated in different spaces: women’s bodies in the home as caring bodies, men’s outdoors as working bodies. Since farmwives perform reproductive activities that include childcare and housework, the overlap of work and family facilitates an interpretation of women’s farm work as primarily domestic and dismisses it as real work (Brandth and Haugen, 2005a).Women are not seen as having bodies that enable them to farm on the same terms as men, but rather as lacking the bodily attributes—mainly muscular strength—that are defned as central to farming.The “inferiorized otherness of the female body” defnes their work on the farm as easier and as having less value than men’s work (Saugeres, 2002a, p. 646). 384

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In addition to homemaking, however, women perform many tasks that are integral to farm operations (Sachs, 1996). Carrying out multiple and various tasks demands a great deal of fexibility regarding the capabilities of the body, and farmwomen have long been regarded as the fexible gender (Thorsen, 1993). In a study from the northeastern US, Brasier et al. (2014) began by differentiating between three salient roles of women farmers: primary operator, farmwife– helper, and off-farm worker.They show that women do not necessarily identify with one single role but with their multiple roles on the farm, which are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, they found that women articulate a farm partner identity, which indicates a more equal role in business management and decision-making, as well as a primary operator role, pointing toward gender identities that lie outside of the farmwife model offered by patriarchal family farms. The socially constructed image of farming as masculine work and of agriculture as a man’s world has been recognized in the literature.The ability of the farmer’s body to perform essential tasks is crucial to the productivity of the farm. Arduous, physically demanding manual labor, often in unpleasant conditions, is linked to masculine bodily qualities, and the laboring dirty body is symbolic of the male farmer. Peter et al. (2000, p. 225) describe bodily performance of traditional farm-based masculinity as not being “afraid of getting dirty, of relieving themselves outdoors, or of performing dangerous and unpleasant tasks.” It includes a denial of bodily comfort and a “work until you drop” attitude.The outcome, a prosperous farm, becomes a symbol of an able-bodied male farmer. Failure to fulfll the moral norms of hard work and “good farming” practices may result in a loss of status in the farming community (Trauger, 2004; Haugen and Brandth, 2014). Male bodily advantage is the paramount symbol of all aspects of agricultural work, including work requiring little physical effort (Bryant, 2003; Brandth, 2006b), such as work with advanced driving equipment. Regardless of women’s actual work practices, their bodies are still defned according to the traditionalist discourse (Silvasti, 2003). As is demonstrated in Bryant’s (2003) study of computer technology in farming, women’s and men’s use of the computer reproduces the traditional gender hierarchy in farming, because the primary farm activity is physical work outdoors, and women must ask men for knowledge from their embodied work in the felds to put in the computer. These examples show how the social reproduction of bodies in family farming is infuenced by highly gendered assumptions about the differing capabilities of female and male bodies. It illuminates the durable aspects of habitus and indicates that the marital interaction between men and women in family and business partnership plays a role in hampering a reconfguration of conventionally gendered embodiments into more equally valued ones. With reference to Foucault,Trauger (2004) points out that this positioning of women’s bodies within social narratives of what is “normal” in family farming disciplines their bodies to comply with the dominant identity of farmers’ wives. The actual situation is more nuanced than the conventional picture; however, it is temporally contingent and depends on farms’ degree of diversifcation and type of production. Current modes of farming lead to an increasing complexity in work and identity and infuence farmers’ gendered embodiment in various ways (Brandth, 2002; Riley, 2009; Brasier et al., 2014; Keller, 2014). For instance, in contrast to productivist agriculture, Trauger (2004) fnds that sustainable agriculture provides a context of empowerment for women. By applying the right body techniques, women feel that they can master the farm work. Moreover, in the public spaces of sustainable agriculture, women farmers resist dominant ideologies “through representations of their bodies that are ‘recalcitrant’” (Trauger, 2004, p. 301). Identifying as farmers, the women in Trauger’s (2004, p. 303) study struggled to assert this alternative role, and embarrassment about their bodies’ masculine appearance showed the social and personal costs of this transgression. 385

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Nevertheless, other studies have shown that the term “farmer” can be used for bodies that are not conventionally masculine. Resisting “the gendered exclusivity of the title of farmer,” the women dairy farmers in Keller’s (2014, p. 96) study both practiced an alternative femininity and used language to make women’s bodies “legible,” i.e., be read or seen, as farmers.

Technology, gender, and the agricultural body The gendering of technology is another foundational topic concerning embodiment in agricultural work. Numerous studies have shown that the identifcation of heavy machinery with male farmers underscores men’s bodily qualities of strength and stamina and naturalizes their capacity to use machines as biological characteristics of their gender. The interpretation of machinery that actually lightens the burden of physical labor as exclusively masculine occurred when the introduction of milking machines coincided with men’s assumption of this task and demonstrated that gender was more fundamental than the actual strength required. In a study of tractor advertisements over a ten-year period, Brandth (1995) identifed the absence of women and explored the mutual construction of machinery and masculine bodies. Physical strength and mechanical skills are pictured as the bodily qualities of men, and men demonstrate their physical prowess and technical skills by using machines. Likewise, Saugeres’ (2002b) study from France showed that the tractor served as a symbol of masculine power and identity, which helped to marginalize or exclude women from farming.This imagery is dynamic, however. Following the development of computer-based tractor technology, including GPS and precision agriculture technology, farmers’ bodies were portrayed as more business-like and technologically competent than before (Brandth, 1995), but in a way that still underlined their power and dominance over nature and the land.This point is further developed by Brandth and Haugen (2005b; 2005c) in an analysis of representations of farm forestry workers in a forestry magazine. Over the years, the change in tools changed the “techniques of the body” and also the body’s appearance in terms of work gear, devices, and postures. Liepins (1998) identifed two dominant media representations of agricultural masculinity: “tough men” and “powerful leaders,” both signaling gender inequality. Research examining women’s use of agricultural machinery has been concerned with how their subjectivity is affected by such a break in the gendered division of work (Brandth, 1994; 2006a; 2006b; Bolsø, 1994; Pini, 2005a). Generally, machinery may be used by many different types of bodies, not just strong ones. Operating the tractor is often an act of necessity, regardless of the driver’s bodily capacities.Tractors may even function as an instrument for sparing an incapacitated body. Focusing on how the bodies of women farmers relate to the tools of work, studies show a variety of strategies used to handle the discrepancy between the qualities of the machines and gender, highlighting the complex and sometimes ironic relationship between farm machinery and feminine embodiment. In these studies, when women are competent drivers, their bodies may sometimes be seen as merging with the qualities of the machines much the same way as men’s bodies are defned as strong and tough. Being given such masculine qualities, they are devalued as women, or defned as “honorary men” (Saugeres, 2002a; Brandth, 2006b). Some research has shown women struggling to maintain a defnition of their bodies as feminine despite the masculine symbolism of their work. Another strategy is to locate their machine work within the discourse of the farm woman as a helper and homemaker (Bolsø, 1994; Brandth, 2006a). In Pini’s (2005a) study, some hid their involvement to protect their husbands’ masculine honor and prevent them from being defned as lazy and ineffcient.When presenting themselves to others, they stressed their feminine appearance (Pini, 2005a), and other 386

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spaces than the farm became particularly important in expressing feminine identity. For men, however, their appearance in dirty clothes matched the work they did and their identity as men and farmers. These examples illustrate that the “techniques of the body” and the discourses of the body sometimes, but not always, go together.The dominant discourse of masculinity and technology posits a mutually reinforcing relationship: masculinity, farm work, and the tractor represent each other. In the dominant discourse, there is no inherent connection between women and farm machinery.“If they drive the tractor, their driving is neglected, or if they drive well, they are not [regarded as] real women” (Brandth, 2006a, p. 343).

Disembodiment and deskilling Agricultural technologies are more than machinery. Novel technologies such as automation and genetic manipulation also co-produce agricultural lives and affect the embodiment of farm work.Working with farm animals, for instance, includes dimensions of care, attentiveness, responsiveness, and affection (Brandth, 2006b). Robotic or automatic milking, in contrast, takes over many tasks usually done by a farmer and reduces the need for bodily contact between the farmer and the cow (Bear and Holloway, 2015). In robotic milking, the cows voluntarily visit the milking stall, and the robots attach the cups to the teats, clean the teats, extract the milk, and monitor and record data electronically. Instead of showing “knowledge of the cows, practical skills in their management, the fostering of their productive capacities, and an ability to identify problems such as illness,” farmers end up checking the computer, interpreting data, and responding to issues it suggests (Holloway et al., 2014, p. 190). Good animal husbandry is no longer dependent on touching, looking and seeing, and making judgments on the basis of embodied knowledge and skills acquired through contact with the animals over time. As Holloway et al. (2014, pp. 189–190) write,“The cow becomes ‘hidden’ in the technology,” and the farmers are “disburdened” from affective caring relationships with their farmed animals. The study by Holloway et al. (2014) does not include a gender perspective, but the disembodiment implied by the change to robotic milking systems will affect both women and men engaged in dairy farming. Since more men than women are dairy farmers, their embodiment may be most seriously reshaped by robotic technology. As Bryant (2003, p. 47) suggested, for some men, “information technologies become the medium, the tool used to construct the managerial body.” Another new technology that may tend to disembody agricultural work is genetic manipulation, which is in the process of transforming breeding practices. Holloway and Morris (2008) and Bear and Holloway (2015) observe that conventional practices, in which farmers were the evaluators and based their assessments on the external appearance and productive capacity of the animals, have shifted with the introduction of new technologies that use genetic data to decide which animals to breed. The new ways of knowing animals rely on abstractions from animal bodies in terms of numbers, statistics, and individual measurement, developed “at a distance” from the material bodies of animals themselves (Holloway and Morris, 2008, p. 2). Bear and Holloway (2015, p. 311, italics in original) show how humans, animals, and the technologies of automation and genetics are intertwined and mutually constructed, much like farmers and machines. “Technology does not simply hold meaning … technology is also performed.” Interestingly, they point out that the subjectivity attributed to animals is also affected by new technologies. For instance, cows are said to be able to freely choose when to be milked. This co-construction of individual human and non-human identities and technology is embedded in social relations, which are variable in time and place. 387

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This co-production of technology and individuals has gendered dimensions. Bryant and Pini (2006), who studied biotechnology in agricultural production, direct attention to the agroindustrial corporations where men are in charge, the scientifc development and construction of technology in which men are mostly involved, and the uses of technology on the farm level where women are shown to be more skeptical (see also Brandth and Bolsø, 1994). Studies of the gendered, embodied consequences of changing technologies need to take ethics and values into account. Animal bodies are also productive bodies in agriculture, and they are becoming more profoundly affected by the development of technologies and less by embodied relations with farmers. In “Images of cows, stories of gender,” Bull (2016) takes gender studies beyond the humanist framework. Based on a study of livestock marketing in trade catalogs, he shows how very stereotypical ideals of masculinity and femininity are demonstrated in the presentation of the cattle. In the marketing of bulls, the muscular strength of the body is emphasized.Their names refect “hyper-masculine constructions of rural masculinity” (Bull 2016, p. 54). Cows are pictured as passive, shown from behind with full udders clearly displayed. Signifcantly, the fact that female genetic material is an input to future offspring and the development of the farm alongside that of bulls is not recognized. Bull (2016, p. 57) draws a parallel to the gender division of farm work and shows how animals are both “mirrors of gender relations and are active in producing them.” The representations of the sexed bodies of cattle contribute to the construction of masculinities and femininities among humans.

Farm-men’s bodies: injuries, illness, and silent suffering In agriculture, as well as in other areas of working life, work makes an impact on the body. Farmers are particularly vulnerable to injury and occupationally related diseases. Handling machinery, chemicals, and livestock is hazardous. Moreover, work that demands physical exertion and endurance creates bodily fatigue and contributes to a worn-out body. Writing from New Zealand, Lovelock (2012) documents the occupational health risks of farming men across production types and explores the sociocultural meanings that seem to undermine men’s own protective actions against risk and injury (technologies of care). Although the farmers in her study feared illness and accidents that could endanger their productive output, they were stoical, ignoring and masking injury, ill-health and pain.When working, they often “absented the body” (Lovelock, 2012, p. 583) through a strict focus on the task and a non-awareness of the body. Absenting the body often occurs in repetitive work and is seen as a means to sustain production, but also as a means of disciplining the body to ignore pain, although it increases the risk of injury and ill-health.This bodily disregard means that the farmer is “inhabited” by the farming work. Another interesting point made by Lovelock (2012, p. 586) concerns the relation between farmers’ stoicism and their conformity to local cultural norms and collective expectations of masculine behavior. Their affliation with the farming community compels the individual farmer to keep on going without moaning until the problem is really serious. Men resist technologies of care because they are considered feminine and not in accordance with the expected management of farmers’ bodies.“Technologies of care challenge the habitus, its specifc aesthetic and, importantly, the reproduction of intergenerational cultural and social capital” (Lovelock, 2012, p. 587). The idealized character of male embodiment in agriculture, which assumes a high degree of strength and stoicism, is found to also undermine men’s mental health (Courtenay, 2006). Research has connected stress, mental illness, and suicide to external situations that affect agriculture across countries, but where idealized norms of farmer’s embodiment infuence the han388

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dling of their problems.Alston and Kent (2008, p. 114) examined the mental health implications of the long-term crisis in Australian agriculture and concluded that men’s identifcation with normative rural masculinity reduced their “ability to seek help during times of extreme stress.” Similarly,Tyler and Fairbrother (2013) showed how the cultural and structural construction of hegemonic masculinities in rural Australia affected the ways men prepared for and responded to disastrous bushfres. “Real men” were expected to stay and battle nature, defend their family and homes like “warriors,” take risks and neglect their own health and safety (Tyler and Fairbrother, 2013, p. 114). The decision to stand and fght was socially accepted as strong and manly while evacuating for the sake of personal safety was seen as weak and feminine. Bryant and Garnham (2014b; 2015) connect mental stress and suicide to Australia’s environmental, social, and economic crises that have destroyed the viability of farming and consequently eroded farmers’ pride, self-worth, and masculine identity. Suicide is understood in terms of a masculine subjectivity that is shamed by the loss of power. Individual men may not feel powerful considering what they are up against, but the masculine ideals in which their habitus is located seem to determine such actions. Similarly, a divorce causes mental health problems for male farmers when the loss of family also endangers their reputation as “good farmers” and the viability of the family farm (Haugen and Brandth, 2014; 2017). The divorced men tended to feel “othered” by the rural community, where moral norms prevented them from expressing and handling their distress before it overwhelmed them (Haugen and Brandth, 2015). Coen et al. (2013), who studied rural men in extractive communities in northern Canada, found that men’s depression attracted a signifcant stigma and threatened their reputation and idealized embodiment. They kept their suffering from public view, but the family became an important alternative to the masculinity they performed outside the home. Bryant and Garnham (2015) use the metaphor of the “fallen hero” to capture men’s sense of shame when they give up the struggle to survive as farmers. Internationally, studies have consistently shown that mental health problems are muted in rural contexts and that seeking help is even more diffcult for invisible illnesses than it is for a broken back or leg (Bryant and Garnham, 2015; Lovelock, 2012; Coen et al., 2013; Creighton et al., 2017; Haugen and Brandth, 2014).Agricultural practices of a more individualistic and competitive kind shape “monologic masculinity” (Peter et al., 2000), which is characterized by a desire to control the land. In places where agricultural practices are more collective, a more dialogic masculinity affords a greater range of embodied performances, including emotional openness (Creighton et al., 2017, p. 1883).

Changing practices: new or old embodiments? Transformations in agricultural work and technology have affected the embodiment of men and women in farming. Studying these changes has provided insights into alternatives to the patriarchal roles of the farmer and farmwife. It has shown a weakening of farmers’ embodied knowledge, raised doubts about the advantages of male privilege, and demonstrated farm women’s rising status and more gender-equal positions (Riley, 2009; Brasier et al., 2014; Keller, 2014). Sustainable agriculture has proven advantageous for women’s engagement in farming. According to Peter et al. (2000), it may also support an alternative, softer, and more fexible masculinity, which is less rigidly distinct from femininity. But more androgynous representations of men in farming, such as the “the sensitive new age farmer,” are still only gradually emerging (Liepins, 1998). In their studies of men and women engaged in farm tourism, Brandth and Haugen (2005b; 2014) show how change creates new possibilities but also makes new demands on the body. 389

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Generally, the service sector emphasizes embodied performances that contrast with those in agriculture. In order to meet tourists’ expectations, farm hosts need to combine the bodily demeanor of a polite, solicitous service worker with that of a rough and practical farmer. Bringing tourists into the forests and mountains, the men must be knowledgeable of the wilderness and master natural forces, but they also need to be sensitive to other people’s needs, which demands less stereotypical masculinity. Care practices must be incorporated into the rugged male body. Similarly,Wright and Annes (2014) observed that women in agribusiness represented rurality and agriculture in many contradictory ways with their bodies. Sometimes they performed traditional gender roles for commodifcation, and other times they presented themselves as modern and gender-equal. Despite the obstacles represented by patriarchal culture, they used agritourism to advance the process of empowerment by asserting independence and autonomy (Annes and Wright, 2015). Women’s bodies are commonly read as caring bodies. In recent years, the burgeoning literature on fatherhood has instigated a nascent interest in the fathering practices of farming men.A study of Norwegian farming fathers (Brandth, 2016; 2019) shows a change over the last generation from including children in farm work in order to prepare them to become farmers and take over the farm to participating in reproductive activities. Contemporary farming fathers seem to be more involved in children’s activities and caregiving in the home. Even though children are included in the manly, outdoor activities of hunting and sports, today’s fathers frame childcare in broader sociocultural accounts of gender equality rather than in terms of patriarchal family farming.The study points toward a possible ongoing ideological transformation of farm fatherhood in which men’s bodies may assume new meanings.

Conclusion The chapter gives a brief overview of research addressing gender and embodiment in agricultural work in Europe, North America, and Australia.When I began, I anticipated fnding only a limited amount of work on this topic, but I end with regret that space has not allowed me to include all the viewpoints I discovered in this fertile feld. One crucial perspective is intersectionality, the social locations of ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and disability that mark bodily difference. Bryant and Pini (2011) point out that the literature has paid little attention to how these corporeal forms infuence gendered experiences and practices in a rural context. For instance, they criticize the assumptions that situate women as oppressed in the domestic sphere, which may be a specifcally white or middle-class situation. Recent research takes us beyond the heteronormativity of family farming and offers a queer lens to the study of relational diversity in agriculture (Leslie et al., 2019).A second topic that deserves more attention is the importance of emotions and affect (Bryant and Pini, 2011). In family farming, men’s and women’s bodies are connected by love and marriage, but presumably also in anger, frustration, worry, shame, and sorrow (Price and Evans, 2005). Gender and farming is an emotionally rich landscape to explore.Third, the chapter’s focus is limited to farm work, while agriculture’s various organizations and political institutions involve many other dimensions of gendered embodiment and power relations. In Pini’s (2005b) work, women in agricultural leadership positions were described as “a third sex.” These omissions indicate where future research is needed. Only some of the studies I found applied theories of embodiment in their analysis, making theoretical work an area in which considerable effort is needed. Bourdieu’s theory of embodiment points toward several dimensions that deserve closer scrutiny, including the importance of social position, collectivity, interactions, body techniques, appearance, and the relationships between the practical and symbolic. 390

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Studies are also needed to explore whether robotics on the farm will affect men’s and women’s embodied work differently and establish whether and how gendered identities are reworked through the changing relationships to animals generated by automation. Further, Little (2017, p. 472) argues for more research on rural domestic violence, which is highly relevant in the study of gender and embodiment since domestic violence as “intimate terrorism” and fear is “shaped by particular constructions and performances of rural masculinities.” The literature presented has highlighted the centrality of embodiment in gender and farm work and demonstrated the empirical utility of taking embodiment seriously. It has provided valuable, in-depth insights into the gendered lives of people in agriculture, both discursively and materially. A body perspective may help see how farming is being changed by social and technological developments and to scrutinize the impact of these changes on those subject to them.The perspective will enable a combination of concern with social power, lived experience, and cultural and physical change (Shilling, 2007) and function as a lens for studying a variety of topics related to gender and agriculture, understanding how they are being reproduced and transformed.

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Embodied work in agriculture Little, J. and Panelli, R. (2007). “‘Outback’ romance? A reading of nature and heterosexuality in rural Australia.” Sociologia Ruralis 47 (3):173–188. Little, J. (2012).“Transformational tourism, nature and wellbeing: new perspectives on ftness and the body.” Sociologia Ruralis 52 (3):258–271. Little, J. (2017). “Understanding domestic violence in rural spaces: a research agenda.” Progress in Human Geography 41 (4):472–488. Lovelock, K. (2012).“The injured and diseased farmer: occupational health, embodiment and technologies of harm and care.” Sociology of Health and Illness 34 (4):576–590. Peter, G., Bell, M.M., Jarnagin, S. and Bauer, D. (2000).“Coming back across the fence: masculinity and the transition to sustainable agriculture.” Rural Sociology 65 (2):215–233. Pini, B. (2005a).“Women, tractors and gender management.” International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture 13 (1):1–12. Pini, B. (2005b). “The third sex: women leaders in Australian agriculture.” Gender,Work and Organization 12 (1):73–88. Price, L. and Evans, N. (2005). “Work and worry: revealing farm women’s way of life.” In Little, J. and Morris, C. (eds.), Critical studies in rural gender issues. Aldershot: Ashgate, 45–49. Riley, M. (2009).“Bringing the ‘invisible farmer’ into sharper focus: gender relations and agricultural practices in the Peak District (UK).” Gender, Place and Culture 16 (6):665–682. Roe, E.J. (2006). “Things becoming food and the embodied, material practices of an organic food consumer.” Sociologia Ruralis 46 (2):104–121. Sachs, C. (1996). Gendered felds: rural women, agriculture, and environment. Boulder:Westview Press. Saugeres, L. (2002a).“‘She’s not really a woman, she’s half a man’: gendered discourses of embodiment in a French farming community.” Women’s Studies International Forum 25 (6):641–650. Saugeres, L. (2002b).“Of tractors and men: masculinity, technology and power in a French farming community.” Journal of Rural Studies 42 (2):143–159. Shilling, C. (2007). Changing bodies. London: Sage. Silvasti,T. (2003). “Bending borders of gendered labour division on farms: the case of Finland.” Sociologia Ruralis 43 (2):154–166. Thorsen, L.E. (1993). Det feksible kjønn. Mentalitetsendringer i tre generasjoner bondekvinner 1920-1985. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Trauger, A. (2004). “‘Because they can do the work’: women farmers in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA.” Gender, Place and Culture 11 (2):289–307. Tyler, M. and Fairbrother, P. (2013). “Bushfres are ‘men’s business’: the importance of gender and rural hegemonic masculinity.” Journal of Rural Studies 30:110–119. Wright, W. and Annes, A. (2014). “Farm women and agritourism: representing a new rurality.” Sociologia Ruralis 54 (4):477–499.

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31 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S MIGRATION IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE Emily M.L. Southard and Leif Jensen

Introduction As evidenced by the chapters in this volume, gender in agriculture is a topic with deep and nuanced literature using diverse feminist theories and methodologies. In contrast, migration studies, and demography generally, have been critiqued for inadequately addressing the complexities of gender (Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Mahler and Pessar, 2006; Pessar and Mahler, 2003; Williams, 2010). Migration—along with fertility and mortality as the key demographic processes—has naturally been studied by demographers quantitatively, which is incongruent with feminist epistemological approaches. However, scholars are beginning to attempt what Williams (2010) calls “feminist demography,” incorporating qualitative work, feminist theory, and moving past simply disaggregating data by sex, but rather understanding gender as a process, as Pessar and Mahler (2003) have encouraged.This chapter aims to summarize the growing literature that bridges gender in agriculture and migration studies, demonstrating the intricate interplay that gender has with migration related to agriculture. Drawing on useful reviews by Hunter and Simon (2019) and Massey et al. (1993), we frst present, in this introduction, basic theories of migration itself. Next, we examine the interplay between gender and migration related to agriculture, exploring migration’s effects on gender roles and the household, with the sections split based on the gender identity of the migrant. We then discuss the growing concern of gender and environmental migration. We summarize key fndings of our review and offer suggestions for future research in the concluding sections.

Theories of migration A variety of theoretical perspectives have been used to understand migration behavior, including neoclassical economics, push-pull theory, the new economics of labor migration, the political economy of migration, cumulative causation theory, the gravity model, and migration systems. Neoclassical economic migration theory is rooted in an assumption of rational choice and utility maximization and focuses on migration decision-making centered on economic benefts (Lewis, 1954). Push-pull theory posits quantifable forces that push people from places of origin

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and draw them to destinations (Dorigo and Tobler, 1983).The new economics of labor migration complicates neoclassical perspectives by arguing that there is a collective dimension to migration decision-making, such that members of a community may migrate in order to diversify livelihoods and minimize risk (Stark and Bloom, 1985).The political economy perspectives bridge the economic and political dimensions of migration decision-making and account for unequal power between countries as shaping migration (Massey, 2009). Cumulative causation theory assumes migration begets migration through a variety of processes, such as the development of social networks and the creation of feelings of relative deprivation (Massey, 1990).The gravity model allows international migration to be modeled based on the attributes (e.g., population size, gross domestic product [GDP]) of sending and receiving countries (Karemera et al., 2000).The migration systems approach notes that proximity is not a necessity for a consistent immigration fow (Massey et al., 1993). Gender has, in general, not featured prominently in theories of migration. However, demography, broadly, and migration studies, specifcally, have begun to engage with gender with the encouragement of feminist scholars who have taken the discipline to task for its previous failure to do so. Pessar and Mahler’s (2003) piece on bringing gender into transnational migration studies enjoins researchers to understand gender as a process, and, as part of their gendered geographies of power framework, encourages migration scholars to analyze the geographic scales, social location, and power geometries of migration behaviors.The authors also posit four scales researchers may engage with to study gender in migration: “1) communicating across borders particularly between spouses; 2) organizing work tasks when laborers are distant; 3) negotiating whether to stay abroad or return home; and 4) what happens when migrants do return home” (Pessar and Mahler, 2003, p. 823).Their later work (Mahler and Pessar, 2006) additionally emphasizes that while, of course, structural factors such as economic and political circumstances are important aspects of understanding migration, sociocultural factors are also infuential, as migration decision-making occurs at the household level.They implore researchers to acknowledge the role gender plays, suggesting ethnographic and longitudinal methodologies in order to do so.Williams (2010) brings attention to the dissonance between critical theory and demography with special attention to the lack of application of feminist theory in the feld. Echoing Pessar and Mahler (2003), she entreats demographers to regard gender as a social construct and to be refective in their cultural perspectives and projections of a Western model of women’s empowerment. Attempting to approach migration in agriculture from the feminist perspective delineated by Mahler, Pessar, and Williams, our chapter reviews relevant research that examines how gender is shaped by and shapes migration related to agriculture. Acknowledging there is a breadth of literature examining migration related to gender in agriculture beyond what we can capture in a single chapter, we have limited our review to focus chiefy on those pieces that have taken a feminist approach to understanding gender. While we recognize gender exists beyond the traditional binary, we nonetheless take a binary approach to the organization of our chapter due to the hegemonic effect of the gender binary on an individual’s lived experiences and in guiding research questions.We also recognize the inherent heteronormativity of our approach. With those caveats, the sections ‘Effects of men’s outmigration on gender roles and the household’ and ‘Effects of women’s out-migration on gender roles and the household’ are organized based on the gender identity of the migrant. Within each of these sections, the experienced gender is broken down into division of labor, decision-making, norms, access to key resources, and emotional and psychological effects. Whenever possible, the experiences of both the migrant and those the migrant leaves behind are discussed. 395

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Effects of men’s out-migration on gender roles and the household Globally, the bulk of migration relating to agriculture is comprised of men migrating away from their home communities to pursue income-generating opportunities elsewhere (de Schutter, 2013). They may work in global manufacturing, as agricultural laborers, or in other sectors, either domestically or internationally. Male migration related to agriculture can occur in two ways: 1) men who are the heads of household or sons in agricultural households migrate to fnd a better income, leaving the women, children, and elderly in their homes to pursue agriculture without them or 2) men travel to become agricultural laborers intra-nationally or internationally, again leaving their families in home communities.These categories are not mutually exclusive, and in some circumstances and geographic contexts, it is the same men who are both leaving their family’s agriculture to pursue wage labor and are working as farmworkers, albeit often in a more industrialized agriculture setting. Regardless of the category, men are typically migrating in order to secure a better income than they could in their sending communities, and often remit a large portion of that income back to their families in their home communities. The phenomenon of men migrating out of rural areas in order to pursue alternative livelihoods, as seen by both categories, is one of the contributing factors to the feminization of agriculture (de Schutter, 2013; Jiggins, 1998). Gender norms, expectations, and their economic implications shape migration patterns.The reasons why men make up the bulk of migrants in this context varies by culture, but there are some common gendered themes. First, by migrating for income, men are maintaining gender norms of men as mobile and breadwinners, engaging in productive labor, with women responsible for domestic work and caretaking, engaging in reproductive labor (Chuang, 2016; Fan and Wang, 2008; Gioli et al., 2014; Ilcan, 1994; Radel et al., 2010). Additionally, by and large, men tend to earn more than women when they migrate due to women’s labor being undervalued in the global labor market (Chuang, 2016; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Social networks are key to facilitating migration, allowing migrants to identify an employer, facilitate travel, fnd shelter, and settle in a receiving community. Because of the historical dominance of men in migration networks, they naturally have an advantage in access to these networks (Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Keller, 2019). Furthermore, for those who are parents, research suggests men’s migration exacts a lower emotional and psychological toll compared to women.While for women, there is a strong social expectation of the mother as caretaker, for men, this expectation is weaker, and by migrating and serving as breadwinner, men are still able to fulfll traditional gender roles from a distance (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). In some (but certainly not all) circumstances, men are also preferred as laborers. For instance, in Vermont’s dairy industry and Canada’s migrant worker program, women are perceived as less capable of doing heavy work, more challenging to house because migrants usually live in densely packed communal bunkhouses, and at risk of pregnancy (Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010; Radel et al., 2010). Men’s out-migration from agriculture is nearly universal. The recent literature documents men’s migration originating from the following places: India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sudan, Cambodia, Vietnam, China,Turkey, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Guatemala. Migration from and in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sudan, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Peru, and Nicaragua tends to fall into the frst category of migration wherein men leave agricultural households to pursue wage labor and diversify the household’s income (Daoud and Karama, 2012; Fan and Wang, 2008; Gartaula et al., 2010; Gioli et al., 2014; Jacobson et al., 2019; Koster et al., 2013; Pandey, 2019; Paris et al., 2009; Pattnaik et al., 2018; Tong et al., 2019). Migration from Mexico and Guatemala tends to fall into the second category wherein migrants move to the Global North (most frequently the US and Canada) to pursue employment as farmworkers (Lyon et al., 2010; Taylor et al., 2006). 396

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However, this second category shares a great deal of overlap with the frst as the majority of these migrating farmworkers come from agricultural households themselves.

Division of labor As noted, the out-migration of men is implicated in the feminization of agriculture (de Schutter, 2013; Jiggins, 1998). A question is whether men are being pulled or pushed. Literature on the feminization of agrarian distress suggests as agriculture becomes a less viable livelihood strategy, men are being pushed to seek opportunities elsewhere and agriculture becomes feminized (Lyon et al., 2010; Pattnaik et al., 2018). In this agrarian distress paradigm, because men can more readily seek alternative livelihoods outside of the farm, they migrate for wage work, while women, who have fewer economic opportunities, are forced to stay on the farm. Irrespective of the push-pull question, it remains that men migrate for wage labor in order to diversify household incomes and, by doing so, often cause an increase in women’s labor burden. A study of “left-behind women” in Sudan found that 87% of women spent more time working in agriculture than before their husband’s migration (Daoud and Karama, 2012).A research participant in Mexico explained that “[t]he work is double” as a result of her husband’s migration (Lyon et al., 2010, p. 95). Research in Nepal, Pakistan, and Cambodia has also shown that not only has women’s labor burden increased due to men’s out-migration, but as a resulting coping strategy, households have decreased their involvement in agricultural activities (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Gioli et al., 2014; Jacobson et al., 2019; Pandey, 2019). Moreover, an unfortunate trickledown effect of women’s increased labor burden is that when women are unable to manage all the work they are responsible for, the burden may be shifted to their children. Evidence from Nepal suggests that girl children are rarely able to study outside of school because they must share their mother’s workload with her (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015). In Sudan, children, and particularly girl children, were reported to have left school altogether in order to assist their mothers in taking on the extra burden created by their father’s migration (Daoud and Karama, 2012). Three studies in Nepal have found that the presence of in-laws can moderate the negative impact of male out-migration on women’s workload.Those living with in-laws report that their labor burden did not increase substantially because of their husband’s migration (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Gartaula et al., 2010; Pandey, 2019). However, a separate study found the effects on labor burden to be variable even within multi-generation households (Spangler and Christie, 2019).Another protective strategy is reported in Calakmul, Mexico, where households typically manage the labor left behind by men’s migration by hiring male farmworkers. Because women’s active involvement in agriculture is not socially acceptable in Calakmul, women use remittance money to pay workers to maintain their agriculture. However, those women who cannot afford to hire workers must do their household’s agricultural labor themselves and face the social stigma of doing so (McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel et al., 2010).

Decision-making A key concern of male out-migration and the feminization of agriculture is whether women’s heightened role in agriculture has led to their increased agency and decision-making power related to the farm, household, and community. The bulk of the literature suggests that decision-making power does not substantially shift to women when men out-migrate (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Gioli et al., 2014). Also, when it does, the shift is temporary during the period of migration, reverting to men upon their return (McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel et al., 397

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2012; Spangler and Christie, 2019). In both Nepal and Mexico, fndings suggest that while women are provided more power to make minor day-to-day decisions, men still retain strategic decision-making powers on major decisions (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Radel et al., 2010; Spangler and Christie, 2019). To be sure, some research has shown a positive relationship between men’s out-migration and women’s decision-making power (Daoud and Karama, 2012; Zhang and Fussell, 2017). However, more research is needed on the gendered division of decision-making power upon the return of the male migrant and on how migration affects long-term views on women’s agency. Zhang and Fussell’s (2017) study of male migration in China fnds that although women have greater decision-making power as a result of their spouse’s migration, the views of these men were no more egalitarian toward gender than their non-migrating counterparts. A moderating factor in decision-making, as with the division of labor, is whether a woman is the household head alone or living with her in-laws. Research in Nepal has shown that while living in a joint household is benefcial for women by moderating their increased labor burden, it inhibits the increased decision-making power a woman might otherwise have as a result of her husband’s migration (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Gartaula et al., 2010; Pandey, 2019).The fndings related to male out-migration overall suggest that while women may experience increased decision-making, this is likely a factor of convenience, wherein it makes sense for women to make certain decisions independently, and less so a result of long-term improved agency for women.

Gender norms The practice of men migrating for wage labor, leaving women behind to care for the household and family, does not directly challenge gender norms, as it fts the traditional gendered labor paradigm of men doing largely productive work while women do largely reproductive work. However, because the household is geographically split, migration does create some opportunities for gender norms to change.The effect of men’s migration on gender norms is understudied in many areas, possibly due to the assumption that this migration pattern is congruent with gender norms.Therefore, the research from this section comes mostly from studies examining households with men migrating from Latin America to the US and Canada. As mentioned in the previous sections on the division of labor and decision-making, gender norms are altered as women may temporarily take on traditionally masculine labor and have the ability to make decisions that were previously made jointly or by their husbands when their partner migrates. In Mexico, traditional gender norms have a tense relationship with adaptation strategies of left-behind women (McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel et al., 2012). Women often must hire male farmworkers to work their land in their husband’s absence, which puts them in a taboo situation of having to interact closely with a man that is not their husband. Moreover, by being put in the position of having to manage these male laborers, left-behind women are put in an unusual position of being a woman supervising a man.The activities that women must engage in to maintain the household, such as grocery shopping and participating in community meetings, seriously challenge gendered restrictions on women’s mobility as well. In these communities, the public sphere is viewed as masculine, so when women are forced to enter it because of their partner’s migration, they often face gossip and judgment on their morality from their local community. Thus, most of the women studied by McEvoy et al. (2012) report that they feel more restricted than freer due to this increased mobility.These feelings were mirrored in Nepal, where left-behind women face similar community judgment and gossip as they are also forced to do work and take on roles that are masculinized (Pandey, 2019). 398

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In a study of migrant-sending communities in Guatemala, Taylor et al. (2006) show mixed results on how male migration affects gender norms. Returning male migrants were reported to display greater machismo, a term that refers to a Latin American form of masculinity often associated with patriarchy. At the same time, some respondents reported that male returnees acted in a more gender-equitable manner infuenced by the US gender norms to which they had been exposed during their migration. Respondents reported this increased gender equity to be short-lived, however, as men over time reverted to traditional Guatemalan gender norms. Altogether, these fndings suggest that while male out-migration impacts gender norms, these effects are often temporary, mixed, and not entirely benefcial for women.

Access to key resources Men’s out-migration can affect women’s access to resources. Because of the gender asset gap— women having less access to resources compared to men—women left behind often have less access to intangible and tangible resources than they would if their husbands were present (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014). For instance, in Vietnam, as men out-migrated, women expressed that they have inadequate access to farming knowledge. Extension agents do not visit most women farmers, both because the land is often not titled to the women left behind, and because agents do not take women seriously as farmers.Thus, these women struggle to use inputs and to run a farm as productively as they could if their husbands did not migrate (Paris et al., 2009). Moreover, a study in Nepal found that as the feminization of agriculture occurs there due to men’s migration, technology has not been developed that reduces the increasing labor burden of women’s work in agriculture. Because women do not have access to labor-reducing technology, without their husbands, they produce less and suffer greater household risk of food insecurity (Tamang et al., 2014).There is potential to address these problems, however. In a study of leftbehind women in China, De Brauw et al. (2013) found that women-run farms were farmed as effciently as those run by men.Yet, in China, men’s migration is negatively associated with agricultural productivity (Tong et al., 2019). An implication is that if the gender asset gap is addressed, left-behind women would be able to provide as well for their households as they could if their husband was present. Moreover, there is potential for men’s migration to positively affect women’s access to resources, as illustrated in the study by Lyon et al. (2010) of left-behind women involved in fair trade and organic coffee production in Central America. Because of the combination of fair trade and organic certifcation requirements and the feminization of agriculture, women were benefting in terms of having land titled in their names, being recognized as farm operators, and gaining leadership experience.

Emotional and psychological effects Male out-migration also has gendered emotional and psychological effects. Men’s migration has consequences both for their mental well-being and the female partners they leave behind. Limited research has examined the emotional and psychological effects that migration have on men involved in migration related to agriculture. Keller’s (2019) research of Mexican migrant dairy workers in the US found that these men suffer social isolation and loneliness that is exacerbated by limitations on their mobility and their geographic and social exclusion. Paciulan and Preibisch’s (2013) study of Latin American parents working as migrant farmworkers in Canada fnds similar challenges but also investigates how gender shapes the psychological burden of parenting from abroad.Their fndings suggest that while men struggle to parent transnationally 399

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because of lack of available communication resources, men are fulflling their role of father as breadwinner and thus are able to emotionally rationalize their migration (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Both studies found that additional emotional challenges include having enough time for rest and relaxation because of the demands of the work and work schedule, the precarity of the work, including the threat of deportation, and racial and ethnic tensions between farmworkers that are stoked by employers (Keller, 2019; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Research has also documented how men’s migration has affected the mental well-being of women left behind in sending communities. Studies in Nepal, Sudan, and Mexico have documented the stress, loneliness, and social judgment women must cope with when their spouses migrate (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Daoud and Karama, 2012; McEvoy et al., 2012; Pandey, 2019).The study by McEvoy et al. (2012) in Mexico found left-behind women face a great deal of stress navigating new responsibilities, as they face constant surveillance, judgment, and gossip from their community about their perceived morality. Moreover, because women are largely relegated to the private sphere in many cultures, left-behind women struggle to access resources, exercise mobility, and cope with emergencies. For instance, an emergency requiring a woman to go to a hospital or fee from an approaching extreme weather event presents both emotional and physical challenges unique to the woman’s left-behind status (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Daoud and Karama, 2012).

Effects of women’s out-migration on gender roles and the household While the bulk of documented agricultural migration in the literature focuses on the migration of men, there is a growing body of literature documenting the increasing phenomenon of women’s migration related to agriculture.As is the circumstance with men’s migration, there are two types of migration related to agriculture in which women might engage.Women’s migration in relation to agriculture includes: 1) women from rural, agricultural households migrating to pursue wage labor, often in urban areas, leaving her household to temporarily adapt without her, and 2) women migrating from the Global South to the Global North or intra-nationally in the Global South to engage in agricultural labor as migrant farmworkers. As is the case with men’s migration, there is some overlap in these categories wherein migrant farmworkers may also be coming from agricultural households. Regardless of the category, these women are often remitting their wages earned in their migration back to their families at home. However, women migrant workers often face particular challenges that men do not, including gender norms that defne women as caretakers, disadvantage them as workers, and restrict their mobility (Chuang, 2016; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010; Radel et al., 2012). Moreover, they are often paid less than their male counterparts who engage in the same work because of their relative disadvantage in labor markets, having fewer work opportunities, and thus less bargaining power (Chuang, 2016; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Women workers also tend to be provided more informal, casual, and precarious positions compared to men, which, combined with their wage differential, may cause them to feel it necessary to work harder than men in order to prove themselves as worthwhile workers (Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Women also are often disadvantaged in their ability to fnd work, as social networks that connect migrants to work opportunities are typically male-dominated (Kanaiaupuni, 2000).1 Lastly, women who are mothers face a unique emotional burden compared to men who are fathers, as gendered reproductive norms cause women to feel especially self-critical and emotional about being far from their children (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013) Geographically, the migration of women has been documented to include women from Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Morocco, India, Guatemala, Brazil, Mexico, and other Latin 400

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American nations. Women’s migration from Laos,Vietnam, Thailand, and China tends to fall into the frst category of agricultural migration, wherein migrants leave their agriculturally oriented home communities in order to seek wage labor elsewhere (Brumer, 2008; Chuang, 2016; De Jong, 2000; Fan and Wang, 2008; Hoang and Yeoh, 2011; Huijsmans, 2014;Tong et al., 2019). This migration is often intranational, encompassing rural to urban migration. However, Laotian women may seek work internationally, most often in Thailand (Huijsmans, 2014).The second category of migration, wherein women migrate internationally from the Global South to the Global North to work as farm workers includes those from Morocco, Guatemala, and Mexico who travel to work in agriculture in Spain, the US, or Canada, respectively (Mannon et al., 2011; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010; Radel et al., 2010;Taylor et al., 2006). Falling into both the frst and second categories, the intranational migration of women working as farmworkers has also been documented in India, often from rural agricultural households (Mazumdar et al., 2013; Sundari, 2005). Moreover, Deere’s (2005) comprehensive literature review of the feminization of agriculture in Latin America includes examples of both types of migration.

Division of labor Women’s migration affects the division of labor within the households they leave behind in various ways. Research from Vietnam has found that men take on the reproductive work in the household traditionally and formerly done by women. However, these men do not cease their productive work, such as farming, because doing so, in addition to taking on reproductive work, is perceived as too emasculating. Of note,Vietnam has more fexible gender norms than many other comparable countries, which relates to women’s agency in migrating in the frst place (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011). Women’s out-migration from Latin America is also increasing (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013; Taylor et al., 2006). With regard to the division of labor, research has focused on parenting, because Canada’s migrant labor regimes have a reputation of strategically recruiting single mothers (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). As these women are single parents and unable to migrate with their children, they must fnd kin to care for their children. Most often, this is the mother’s mother, but other kin may take up the labor of childrearing while the mother migrates (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Division of labor may not be greatly affected by women’s migration in some instances, however, because women only migrate strategically during the period of their lives when they are young single adults and thus have the fewest reproductive responsibilities. Within Mexico, packing houses target young single migrant women, as married women would likely be unable to work the long work hours required while also tending to their reproductive work (Deere, 2005). Similarly, in China, young single women are recruited from rural areas into urban factory work.These women are expected to return to rural areas to farm and engage in their domestic duties once they are married, however (Chuang, 2016).Women’s migration thus may alter the division of labor or may be strategically planned to occur when the gendered division of labor would not be disrupted.

Decision-making Little research has examined how women’s migration related to agriculture impacts gendered decision-making processes. From what research exists, we can make a few observations, however. In the Vietnamese example, men whose wives migrate express a variety of different attitudes toward decision-making. Some express that their wives had agency in the decision to migrate, 401

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while others assert that they, as men, had the fnal say. Some stress that they are still the chief decision-makers in the household, while others describe a more egalitarian decision-making process. Women tend to retain control over decision-making regarding their wages, and some may even choose not to remit to their husbands (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011). In Preibisch and Encalada Grez’s (2010) study of Mexican women migrants, participants also express their agency in deciding to migrate despite societal taboos relating to women’s mobility. However, these women are also largely single mothers who may have more agency than women who are married would in a similar situation (Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Clearly, more research is needed to understand how women’s migration affects household decision-making.

Gender norms Whereas men’s migration commonly reinforces gender norms of man as the breadwinner and woman as the domestic caretaker, women’s migration is often, though not always, a transgression of gender norms. For instance, in Southeast Asia, as women increasingly migrate for wage labor and become breadwinners in their households, they challenge traditional ideas of femininity and masculinity in their local communities. Literature from Laos and Vietnam documents that as labor migration becomes increasingly feminized in Southeast Asia, norms on women’s mobility and domestic responsibilities are challenged along with norms on men’s breadwinner status (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011; Huijsmans, 2014). Gender norms may still restrict the extent of these gender transgressions, however. While young, unmarried, rural Chinese women are increasingly taking opportunities to work in factory jobs in urban areas, challenging gendered ideas of domesticity, their gendered rebellion is tempered by marital expectations (Chuang, 2016). Once a woman is married, the expectation is that she returns to the rural community in order to raise children, care for elderly kin, and farm the land to maintain a backup livelihood strategy for her split household, while her husband often works in urban areas (Chuang, 2016; Fan and Wang, 2008). Similarly, though Thai women are highly mobile and migrate for work at similar rates to men, they are less likely to migrate if they have children or elderly dependents (De Jong, 2000). However, being married in and of itself does not have a negative relationship with migration behavior for Thai women (De Jong, 2000). There are situations where gender norms are simultaneously perpetuated and transgressed through women’s migration. Countries such as Canada and Spain have recently implemented policies of encouraging women, particularly women with children, to migrate as farmworkers. These policies, informally or formally, target mothers as ideal because it is perceived that they 1) will not overstay their visas due to their domestic responsibilities to their children in their home countries, 2) are more skilled at the “delicate” work required, and 3) are less mobile in their receiving communities (than male workers) and thus more focused on their work (Mannon et al., 2011; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Because migration for farm work remains uncommon and taboo in their home cultures, these women are challenging norms by migrating and temporarily abandoning their domestic duties at home.Thus, these women migrants are transgressing their local culture’s gender norms, while, at the same time, unintentionally serving to perpetuate gender stereotypes as they fll Western archetypes of the ideal migrant (Mannon et al., 2011; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013; Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010).

Access to key resources Women’s migration has gendered effects on how resources are accessed. Most obviously, when employed, women migrants now have an income. Not all studies that examine women migrants 402

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explore how a woman’s wage is controlled. However, Hoang and Yeoh’s (2011) research on Vietnamese women migrant workers found that they manage their own income, and sometimes do not even remit wages back to their households because they do not want their husbands to become “spoiled.” Indeed, some women remit back to their parents and siblings rather than to their husbands. In this circumstance, husbands will continue to work in order to retain access to an income. Even husbands who do receive remittances from their wives often continue to work for both fnancial and symbolic reasons, the latter including preserving their masculine breadwinning role (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011). In China, young rural women who migrate to cities for temporary work also often control their wages, which are just enough to allow them to survive independently for a short period of time (Chuang, 2016). Practicing a strategy of household livelihood diversifcation, rural homes and farms are maintained by extended kin until women marry, at which time they typically return to maintain the family’s access to the safety net of a rural agrarian livelihood, while husbands often continue working in urban areas (Chuang, 2016; Fan and Wang, 2008).While some research does not explicitly address how resources, and particularly women’s wages obtained through migration, are controlled, because women express that they are working in order to be able to provide opportunities for their children, it can be assumed they control the use of their wages and use those resources primarily for their children (Mannon et al., 2011; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Thus, broadly, the research suggests that women’s migration related to agriculture is benefcial in improving women’s access to resources. Access to resources, or rather, a lack thereof, can also be a push factor in motivating women’s migration. Brumer’s (2008) study of rural to urban migration in Brazil in the 1950–2000 period found that women emigrated from rural areas at much higher rates than men. Brumer attributes this difference to resource constraints faced by women in rural areas, particularly in land access due to inheritance laws that prioritize male heirs.

Emotional and psychological effects The migration of women can have major emotional and psychological effects on both the female migrants themselves, as well as their spouses and families left behind. Women migrants often suffer unique harassment and emotional stress due to their gender. For female migrants from Mexico to the US, this includes sexual, physical, and emotional harassment in the receiving community environment, as well as judgments of a women’s moral character in the sending community due to a women migrant’s daring to violate gendered mobility norms (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013).Women also face emotional strains when it comes to transnational parenting. Whereas men’s migration is seen as fulflling their parental role of breadwinning, women’s migrating is at odds with parental expectations of women as caretakers.Therefore, women migrants report feeling a greater sense of guilt and emotional strain than men (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Moreover, when women migrate, they often must leave their children with extended kin whom they cannot always trust to provide the type of upbringing that they themselves would provide.This is in contrast with migrant men, who typically are able to leave their children with their mothers in a situation where they can have faith their children are well minded (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Despite these challenges that migrant mothers face, they report that their migration is an emotional burden and sacrifce that they undergo in order to provide the best lives possible for their children (Mannon et al., 2011; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Migration can also be a cause of empowerment and emotional liberation for women in some cases. Findings suggest that some women from Guatemala who suffer from domestic violence or are otherwise held back due to local patriarchal norms treat migration to the US as an oppor403

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tunity to escape their gendered suffering (Taylor et al., 2006). Moreover, fndings from Chile suggest that women’s income from agricultural work may allow them more freedom and agency to separate from their partners (Deere, 2005). Women’s migration affects not only their emotional and psychological well-being but also the well-being of male partners left behind. Few studies have examined how men are affected by women’s migration. However, Hoang and Yeoh’s (2011) study of women’s migration in Vietnam and the effects on left-behind men and masculinities provides some interesting insight. Their work showed that women’s migration threatens men’s masculinity and self-conceptualization, both because it threatens men’s identity as a breadwinner and because men must take on feminized domestic work, which sometimes emasculates them. In response to this perceived emasculation, many men continue to engage in productive work such as farming, petty trade, or wage labor in order to maintain a masculine breadwinning identity. Because left-behind men maintain productive work while also taking on domestic work, as with left-behind women, they often felt overburdened due to their partner’s migration. Left-behind men reported increased stress and exhaustion.While women suffer unique vulnerability and worry about managing an emergency due to their partner’s migration, men suffer unique threats to masculinity and must manage the emotional and psychological effects of that.

Looking to the future: climate change and environmental migration While there is not an extensive body of literature related to environmental migration in agriculture due to climate change, studies thus far do show gender interplays with the environment and migration, shaping why, how, and who migrates. In Latin America, environmental degradation and extreme weather events act as push factors for migration, primarily of rural men. As farmland and other rural resources become less productive, families develop livelihood strategies to adapt, and because men are allowed greater mobility and are perceived as breadwinners, environmental factors interact with gender norms to promote male migration (Radel et al., 2010; Taylor et al., 2006). Gendered environmental migration is not limited to Latin America, however. Chindrakar’s (2012) review of gender and climate-change-induced migration found that in numerous societies where women’s mobility is restricted, from communities in Latin America to South Asia, women are left behind to manage in areas affected by climate change while men migrate for better livelihood opportunities. Bhatta et al. (2015) found that in India and Bangladesh,“distress migration” in response to a major climatic event is almost exclusively male, with women largely left behind in affected communities. Further support of the trend of environmental migration prioritizing men comes from the study by Massey et al. (2010) in Nepal, which found that when climate change increases the diffculty of tasks that men do, household migration is more likely than when climate change increases the diffculty of women’s tasks. However, Sundari’s (2005) study in Tamil Nadu, India, found that drought was a major push factor motivating women’s rural to urban migration in the state, though the majority of these women migrated with their families, not alone.While these studies are still limited in number and scope, we can see a trend developing of climate change and environmental migration having gendered impacts that include unique challenges for women.

Conclusion Our review of the literature relating to agriculture, migration, and gender has shown that there is a dynamic relationship between gender and migration. Gender plays a key role in shaping both who within a household migrates and what the effects of that migration are. We have 404

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organized our review by the gender of the out-migrant in order to interrogate how gender affects household division of labor, decision-making, gender norms, access to key resources, and emotional well-being. From our review, we have found that in areas where gender norms are more fexible, women are more likely to migrate, and households are more adaptable to migration (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011; Huijsmans, 2014).While women may still migrate in areas where gender norms are more rigid, transgressing social rules regulating women’s behavior, this migration is often strategic since it comports with broader standards of women’s roles. For instance, mothers may strategically migrate in order to provide a better future for their children (Mannon et al., 2011; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013), or women may strategically migrate when they are young enough to not have major reproductive responsibilities (Chuang, 2016; Deere, 2005). Men’s migration is a more common livelihood strategy globally, and fts with traditional views of gender, as men are able to engage in the often masculinized public sphere and fll their role as breadwinners (Deere, 2005; Fan and Wang, 2008; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013; Pattnaik et al., 2018; Radel et al., 2012). Moreover, men’s migration is refective of the feminization of agrarian distress, wherein, as agriculture becomes a more precarious livelihood, men are fnding alternatives, whereas women who have fewer opportunities for non-agricultural work are left to maintain farms (Lyon et al., 2010; Pattnaik et al., 2018). We have explored the various impacts that agriculture-related migration has on gender and found that it presents both challenges and opportunities.When males are the primary migrants, women face the challenge of a new division of labor, with both reproductive and productive agricultural labor falling upon women (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Daoud and Karama, 2012; Lyon et al., 2010).While women may be presented with the new opportunity of improved decisionmaking power (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel et al., 2012), this is not always realized and may be short-lived when it is (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Gioli et al., 2014; McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel and Schmook, 2009). Gender norms do shift when men migrate, including creating new opportunities for women to have mobility and act as farm managers and affecting men’s machismo and perception of domestic violence. However, these changes do not always beneft women as they may be watched and judged by those in their community, and even positive changes may not last (McEvoy et al., 2012; Radel et al., 2012;Taylor et al., 2006).Access to resources presents a challenge when men migrate, as women may have less productive yields due to a lack of appropriate technology, knowledge, and access to extension services (de Brauw et al., 2008; Paris et al., 2009;Tamang et al., 2014). Lastly, men’s migration can have serious psychological and emotional effects on both men and women. Men may suffer from missing out on parenting, social isolation, overwork, and ethnic discrimination (Keller, 2019; Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013), while women may suffer stress, judgment of their behavior, and a sense of being unable to cope in an emergency (Adhikari and Hobley, 2015; Daoud and Karama, 2012; McEvoy et al., 2012). When women are the primary migrants, again challenges and opportunities arise. Regarding the division of labor, men must take on domestic tasks traditionally done by women (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011), unless migrant women are single parents and have other kin to care for their children (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013), or strategically migrate when domestic responsibilities are minimal (Chuang, 2016; Deere, 2005). Scant research on how household decision-making is affected by women’s migration suggests that women largely control their income (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011) and that women decide to migrate despite the societal taboo (Preibisch and Encalada Grez, 2010). Women’s migration can challenge gender norms on women’s mobility and breadwinning status (Hoang and Yeoh, 2011; Huijsmans, 2014), yet also, in some circumstances, it perpetuates norms on women’s role in society (Chuang, 2016; Mannon et al., 2011). Overall, women’s migration is associated with an increase in their access to key resources, with 405

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women largely controlling the wages they earn (Chuang, 2016; Hoang and Yeoh, 2011). And lastly, women’s migration can have both emotionally and psychologically challenging effects for women, particularly for mothers (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013), but can also be empowering in some circumstances (Deere, 2005;Taylor et al., 2006). Overall, we conclude that while migration certainly is related in important ways to gender in agriculture, migration itself operates as a strategic mechanism to achieve certain ends. Migration does not appear to have a signifcant substantive or transformative impact on gender ideology or relations. Men and women make strategic decisions on how to adapt gender roles in the face of migration, but these decisions are just that—adaptations. Although the ways households manage in the face of agriculture-related migration shows that gender can be fexible, the lack of evidence for long-term changes in gender norms suggests migration alone is not enough to lead to substantive shifts in gender.

What research needs to be done? Through our review of literature related to gender, migration, and agriculture, we have been able to identify a number of gaps. First, we have observed a need for more research that unpacks how gender affects who migrates and how migration decisions are made. Often gender is taken for granted in the literature, and there is a lack of understanding of how gender ideology relates to migration. Second, there is much more research examining the impact of migration on leftbehind women when men migrate than on left-behind men when women migrate. This gap will only become more glaring as women increasingly migrate.Third, there is a dearth of longitudinal studies that would allow for a better understanding of the gendered dynamics of migration decision-making, gender norms, gendered livelihoods, and other domains, before, during, and after migration has occurred. Notably, to the extent migration benefts women, do these benefts endure? Fourth, there are numerous geographic areas that are lacking representation in the literature.While the intersection of migration, gender, and agriculture has been well-studied with migrants from countries such as Mexico and Nepal, we were unable to identify adequate literature from regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East and North Africa. Lastly, as previously mentioned, our review, in refecting the current literature, takes a binary approach to gender and is heteronormative in its focus on the household as a unit of measurement. Future literature examining the interplay of gender, migration, and agriculture should aim to view gender beyond the binary and strive to look beyond the household as a unit of analysis in order to capture gender and sexuality in all its nuance.

Note 1 Note that this does not hold true in the Southeast and East Asian contexts where factory work is often female-dominated and employers target young women, providing female migration social networks in these cases (Chuang, 2016; Hoang and Yeoh, 2011).

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32 REMATRIATING TO THE WOMBS OF THE WORLD Toward Black feminist agrarian ideologies Shakara Tyler

If “the negro question in the United States is agrarian in origin” (Haywood, 1948, p. 11), where does the gender question ft into this declaration? This article conceptualizes a Black feminist agrarian ideology as a rematriation praxis inherent to Black agrarianism where political identity, lived experience, and ancestral memory cultivate the agrarian cosmological and axiological frames of liberation through, on, and with the land. It argues for a more explicit gendered analysis of Black womxn’s1 agrarianism in the US while (re)centering the rematriation process, explicit to some and implicit to others, within Black agrarian ethics.With the hopes of charting a course for needed theoretical and empirical work, I situate Black feminist agrarian ideologies within Third world and decolonial feminisms, and I conclude with a fnal offering summarizing the article. Black agrarianism weds social justice and environmental stewardship (Smith, 2004) through an ancestral legacy of resistance to oppressive systems (White, 2011a; 2011b). As a social movement, pedagogical orientation, and cultural livelihood, the theory and practice employ land, food, and culture in the dignity-affrming quest of Black peoples’ liberation in resistance (White, 2017; 2011a) to the white supremacist capitalist settler state gorging on heteropatriarchal dominance. Black agrarianism forefronts agricultural self-suffciency and the associated consciousness in pursuit of it (Ochiai, 2004). This is not to be considered in alignment with “agrarian fundamentalism,” defned as the importance of national progress, individualism, moral integrity, democracy, and practicality and effciency (Dalecki and Coughneour, 1992). Many of these facets have been used as tools in the oppression of Black agrarian communities (Smith, 2004), specifcally chattel enslavement of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, sharecropping and peonage of the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, and what we know as slavery by another name (Blackmon, 2009) of the twentieth century through present day. With deep historical roots in movement-building across various intersections of land access, public health and well-being, cultural reclamation, and self-determination, Black agrarian ethics tenaciously resists what the dominant system rationalizes as national progress, individualism, moral integrity, democracy, and practicality. Rather, we enact intentional practices of community development, racial upliftment, economic autonomy, environmental health, and cooperativism as pathways toward self-determining sustainable communities. Reclaiming the land is not an abstract state of affairs but rather is inextricably tied to the survival of our peoples, the non-human nature in the broader cyclical nature matrix (Riley, 2004). 410

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What makes the gender question so important to Black agrarianism is that the white supremacist, capitalist, settler state thrives off of fear, hatred, and domination of all that is natural, non-white, and womxn (Riley, 2004).While often glossed over in favor of essentialized notions of identity, culture, and society, the gender question lies at the heart of agrarianism.The profundities, implicit to some and explicit to others, on Black womxn’s unique positioning and pivotal infuence in Black agrarian communities arguably extends back to antiquity’s record where the greatest empires rest on foundations constructed and created by the genius of womxn (Chandler, 1999). Speaking to the evolutionary prehistoric culture of Africa, Finch (1991) asserted farming as a womxn’s invention that strengthened and amplifed the matriarchy.The dominant matriarchal role within agrarian societies during antiquity (pre-European invasion and colonialization) was based on intra-group harmony, an intimate relationship with nature, and the central place of the mother in the family and social affairs that promoted a cooperative, non-competitive social ethic (Finch, 1991). Today, Black womxn’s roles are pivotal in these agrarian ethics through socially constructed societal roles of mothering, farming, caregiving, educating, organizing, and more. Laboring the cotton felds and the plantation owners’ kitchens, cultivating the home “slave gardens,” maintaining the one-room family shacks, building the home demonstration programs as part of the federal extension outreach efforts, Black womxn’s historical role in Black agrarianism throughout the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries has been dominant in reality and ancillary in mainstream narratives of (Black) agrarian pathways. Like many womxn across variable walks of life, Black womxn’s knowledge and roles are devalued within Western science frameworks, agricultural policy, and patriarchal family structures (Sachs, 1996). The role of women is critical in this intersectional enslavement as the “ecofeminist” principle illuminates the “material resourcing”—or less euphemistically coined, the violence—of women and nature structurally interconnected in the capitalist patriarchal system (Mies and Shiva, 2014).The violence against women of color and the violence of land degradation constructs a dual intersectionality of women of color who work the land. This exemplifes the interconnectedness of environmental degradation and male supremacy in how work traditionally associated with womxn via cultural socialization is often viewed with little to no value (Riley, 2004), not only within the compounded systems of oppression but the liberation movements (King, 1988) that resist and unintentionally remain complicit. Black feminist agrarian ideologies challenge the inter- and intra- liminal spaces between the white supremacist capitalist settler state in addition to the incisive patriarchy within particular Black agrarian communities. Black and multiracial feminist theories argue that race and gender are socially constructed categories that contain inherent power differences (Collins, 2000). Black feminist theory articulates the separable dimensions of race and gender and how Black womxn’s experiences are often characterized by “double barriers” that lead to disadvantages as a result of multiple marginalized identities (Beale, 1979). Not only are these identities compounded, but the socially constructed systems are also strategically coordinated. Our radical politics come from our identity and our identity comes from our lived experiences; our lived experiences commune with our memories and our memories are laced with our ancestors. This is the crux of Black feminist agrarian ideologies that are held together through the praxis of rematriation. To resist the heteropatriarchal dominance subsumed in repatriation, I choose rematriation to signify the motherlode in all that is axiologically agrarian. Rematriation is the discursive set of relationships practically situated within radical struggles that start and end with land and the communities actively working to restore responsibilities, not rights, to the land in building toward abolitionist and decolonial futures. 411

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This article proceeds in four parts. First, I explain the unfolding of Black feminist agrarian ideologies through a historical scan of literature. Second, I discuss Black womxn’s agrarianism in the US and using land ownership as a complicated example of Black feminist agrarian ideologies exhibiting multiple jeopardies and multiple consciousnesses.Third, I offer the rematriation of Black agrarian ethics in contrast to repatriation as a returning-to-land tenet. Lastly, I suggest avenues for theoretical and empirical implications as it relates to Third world and Decolonial feminisms before the fnal offering, which briefy summarizes the entire article.

Toward Black feminist agrarian ideologies As a spiritual cis-being with various societal roles—mother, returning-generation farmer, agrarian, researcher, organizer, and activist—that profoundly impact my axiological, cosmological, ontological, epistemological, and methodological lenses, I found Black feminism through the recovery of my agrarian praxis both as an academic and grassroots organizer. Conducting historical and empirical research on Black agrarian pathways and building community with other Black agrarians in the process led me to recognize the unsung preeminence of Black womxn in food justice, food sovereignty, and climate justice movements. From “small scale” food production to community advocacy and organizing along with interdisciplinary academic theorizing, Black womxn signifes agrarianism in theory and practice. It was then that I understood myself to be part of a larger network rooted in the identity politics of Black femininity, feminism, and beyond. At these moments, my understandings of Black feminist agrarian ideologies unfolded. The formation of my identity politics became more apparent. The signifcance of identity in liberation work, generally, is refected in how Black womxn have had their identity socialized out of existence (hooks, 1981) while also continuing to produce social thought designed to oppose this invisibility and oppression (Collins, 2000). Herein, lies how Black feminist agrarian ideologies forefront identity politics. In “‘Ecology is a Sistah’s Issue Too’: The Politics of Emergent Afrocentric Ecowomanism,” Riley (2004) asserted how eco-identity politics lays the foundation for an Afrocentric ecowomanist agenda that weaves Black womxn’s survival and humanity into an approach to analyze social justice issues related to environmental degradation and the interconnected socioeconomic inequalities. Maparyan (2016) takes a similar position by postulating—through womanist ecopolitics—the “womanist triad of concern:” 1) relationships among humans, 2) relationships between human beings and the non-human environment, and 3) relationships between human beings and the spiritual realm. With this grounding, ecowomanism infuses an ecological activist, spiritual praxis. This ecowomanist praxis is made possible through identity politics that straddle the multiple ways Black womxn come to know and be in the world. In Building Houses out of Chicken Legs, Williams-Forson (2006) theorizes Black women, food, and power by adding another dimension to the usual race, class, and gender intersection: food. She argues that producing one’s own knowledge of self and community persists at this tetralogy, and food has become an important cultural mediator preserving cultural customs and rituals. Not only does food importantly catalyze the agrarian ethic within this tetralogy, but the land and accompanying gendered orientations ground the Black feminist agrarian ideologies. Whether Black feminism, womanism, Africana womanism, Grassroots feminism, or Third world feminism, Black womxn have defned our ideologies based on our realities (King, 1988) that remain as diverse as we are across geopolitical positions, societal roles, life aspirations, meaning-making, and general understandings of the world and ourselves in it. Teasing out the contours of these various namings of Black womxn’s liberation theories is beyond the scope of this article, and I choose to articulate my positioning within the Combahee 412

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River Collective’s Black feminist statement (Eisenstein, 1978, p. 264) that classically asserted we are “actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see our particular task as the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” In Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, (Finney, 2014) argued that Black people drew from “experience and memory in using their individual and collective knowledge to inform their relationship to their environment” (Finney, 2014, p. 18). In parallel terms, Dotson (2018, p. 4) articulated Black feminist identity politics as placing oneself in one’s geopolitical landscape in order to develop the “political orientation and set the groundwork for potential political coalitions with differently situated people.” Finney’s Black environmental reclamation analysis, along with Dotson’s Black feminist identity politics, alludes to Black feminist agrarian ideologies that experientially employ an intersectional historicized identity as a political and radical recovery of our memories connected to our agrarian ancestry.

Black womxn’s agrarianism in the US To be Black, womxn, and agrarian sometimes means to exist in the liminal spaces of shouldering the majority of the work with minimal acknowledgment, resources, and benefting advantages. Black womxn’s knowledge and labor have been key in the formation of Black agrarianism as a cultural practice, social movement, and pedagogical process, let alone the development of the US food system.Throughout forcible migration from Africa via the Middle Passage beginning in the sixteenth century, African women hid rice and other grain crops in their hair and their children’s hair, “bestowing a gift of lifesaving food from Africa” (Carney and Rosomoff, 2009, p. 76). Black womxn were the creative sources of gardening and/or farming in their communities from enslavement to the early twentieth century (Glave, 2003). Gardens, at times, were the primary food source for enslaved and sharecropping families.They interpreted these spaces for sustenance, comfort, joy, and proft by “gardening within a gendered and racial milieu that gave the application of these simple instruments of skill a complex social potency” (Glave, 2003, p. 396). During the early to mid-twentieth century, they cultivated the overall well-being and aesthetic of their communities through the leading and participating in the home demonstration activities of the federal extension program (Minor, 2012; Glave, 2003) that often centered on nutrition, childcare, sanitation, home aesthetics, gardening, and basic cooking. This continued through the mid-to-late twentieth century, where womxn literally fed, clothed, and educated communities during the Black Freedom Movement of the twentieth century (Ransby, 2003; Nembhard, 2014;White, 2017; 2018).Today, Black womxn demonstrate agency and self-determination to build a sense of community and greater food access through repurposing vacant urban lots for food production (White, 2011b). In spite of the gendered work that has come to signify agrarian spaces (Allen and Sachs, 2012), Black womxn remain on the margins and in the shadows of owning the means of production that often govern our lives (Figure 32.1). Black womxn currently comprise less than 1% of US farm producers and approximately 1% of womxn farm producers in the US (United States Department of Agriculture [USDA], 2017).2 Even with the steady rise in the number of Black womxn farm producers, as depicted in Figure 32.1, the cumulative systemic oppressions experienced by Black womxn farmers prompt a closer examination as to exactly how womxn are impacted, and more importantly, how they continue to resist what King (1988) posited as the multiple jeopardies of our lived experiences and how we employ our multiple consciousnesses for our survival in an agricultural system built 413

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Figure 32.1 Number of Black womxn farmers, womxn farmers, and all farmers in the US, 2002–2017. Source: USDA Census of Agriculture (2017, 2012, 2007, 2002).Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Census. *The data is an estimated projection at best and does not refect the actual numbers given the varying data collection methods of the Census of Agriculture over the years. For example, the 2002–2012 data were collected for a maximum of three operators per farm.

by us and against us simultaneously. Gendered relations in land ownership structures complexly exemplify these multiple jeopardies and multiple consciousnesses of racialized gender barriers.

Multiple jeopardies of Black gendered land ownership Women’s access and control over land are strikingly absent from the intersecting determinants of gender relations (Hansen et al., 2018). Black womxn challenging multiple jeopardy and consciousness scripts of race, gender, and class through historical and contemporary pursuits of land ownership has yet to be explored comprehensively in the US. While a suitable metric in certain justice-oriented arguments, particularly selective Black liberation discourses, it reifes the land as property dogma, and in turn, reifes the denial of Indigenous sovereignty and conspires in Indigenous erasure. Undoubtedly, Black land ownership incommensurably (Tuck and Yang, 2018) assaults Indigenous resurgence predicated on restoring land and the knowledge embedded within back to indigeneity. Thus, Black feminist agrarian ideologies must continue to probe how the settler-colonial tool of land as extractable capital can be decolonized while still navigating the need to survive in a system where economic well-being is predicated on land ownership. Though defaultly in line with settler-colonial logic, I, in good faith and humility, offer Black gendered land ownership as an imperfect interpretive landscape—one of many—of Black feminist agrarian ideologies. Despite making up a signifcant part of the US population, Black rural land accounts for less than 1% in the US (USDA, 2017) and women’s ownership, specifcally, has been masked through national data collection and analysis that conceals gendered ownership (Hansen et al., 2018). Even with ill-ft systems of data collection and representation, it is commonly understood that womxn bear the majority of the agricultural work within patriarchal land tenure systems 414

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without land ownership rights (Sachs, 1996).With little decision-making power and the typical visible and invisible womxn’s work, land ownership and who is validly considered a farmer, based on bias and dominant defnitions, is a cumulative hindrance for Black womxn, not only within the compounded systems of oppression but the liberation movements that resist and unintentionally remain complicit within the systems. While some traditional agricultural ideologies defne a farmer as a landowner, it is important to understand the complexities of farming identities that are tied to and beyond land ownership that tend to be explicitly and implicitly gendered on various scales. Black agrarian identities, namely farmers, expansively include—and are not limited to—those who own, rent, or occupy property for the purposes of agricultural production.As White (2018) argued in Freedom Farmers, farmers of the twentieth-century Black Freedom Movement inclusively encompassed subsistence farmers, many of whom were womxn who used their small amounts of free time to perform the gardening and farm work necessary for survival along with their duties as domestic workers in rural and urban settings.The patriarchal defning of “farmer” subsumes the capitalistic connotations of land ownership weaponized against Black womxn creating an agrarian glass ceiling where the sociopolitical and socioeconomic structures of land ownership dictate who can be rightful owners of the agricultural property used for agricultural production, agritourism, and community organizing and activism. Black womxn have historically pursued land ownership for community well-being, cultural continuity, and political-economic autonomy. In Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Georgia, Bell (2018) excavated the historical legacies of “female benevolent societies” that encouraged saving and investing in land as survival strategies, for widowed and single womxn during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction period in the Georgia low country. Almost a century later, the Freedom Quilting Bee (FQB) of Alberta, AL, crafted quilts and sold them to augment the sharecropping family income and purchased 23 acres to build a sewing plant and to sell land to sharecropping families who had been evicted from their homes for registering to vote and/or participating in civil rights activities (Nembhard, 2006). For rural Black women in early twentieth-century Yazoo Mississippi, land meant the transmission of rituals and traditions that built self-respect and empowerment to educate their children, establish mutual societies, control the distribution of food, and maintain safety from white violence (Hansen et al., 2018).These audacious acts were strategized and executed within the commitment to cultural continuance of which womxn were central as the keepers of cultural traditions in Afro-diasporic ideologies (Reagon, 1986) that existed (un)dialectically with Indigenous cultural continuances.Through a “standpoint methodology,” Black feminist agrarian ideologies connote the praxis of rematriation as the grounding of Black agrarian ethics that seek greater solidarity with the liberation and sovereignty of all peoples, initially precipitated by Indigenous sovereignty.

Rematriation of Black agrarian ethics Rematriation of Black agrarian ethics signifes returning to land as a process of cultural continuance through mothering as the “making of cultural workers” (Reagon, 1986, p. 77).Through a Black feminist lens, Collins (1997) posited “standpoint theory” to explicate how knowledge— specifcally group consciousness, self-defnition, and voice—remains central to maintaining and changing unjust systems of power within historically-shared group experiences located in hierarchal power relations. Standpoint theory and methodology grounds the rematriation praxis inherent to Black feminist agrarian ideologies, in turn, inherent to Black agrarian ethics. In “Womanism as Agrarianism: Black Women Healing Through Innate Agrarian Artistry,” Baxter 415

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et al. (2017) theorized the creative use of land-based resistance as a tool to preserve the people and soil simultaneously through a feminine fore. “Innate agrarian artistry,” coined by the authors, celebrates the intuitive knowing and nurturing that womxn have employed in holding Black agrarian communities together.Whether through singing spirituals to calming the chaos or listening to and learning with the forest, Black womxn have demonstrated how survival is resistance within agrarian contexts that are laced with hegemonic racialized, sexist and classist power structures on the inter (external to Black communities) and intra (internal to Black communities) outwardly-muted yet sagacious ways.Working from the intra- to the inter-, Black feminist agrarian ideologies facilitate the recovery of concentric human-human relationships and human-nature relationships as it relates to the basic modes of eating, clothing, educating, and overall nourishing our communities. In contrast to the Eurocentric mindset that nature is to be conquered and controlled (Mies and Shiva, 2014; Chandler, 1999), Black feminist agrarian ideologies move toward a symbiotic relationship with nature because both nature and womxn are producers of life (Shiva, 1989). In fact, agricultural resiliency is predicated upon women’s labor, knowledge, and role in social dynamics, as Lope-Alzina (this volume) argues through the lens of Latin American Indigenous women. In an explanation of rematriation within curriculum studies, Tuck (2011) explains it as the concernment of the distribution of power, knowledge, place, and the dismantling of settler colonialism.To be clear, rematriation is essential for decolonized and sovereign futurities. Black feminist agrarian ideologies—as a pluralist praxis—births Black liberated communities through “dialectical co-resistance” (Grande, 2018) with Indigenous peoples, their lands, and demands for sovereignty. It completely refashions the conditions and standards that have constructed relationships produced for us and in which we sometimes remain complicit to survive within the violent expansions of European colonialism. Imperatively, it helps to reimagine life beyond the settler state (Grande, 2018), honoring the ongoing building toward abolitionist and decolonial futures. In the midst of massive ecocide and genocide, “we can choose to be mothers, nurturing and transforming a new space for a new people in a new time” (Reagon, 1986, p. 89). How we choose to do this is never as simple as is posited, advertised, and hoped by any measures.To rematriate means to seek out and honor the motherlode in a settler-colonial state that exploited Black and Indigenous labors on Indigenously stolen land to build the US empire.

Theoretical and empirical implications “On the way” to decolonizing the Black agrarian feminist ideology Settler colonialism, as a structure and process, has always included gender-based violence (Deer, 2015; Simpson, 2009). Dotson (2018, p. 1) offered an understanding of Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is “on the way” to decolonial projects in ways that position the “personal as (not only) political,” but structural and global as well.This phenomenological approach to womxns’ liberation, where we defne and construct our own reality (King, 1988), is an experiential identity-laden process. Honoring the multiple jeopardies and consciousnesses of gendered land ownership while condemning Indigenous land dispossession within the settler colony of the USA and its foundational ethic of land ownership is complexly necessary.As Hall (2009, p. 20) stated, the “historical and contemporary folk demand for ‘40 acres and a mule’ as minimal reparations” is a legitimate plea that still effaces the question from where the 40 acres originate. Black and Indigenous feminisms have dialogically probed this question,3 and, still, we must continue to do so because unraveling well-being from property dislodges the colonial relational logic of settler-native-slave. 416

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By way of the Black feminism of Audre Lorde, questioning our complicitness in the oppressive systems that we resist and (un)consciously buy into is crucial to the Black liberation theories and practices on, with, through, and beyond land. She stated, the true focus of revolutionary change is more than the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor, which is planted deep within us and knows only the oppressors’ tactics or relationships (Lorde, 2012).As Dotson (2018, pp. 3, 7) insisted,“there is no innocence in settler colonial USA” and claiming our “relationship to the twilight of settler colonial formations and maintenance” are decolonial politics that is inherently agrarian in origin given the primary tool of domination and dispossession in the settler-colonial project: the land.As part of this process, she illuminated the Black agrarian ethic through her insistence that, within Black feminist identity politics, we attend to our “originating stories” on settler colonized land, which inevitably begins with forced enslavement. Dotson (2018) situated her Black feminist identity politics, as a descendant of enslaved peoples, to continually refocus the settler-colonial triad of settler-native-slave with the hopes of breaking it within the decolonial projects in the US. Refusing to be “just American,” the settler preoccupied desire, (Dotson, 2018) in the agrarian discourse rematriates land back to indigeneity. In essence, gendered analysis on agrarianism is best articulated within the understanding that the exploitation of land, people, and resources is the indispensable stratagem in the settlercolonial project, and Black feminist agrarian ideologies interrogate that through an axiological orientation of land, identity, lived experience, memory, and ancestry coalescing into one. Black agrarianism as a liberation praxis of rebuilding on, through, and with the land has to confront the indigeneity of the land. And, Black feminist agrarian ideologies articulated, here, as a cyclical composite of identity, lived experience, memory, and ancestry inevitably acknowledges and dismisses claims of historical and present innocence as the necessary step in coalition-building across various ways of knowing, being, and living in the world. To further avoid contributing or remaining complicit in Indigenous erasures, the inquiries “on the way” to decolonizing Black agrarian feminist ideologies could delve philosophically and empirically deeper into AfroIndigenous solidarity processes that speak to authentic intersectional coalition-building, the socioeconomic and sociopolitical possibilities of building decolonized communities on Turtle Island, and the roles Indigenous and Black womxn play in bringing these to fruition.

Third world feminisms More visibly understood and documented within the “Third world” context, the fables (for some) and facts (for others) of Black womxn being the “mule of the world” (hooks, 1993) in conjunction with other women of color holds within Black agrarian contexts. In “Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory and Practicing Solidarity,” Mohanty (2003, p. 7) defned solidarity as “the mutuality, accountability and recognition of common interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities.” In accordance, “Third world” theories highlight the hierarchal and cultural economic relationships between the “frst” and “Third” world based on the colonized, neocolonized, or decolonized countries economically and politically deformed in the colonial process (Mohanty et al., 1991).Third world feminism is responsive to the problems womxn face within their national contexts and challenges Western feminist political concerns (Narayan, 1997). Critically, the Third world feminist lens leverages the knowledge and experiences of those who literally produce the majority of the world’s food: womxn (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], n.d.). Mohanty (2003) centers global capitalism as the epicenter of resistance in “anticapitalist feminist solidarity,” in which common interests, historical location, and social identity of womxn workers coalesce. Disproportionate gendered labor 417

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prompts further interrogation of Black feminist agrarian ideologies that lie within the global scaling of womxn’s agrarian work while resisting temptations of anti-Blackness that can co-opt well-intentioned cultural alliance building.The dialectical integrity across difference essentially speaks to the sustainable relationship building within the “cartographies of struggle” (Mohanty, 2003), where womxns’ simultaneous oppressions become globally grafted on to one another. Drawing from a Black feminist agrarian ideology, our political identities, lived experiences, and ancestral memories that inform our knowledge production, while collectively unique, are not a static or exclusive facet to any singular reality.The political transportation of these pedagogical tools across time, space, and place is validly understood within transnational feminist and multi-diasporic connections. For example, women as uncoincidental vanguards of defending seed freedom and sovereignty (Shiva, 2015) and seedkeeping across colonially crafted borders is an act of political warfare (Tyler and Fraser, 2016). In ways that “feminism without borders” (Mohanty, 2003) attends to the very borders it is learning to transcend, womxn have been doing this with seeds for centuries, notably African womxn who placed seeds in their hair before boarding the transatlantic enslavement ships (Carney and Rosomoff, 2009). Seedkeeping and sharing, as one example, represent the prevailing of grassroots pedagogies led by womxn to survive and transform not only their realities but others of whom they choose to be in solidarity.

Final offering Circling back, if “the negro question in the United States is agrarian in origin” (Haywood, 1948, p. 11), then the racialized gender question is the womb of the agrarian origin.The hallmark of Black agrarian ethics, like many agrarian cultures from various walks of life, is resisting on and through the land as the vehicle to liberation. Black feminist agrarian ideologies situate Black agrarianism as a rematriation fortifed with intersectional knowing of soil, soul, and solidarity. With Black and Indigenous futurities in mind, rematriation—as a pluralist praxis—reimagines the life beyond settler logics where articles like this can forgo land ownership as a metric for liberated well-being. Rematriation, within this context, upholds Indigenous sovereignty of lands, in tandem with Black self-determining life where all beings, not womxn exclusively, work toward abolitionist and decolonial futures. Black feminist agrarian ideologies, in solidarity with other feminism frames named here, have, implicitly and explicitly, counteracted the defcit and demoted lenses of agrarian pathways and enact cultural continuance through grassroots organizing, mobilizing, educating, and building upon some of our most valuable artillery in the spiritual warfare of ecocide and genocide: political identities, lived experiences, and ancestral memories.These components are crystalized as the dialogue of gender and Black agrarianism uplifts what is not usually seen when conceptualized separately. Merging with multiple feminist epistemologies—Third world and decolonial feminisms—can only serve to strengthen our liberatory praxis. Moving toward Black feminist agrarian ideologies primes all of us—not just womxn—for the rematriation back to the wombs of the world where we can more readily engage in dialectical coalition-building and renewing cultural kinships with the land and her stewards.

Notes 1 “Womxn,” rather than “women” is a political choice that literarily challenges the Western JudeoChristian assumption of “men” serving as the foundation of “women.” Language matters! 2 Although the Census of Agriculture remains a fawed tool in comprehensively accounting for people of color’s roles and activities in agriculture, I hesitantly use this data to visually refect the topic at hand with the hopes of providing a partial truth to the broader problem.

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Rematriating to the wombs of the World 3 See note number 15 in Hall (2009). “A productive discussion of these issues occurred at the colloquium.” “Feminist Perspectives on African American and Native American Reparations,” March 19–20, 2004 at the University of Michigan,Ann Arbor.

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33 FARMING, GENDER, AND MENTAL HEALTH Lia Bryant

Introduction The topic of gender and mental health in farming largely remains an analysis of male farmer suicides and “masculinities in crises.”This focus is prompted by the disproportionately high rates of male farmer suicides that have occurred across geographical spaces and cultures including France,Australia, Japan, Brazil, India, Korea, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (Tiesman et al., 2015; Arnautovska et al., 2014; Behere and Bhise, 2009; Bossard et al., 2013; Stark et al., 2006; Sturgeon and Morrisettee, 2010). The disciplines of health and medical sciences have been at the forefront in identifying risk factors for farmer suicide, and an increasing corpus of knowledge from sociology, social geography, and suicidology has focused on identifying why farmer suicide is occurring. These knowledges will be examined as the production of knowledge on farmer suicide has had profound impacts on “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1998) about suicide that are inherently gendered and this, in turn, shapes the state apparatus that writes mental health policy and the targeting of services to specifc populations in farming communities. The international literature on farming men and minimal literature on farming women and mental health spans several decades and is mostly located in health disciplines. Health studies have quantifed women and men’s experiences of mental ill-health in relation to farm variables like property size, income, debt, marital status, isolation, and loneliness and use depression scales to identify and measure the percentage of the population with depressive symptoms (e.g., Berkowitz and Perkins, 1984; Simkin et al., 1998; Stallones et al., 1995; Melberg, 2003). In a similar vein, there are studies that ask farming women and men to self-evaluate their mental health status and the “hazards” that impact on well-being (e.g., Carruth and Logan, 2002). Within this extensive body of work, mental health remains unproblematized, and as such, it is helpful to turn to the sociology of mental health and feminist scholarship to interrogate how mental health is conceptualized. The concept of mental health has often taken form and been normalized in opposition to mental ill-health—that is, given meaning in the context of assumptions about mental illness (Bartlett, 2000). As Bondi and Burman (2001, p. 7) argue, “Thus, what is considered ‘normal’ or typical or acceptable ‘mental health’ remains unspecifed and shrouded in mystery and assumption.” The term “health” locates “mental health” within medical and “psy” discourses 421

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of pathology, whereby the etiology of mental health is derived from individualized attributes. Additionally, “mental” draws attention to the cognitive and the binary constructions of the mind/body that also “spawns a number of dualisms [including] reason/emotion” (Williams, 2000, p. 561).Williams (2000, p. 561) aptly states: The reason, madness, mental disorder triumvirate, I suggest, has in large part “coopted” these debates, wittingly or otherwise in ways that: (i) reinforce traditional views of emotions as somehow “unreasonable” or “unintelligible” from a dominant (i.e. instrumentally rational) viewpoint, and (ii) defect attention away from the importance of emotions to the “mental” health and “rationality” of the individual agent alongside the “rational” functioning of society as a whole. While emotions are part of the embodied experience of illness, recovery, well-being, and indeed “lifeworlds,” emotions and mental health have also been essentialized in relation to women’s bodies as containers for uncontained unwieldy emotions. There is a long-established history of feminist writing articulating how mental health has been synonymous with the feminine subject and used to oppress and render women’s protesting bodies in the private and public spheres as docile through incarceration, chemical, and talking therapies (e.g., Scott and Payne, 1984; Millett, 1972). This chapter is attentive to how conceptualizations of mental health are implicated in constituting gendered understandings of mental ill-health in farming.The sections below will focus on the gendering of suicide and gendered subjectivities in farming, making a critical departure from the concept of mental health, which contains historical connotations of madness, stigma, and gendered histories. Instead, this chapter focuses on embodied distress (also see Brandth’s chapter in this volume). Distress is a useful concept to understand “mental health” in farming as following Price and Evans (2009), it “opens up a critical space in which to think about the subjective experience of farmers as shaped by discourse and one that offers deliberate ambiguity in order to explore dimensions of human emotional suffering” (Bryant and Garnham, 2014, p. 2). Embodiment provides a lens in which to understand bodies as “Fluid biosocial bodies” emplaced in farming and, therefore,“invite[s] deeper understanding of the material body’s role in the unfolding of social, political … ecological” (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2016, p. 581) and cultural practices, contexts, and conditions that shape gendered well-being (Bryant and Garnham, 2013). Fluid biosocial bodies convey mental health as lived in relation to place, as gendered, and intersectional opening up the materiality of diverse lives and histories, bringing into view the diversity of men and women who operate family farms and the bodily well-being of farmworkers. The biosocial body also enables a critical examination of power at multiple scales taking into account the mobile bodies of farmworkers, gendered ascriptions of working bodies, of bodies that have died by suicide, and those that experience emotional, psychic, and physical pain.

Farmers and the gendering of suicide Offcial defnitions, laws, and scientifc knowledge about suicide shape the gendering of suicide in farming. State defnitions of suicide in countries where farmer suicide is acknowledged as high demonstrate the global connectivity of knowledge production about what suicide is and the political and social context that situates suicide as “explicitly individual and a deliberate choice and act” of the self (Jaworski, 2010, p. 47). 422

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Defning suicide, gendering suicide The World Health Organization (2014, p. 11) defnes suicide as “the act of deliberately killing oneself ” and “suicide attempt” refers to “any non-fatal suicide behaviour and intentional selfinficted poison, injury or self harm which may or may not have a fatal intent or outcome.” In Australia, suicide is defned as “death resulted from a deliberate act of the deceased with the intent of ending his or her own life (intentional self harm)” (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2011, para 1); in the United States, suicide is defned as “death caused by self-directed injurious behaviour with intent to die as a result of the behaviour” (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d., para 1); in India, suicide is an “unnatural death, the intent to die originated within the person, there is reason for the person to end his or her life” (Ranjan et. al, 2014, p. 4). Common across these cultural contexts is the categorization of suicide statistics informed by medicalized knowledge and enumerative practices of states that publish national suicide mortality data (Bryant and Garnham, 2017, p. 26). Data is collected from coronial reports, and these suicide statistics are used to compare suicide rates by country, occupation, spatial location, gender, and other social locations. Farmers, and male farmers, in particular, have been identifed through international data sets as being “suicide prone” (Tiesman et al., 2015; see also Bryant and Garnham, 2017). For example, in France, the rate of suicide among farmers is between 20% and 30% higher than the population rate for men (Bossard et al., 2013). In Australia, Hogan et al. (2012, p. 119) state that the suicide rate of non-indigenous men in rural areas is 25% to 40% higher than men living in urban areas and proportionally 48% higher for male farmers. India is said to hold the highest rate of male farmer suicide, with more than 100,000 farmer deaths over the past ten years (Münster, 2012). However, as Bryant and Garnham (2017, p. 27) have argued, Whilst the argument that farmers are disproportionally at risk of suicide is clearly stated across the literature … claims are often based on aging data (e.g. Miller and Burns, 2008; Page and Fragar, 2002) and coronial data which excludes deaths not offcially identifed as suicide. Further, offcial defnitions use the terms “confound intent and outcome,” presupposing that the intent of self-harm is an attempt at death and suicide an intended death (Canetto and Lester, 1998, p. 166). Not all people who die by suicide do so with the intent of killing themselves (Canetto and Cleary, 2012). Offcial statistics on suicide rates shape knowledge production on the gendering of farmer suicide as “suicide statistics incorporate gendered assumption about what counts as suicide, ignoring higher rates of attempted suicide (as opposed to death by suicide) and self-harm among women” (Jordan and Chandler, 2018, p. 1). Women fgure more predominantly in self-harm statistics and have higher rates of hospital admission for intentional self-harm (Fullagar and O’Brien, 2018). It is diffcult to fnd statistics on methods of self-harm and the numbers of rural or farming women who have self-harmed. In Australia, for example, no such data is collated; however, it is clear that self-harm increases with the increasing remoteness from urban centers, women are at a higher risk than men and younger women are most at risk (Harrison and Henley, 2014). Theoretical studies of suicide have recognized gender as a discursive, embodied, and performative process by which people and practices become understood as “masculine” or “feminine” (Canetto and Cleary, 2012; Canetto and Lester, 1998). In relation to suicide, the gendering of suicide draws attention to how men and women take up meanings of gender and suicide, 423

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which condition, whether and how one suicides (Jaworski, 2010). Jordan and Chandler (2018, p. 4) argue that: The “gender paradox” in suicide and self harm has been identifed for at least 20 years, and has been considered in some attempts to understand higher rates of men’s suicide compared to women. Hypotheses include: men use more fatal methods when selfharming, increasing chances of death, while women are more likely to live; men being less likely to seek help for mental health problems. Hence, farmer suicide is gendered as pre-existing constructions of gender and suicide shape what suicide is and how it is made visible through separating suicide from self-harm (Jaworski, 2016).The consequences of gendering suicide in farming draw academic attention and suicideprevention strategies away from women.While the suicides of farming men require signifcant interventions, as Fullager and O’Brien (2018, p. 2) argue,“rural women’s experiences often pale into insignifcance with the attention given to youth and men’s suicide.” Farming women infrequently appear in Australian or international studies of distress and suicide, and when they do, they are accounted for as being less likely than men to suicide or as suffering poor mental health but remaining strong to support their husbands (e.g., Alston, 2009; Alston, 2011; Berry, 2009). While, as noted previously in this chapter, greater numbers of men in farming suicide, the fact that between 2006 and 2010, approximately 1,000 deaths of rural women (including but not limited to farming women) offcially designated as suicide remains unexamined (ABS, 2012). Men and women who are employed as farmworkers or who contract their labor to farm businesses also constitute an important part of the farming occupational landscape. However, there is sporadic literature on farmworkers, suicide, distress, and gender despite, for example, in Australia, farm laborers account for 46.9% of farmer suicides, of which 87% are men (Arnautovska et al., 2013).The majority of the literature on farmworkers emanates from India and the USA with fewer studies from Brazil, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and Europe (Klingelschmidt et al., 2018). In order to understand how suicide is gendered for farmworkers, more research is required to critically analyze the social and cultural context in reporting and experiences of suicide and self-harm.

Beyond individualization Individualization emerges in relation to suicide as “psy” discourses establish linear connections between the economy, fnancial stress, mental illness, and suicide (Bryant and Garnham, 2014). As Bryant and Garnham (2014, p. 304) argue, “identifying the risk factors for farmer suicide constitutes a ‘surface’ to understand suicide but one that is fragmented, reductive and circumscribed.” For Price and Evans (2009, p. 4),“psy” disciplines “tend to focus on the dramatic outcomes of processes of stress in the form of suicide rather than the dynamics of social processes themselves which form the underlying causes of stress.” Moving beyond the surface involves an examination of the social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics in which subjectivities in farming are enmeshed to understand the global phenomenon of farmer distress and suicide (Bryant and Garnham, 2017). Common to farming contexts across geo-political borders within and across the Global North and South is the role of transnational corporations in setting prices for inputs (e.g. seed and fertilizers), establishing commodity prices and conditions of contracts, shaping global markets, and impacting on climatic variability, which all, in turn, reduce farmer autonomy and increase uncertainty and viability. In a series of papers, Bryant and Garnham (2013; 2014; 2017; 2018) demonstrated in relation to Australian male farmer suicide 424

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that a complex constellation of contexts and conditions shape the possibility for farmer suicide. These constellations are embedded in glocal political and moral economies in which farmer subjectivities are enmeshed.This position substantiates an understanding of place as produced, inter-related, and scaled (Lefebvre, 1991) but also of place and subjectivity as relational and becoming. In relation to gender and farming, this means that Australian male farmers’ bodies, while inscribed with hegemonic masculinities that render their bodies as strong, stoic, and resilient and pitted against nature (Alston, 2011; Bryant and Garnham, 2015), are also changing. Men are speaking out about their emotions and feelings of shame as farming in the neoliberal economy becomes harder to practice (Bryant and Garnham, 2018). In relation to US farmers, Ramirez-Ferrero’s (2005) work brought to light the importance of cultural constructions of pride and self-worth in shaping gendered farming identities and distress and suicide. This excerpt from Bryant and Garnham (2014, p. 77) explicates feelings of shame and the relationality of socio-natures and subjectivity: you talk to your neighbor and knowing how hard you used to work they say “you still working hard?” and you sort of look at the ground and “yeah mate, doing everything you know”.They look over your block and look at your weeds everywhere and think, you can see what they’re thinking. Turning one’s face to the ground is an embodied act of shame, the instinctive feeling that comes from feelings associated with loss of pride and possibly, also blame.The reference to “weeds” and shame speak to the embodied ways of being and feeling in relation to human and more-thanhuman materiality and what this signifes in cultural contexts. While discourses of “masculinity in crises” in farming abound, masculinity in farming is not monolithic or a singular construct. How do masculinities shift and change and come into being in the context of multiple and shifting gender relations? More research is required to uncover how farming masculinities intersect with age, ethnicities, race, sexuality, ability in shaping distress, and possibilities for male farmer suicide.The limited intersectional research available tends to enumerate rather than critically analyze age by farmer suicide noting older farmers (average age of farmers in Global North is 55) and younger rural men (18–25) are more highly represented in suicide statistics (e.g., Page et al., 2007).

Farming and distressed biosocial bodies Distressed bodies in farming are often identifed as male bodies, particularly white male farm owners/operators (Price and Evans, 2009).The body of literature on women and mental health lacks critical scholarship and primarily derives from health disciplines and accounts for gender by delineating stressors experienced by men and women. For the most part, this body of work uses essentialist understanding to defne stress by gender, suggesting that women are more likely to experience distress due to concern for the family and men tend to experience distress in relation to the operating of the farm (Melberg, 2003; Carruth and Logan, 2002; Berkowitz and Perkins, 1984). Male farmer distress has also been largely understood within the contexts and conditions that give rise to suicide (Bryant and Garnham, 2013).To reiterate, these contexts include delimited autonomy within political and moral economies, fnancial threat to continuance in farming, exiting farming, aging and retirement restricting the ability to work on the land or intergenerational confict reducing active engagement on the property, loneliness, and isolation (Perceval et al., 2018). Studies of male farmer mental health in Australia and New Zealand are drawing 425

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attention to the breakdown of marital and intimate relationships infuencing distress for male farmers (Firth et al., 2007; Kunde et al., 2017; Perceval et al., 2018). However, this limited body of work simply reports marriage breakdown as a risk factor and positive relationships as a protective factor for reducing men’s distress. The complexity of relationship breakdown and its relation to distress and gender remain unexamined. As intimate relationships in farming are largely heterosexual, any examination of distress requires an exploration of heteronormativity and gender relations and gender hierarchies. Bryant and Pini (2011, p. 80) and Hoffelmeyer in this volume, have drawn attention to the everyday tensions in heterosexual farming relationships providing examples of the “inequities associated with the subject position daughter-in-law,” the physical proximity to extended family members, and the “generational surveillance and regulation of women’s heterosexual futures,” particularly in relation to procreation for farm succession (Bryant and Pini, 2011, p. 88). Further, Bryant (2013) interrogates spatiality and intimacy on Australian family farms, arguing that the gendering of space through pastoral power, a male protective overview of women’s activities that is said to be in women’s best interests, results in diminishing women’s opportunities for spatial freedom and work. Daily affective tension between men and women and isolation is overlaid with limited spatial movement in the home and on the farm when confronted with affective atmospheres of or actualized masculine violence. Since the 1980s, there has been widespread international literature that draws attention to intimate partner violence on farms and the threat to women’s lives, especially as male farmers have access to frearms (e.g., Lainer and O Maume, 2009; Breiding et al., 2009;Websdale, 1995). Recent work by Little (2016) refers to domestic violence as “intimate terrorism.” Fear, violence, inequality, and control are experienced as distress and, in some instances trauma, and remain absent in conceptualizations of farmer mental health, which rely on traditional medicalized notions of “mental” “ill” health. Moreover, as the subject position of the male farmer is understood to be inherently heterosexual, knowledge on queer farm operators, workers, and intimate partners remains sparse in relation to suicide, relationships, and violence and “mental ill-health” (Leslie et al., 2019).

Farming men and women: biosocial bodies, distress and more-than-human encounters More-than-human encounters in social and cultural geography have found their way through the concept of relationality between humans, environments, animals, insects, and land/waterscapes into a small disparate body of literature across health and social sciences on farmer distress. These accounts acknowledge the threat to farm viability due to natural and other disasters as distressing but also examine psychological and emotional health in relation to charred land, bare earth during drought, and deaths of animals (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Speldewinde et al., 2009). The question of “ecological grief ” remains an underdeveloped inquiry, according to Cunsolo and Ellis (2018, p. 275). The health literature tends to either pathologize distress in relation to disasters or climate change or refers to a more general sense of distress, “solastalgia,” which is associated with prolonged climate devastation that causes a “loss of, or inability to derive solace … connected to the negatively perceived state of one’s home environment” (Albrecht et al., 2007, p. 2). However, there is little exploration of how women and men in farming experience living alongside devasted landscapes or sick animals; and what is missing are individual stories. In the midst of this sparse literature, the study by Olff et al. (2005) stands out as an example of relationality with human and more-than-human environments and medically identifed farmer distress.The researchers obtained some qualitative data from farmers to explore the psychologi426

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cal impact of a foot and mouth epidemic in 2001 on Dutch dairy farms, which resulted in the culling of 270,000 farm animals (Olff et al., 2005). Olff et al. (2005, p. 16) interviewed by survey 661 male and female farmers and their qualitative data showed that: the sight of the slaughter of healthy animals has become engraved in the memory of farmers … [with] fashbacks and nightmares affect[ing] the farmers in a way seen in people who developed post-traumatic stress disorder following a severe crime or accident. The relationality of distress and well-being in relation to human and more-than-human in farming appears to be an obvious direction for academic inquiry. Research is required to undertake deeper qualitative analysis to understand the gendering of space and distress in relation to socio-natures. There is long-standing literature that examines how human and more-than-human encounters may also give rise to therapeutic encounters (Gesler, 1992; Conradson, 2005). In relation to farming and mental health, Fullagar and O’Brien (2018) explore the spatiality of farming and rural women’s experience of recovery from depression through both human and morethan-human encounters in place.They provide multiple examples of women creating care and being renewed through spending time working with the soil or horseback riding and through relations with professionals and friends. However, as Conradson (2005) cautions, individuals experience more-than-human encounters in a multitude of ways, not always positive, but also, that there are discursive constructions associated with certain types of encounters and places like gardens and green open spaces as promoting well-being. In relation to distressed farming bodies, open spaces can invoke fear or increase anxiety about work that needs to be done. Feelings of depersonalization, anxiety, and depression, for example, can color space so that they are too vibrant or can strip the landscape of color. Commonly, depression has been likened to fog, and as Keats (1895, p. 133) has said,“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” If “I would scarcely kick to come to the top,” suggests that interiority, lethargy, indifference, or ambivalence has the power to shape a multitude of responses and interactions with landscapes that are not necessarily therapeutic.

Farmworkers The international literature on farmworkers focuses on employment in agriculture, forestry, and fsheries and is predominantly quantitative, pointing to some common risk factors across geographical places and specifcally, access to lethal weapons like frearms and pesticides, the potential for lowered “inhibitions” to death as a consequence of slaughtering animals, unstable employment, and rural decline (Klingelschmidt et al., 2018). In India, it has been noted that debt is a risk factor (Bharti, 2011).This body of work lacks critical analysis of gender, and there is a bellowing absence of the voices of farmworkers and contractors about suicide attempts or ideation.The sections below discuss distress and suicide in relation to indigenous and also migrant men and women who undertake farm work.

Indigenous farmworkers and farming The question of inequality and “psychic trauma” is most visible in relation to indigenous peoples and the dehumanizing colonization of their countries.There is an exceptionally limited body of knowledge on indigenous farmworkers and distress. In Australia, for example, indigenous peoples 427

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are the most at risk of suicide; however, little is known about indigenous farmers and farmworkers in relation to suicide and biosocial bodily well-being. Australian imaginaries of farming remain white and inextricably connected with industrialized agriculture. Indigenous peoples have a long history of contributions to pastoralism with indigenous men working on cattle and sheep stations and indigenous women carrying out domestic labor for farm families (Brock, 1995).These racialized and gendered contributions to Australian farming have been erased (Gill and Paterson, 2007, p. 133; Ramzan et al., 2009). While there is an acknowledgment of indigenous ways of knowing in relation to care for land and waterways, this knowledge remains on the margins with limited or ineffectual consultations with diverse groups of indigenous people about use and care of water/landscapes (Bryant, 2016; Poirer and Schartmueller, 2012). Colonization is well recognized as a violence that is trans-generational, and we have yet to “grasp the material relationship between the body and rural place … [to] pay attention to the ways that bodily well-being unfolds” (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2016, p. 583) for diverse groups of indigenous women and men in farming.

Migrant farmworkers The concept of biosocial bodies that enables a relational analysis of bodies and multiscalar geopolitics and practices of farm labor migration brings into focus the relations between farming and well-being rather than the siloed notion of mental health.There is an important body of literature that explores the biosocial bodies of farmworkers providing either a seasonal labor force or settlement of immigrants into rural areas with the receiving countries placed in the Global North (e.g., Australia, Canada, Netherlands, USA) and sending countries in the Global South (Litcher, 2012; Hugo, 2008; Preibisch and Grez; 2010).This literature brings to light the working conditions of farmworkers and, in particular, poor pay and vulnerability to homelessness as housing is a condition of employment. Furthermore, in some countries, farmworkers have inadequate living conditions. For example, in Australia, workers are provided with caravans that sustain the heat and shared toilet and washing facilities for large groups of people (McAvreavey, 2017; Farnsworth, 2013). Despite the variation in types of work and farmworkers’ socioeconomic locations, the majority of workers are poorly rewarded and undertake dangerous work (Fredrik Rye and Andrzejewska, 2010). Consequently, the potential for trauma is entrenched in gendered and racial inequalities and by virtue of which bodies are deemed appropriate in place for specifc types of work (Fredrik Rye and Andrzejewska, 2010). Australia, for example, runs a seasonal worker program employing workers from the South Pacifc islands or Timor Leste for up to six months, mostly for seasonal work in horticultural industries.This government scheme was initiated to fll labor shortages (Department of Jobs and Small Business, 2019). Most seasonal workers are men, with women being less than 14% of the seasonal labor force (Chattier, 2019). Moreover, as families are not permitted to accompany seasonal workers, women remain caring for families in home countries. Chattier (2019, p. 49) argues that “focusing solely on the economic development discourse of seasonal labour programmes is problematic because it fails to take into … consideration the rights of migrants to live with their families.” Recently there has been a parliamentary inquiry into the working conditions of seasonal workers showing abuse by farming enterprises by providing poor living conditions, extremely long hours of work, poor pay, and deaths.This has been referred to as “Modern Slavery in Australia” (Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, 2017). These conditions, as Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy (2016, p. 583) argue, create “psychic and physical trauma of social inequality” and affective trauma. 428

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Preibisch and Grez (2010) provide examples of Mexican women working in Canada who, by migrating for farm work, are often seen as transgressing gendered norms by their host and home countries. Moreover, inequalities are experienced and felt at the scale of the body as female farmworkers have reported sexual assault and harassment (Preibisch, 2005) and women have been constructed as the “non-white other” in binaries of passive/deviant, domesticated/sexualized with agency, resistance, and multiplicity negated (Bryant and Pini, 2011, p. 53). Furthermore, recent research has also brought to light experiences of heterosexism, transphobia, and isolation experienced by queer farmworkers (Leslie et al., 2019). There is a need for further research to explore diverse localities and diverse migrant experiences of working on farms. Are inequalities spread unevenly across intersectional categories? What are some of the success stories of farmworkers and farmers working collaboratively to support farmworker well-being in rural areas? In what ways are success stories gendered?

Contingencies of belonging: situating farming, biosocial bodies, and gender in rural communities Experiences of distress for women and men in farming occupations cannot be isolated from how mental health is constituted in rural communities, and the allocation or lack of mental health services available to rural people. Physical distance from neighbors may impact on the ability to seek or give social support, and as distances increase from urban centers, inadequate access to and/or provision of social and health services is likely. Furthermore, distance from neighbors and self-employment for farmers may mean that distressed bodies are out of sight. Increasing academic attention in geographies of rural mental health and suicidology has been attendant to the diversity of rural communities as complex constellations of political, experiential, and social-cultural relations that shape mental health.These disciplinary felds have brought community social relations into focus as a critical confguration in mental health policies and programs.Within critical suicidology, community becomes a site for including local knowledge into theorizing distress and suicide (White et al., 2016, p. 4) and provides the basis for targeted suicide-prevention programs (Allen et al., 2009; Hirsch and Cukrowicz, 2014; Mohatt et al., 2014). Geographies of rural mental health draw attention to the complexity of “community” and “care” and the paradox of social proximity and physical distance shaping social relationships and support and use of existing services (Parr, 2008; Parr and Philo, 2003). Social proximity can mean that personal well-being, history, and biographies, as well as relationships and business endeavors, are more intimately known among those living in the community.While social proximity may result in heightened awareness of distress and therefore support, it may also result in gossip, disfavor, and acts of exclusion, which can create the conditions for the possibility of distress (Parr and Philo, 2003). In relation to farming men, in particular, Bryant and Garnham (2018) found that ordinary ethics circulate in rural communities with moral discourses shaping evaluative judgments about male farmers as “the good farmer” or “failed farmers.” Male farmers who exit farming by accepting government fnancial packages were constructed as lacking in skill, as poor fnancial managers, and uncaring rural citizens who were exacerbating the economic and social decline of the community. These circulating discourses provide the possibility for heightening distress for farmers during times of fnancial vulnerability. Moreover, ordinary ethics are somewhat opaque as they occur in “feeting encounters and mundane conversations” (Sayer, 2011, p. 1), combined with stigmatizing discourses attached to mental and emotional distress and internalization of these discourses may lead to feelings of shame and loss of self-worth (Bryant and 429

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Garnham, 2018). Women who farm are also subject to moral discourses shaping distress and gendered bodies, however, there is limited knowledge about the discourses that circulate in relation to women’s mental health.An exception is a recent article by Fullagar and O’Brien (2018) where rural and farm women recount gendered discourses associated with the self that, to some degree, mirror those associated with farm men based on stoicism and resilience, causing women to hide their distress. In relation to migrant and indigenous farmworkers, the contingencies of belonging to “rural community” in the literature are shown as often tenuous with whiteness privileged in the rural (e.g., Cloke, 2006).As argued earlier, there is little research that delves into multiple and diverse life stories of gender, indigeneity, and ethnicities in relation to farmworkers and their contingencies of belonging in rural areas and impacts on distress and wellness.

Conclusion Male farmer suicide is a deeply concerning and persistent complex problem in many societies that requires extensive and multiple interventions at multiscalar levels. For example, at the local level, resources and supports are required to assist with well-being but also to challenge neoliberal labels of “the successful” farmer that render some farmers as “unsuccessful,” instituting blame and its emotional corollary shame when farms become unviable. Equally, it is imperative to address global policies and practices around climate justice and the practices of transnational corporations that create shifting fnancial and moral conditions of farming in relation to inputs and contracts, which threaten farm viability, increase uncertainty, and place farmers at risk of heightened distress. Distress in farming, however, is not limited to men who own or manage farms and is exacerbated by agricultural policies and rural communities through discursive constructions of who is considered a legitimate farmer and farmworker. Material practices like access to credit and farmer organizations and the ordinary ethics that circulate in rural communities shape contingencies of belonging for women, indigenous people, people of color, queer farmers, and farmworkers. Future research focused on farming, gender, and mental health will need to challenge the monolithic notion of “farmer” and incorporate intersectional and relational analyses to develop knowledge about gender and distress. Moreover, conceptually “mental health” or “mental ill-health” is a limiting heuristic device to understand distress in farming as it individualizes distress.The terms “distressed” and “biosocial bodies” draws attention to the social contexts and conditions that give rise to the possibility of distress and suicide and centralizes the practice and emotional engagement of farming with humans and the more-than-human. It reveals that farming bodies are emplaced in localities, histories, policies, economies, and the politics of farming, which is also a politics of gender, race, sexualities, and class that shape what is identifed as distress, who is identifed as distressed, and the types of interventions to reduce distress. In order to interrogate farming bodies as refexive and as relationally occurring in place, it requires a movement away from traditional methods of inquiry like surveys and interviews to enable diverse farmers to voice their nuanced, shifting psycho-social and emotional interior lives. As Rodriguez Castro (2018, p. 293) argues to “complicate the feld as a relational space then it is important to embrace the relationship between emotional and thinking processes, as complementary aspects of research.” Hence, for example, arts-based methods like photography or writing fction or memories have been shown to give rise to emotional and sensory understandings of the self and allow for experiences and knowledge to emerge (Chambon and Irving, 1999; Denzin, 2000) and open up the possibilities for 430

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unearthing depth, variation, and difference in the context of distressed biosocial bodies and intersectional lives in farming.

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EPILOGUE Gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems under coronavirus global pandemic

This book is going to production in April 2020, just at the time when the coronavirus global pandemic is hitting the world in full force.We know this virus impacts everyone in the world in terms of health, economics, and social relations. We also know that although everyone is impacted, suffering is not equitable as the most vulnerable people are and will continue to experience the most distress. Due to the timing of the book, we have not been able to conduct any thorough studies or scholarship on gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems under the coronavirus. However, we know the authors in this volume are at the forefront of thinking about these issues, so with only a couple of days before going to publication, the authors agreed to write a paragraph on how they think the coronavirus is impacting or might impact gender and agriculture on the topic they wrote about for their chapter, in particular regions, or other issues that they see as critical.While the authors are responding specifcally to coronavirus, many of the issues also play out in the food system with other disasters such as climate change, droughts, hurricanes, and fres, so the ideas have wider implications. Also, many of the authors have included action steps that might be implemented to promote gender equity in responses to the virus as well as mitigate the worst impacts. Consequently, unlike other chapters that are highly researched, this epilogue is a collective thought piece with our initial thoughts that might form the basis of future research.

COVID-19 implications vis-à-vis gender dynamics in value chains Rhiannon Pyburn and Froukje Kruijssen COVID-19 and response measures have major economic implications, including for global value chains, and these implications are gendered. For example, women often comprise a signifcant part of the workforce in the informal economy and in the value chain nodes expected to be most affected (post-farm) by lockdowns like retail, restaurants, food processing, and selling in markets, etc. Women tend to work with often insecure and fexible contracts in global agrifood value chains; as these chains are slowing down or coming to a standstill, women working in them will be affected. Large inequalities between women and men persist in terms of salaries, job security, social protection, unemployment benefts, and health insurance.With their insecure contracts, women are more vulnerable to losing their jobs, incomes, and economic 435

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independence. Further, women are responsible for a disproportionate share of the additional unpaid care work within households and communities. They are at a higher risk of genderbased violence, which is exacerbated by families being confned to their homes and the added economic stresses and insecurities.

What does COVID-19 mean for gender work related to food and nutrition security? Julie Newton As COVID-19 spreads and the knock-on effects on global food systems unfold, lessons learned from past pandemics on gender impacts reinforce the centrality of sound gender analysis for both preparedness and response efforts to the crisis (Wenham et al., 2020). In my chapter about nutrition and food systems, the recommendations remain relevant and timely. First, we need to continue reinforcing gender disaggregation of data around the impact of the virus on food and nutrition security outcomes through an intersectional lens. Reporting on food and nutrition security outcomes across multiple dimensions, including gender, age, race and other intersecting social markers, is vital to understand how policies can address the food and nutrition inequity gaps that will be widened through the virus (Cleveland, 2020).We already know from past pandemics that women are at greater risk of malnutrition and that this will be an important aspect to monitor. Second, understanding how COVID-19 affects gender dynamics and tradeoffs in food systems will be key in terms of who is likely to be more at risk and tailoring appropriate policy responses. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) notes concern around how smallscale farmers, who include many women, will be able to access markets to sell products and purchase key inputs for agriculture (FAO, 2020). The knock-on effect on food prices and limited purchasing power is a concern. Past health crises have shown a spike in hunger and malnutrition linked to restrictions in movement and labor shortages following pandemics. Again, lessons from Ebola and Zika virus show that women’s predominant role as caregivers means their unpaid work will increase dramatically with negative consequences for women as well as their families. Women will face the stress of balancing agricultural work to care for those who are sick. Others who are subject to quarantine or self-isolation could suffer increased bouts of domestic violence.The impact on the production and processing of food for consumption and sale will also be greatly impacted by closing borders, lockdowns, and social distancing, which may threaten consumers’ food supply. As noted in the statement of feminists and women’s rights organizations from the Global South and marginalized communities in the Global North, policymakers need to look closely at the implications of the availability of nutritious food, particularly countries dependent on food imports. Women will be disproportionally affected as they do not have easy access to city centers and markets, and they have limited purchasing power. Gender norms about who eats the most nutritious food are also likely to continue excluding women.

References Cleveland, N. (2020).“An intersectional approach to a pandemic, gender data, disaggregation and covid-19.” https://data2x.org/an-intersectional-approach-to-a-pandemic-gender-data-disaggregation-and -covid-19/ FAO. Updates on Novel Coronavirus (COVID 19) http://www.fao.org/2019-ncov/q-and-a/impact-o n-food-and-agriculture/en/

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Epilogue “Statement of feminists and women rights organizations from the global south and marginalized communities in the Global North.” http://feministallianceforrights.org/blog/2020/03/20/action-call-for-a -feminist-covid-19-policy/ Useful blogs: https://data2x.org/resource-center/gender-and-data-resources-related-to-covid-19/ Wenham, et al. (2020).“COVID 19:The gendered impacts of the outbreak.” https://www.thelancet.com/ journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30526-2/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email

Women workers in the food system Patricia Allen They say the novel coronavirus does not discriminate; this is not true. Rather, the pandemic is increasing inequality everywhere, including in the US, a country near the top in wealth inequality.As the pandemic rages on, inequalities that map race, class, and gender are increasingly evident, including among workers. For many women workers, the consequences have been devastating, whether they are still at work or confned to their dwellings. On the front lines in medicine, most of the people who are hyper-exposed to the pathogen are mostly women nurses and care workers. Food workers in the felds, in the grocery store, in preparing restaurant takeout are laboring without adequate protective gear and often without health insurance or access to healthcare, particularly if they are undocumented. Many others have lost their jobs and are now doing even more of the “women’s work” of childcare, schooling, shopping, and meal preparation. For women fortunate enough to be able to earn income working from home, they now must juggle their paid labor with increased domestic responsibilities in the same space. Stress, anxiety, and depression are skyrocketing, and more women than men are reporting negative effects on their mental health. We know that the most dangerous place a woman can be is in her home, and the confnement required to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus is spiking reports of domestic violence. And, as always, the number of reported cases is likely a small subset of the actual cases.Yet even as they are suffering, women are leading the way. One of the hypotheses about why women are dying in lower numbers than men is that women are more likely to have taken protective measures against the coronavirus. Countries with women leaders are said to be doing a much better job than men in handling the response to the pandemic and taking effective action.There is no question that there will never be a return to normal after the novel coronavirus pandemic. If this pandemic results in anything good at all, may it be that we enter a new global order that recognizes and rewards women’s leadership and energizes us to rectify inequality on a world scale.

The gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on farmworkers Kathleen Sexsmith The COVID-19 pandemic poses major health and economic risks to migrant and immigrant farmworkers and their families residing in the US. In the frst place, migrant farmworkers face signifcant exposure to the novel coronavirus because they often live in overcrowded housing conditions, work in close quarters, and have insuffcient access to sanitation facilities on the job Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM, 2020). According to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), food workers are not being provided with access to personal protective equipment to reduce the likelihood of contracting the virus on the job (Beach, 2020). Not only are farmworkers at greater risk of contracting the virus than many segments of the

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population, they are also at great risk of becoming seriously ill once they have it due to the legal and economic obstacles they face in gaining access to healthcare as a low-wage and often undocumented population (at least 60% of the US farmworker population is thought to be undocumented [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]). These risks and impacts are differentiated by gender.Women make up 20% of the US farmworker population (CDM, 2020), and their minority status among male colleagues and supervisors renders them vulnerable to high rates of gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual harassment (Morales Waugh, 2010). Quarantine or self-isolation for women living in crowded housing with mostly men will, therefore, exacerbate their already high levels of vulnerability to sexual violence. Moreover, women’s dependence on male supervisors for access to paid work, personal protective equipment, and sometimes also basic needs like food can exacerbate power hierarchies and vulnerabilities in the simplest acts required to survive and protect themselves from the virus. At the same time, men face a unique set of risks and vulnerabilities vis-à-vis the virus. As the majority of the farm labor force, they are present at a higher rate than women on the farms where their exposure to the virus is high due to the insuffcient availability of protective gear. Moreover, the nascent research on the virus’s impacts on the body does suggest that men are more likely than women to become critically ill or die, likely due to a combination of behavioral patterns and weaker immune responses (Greenfeld Boyce, 2020).

References Beach, C. (2020, April 15). “Food worker advocates say lack of PPE endangering nation’s food supply.” Accessed April 18, 2020: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/04/food-worker-advocates-saylack-of-ppe-endangering-nations-food-supply/ Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM). (2020). Ripe for reform: abuses of agricultural workers in the H-2A visa program. Baltimore, Mexico City, and Oaxaca: Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. Greenfeld Boyce, N. (April 10, 2020).“The new coronavirus appears to take a greater toll on men than on women.” NPR. Accessed April 18, 2020: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/10/83 1883664/the-new-coronavirus-appears-to-take-a-greater-toll-on-men-than-on-women Southern Poverty Law Center. (2010). Injustice on our plates: immigrant women in the U.S. food industry. Montgomery,AL: Southern Poverty Law Center. Waugh, I. (2010). “Examining the sexual harassment experiences of Mexican immigrant farmworking women.” Violence Against Women 16 (3):237–261.

Gender and livestock and COVID-19 Elizabeth Ransom While globalization has seen an increase in the movement of biological entities (humans, animals, and microbes), pandemics like COVID-19 pre-date the modern global economy. For example, rinderpest appeared in Egypt in 1887 and swept across the African continent, killing millions of cattle and ungulates (mammals with hooves), contributing to massive social upheaval. More recently, in 2009, the swine fu emerged in North America and spread across the world, infecting both humans and pigs. History tells us that disease control measures affect diverse populations of people and communities inequitably (Chambers and Gillespie, 2000). Many scholars have documented how livestock disease control in Southern Africa primarily benefted white colonists to the detriment of indigenous populations during the colonial era (Beinart, 2008; Brown, 2008; Spinage, 2003). In more recent times, there is concern that pandemics will disproportionately impact people and/or animals in Africa, where public health 438

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and veterinary infrastructure is weak.To date, the gendered impact of pandemics on livestock agriculture is understudied. However, given the growing evidence of gender inequalities in livestock production systems, in combination with other structured inequalities like social class, age, and ethnicity, we can assume diseases like COVID-19 exacerbates pre-existing inequalities, including gender inequalities in livestock production systems, but this an area in need of further research.

References Beinart, W. (2008). The rise of conservation in South Africa: settlers, livestock, and the environment 1770–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, K. (2008). “From Ubombo to Mkhuzi: disease, colonial science, and the control of Nagana (Livestock Trypanosomosis) in Zululand, South Africa, c. 1894–1953.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 63:285–322. Chambers, D., and Gillespie, R. (2000).“Locality in the history of science: colonial science, technoscience, and indigenous knowledge.” Osiris 15:221–40. Spinage, C. (2003). Cattle plague: a history. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publisher.

Climate change and COVID-19 Margaret Alston My chapter draws on Mary Robinson’s words that “we must imagine the world we want to see, the world we want to hurry toward.” These are never more apt than now as we ponder a world ravaged by COVID-19. There is little doubt that this virus, which has affected every corner of the globe, has challenged us to reconsider how we have run our lives and squandered our resources.The unimaginable toll of illness and death, the closure of borders, grounding of planes, loss of businesses, services, and jobs, and the lockdown of whole populations have caused a rethink of the many taken-for-granted structures that have shaped our uneven lives. How people work, learn, and live will be re-evaluated.The period of intense refection that will follow this crisis will open up signifcant space for an intense study of the structures and processes that have oppressed people (some much more than others) and shaped inequalities in the context of climate change. My strong premise is that people will be more attuned to the needs of people, planet, and peace and that this will override the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. Within this context, the space for attention to gender inequalities in the context of a changing climate will be evident. However, as with any situation where women have struggled for equality, this will inevitably require strong lobbying and fearless mobilization.

COVID-19 and gender in the UK Hannah Budge and Sally Shortall There are many gendered implications of COVID-19 for rural areas. Many of the frontline occupations affected by the virus impact on women. Teachers, carers, and nurses are predominantly women. Research has consistently shown that women are predominantly responsible for childcare, and homeschooling is likely to have gender implications within the family.Women rural entrepreneurs and women who have undertaken farm diversifcation initiatives have often done so to ft around their other childcare and caring responsibilities (Shortall et al., 2017).1 Maintaining these businesses while undertaking additional COVID-19 caring roles will be a challenge.There 439

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may be gendered effects that will mean differential access to household assets that can be used to buffer the effects of coronavirus on frms. During the UK’s foot and mouth disease outbreak in the early 2000s, male-owned frms were far more likely to draw on the unpaid labor of household members and female-owned businesses were less likely to use household savings to ease cashfow or to take on additional loans or debts to limit risks to family and households. In terms of the impact on agriculture, we are using a case study of a family of women farming in Shetland through COVID-19.The mother works full-time off the farm but is now working from home, two daughters farm full-time (although one also works part-time off the farm) following the death of their father in a farming accident, and one daughter is doing Ph.D. research on the position of women in agriculture but is home to help with lambing.We asked for their observations about their lived experience.These are their observations. They are experiencing a return to the traditional farming lifestyle, with everyone being home for mealtimes, whereas before COVID-19, one daughter would have eaten a solitary steak pie beforehand.There is a return to traditional gender roles where, in a heterosexual household, the woman would manage the household, ready for those coming in from doing the outside work, and it is possible this is being repeated across the country in other farming households, with partners being at home.This could create an arguable increase in productivity with quality food being ready on the table, instead of a quick snack in between jobs. It could also combat some of the issues that arise around mental health and isolation faced by farmers. We are now realizing that more people can work from home than currently do, and this can have very positive environmental benefts.When restrictions are lifted, this may encourage people who usually work away from the farm to instead work more from home so that they are available to help on the farm.Although this could be seen as a positive in many respects, this could further undermine (usually women’s) off-farm work, which is essential to the economic viability of many farm businesses, and place greater expectations on their ability to undertake farming jobs, which would still be unrecorded. From a social perspective, having your family around can be very benefcial rather than being isolated on your own, both mentally and in terms of the ability to do jobs that require multiple people. However, this perspective would refect a traditional household, those with crofts/farms who are single or whose family lives elsewhere will potentially suffer, as there is no clear guidance on whether neighbors or people out of your household will be able to help as they usually would during this busy period of lambing, calving, and sowing crops. This could have serious implications for businesses that usually rely on labor from outside their household. From an island perspective, there have been disruptions to supply chains, markets, and labor sources with the reduction of boats and travel restrictions.This is counterbalanced by an increase in community in that more people are looking at local markets, with the increase in demand for local meat boxes, for example. To conclude, there are potentially positive aspects of COVID-19 in terms of inclusion, family togetherness, and community solidarity.There may also be challenges if traditional gender roles are restrictive, going forward, and where social distancing keeps people living alone isolated. Only the future can tell.

Coronavirus in Norway Berit Brandth In Norway, the pandemic situation has instigated a call for greater self-suffciency in food production. Considering the pandemic’s possible effects on global trade, the import of grain feed 440

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based on soya has constituted a particular concern. It is said to be essential for the production of meat, but it is criticized for contributing to deforestation of the rainforest and thus for being unsustainable. In the wake of the virus, the public debate has pointed at the signifcance of food production. Farmers have “no bullshit jobs,” but are needed, and their jobs are critical for society.The situation may thus increase farmers’ overall worth and standing. The growing interest in local food culture over the last years may expand further, especially if people become more anxious and more interested in what is close and authentic. The COVID-19 pandemic struck when the spring season was about to start, and a lot of workers are needed to plow, sow, plant, and for lambing. Agricultural workers, commonly from Eastern Europe, met restrictions in terms of closed borders—and quarantines if they managed to enter the country. Many farmers were not able to pay wages during a quarantine period of 14 days.The agricultural authorities encouraged Norwegian youth and unemployed people to sign up for work on farms. One obstacle was the low wages normally paid to agricultural workers. Consequently, the government offered to compensate by paying the difference between the higher unemployment rate and the low agricultural wage rate. Farming is important, but this has not been refected in its wage level. COVID-19 is a disease that may also affect farmers’ bodies. In my chapter on embodied work in farming, I stressed the idealized character of masculine embodiment among farmers where technologies of care are not in accordance with the expected management of farmers’ bodies. The advice to avoid infection, such as staying home and maintaining social distance, may not be hard to achieve as farmers work at home, often in solitude. They do not have to meet people traveling to work on busses or trains. Other advice, such as self-isolation if feeling sick, extreme cleanness, and using protective equipment, are important to avoid catching the virus. Farm substitutes are often hard to fnd and may be even harder to fnd during the pandemic. Smaller farms, many of whom are run by women, reported having diffculties selling their products, but at the same time, demand is great, and this seems to have led to innovations when it comes to reaching customers. As a substitute for farmers’ markets, ordering on the internet with pick-up at special places or deliveries to people’s doorsteps seems to have become more common. Farm tourism, however, is an activity that is facing crises due to a severe lack of customers.This is a business in which many women are involved.

And in neighboring Sweden Seema Arora-Jonnson In Sweden, the discussion on food security that had been increasingly on the agenda for the last few years has now assumed importance also in mainstream media discussions due to the coronavirus. Organic and locally farmed products have gained ground in Sweden. Communitysupported agriculture that had been around for a while has become even more popular so that some farmers have spoken about being overwhelmed by the demand. Increasingly, what are known as REKO rings, are becoming popular all over the country where local produce is sold at farmers’ markets without middlemen. People choose their produce, pay through Facebook, and collect their produce at a designated place and day, often once every other week. Many of these REKO rings have continued through the pandemic as long as they are able to make sure not too many people gather in one place at the same time together. 441

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Although women have always worked on farms, the number of women who own farms in Sweden has increased in recent years.Women are also the ones who run farms for tourism or recuperation and are likely to be affected by the pandemic. However, the farms might also appeal to people to come and live in the countryside since most other travel is going to be limited.The Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) has been reaching out through the media asking people to come and work on farms since the migrant labor has been unable to come to Sweden.The vice-chairperson for LRF, Åsa Odell, has said that she hopes that the lack of self-suffciency and its implications might fnally mobilize politicians who have been uninterested in agriculture so far. The lasting effects of the pandemic for women and men on farms are diffcult to say. On the one hand, the increased appreciation of local produce, as well as the increased focus on needing to have some sort of food security for the country bodes well for farming. On the other hand, the pressure is extreme, given the current food supply chains and structures that tend to favor large-scale agriculture. The Ministry of Agriculture has also let it be known that this year, the budget for the rural program and funding will be cut. As I write in our chapter, the #metoo movement within the green sectors had raised quite a storm. LRF remains male-dominated, but the question of discrimination and harassment of women has been taken on to some extent. Since gender relations have been on the agenda in recent years, one could hope that any restructuring of the agricultural sector would keep the question of gender in mind and work to address past inequalities without creating new ones. I think it is important for all of us working in these felds to keep the questions on the agenda so we can create better and more just paths for the future.

Gender, migration, agriculture, and COVID-19 Emily Southard and Leif Jensen Pandemics affect migration greatly as people may fee infected areas but also be compelled to stay put. Social distancing and restrictions on mobility through stay-at-home orders or “lockdowns” are considered best practice for limiting the spread of COVID-19. Migration processes and migrant laborers have been and will be severely affected by these realities. In terms of migrant workers active when lockdowns were put in place, we have seen that some governments provided inadequate time and resources to allow migrant workers to return to their home communities to isolate (Beech, 2020; Frayer and Pathak, 2020; Hubbard, 2020). In India, very short notice was provided when mass transportation was shut down, leading to a mass exodus of migrant workers walking from cities to their rural homes (Frayer and Pathak, 2020). While the resulting road accidents, malnutrition, and exhaustion affected men and women alike (Ellis-Petersen and Chaurasia, 2020), the response of migrant workers to lockdowns is apt to be gendered. Women migrant workers feel more guilt and pressure related to parenting than their men counterparts due to the socialization of women as caregivers (Paciulan and Preibisch, 2013). Amidst a pandemic, it is likely that women will feel a stronger obligation to return to their homes, despite the risks. Migrant workers in agriculture who decide not to return to home communities face their own diffculties in keeping proper social distance, whether in the feld or group quarters, putting them and their families at higher risk (Radel et al., 2010; Xinghui and Jaipragas, 2020). Additionally, due to healthcare costs or worries about deportation if one seeks care, migrant workers may avoid needed screening or treatment (Kluge et al., 2020). Given apparent gender differences in mortality from COVID-19, male migrant workers are particularly vulnerable (Wenham et al., 2020). So too are inmates in migrant detention facilities (Keller 442

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and Wagner, 2020), which could dissuade future labor migration and forestall its economic benefts to families. Meanwhile, women “left-behind” by men migrant workers have previously reported stress, vulnerability, and fear at their perceived lack of ability to respond in emergency situations without their partners.This real emergency situation thus is likely to lead to psychological trauma for both workers and those left-behind. In short, migration patterns have been and will be interrupted, and households relying on migrant work as a livelihood diversifcation strategy will inevitably suffer. Although we do not yet know the gendered implications of the disruption of labor migration patterns, we predict that constrained livelihood strategies will worsen household tensions and violence and increase the gender asset gap, as has been seen in previous crises and natural disasters (Enarson et al., 2007). As migrating for work is a strategy women can use to gain their own access to resources and potentially improve their agency, this impediment on migration restricts this pathway to greater fnancial independence. Moreover, migrant farmworkers of all genders face wage cuts even though their work is clearly “essential.” As men make up the bulk of migrant farmworkers in the US (National Center for Farmworker Health Inc., 2012), these effects are gendered to particularly harm men and may disrupt their breadwinning status.While the overall effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the intersection of gender, agriculture, and migration have yet to play out, we have identifed numerous major concerns that have long-term implications both for migrant workers and the global food system, which relies heavily on the labor of migrants.

Note 1 Shortall, S., Sutherland, L.A., McKee, A., Hopkins, J. 2017. Women in farming and the agriculture sector. Edinburgh, UK: Scottish Government.

References Beech, H. (2020). “Coronavirus fnds fuel in a world of migrants.” The New York Times. https://www.nyt imes.com/2020/04/10/world/asia/coronavirus-migrants.html Ellis-Petersen, H., and Chaurasia, M. (2020).“India racked by greatest exodus since partition due to coronavirus.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/india-wracked-by-greates t-exodus-since-partition-due-to-coronavirus Enarson, E., Fothergill, A., and Peek, L. (2007). “Gender and disaster: foundations and directions.” In Rodriguez, H., Quarantelli, E.L., and Dynes, R.R. (Eds.), Handbook of disaster research. New York: Springer, pp. 130–146. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-32353-4_8 Frayer, L., and Pathak, S. (2020). “Coronavirus lockdown sends migrant workers on a long and risky trip home.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/31/822642382/coronaviruslockdown-sends-migrant-workers-on-a-long-and-risky-trip-home Hubbard, B. (2020). “Coronavirus fears terrify and impoverish migrants in the Persian Gulf.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/world/middleeast/persian-gulf-migrants-coronavirus.html Keller,A.S., and Wagner, B.D. (2020).“Covid-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act.” The Lancet: Public Health. 5: e245–246. doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30081-5 Kluge, H.H.P., Jakab, Z., Bartovic, J., D’Anna,V., and Severoni, S. (2020). “Refugee and migrant health in the COVID-19 response.” The Lancet 395: 1237–1239. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30791-1 National Center for Farmworker Health Inc. (2012). Farmworker health factsheet. http://www.ncfh.org/ uploads/3/8/6/8/38685499/fs-migrant_demographics.pdf Paciulan, M., and Preibisch, K. (2013).“Navigating the productive/reproductive split: Latin American transnational mothers and fathers in Canada’s temporary migration programs.” Transnational Social Review 3 (2):173–192. doi:10.1080/21931674.2013.10820763 Radel, C., Schmook, B., and McCandless, S. (2010). “Environment, transnational labor migration, and gender: case studies from southern Yucatan Mexico and Vermont, USA.” Population and Environment 32:177–197. doi:10.1007/s11111-010-0124-y

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Epilogue Seipel, B. (2020). “Trump admin looks to cut farmworker pay to help industry during pandemic: report.” The Hill. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/492320-trump-admin-looks-to-cut-farmworker-payto-help-industry-during-pandemic Wenham, C., Smith, J., and Morgan, R. (2020). “Covid-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak.” The Lancet 395 (10227):846–848. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30526-2 Xinghui, K., and Jaipragas, B. (2020).“Coronavirus: Singapore migrant worker dormitories still a hot topic as COVID-19 cases rise.” This Week in Asia. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/ article/3079675/coronavirus-singapore-migrant-worker-dormitories-still

COVID-19, gender, and urban agriculture Hannah Whitley The rapidly developing COVID-19 pandemic is already causing signifcant impacts across the entirety of the US food and agriculture system, and urban farmers and growers have not been left unaffected.As described in my chapter on gender and urban agriculture, my reading of contemporary academic literature on the subject points to seven challenges related to women’s urban agriculture operation.Among these seven challenges, lack of access to/and tenure on land, limited access to and control over capital and resources, restricted knowledge of technical and business skills, and isolation are realities that I expect to be of particular concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finding viable production plots, locating scarce fnancial and natural resources, navigating institutional bureaucracy, accessing culturally appropriate mentors, and connecting with fellow women urban agriculturalists were diffcult endeavors before the novel coronavirus.Access to resources and community was facilitated through systems of neighborhood, philanthropic, non-governmental, governmental, university, and faith community support. Now, in the wake of slashed budgets, an uncertain economic future, mandatory social distancing, and shelter-in-place measures, urban farmers and growers are faced with both short- and long-term disruptions to their farm, garden, and food systems. Support organizations must continue to offer their education and networking programs in digital form, as access to already scarce resources and human connections are needed during this uncertain time. Policymakers, philanthropic organizations, and grassroots movements must continue to develop and advocate for policy solutions to include urban agriculture in any pandemic-related emergency legislative packages. Small and mid-sized farms should be included in any broader stimulus or farm relief package, and direct fnancial assistance should be provided to critical supply chain businesses, food system workers, and food establishments. From an administrative standpoint, institutions should offer fexibility for existing farm and food systems programs.This fexibility might include the extension of current and future grant deadlines, a widened sign-up window for farm and food programs, and temporary waiving of application fees and cooperative and cost-share requirements. As always, consumers should continue to shop from local farmers and growers directly wherever they can, whether this is through local markets, online, through community-supported agriculture shares, or via local food businesses that source local farm and garden products.

How is coronavirus impacting agriculture and gender in India? Surabhi Mittal COVID-19 is affecting everyone globally in their lives, lifestyles, and livelihoods. This effect can be seen across all sections of society, though some sections are exposed to greater risk. 444

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Emergencies, crises, shocks, and even pandemics affect men and women differently. Among the vulnerable groups are small-scale farmers, daily wage earners, and laborers who are now disrupted from their livelihood options because of the lockdown. Discussions and guidelines around the coronavirus often tend to be gender-blind and ignore how it affects women differently, both socially and economically.

Food insecurity Though food is the most essential and demanded commodity in this emergency, the issue of hunger and food security has become an important issue for all governments to handle. All parameters of the defnition of food security, food availability, accessibility, and utilization/ adequacy, are being challenged during this time of the pandemic.This is turning out to be the biggest challenge that is being faced by the rural and migratory population.

Disrupted market systems The rural agricultural section of society is facing issues in accessing markets for inputs for their crops or livestock and veterinary services. Crops that are ready to be harvested, like wheat in northern India, are being delayed in access to machines or markets.The poor are struggling with the issue of limited purchasing power and reduced funds. Restricted movement of transportation systems and lack of labor has extensively affected the supply chain of perishables like fruit and vegetables, leading to an increase in the magnitude of food loss and waste.The poultry sector has already suffered extensively due to fear among consumers about eating chicken products.

Income effects Loss of employment and livelihood leads to adopting coping strategies like the sale of productive assets and livestock and reduced consumption of diversifed food. Migratory populations and people below the poverty line are experiencing massive income loss and food insecurity, and thus are consuming fewer meals. The pandemic has accelerated economic stress among low-income households, which further impacts their immunity level and ability to fght the coronavirus if infected. It was also found in studies that among households, it is mostly the female members who reduce the quantity of their food intake initially and thus suffer from higher levels of malnutrition.

Gendered health effects Data across the globe has shown that older people are at a higher risk of the disease than the younger population, although the data also shows that among men and women, the number of men infected is more than women. Discussions link it to the likelihood of men being out for work and thus exposing themselves to the virus more than women. Although, as per the NSS employment report, there are more women health workers than men.Thus, their exposure to risk is equally high in this sector.

Social effects Besides being economically vulnerable and having poor access to resources compared to men, culturally and socially, women fnd themselves more exploited in the situation of COVID-19 445

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lockdown. Higher incidences of domestic violence have been reported globally, and this is likely to be higher in poorer and distressed sections of society. Employed women, along with taking care of their offcial responsibilities in the era of “working from home” also have additional and higher burdens of household chores because of a lack of additional domestic support. Even in the case of layoffs and wage cuts, it is expected that the policies will be biased against women.

Initiatives taken in India to meet the challenges India has taken several initiatives through its social protection program to help the poor and vulnerable sections of society cope with the risk. 1) Directives were given to district offcials to ensure that harvesting of crops could take place following social distancing protocols. Procurement of grain as per the earlier established process with procurement done directly at the farm gate. 2) Under the fnancial inclusion program, several social welfare programs ensured the opening of bank accounts for farmers, laborers, women, and people living under the poverty line. These accounts are being used to transfer funds from social assistance programs. 3) Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) who also work as banking correspondents contributed to the distribution of credits from their accounts to benefciaries. 4) Women’s SHGs and Anganwadi workers (community health workers) worked together at the grassroots level to prepare cooked food through the community kitchens to ensure that homeless, unemployed people do not suffer due to starvation. 5) State governments and non-government organizations worked together to distribute free rations to low-income families for the next couple of months. 6) Women’s SHGs were involved in producing masks, sanitizers, and protective equipment for health workers.

COVID-19 and gender in rural Nepal and India Stephanie Leder In any pandemic or major socioeconomic crisis, the health and food security of marginalized populations will be affected the most. Social and economic inequalities will become visible because household and community responses rely on their access to fnancial and material resources, as well as their critical consciousness and social networks. In rural India and Nepal, the most marginalized people have limited access to healthcare facilities, quick fnancial support, and relief measures. For households where every day needs for food are covered through daily wage labor or remittances from out-migrated family members, a pandemic, such as COVID-19, can have not only direct consequences for health, but also for short- and long-term food security because of the immediate cut in income, restricted mobility, and access to well-supplied food stores. Three residents1 in the western Nepal villages of Selinge, Dadeldhura, and Tiltali Doti stated that in their villages, most maintain their physical distance based on the news they received via the national TV channels and radio, which advised them to stay at home.When migrants return home, the communities hope they will follow quarantine rules so that the virus will not be able to spread. One of our interviewees reported that their village stopped the social practice of “parma,” a collective system of reciprocal labor exchange in which women especially help each other seeding, irrigating, or harvesting each other’s felds.This, as well the limited access to 446

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markets currently, could severely affect the whole cropping season and thus their food security. In addition, the supply of soaps, vegetables, or cell phone recharge cards from the market is limited, and they are advised not to leave their remote village, which is perceived as considerably safe. Instead, a truck delivers food regularly to them, which, however, is limited to those who can afford to buy food, especially if their regular remittances may not arrive anymore. Many households have migrant family members abroad who are not able to return due to the Nepal government’s response to reduce the spread of COVID-19 through a nationwide lockdown and the closing of the country’s borders to avoid the infux of returning, mostly male, migrants from India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere. On the one hand, this has limited, or at least delayed, the infux of returning migrants and the possibility of the virus entering the villages. On the other hand, migrants have run out of cash abroad with severe consequences on their daily survival.There is also the consequence of unchecked border crossings via the porous Indian border, with migrants returning to their families and possibly unknowingly spreading the virus. In villages where multi-generational households are common, the spread of a virus across communities can be expected to be much quicker than in regions where nuclear families or single households are the norm.

Coronavirus in Latin America Diana Lope-Alzina In Latin America, as in other regions of the world, small agriculture is often associated with marginality and scarcity of resources.This long neglected family agriculture is relevant and may prove to be indeed a resilient system as suddenly and unexpectedly, in 2020, we face a worldwide pandemic: COVID-19. The lockdown and closing of borders that have taken place at all levels (international, regional, and even local) have direct implications, for instance, on the access, distribution, and supply of goods. Regarding agricultural products, on the one hand, there may be a shortage of food supply, from seeds to fruit, vegetables, livestock, and poultry. On the other hand, agricultural producers at medium and large scales may have diffculties in transportation and reaching their customers. In this context, small-scale and low-input land-use systems, such as home gardens, enhance their multiple functions for subsistence and petty cash generation. In Mesoamerica, for example, women’s labor and knowledge tend to predominate in this system as they are principle managers and often the decision-maker about what to grow, where to grow it, and the crops’ end uses.As home gardens are known for food production all year round (Hoogerbrugge and Fresco, 1993; Eyzaguirre and Linares, 2004; Nair and Kumar, 2006), they are a means for continuous access to food amidst a pandemic, while also being a potential means to increase petty cash (e.g., by selling agricultural goods) or to access other goods using non-monetary exchange, as in the case of swap and barter. To illustrate this case, lockdown measures in Mérida, the capital city of the state of Yucatan, have limited access to food stores and the availability of certain products.The surrounding villages play a key role in the provision of all kinds of groceries, especially fresh food (vegetables, meat, poultry). This covers three different dynamics: food production for self-consumption, cash generation potential (directly generated and managed by women), and contributing to building exchange networks (in some communities in the Yucatan, communities are returning to the old practiced “swap and barter.” Elsewhere in Mexico, amidst the pandemic, local producers are organizing and promoting their locally produced goods. (Photo credits: Rubén Ortíz Flores): 447

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Note 1 Three short phone interviews were conducted on April 15th, 2020, by Yuvika Adhikari, research assistant at the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) in Kathmandu, Nepal, and in the FORMAS project “Revitalizing community-managed irrigation systems in the context of out-migration in Nepal” led by Stephanie Leder at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

References Eyzaguirre, P.B., and O.F. Linares (eds.). (2004). Home gardens and agrobiodiversity. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. 296 pp. Hoogerbrugge, I., and O.L. Fresco. 1993. Homegarden systems: agricultural characteristics and challenges, sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods. Gatekeeper Series No. 39. London: United Nations Environment Programme and International Institute for Environment and Development. 23 pp. Nair, P.K.R., and B.M. Kumar. (2006). “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in B.M. Kumar and P.K.R. Nair (eds.), Tropical homegardens: a time-tested example of sustainable agroforestry. Dordrecht (Netherlands): Springer.

Fisheries, aquaculture, and COVID-19 Molly Ahern,Afrina Choudhury, and Surendran Rajaratnam The pandemic has affected the fsheries and aquaculture sector, like any other sector, in developing countries. Although it affects both women and men, it affects (different groups of) women and men differently, and the consequences for women can be far worse than those for men, exacerbating existing gender gaps (see United Nations Population Fund UNFPA, 2020). Small-scale businesses are hit hard (International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], 2020), and it is women who are mostly engaged in livelihood endeavors at such a scale. With very slim proft margins, small-scale businesses are not able to bear the brunt of reduced business operations or disruptions in their supply chain (IFAD, 2020).Women and men fshers, fsh farmers, processors, and traders also face constrained movement leading to them spending more time at home. The temporary halt has seen migrant workers traveling back home to observe movement control or lockdown. Loss of livelihoods and income and uncertainty in the time it will take to return to normalcy can increase household tensions, placing women and children at risk of domestic violence.Women are often responsible for food and nutrition security for their household and face the extra burden of maintaining the necessary household cleanliness.They also face additional risks and burdens by taking up the stereotypical role of caregivers of older people and children home from school. Even if the state were to ensure that the food supply chains are not disrupted, and the livelihoods of people relying on fsheries and aquaculture were secured through the government’s intervention, these may not reach and beneft everyone equally.Women often hold lower, informal positions in the processing and marketing/retail side of the sector; thus, they are more exposed and vulnerable to the virus and its impact in terms of loss of jobs, unavailability of seasonal jobs, and lower compensation. A new report by the International Organisation for Women in the Seafood Industry (WSI) has confrmed that women in the seafood industry are being “hit harder” than men by the virus, and this will further perpetuate gender inequalities in the seafood industry (see The Fish Site, 2020).They emphasized that since women work in low quality, invisible jobs in the industry, they will most probably have to continue work under unsafe conditions.Although the World Health Organization (2020) emphasizes the importance for food industries to put in place personal hygiene measures and training on hygiene principles, 448

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provide personal protective equipment, and introduce physical distancing and stringent hygiene and sanitation measures for its workers, many companies will not be able to adhere to these. Furthermore, men who usually take up higher-level management jobs will probably have the chance to work from home, thus widening the inequalities (The Fish Site, 2020). The canceling of seafood trade by developed countries and business closures by suppliers (FAO, 2020) will impact nations like Bangladesh, where women occupy more than 70% of contract work positions in shrimp export processing factories (Choudhury et al., 2017). With limited job opportunities, to begin with, positions in contract work are often lifelines for these women (Choudhury et al., 2017). There is a need to ensure that the response to COVID-19 by the state does not reproduce or perpetuate gender inequalities, by ensuring that women’s engagement in both the commercial and small-scale sector is acknowledged, identifed, and supported through government assistance.We need evidence to prove that women and girls are disproportionately vulnerable to this crisis so that COVID-19 response strategies can effectively reach and beneft women and girls (UN Women, 2020). There is an urgent need also to fll the existing data gaps, especially due to the lack of sex-disaggregated, intersectional data in fsheries and aquaculture (see Gee and Bacher, 2017; UN, 2020).This is to ensure that the subsidies and aid, regulatory enforcement relaxations, and support given to fsheries and aquaculture enterprises take into consideration the needs of different social and gender groups within the sector and recognize the invisible roles of women.Additionally, the use of a gender lens and specifc targeting of women through these interventions will ensure that the benefts reach different groups of women and men who are dependent on the sector (UN, 2020). With persisting gender gaps in access to inputs like information and extension services, governments need to take extra precautions to ensure the COVID-19 response is gender-responsive. For instance, since the outbreak began, there has been a rise in demand for preserved or shelf-stable food products such as dried, canned, and cured fsh in some countries, which is benefcial for fsh processors, who are often women. However, there is also a need to ensure that these processors are still able to procure fresh fsh as well as products and materials for fsh processing. Given the movement control and restriction, social distancing, and limited operation hours imposed upon markets to avoid over-crowding, these women processors must be able to protect themselves against infection and, at the same time, be able to sell the processed fsh to traders and/or consumers.They need a safe and enabling environment not only at the market but throughout the fsh supply chain. Leveraging information and communication technologies will ensure that these nutritious fsh products continue to reach consumers (FAO, 2020) and that women are reached and beneft from the food supply chain.

References Choudhury, A., McDougall, C., Rajaratnam, S., and Park, C.M.Y. (2017). Women’s empowerment in aquaculture:Two case studies from Bangladesh. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/Penang, Malaysia: WorldFish. The Fish Site. (2020).“Women set to bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Retrieved from https ://thefshsite.com/articles/women-set-to-bear-the-brunt-of-the-covid-19-pandemic FAO. (2020). “COVID-19: impact on global fsh trade.” Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/in-action/g lobefsh/news-events/details-news/en/c/1268337/ FAO. (2020). “How is COVID-19 affecting the fsheries and aquaculture food systems.” Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ca8637en Gee, J., and Bacher, K. (2017).“Engendering statistics for fsheries and aquaculture.” In Gender in aquaculture and fsheries: engendering security in fsheries and aquaculture. – . Asian Fisheries Science Special Issue 30S (2017): 277-290

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Epilogue International Fund for International Development (IFAD). 2020. “COVID-19.” Retrieved from https:// www.ifad.org/en/covid19 UN Women. (2020).“In focus: gender equality matters in COVID-19 response.” Retrieved from https:// www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/in-focus-gender-equality-in-covid-19-response UN. (2020).“UN Secretary-General’s policy brief: the impact of COVID-19 on women.” Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/04/policy-brief-the-impact-of -covid-19-on-women#view United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA]. (2020). “COVID-19: a gender lens – Protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and promoting gender equality.” Retrieved from https://www.unfpa.or g/sites/default/fles/resource-pdf/COVID-19_A_Gender_Lens_Guidance_Note.pdf The World Health Organization [WHO]. (2020). “COVID-19 and food safety: Guidance for food businesses. Interim guidance.” Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331705/ WHO-2019-nCoV-Food_Safety-2020.1-eng.pdf

COVID-19 and queerness in the agrifood system Michaela Hoffelmeyer COVID-19 raises a host of concerns for marginalized populations, including Native American, migrant, black, and older people, to name only a few. Queer identities, which transcend race, ethnicity, and age, have further implications for vulnerability. Queer populations face existing inequalities in food access, healthcare, and housing (Brown et al., 2016; Jerke, 2010; Rosenkrantz et al., 2016), and COVID-19 will undoubtedly exacerbate these inequalities. Food justice organizations that already work to mitigate food system inequalities will face heightened demand, requiring adaptability. For example, the Okra Project sends Black Trans chefs to the homes of Black Trans people to cook healthy meals.The organization has shifted to food delivery and continued to offer an international grocery fund to meet the needs of the Black Trans community in this uncertain time (theokraproject.com, n.d.). Given the historical exclusion among queer communities from food access and healthcare, are food justice and food sovereignty organizations expanding equity and justice to include queer populations in response to COVID-19? Additionally, heterosexism and cissexism are showing in new ways during this crisis. In Panama, strict gender-based regulations for leaving the home marginalize those outside the gender binary, which prevents certain groups, like transgender people, from engaging in food access work during the crisis (Oppenheim, 2020). In the US, queer-owned farms, which already face barriers to receiving loans (Wypler, 2019), may face additional hurdles to accessing relief money that may be funneled to farms with more eligible heteronuclear structures. This global crisis will profoundly shape food and farming, and attention to queer populations—both as producers and consumers—will shed further light on food justice moving forward. The queer community is deeply and painfully connected to epidemics through the AIDS crisis.Although vastly different, COVID-19 has also been associated with a deadly combination of misinformation, stereotyping, and governmental inaction (Killian, 2020).With the COVID19 crisis, queer communities are again seeking to understand what sexuality, gender, and disease mean for engaging in human and more-than-human relationships. In the 1990s, during the height of the AIDS crisis, some gay men sought refuge away from the city in rural Radical Faerie sanctuaries, “expecting to fnd a quiet place to die” (Soderling, 2016, p. 334). However, for some, these rural queer communities were associated with queer resilience rather than queer death. Historically, the urban is synonymous with queer life, whereas the rural is equated with queer death (Soderling, 2016).These queer geographic imaginaries may shift due to COVID-19 with potential implications for future engagement in foodways. In the context of COVID-19, 450

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we may come to understand how access to land, food production, and community impact queer farmers’ and food workers’ capacity to endure a crisis.

References Brown, T.N.T., Romero, A.P., and Gates, G.J. (2016). “Food insecurity and SNAP participation in the LGBT community.”The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, (July). Available at: http://williams institute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Food-Insecurity-and-SNAP-Participation-in-the-LG BT-Community.pdf Jerke, B.W. (2010).“Queer ruralism.” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 34:259–312. Killian, J. (2020).“COVID-19 reignites dark memories for those who survived the AIDS epidemic.” N.C. Policy Watch. Available at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/04/10/covid-19-reignites-dark-m emories-for-those-who-survived-the-aids-epidemic/ Oppenheim, M. (2020). “Trans woman distributing food in Panama fned for breaching gender-based lockdown.” Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coron avirus-transgender-woman-panama-fne-lockdown-a9461596.html Rosenkrantz, D.E., Black,W.W., Abreu, R.L., Aleshire, M.E., and Fallin-Bennett, K. et al. (2016). “Health and health care of rural sexual and gender minorities: a systematic review.” Stigma and Health 2 (3):229– 243. doi: 10.1037/sah0000055 Soderling, S. (2016). “Queer Rurality and the Materiality of Time.” In Gray, M.L., Johnson, C.R., and Gilley, B.J. (eds.), Queering the countryside: new frontiers in rural queer studies. New York: NYU Press, pp. 333–348. The Okra Project (n.d.).Available at: https://www.theokraproject.com/ Wypler, J. (2019). “Lesbian and queer sustainable farmer networks in the Midwest.” Society and Natural Resources. Routledge 32(8): 1–18. doi: 10.1080/08941920.2019.1584834.

COVID-19, gender, farming, and mental health Lia Bryant In Australia, there was a cartoon circulating whereby a male frefghter passes a baton marked with the word “hero” onto a healthcare worker. This imagery encapsulates some of the sentiments of farmers around COVID-19 but not in the way intended by the cartoon. Conversations I had with farmers suggested women and men in farming are concerned that the devasting bushfres running from June 2019 to January 2020 have been forgotten as we moved from one crisis to another.The Australian bushfres were one of the worst in Australian history.We have yet to understand the depth of trauma experienced by women and men in farming, rural people, and rural children.The scale and ongoing nature of the fre were unforeseen. In most areas, it was horrifc, devasting crops, animals, homes, and farm equipment, and killing and injuring people. Farmers had to shoot animals who were left injured or had diffculty breathing. Lives were lost, livelihoods were lost, including off-farm work opportunities in some areas. In relation to recovery, we have yet to fully recognize and implement appropriate trauma recovery.We have yet to work closely with communities to build mechanisms for support that are gendered and, therefore, tailored to respond specifcally to men’s, women’s, and children’s needs in relation to distress, trauma, and recovery. Some families remain homeless. COVID-19 is yet another disaster occurring rapidly after the bushfres that brought additional fear and socioeconomic and political consequences into the agricultural domain. Farmers have taken to the media reassuring Australia that our food is secure, and others have pointed to what they perceive as economic injustice in relation to water supply (especially during drought), arguing that if water had not been sold to foreign corporate farming, family farmers would have been able to provide some of the foods that are now in short supply, like rice and four. The politics of water, drought, 451

Epilogue

commodity markets, and more, as I have argued in my chapter on gender, farming, and mental health, provide the contexts and conditions that give rise to distress for men and women in farming. I am arguing that in Australia, COVID-19 is an additional factor giving rise to distress, but for women and men who are family farmers, one that cannot be separated from the political and moral economy in which agriculture occurs. For farmworkers, of course, distress is likely to be increased, and lives will be at risk where living conditions are cramped, and their income will be threatened with social distancing measures or through the closure of borders. Further, we do not know the extent of the emotional, psychological, and social distress experienced by indigenous farmers and farmworkers whose health is at greater risk of COVID-19 than that of non-indigenous women and men.

452

INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate fgures. Page numbers in bold indicate tables. A-WEAI 301, 302, 303, 308 absenting the body 388 access: and migrations 399, 402–403; vs. rights 339; see also land access achievement 299 Acker, J. 276 Acosta, M. 243, 245 Adams, J. 363–364 adaptation 138–140 Adebisi,A. 212, 214 affrmative action, importance of 24 Africa: contract farming 119; exploitative labor in 173; FFS 251; fshing/aquaculture 170; global land grab in 114; mobile phone usage 165; see also specifc countries; Sub-Saharan Africa African Women for Agricultural Research for Development (AWARD) program see AWARD program Afrocentric ecowomanist agenda 412 Agarwal, B. 61, 63 agency 299, 300, 304; collective 289; and gender norms 78; importance of 47; and power 35–36; and value chains 34–35 agrarian households, production crises 377 agrichemical exposure 331–332, 370, 372–373; see also pesticide/herbicide exposure agricultural development programs: gender approaches to 254; and nutrition links 87–88 Agricultural Economic Land Ownership Surveys (AELOS) 103–104 agricultural extension 225, 253, 289; best ft framework 231–232; demand-driven private extension 228–229; history of 225–227; Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) 232–234; project method 227–

228; and technology 226–227; training/visit method 227;Vermont Women’s Agricultural Network 28; women’s barriers 229–231, 252, 259; see also farmer feld schools (FFS) agricultural gender studies 383 agricultural labor 153–154, 160–161 Agricultural, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project 90 agricultural nutrition pathways framework 86–87, 90, 97; and nutrition-sensitive programs 90 agricultural organizations see farming organizations; women’s agricultural organizations agricultural production decisions 300 agricultural sciences 69; and gender norms 77 agriculture: feminization of 58, 172–174, 213, 288, 328, 362, 397, 399, 414; impacts on nutrition 88; industrialization of 277 Ahearn, M. 228 Akkad, D. 326 Alemayehu, T. 37 Alianza Nacional de Campesinas 333 alienated labor 48 Alkire-Foster methodology 300–301, 304 Allen, P. 283 Alston, M. 292, 389 Ambler, K. 309 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) 265 Andersen, L. 145 Anderson, E.N. 340 animal-sourced foods: fsh 171; and malnutrition 130; see also meat consumption Annes, A. 390 Annie’s Project 277–278, 283n3

453

Index aquaculture 170, 204; and COVID-19 448–449; feminization of 172–174, 179; gender dynamics of 171–172, 177, 205; industrialization of 175; ownership of 179; small-scale fshers 177, 179; see also fshing Aregu, L. 78–79, 258 Argentina 154 Armstrong, D. 218 Arora, D. 35 Arora-Jonsson, S. 16, 76, 80, 139, 144 Ashby, J. 74 Asher, K. 75 Asia, fshing/aquaculture 170, 177, 205 Asongu, S. 165 Assan, E. 131 Assess and Revise Work Culture strategy 279 assets, lack of access to 1, 47, 57, 118, 156, 176, 202, 215, 225, 231, 252, 257, 302 Associación de Mujeres Intibucanas Renovadas (AMIR) 257 audits, shortcomings of 52 Australia 141, 143, 291–292, 389, 423–428, 451–452 Australian Center for International Agricultural Research 150 Avian Flu 374 AWARD program 18 Bacchi, C. 145 Bachelet, M. 140 Bain, C. 51, 53 Baker, M. 191 Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition 281 Bali COP conference (2007) 200 Bangladesh 254, 309, 371–372; agricultural extension 255;Agricultural, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project 90; aquaculture/fshing 79, 177, 244, 253, 257, 449; climate change impacts 142–143; conservation agriculture conference (2017) 150; information access in 162; value chain studies in 38, 40; WEAI 307–308 Barau, A. 215 Barbercheck, M. 217, 252 Barrett, C.B. 316 Barrientos, S. 38 Bartlett, P. 364–365 Baxter, K. 415–416 Bear, C. 387 Beckley, T.M. 104 behavior-change communication (BCC) programs 89 Behrman, J. 242 Beijing Conference on Women (1995) 15 Bell, K. 415 Bernier, Q. 208 Bernstein, H. 377

Bezner Kerr, R. 62 Bhatta, G.D. 404 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 47 biodiversity, vs. monoculture 150–151 biomass, reliance on 205 biophysical component research 70–72, 73 biophysical system research 70–72, 75 biosocial bodies 422; see also mental health biotechology 186, 188 Black agrarianism 410–411, 418 Black feminism 412 Black feminist agrarian ideologies 410–412, 416–418; and land ownership 412 Black Freedom Movement 413 Black Hawk “Purchase” 280 Blige, S. 375 Bobo, K. 270 Bokemeier, J. 364 BOMA project 146 Bondi, L. 421 Bonneuil, C. 190 Boogaard, B.K. 130 Boserup, E. 1 Boster, J.S. 338 Botswana, urban agriculture 212 boundary conditions: ecological feminism 64; food sovereignty 65 Bourdieu, P. 383–384 Brasier, K. 217, 362, 365–366, 385 Brandth, B. 318, 386, 389–390 Brazil 403 Brexit 141 Brown, O. 162 Browne, P.B. 176 Brumer, A. 403 Bryant, L. 81, 185, 193, 384–385, 387–390, 423–426, 429 built capital 155–157 Bull, J. 388 Burkina Faso 157; marketization example 19; nutrition-sensitive programs in 89; value chain studies in 39 Burman, E. 421 bushfres 451;Australian 389 business opportunities, and value chains 33 Bustamante, D. 330 Byrd, R. 206–207 Byrne, A. 365 Cabrera, N.L. 372 Cambodia 154, 173, 179, 309, 397; fshing/ aquaculture 178; global land grab 115; protests 120 Cameroon, urban agriculture 212 Campling, L. 173 Canvan, Matt 141 capital 152–157; restricted access to 214–215; and sustainable intensifcation 152

454

Index capitalism, and peasant agriculture 127 capture fshing 170, 204, 205; see also aquaculture; fshing caretaker roles 88, 93 Carolan, M.S. 105 Carroll, M. 192 Carter, A. 105–110 Carvajal, E. 331–332 Casey, K. 258 Castro, R. 430 cattle 131, 133, 156, 387–388 Caxaj, S. 327 Cejas, Maria 326 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) 24–25 Central Coast Packing 326 Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) 152 CGIAR 2–3, 16–18, 22–23, 71, 81, 239; consortium research programs (CRPs) 71; and gender mainstreaming 16, 23, 27; internal diversifcation 25; Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems 258 Challenging Chains to Change (KIT et al.) 40 Chandler, A. 424 Chayanov, A. 127–128 child-marriages 144 childcare 54, 231; improving access to 80; lack of 52, 331 children: and farmworkers 331; and livestock ownership 130; and migrations 401, 403; work levels 397; work regulations 329 Chile 404 China 141, 396, 398–399, 401–402; FFS 255 Chindrakar, N. 404 Choudhury, A. 178–179 Chung,Y. 117, 120 Chung,Y.B. 377 Clapp, J. 66n2 Clement, F. 78 climate change 75, 140–142, 153, 200; and coastal areas 80–81; and COVID-19 439; denial of 140–142; farmer’s choices 201; and gender inequality 75, 138, 145; health risks of 374; information access concerning 163–164; and labor increases 142–143; and men 133; and migration 404; and rurality 144–145; in SSA 131; strategies for 132; vulnerability to 137–138, 202 Climate Change,Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) program 75 climate shocks 208; see also environmental disasters climate-smart agriculture (CSA) 200, 201; gender studies 206–208; gendered adoption rates 202, 203–204, 205–206; and structural inequality 208

climate variability 209n1 codes of conduct 46 Coen, S.E. 389 Cohen, A. 327 Cohen, N. 215 Cole, S. 178 Collins, P. 415 Collins, P.H. 375 Colombia 339 colonialism 190, 193, 226, 428 Colverson, K. 253–255 Combahee River Collective 412–413 Committee on World Food Security 87, 121 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 320 community driven development (CDD) 258 Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings 140–141, 145–146 Congo Basin, women’s marginalization in 115 Conradson, D. 427 conservation agriculture 150, 157; see also no-till farming Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) see CGIAR consumer behavior, and gender norms 97 contextualized case studies 315 contract farming 119 Convention on Biological Diversity 336 Cornwall, A. 282–283 coronavirus global pandemic 435–452 corporate social responsibility (CSR) 46, 50; gendered 50 Corrigan, M. 218 Costa Rica, value chain studies in 35 COVID-19 435–452 Crane,T.A. 129–130, 133 Create Equal Opportunity strategy 278–279 credit, lack of access to 1, 47, 57, 118, 156, 176, 202, 215, 225, 231, 252, 257, 302 Crenshaw, K. 10, 377 crop diversity, and indigenous knowledge 338–339 crop residue 131–132 crop rotation 73, 149–151, 157, 201–202, 203–204 crops: cash vs. food 230; gender-responsive breeding 74; gendered care of 152–153, 230; gendered trait preferences 73–75; minor 345n5; see also GMO crops cryptosporidiosis 373 Culinary Union Local 226 267–269 “cult of domesticity” 336–337, 344 Cultivating Change Foundation 355 cultural capital 153, 157 cultural identity, and patriarchy 62 Cunsolo, A. 426 Cuomo, C. 67n6 Cush, P. 365 cyclones 142

455

Index Da Corta, L. 192 Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) 280–281 Danso, G. 212 Davids, T. 19–20 Davies, O.A. 176 Davies, R.M. 176 Davion,V. 65 Davis, K. 255 De Brauw,A. 399 De Pinto,A. 309 De Vos, R. 115 de Vries, J. 25 Decent Work Agenda 48 decision-making power 207, 244–245, 291–292, 300–301, 302, 309, 318–319, 364–366; fshing/ aquaculture 174, 178; home gardens 338, 340– 341; and information access 161; and migrations 397–398, 401–402; as part of empowerment 371; urban agriculture 214, 217; and value chains 35–36 Declaration of Nyéléni 60–61 Deere, C.D. 401 Delabre, I. 115 Democratic Republic of Congo 115, 118 Desmarais, A. 58 Devine, J. 279 Dey de Pryck, J. 54 Dey, M.M. 171 discrimination 207; accounts of 19; against women farmers 276–277; and economic development 19; H-2A visa program 328–329 disempowerment, by other women 80 displaced populations, and the global land grab 117 distressed bodies 425–426 divorces 389 Djoudi, H. 139, 200 Djurfeldt, A.A. 318 “doing gender,”WNOLs 108–109 domestic labor 46, 48–49, 176–177, 179, 214, 282, 301, 319, 327, 377; gender-reinforcement of 179; increasing 143, 154, 173, 255–256, 379, 397, 436–437, 439–440, 446; see also unpaid/ household labor; women’s labor domestic violence see gender-based violence; violence donkeys 156 Doss, C. 216, 230 Dotson, K. 413, 417 Dottie 108 dualisms 63–64, 247 Duveskog, D. 256 East Kalimantan 117 Eastern Gangetic Plains 77 Eastin, J. 144 ecofeminist theory 57, 63–66, 67n6, 280, 411; studies of gender and the environment 349

ecological grief 426 ecological sustainability, and social justice 60 economic development, and discrimination 19 economic empowerment, limited focus on 20–21 economic security 151 Edmunds, D. 111 education: and health 374; women’s 213, 215, 319; see also agricultural extension Eells, J.C. 104–105, 111 Effand, A.B. 104 Efobi, U. 164 Ellis, F. 317 Ellis, N. 426 Elmhirst, R. 117, 376 Elson, D. 55 Ely, R. 277–279, 282 embodiment 383–384, 388, 390 emotions 390, 422 empowerment 95, 291, 300–301, 304, 305–308, 380n1; FFS 228, 256; and food security 370; and food systems/nutrition 93; and ICTs 162; importance of 47; and information access 161– 163; and migration 403; and nutrition 371–372; and value chain interventions 39–40 Energy Stove project 205 English National Farmers Union 293 entrepreneurship, focus on 21 environmental degradation 404, 411; monoculture agriculture 149–150; and population growth 131 environmental disasters: vulnerability to 138–139, 145; see also climate shocks erosion, and cover crops 149–150 “Escuela Agrícola Panamericana Zamorano” 257 Ethiopia 157; agricultural extension 252–253, 255 EU Common Agricultural Policy 21, 23 EU Rural Development Program 23 Europe 320, 361; and agricultural extension 225–226; farming organizations in 290 Evans, N. 422, 424 Eveline, J. 145 exceptional women 293 exploitative labor 173–174, 178–179, 266; food service industry 266 eXtension.org 229 Fairbrother, P. 389 Fairchild, E. 106–108 Fairtrade International 50–51, 54 family farms 77, 275–276, 282, 316, 350–351, 361, 390; and food sovereignty movement 62; and markets 316; and traditional knowledge 62; and unpaid labor 65, 282 family separation 405; impacts of 399–400 Faria, C. 375 farm diversifcation activities 319–322 farm family households 316, 320–321; see also family farms

456

Index farm tourism 389–390 farmer feld schools (FFS) 227–228, 251; criticisms of 252; external factors and 255; and food security 251; Honduras 257–258; see also agricultural extension farmers 386; embodiment 384; women not identifed as 230 farmer’s markets 212 FarmHer community 278 farming organizations 289–290, 293–294; co-operatives 290–292; exceptional women 293; lobbying by 290; male vs. female 288, 291; women’s marginalization in 292–293, 364; see also women’s agricultural organizations farmwives 318, 351, 384, 389; as identity 10, 241, 280, 360, 364, 385 farmworkers 61, 232, 271, 326–334, 396–400, 402, 422, 424, 427–430, 437–438 Farnworth, C.R. 254–255 fatherhood 390 federal agencies, dismissal of women 110–111 Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) 15–16, 18–19, 22, 442; male domination of 25–27; see also Sweden Feed the Future 257, 300, 303, 308 Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Sustainable Intensifcation 152 Fellowes, W. 353 feminism without borders 418 feminist demography 394 feminist epistemologies 239–240, 246–247, 418 feminist geography 371 feminist political ecology 77, 375–376 feminist standpoint theory 240 feminist theory 371, 379; and health risks 370 feminist research methods 242–243, 246–247; see also research feldworkers, and sexual harassment 326 fnancial capital 155 Finch, C. 411 Fine, J. 269 Fink, D. 364 Finnerman, R. 340 fsh 170–171; access to 178 fshing 170, 204; and COVID-19 448–449; feminization of 172–174, 179; human traffcking 173; industrialization of 175; risks of overfshing 174; small-scale fshers 171, 177–178; see also aquaculture Fitzgerald, L. 329 Five Domains of Empowerment Index (5DE) 300–301, 302 Fix the Woman strategy 277–278 Fleck, A.K. 277–278 Foeken, D. 212 food 412 food and nutrition security (FNS) 85, 93–94, 97–98

Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) 270–271 food insecurity 46–47, 143, 213, 257, 298, 378 food justice organizations 450 food security 59, 66n2, 143, 440–441; and climate change 143; combating gender inequality 60; and CSA 201; and empowerment 370; and farmer feld schools 251, 255; and fshing/ aquaculture 171; impacts of COVID-19 436, 445, 447; and livestock 130; pillars 86; see also food and nutrition security (FNS) food service industry 271, 438; collective organizing of 267, 269–271, 273n14; cultural violence in 265–266; direct violence in 265, 269; gender segregation in 265–266; illness 273n12, 438; injustice in 263, 269; sexual harassment in 265; structural violence in 264, 266 food sovereignty 58–60, 66n2; boundary conditions 65; defning 57–58, 60; and gender justice 65–66, 68 food sovereignty activism 64, 67n5 food sovereignty movement 57, 59, 63; criticism of 61–62; and family farms 62 food system activities 91 food system processes 96–97 food system programming 98 food systems 90, 91; analysis of 92, 92; outcomes 94–96, 98 food systems approach (FSA) 85, 90–91, 96; and gender 93–94, 98; value-added 92 foraging 116, 153, 176 Fordham, M. 138–139 forest management, and women 75–76 France 423 Freedom Quilting Bee (FQB) 415 Friedmann, H. 127, 352 Friis-Hansen, E. 228, 256 Fukuda-Parr, S. 192 Fukushima nuclear incident 373 Fullagar, S. 424, 427, 430 Fussell, E. 398 future research directions/questions 4–5, 7, 9, 11, 41, 98, 108, 121, 132–133, 172, 180, 193, 217– 218, 240–241, 294, 322, 333–334, 366–367, 375, 390–391, 406 Galtung, J. 264 Gamhewage, M.I. 212, 215 gardens 413; see also home gardens Garkovich, L. 364 Garnham, B. 384, 389, 423–425, 429 Gaventa, J. 282–283 GEARE initiative 2–3 Gelli, A. 39 gender 201–202, 245, 315; and age 107; bureaucratic approaches to 15; confation with sex 354; and data collection 374; and feminist

457

Index epistemologies 240; global attention to 140; and nutrition-sensitive programs 89; as role 90; and sexuality 241; and social arrangements 241; stereotypes 26, 328, 350, 402; as women 200, 206, 208, 263 gender accommodative approaches 78–79 Gender Agriculture and Assets Project Phase 2 95 gender analysis, of nutrition 94–96 Gender and Breeding Initiative (GBI) 73 gender-aware spectrum 78–79, 254 gender-based violence 41, 132, 144, 175, 264, 268, 391, 426, 436–437; see also sexual harassment; violence gender behaviors 350 gender consciousness-raising exercises 79, 257 Gender Development Index 299 gender equality 258, 319; attitudes towards/ funding for 23–24; and climate change 145– 146; and forests 76; and gender mainstreaming 22; importance of 47, 290; value chain trends 33 Gender Equality Academy (Sweden) 15–16, 18–19, 23–24; market focus of 21 Gender Equity through Agricultural Research and Education (GEARE) initiative see GEARE initiative gender essentialism 63 gender-exploitation 254 gender gaps, and value chains 39 gender-inclusivity 235 gender inequality 180, 256, 277, 435–436; and climate change 75, 137; combating through food security 60; and COVID-19 436–437, 439; and gender neutrality 51, 80; impacts of 75; impacts on yields 234–235, 289, 298; organizational approaches to 277–279; and poor maternal/child care 90; and private standards 50–52; and proftability 53; reinforcement 138; reproduction of 80; signs of 33; struggles to recognize 22; and taxes 53 gender integration 81; and AR4D/ARinD 69–70, 72–73 gender justice 65–66; and climate justice 200; sacrifce of 58; and unions 267–269; see also food service industry gender mainstreaming 15–16, 27, 235, 254; adoption of 22–24; and climate change 138, 205; criticisms of 19; and gender equality 22; male leadership of 25–26; refusal of 19–20, 28n9 gender neutrality, exacerbating gender inequality 51, 80 gender norms 41, 76, 79, 144, 175, 180, 207, 254, 256, 291–292, 321; and agency 78; and consumer behavior 97; fshing/aquaculture 175, 177; and food/nutrition inequalities 90, 372; and information access 166, 231, 252; and land ownership 105; and migrations 396, 398, 400,

402; and protests 192–193; and resilience 137, 144; studies of 39; travel restrictions 176–177, 202, 292, 317, 320; and urban agriculture 214; and value chains 34, 38;Vietnam 401 Gender Parity Index (GPI) 300 GENDER platform 81 gender relations 442; shifting 1 Gender Research and Integrated Training (GRIT) program see GRIT program gender roles 320–321; and COVID-19 440; men’s migration 396–400; and nutrition-sensitive programs 89–90; and technology 156; and urban agriculture 213; vs. gender relations 41, 90 gender training 253, 254 gender-transformative approaches 20, 42, 77–79, 81, 254, 255–258, 292 gendered identities, ignoring 241 gendered knowledge 73–74, 340; see also knowledge; traditional knowledge gendered livelihood strategies 131 gendered organizations 276 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 59 genetic engineering (GE) 186–187 GENNOVATE 79, 244 Ghana 115, 119, 174–176, 230, 308–309; information access in 161, 164; jatropha production 116; urban agriculture 212 Gichuki, C. 164 Gilbert, J. 104 global capitalism 417–418 global corporate agriculture, threat of 61 global land grabs 114, 122n1; displaced populations 117; job creation promises 118; political responses to 119–121 global North: comparing with global South 287–293, 316, 319, 321; farming employment levels 17; farming organizations 290, 292–293; and gender equality 287; gender mainstreaming in 15, 27; livelihood diversifcation 317–318; organizational funding 27; urban agriculture 218; women and climate change 137; women’s agricultural organizations 291 global South 377; agricultural extension 226, 255; co-operatives in 290–291; comparing with global North 287–293, 316, 319, 321; farming employment levels 17; fshing/aquaculture 170; gender mainstreaming in 15, 26; migrations to global North 401; queer farmers in 355–356; rural 46–47; urban agriculture 218; women and climate change 137; women’s care work in 49; women’s labor in 287; see also Africa; Latin America; specifc countries; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) global value chains 49–50, 53, 435–436; see also value chains

458

Index GLOBALG.A.P program 50, 53 globalization 438 glyphosate 187–188 GMO crops 185, 187, 194n8; anti-GMO activism 192–193; costs of 189; and indigenous groups 191; lack of research into 185; Maori concerns 191; and power relations 189–190; problems with 187–188; questions about 186–187; research into 191–193, 194n1; and seed saving 189 Gonda, N. 133 Gopalakrishnan, T. 80 Gray, M. 354 Greece, agricultural extension 253 Green Climate Fund 140, 146 green revolution 151, 191 Greenberg, L. 339 Grez, E. 402, 429 GRIT program 2–3, 18 Guatemala 396, 399, 403–404 guest workers 334; LGBT 330–331 Gumucio, T. 243 Gurnsey, D. 349 Guterres, A. 142 Guyler-Alaniz, M. 278 H-2A visa program 328–330, 332 habitus 383–384, 388 Halberstam, J.J. 353 Hall, L. 416 Hallegatte, S. 144 Hambleton, R. 278 Handapangoda, W. 162 Haraway, D. 190 Harding, S. 240 Hariharan,V. 164 Haugen, M.S. 318, 386, 389–390 Hayes-Conroy, A. 428 Hayes-Conroy, J. 428 health: archetypal risks 370, 378;Avian Flu 374; and climate change 374; concerns over livestock 130, 373; cryptosporidiosis 373; emerging diseases 373–374; and feminist theory 370; and intersectionality 375–377; leptospirosis 373–374; men’s 388–389; mental 388–389, 421–422; and precarity 377–378; stigmatization of illness 373; study shortcomings 374; see also malnutrition; mental health; pesticide exposure Heckert, J. 306 Heckler, S.L. 339 heterogeneity 79–80 heteronormativity 10, 348–349, 353–354, 356; and the family farm 350–352, 364, 384, 390; migration studies 395 heterosexuality: enforcement of 348; see also sexuality Hickel, J. 263 Hidden Harvest study 171

HLPE 90, 92–93 Hoang, L.A. 404 Hoffelmeyer, M. 62, 81, 426 Holloway, L. 387 home gardens: Latin America 338–340, 343–344; see also gardens Honduras 257–258, 375–376 hooks, b. 280 horticulture value chains studies 32 households, defned 337 Hovorka,A. 212, 216 Howard, P. 337–339, 342, 344n3 Huerta, D. 333 Huggins, C. 163 human capital 153–154 human traffcking, fshing industry 173 hunger/malnutrition, and women 58 Hunter, L. 394 Hurlbut, J.B. 193–194 Hussein, K. 316 Hutchings, J. 191 Huyer, S. 75, 80 Hyogo Protocol 140 identities 1, 7, 9, 11–12, 41, 62, 76, 81, 94, 140, 208, 240–241, 264, 268, 272, 272n2, 272n3, 350, 362–363, 366; and Black women 9–10, 412–413; as farmers 280, 291, 318, 320–321, 348, 362–363, 366, 415, 425; as “farmwife” 10, 241, 280, 360, 364, 384–385; and marriage 241, 322, 364–365; men’s 133, 360; women’s 10, 61, 206, 276, 280, 288, 321, 362–363, 366 identity politics 350, 412–413, 416–417 identity theory 362 IFOAM Organic 50 IFRPI 8, 37, 95, 299–300 illiteracy 115 illness, stigmatization of 373 Imai, K.S. 371 “inclusive” business models 118–119 Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) 17 India 141, 175, 371, 396, 404, 423, 442; agricultural extension in 255; and COVID-19 442, 444–447; Deccan Plateau 61; Deep-Sea Fishing Policy (1991) 174; fshing/aquaculture 171, 175–178; food insecurity 378; GMO crops in 192; information access 164; Land Acquisition Act 115; land compensation in 118; marginal land in 116; suicide 423–424 indigenous groups: and Black feminist agrarian ideologies 414; erasure of 417; as farmworkers 427–428; and GE technologies 191; predictions about 336;Two-Spirit identities 356 indigenous women 341–343; exclusion of 336, 342; home gardens 338–340, 343–344; knowledge 338–340, 344n1

459

Index Indigenous Women Network on Biodiversity 343 individualization 424–425 Indonesia 117; FFS in 251; protests 120; women’s marginalization in 115 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) 267–268 information access 165–166, 225; agricultural extension 228–30; and economic participation 164; gender biases 161, 164, 166, 231; women’s 161–163, 202, 208 information and communication technologies (ICTs) 8, 160, 163–165, 255; and agricultural extension 229; and economic participation 164; see also mobile phones institutional structures: and climate change 145; and food systems 96–97 intentional recognition stance 64 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 138, 140, 200, 206 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 336 International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) 18 International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) 289–290 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRPI) see IFRPI International Labor Organization (ILO) 48, 51 International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) 18, 307 International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) 18, 152–153 International Potato Agency 153 International Potato Center (CIP) 18 International Water Management Institute (IWMI) see IWMI intersectionality 10, 41, 80, 94, 95, 133, 206, 208, 264, 266, 276, 370, 375–377; and AR4D/ ARinD 78; and climate change 137; fshing/ aquaculture 174 Iowa 280–281;WNOLs in 105, 107 Iowa Land Ownership Survey 104 Ireland 292 Irish Farmers’Association 292–293 Irish National Ploughing Association 293 Islam, M. 162, 176 isolation, impacts of 216–217 IsteniČ, ČerniČ 21–22 ITIKI Plus 164 IWMI 15, 17–18, 20–21 Jack, W. 165 Jackson, S. 348 Jamaica, FFS in 251 Jasanoff, S. 193–194 Jiggins, J. 252 job segregation 48, 51, 57–58, 119, 206, 327, 363; fshing/aquaculture 173–175, 177; food service

industry 265–266; guest worker programs 328–329; meat processing plants 126 Johnson, N. 95 Jordan, A. 424 Joseph, M. 162 Journal of Peasant Studies 120 Julia, 115, 117 Kabeer, N. 35, 299 Kaijser, A. 77 Kantor, P. 78 Kasanga, R.K. 214 Kautsky, K. 336 Kawarazuka, N. 77–78 Keats, J. 427 Keller, J. 354, 386, 399 Kelly, R. 317 Kent, J. 389 Kenya 115–116, 373; FFS in 251, 255–256; fshing/aquaculture 177–178; information access in 161, 164–165; urban agriculture 213; value chain studies in 32, 37–38 Kerr, R.B. 372 Kimani, M. 214, 373–374 Kimber, C.T. 340 Kinchy, A. 190 King, D. 413–414 Kings, A.E. 80 Kinsella, J. 317 knowledge 344n1; dismissal of 190, 411; indigenous 191, 338–341, 344n2; prioritization of science 190; women’s perceived lack of 106–107, 207 Komatsu, H. 309 Korowai framework 191 Kristjanson, P. 75 Kronsel, A. 77 Kruzic, A. 282 Kumar, P. 171 Kumara, A. 162 Kusakabe, K. 115 Kyoto Protocol 140–141 La Vía Campesina (LVC) 57–60, 62–63, 127, 355–356; combating patriarchy 60 labor 337–338; gender divisions of 35, 118–119, 132, 317, 364–365, 372, 384, 386, 397, 401; and land ownership 22; studies of 216 labor control, gendered nature of 326–327 labor increases 231, 317, 379; and climate change 142–143; COVD-19 436–437, 439–440, 446; and CSA 202, 206–207; and FFS programs 255–256; fshing/aquaculture 175–176; and gender mainstreaming 19; and GMO crops 192; and livestock 131; and migration 397 Lamb,V. 120 Lancet series 86–87, 90

460

Index land access 287, 339–340; Black womxn 414; “inclusive” business models 118–119; and land grabs 116; marginal land 116; urban agriculture 214, 444 land deal negotiations, lack of women’s representation in 115 land grant universities 226 land ownership 218n3, 319; and Black femisnst agrarian ideologies 412; Black womxn 414–415; encouraging women in 60; and labor 22, 57; lack of discussion about 26; male dominance of 17, 22–23, 57, 111, 144–145, 230, 233, 288, 318; urban agriculture 214; US data on 103–104; see also property inheritance;Women non-operator landowners (WNOLs) land quality 75 land use, competing for 109 landlord-renter relationships 104–105, 107 landrace seeds 345n7 languages 153 Lantbrukarnas Riksförbund see Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) Laos 374, 402; fshing/aquaculture 177 laser land leveling (LLL) 202 Latin America 152, 327–328, 330–331, 404; COVID-19 447; gender-disaggregation in agricultural labor 337–338, 343; indigenous women in 336–337, 341–343; land grab in 115; see also specifc countries Latvia 360 Lawrence, K. 281 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) 438 learning circles 227–228, 234, 279; lack of family support 109–110 Leckie, J.O. 372 Leder, S. 16, 77, 80 Lee, A. 192 leptospirosis 373–374 lesbians 353 Leslie, I. 282–283, 349, 351, 353, 356n2 Levien, M. 118 Lewis, J. 11511 Li,T. 118–119, 121 Liberia 118 Liepins, R. 386 life-science industries 188–189 Lithuania 360 Little, J. 391, 426 livelihoods 315–316; diversifed 38, 131, 143, 178, 319; from fshing/aquaculture 179; gendered 131; and identities 321; strategies for 317–319 livestock 128, 204, 306–307, 387–388; health concerns surrounding 130, 373; non-monetary value of 130, 155–157; and women’s labor 130–131, 160, 205; see also milk livestock marketing 133; and men 129

livestock ownership 129–130; and food security 130; impacts on children 130 livestock production, and poverty 126, 129, 131 Locke, R.M. 287–288 Loconto, A. 54 Lope-Alzina, D.G. 339, 416 Lorde, A. 417 Love v Vilsack 276–277 Lovelock, K. 388 Lukasiewicz, A. 139 Lyon, S. 399 McCall, L. 264 McCarthy, L. 52 McDonalds 269 McDougall, C. 179 McEvoy, J. 398 McFarland, D. 363 Mackie, G. 36 McMichael, P. 127 Mahler, S.J. 394–395 Maine Women’s Agricultural Network 280 Malapit, H.J. 308 Malawi 62, 372; agricultural extension 253; information access in 163; value chain studies in 39 male biases, in land compensation 117–118 male supremacy 411 malnutrition 86, 171, 213, 298 Mann, M. 289, 291 Maori women 191 Maparyan, L. 412 Margaret 108 marginal land: losing productivity 131; as resource 116 marketization 19 markets 204; disrupted 445; and family farms 316; language of 20; structural inequalities of 24 marriage 110, 132, 319, 353, 356n6, 384; and identity 322, 364–365 Marriot hotel strike 271 Martiniello, G. 120 Masamha, B. 35 masculinity 386–388, 399, 425, 441; and meat consumption 126 Masinde, M. 164 Masioli, I. 64 Massey, D.S. 394, 404 maternal care, and gender inequality 90 Maxwell, D. 215 Mayans 337–341 Mayoux, L. 36 Mbo’o-Tchouawou, M. 253 meat consumption 127; and malnutrition 130; and masculinity 126 meat processing plants, job segregation 126

461

Index meat production: industrial 127, 129; and smallholder farms 127 Meert, H. 320 Mehar, M. 163–164, 207 Meinzen-Dick, R. 254 men: agrarian health risks 370, 378; claiming women’s labor 156, 386; and climate change 133; identities as farmers 360; and injury 388–389; and livestock income 129, 133; marginalization 206; migration of 396–400, 405; missed engagement with 89, 90, 93, 97, 256; NOLs 105; perceptions of 206; in service industries 265; and technology 164, 176, 256, 385 Meng, G. 329 mental health 88, 388–389, 421–422, 430; and climate change 142; COVID-19 impacts 437; depression 427; and distance 429; distress 422, 425–427, 429–430; lack of studies 425; selfharm 423–424; see also health; suicide mentorship 216–217 #MeToo movement 19, 21–22, 27, 442 metronormativity 353 Mexico 339, 396–397, 400, 447 Meyerson, D. 277–279, 282 micro-credit programs 26, 178 Migrant Dreams documentary 331 migrant labor 154, 396, 400, 442–443; farmworker conditions 327, 330–332, 428, 437–438; Mexican 327–328, 399; palm plantations 118 migration 173, 179, 317–318, 320, 394, 447; and access 399; and climate change 143; decisionmaking around 395; forced African 413; and gender 395, 404–405; and labor increases 397; men’s 396–400, 405; and pandemics 442–443; and social networks 396; study shortcomings 394; those left behind 17, 399–400, 404, 443; women’s 173, 400–406 military/paramilitary groups, global land grab 115 milk: and cattle breeds 131; women selling 129–130; see also livestock millet 157 Mittal, S. 163, 229 mobile phones 160; access to 161, 165; and agricultural extension 229; and banking 164; as information delivery mechanism 160, 162, 164; and market access 165 Mohanty, C. 417 Mollett, S. 375–376 Monisola,T.F. 212, 214 monoculture agriculture 150–151; and CA 151; environmental degradation 149–150; and foraging 153 more-than-human encounters 426–427 Morgan, M. 120, 254 Morris, C. 387 Morrison, S. 141

Moser, C.O.N. 215 Mozambique 309; goats in 130; information access in 164; urban agriculture 213; value chain studies in 38; women’s marginalization in 115 Mukhopadhyay, M. 22–23 multifamily farms 322n3 Mulu-Mutuku, M. 164 Munro, W. 188 Murray, S.J. 340 Musiimenta, P.T. 214 mutuality 65 Myanmar, value chain studies in 37 Nabanoga, G. 339 National Farming Organization 277 natural capital 152–153 Navdanya 62, 64 Navin, M. 61 Naylor, P. 282 Nelson, J. 316 neo-colonialism, land-grabs as 121 neoliberalism 425; and unpaid work 53 Nepal 18, 78, 308–309, 396–400, 404, 446–447; gender mainstreaming in 18, 20–21, 25; IWMI in 15, 18; nutrition-sensitive programs in 89; water access projects 20–21, 25–26 Neufeldt, H. 208 New Zealand 191, 388, 424–426 Newman, M. 141 Ngome, I. 212 Nicaragua 133, 243, 396 Nicholason, P. 65 Nichols, C.E. 378 Nigeria 165; e-wallet program 163–164; fshing/ aquaculture 177; urban agriculture 212, 215 Nightingale, A.J. 77 nitrogent 149 no-till farming 149–150; see also zero-tillage nonbinary people 66n1, 67n5, 272n2; see also queer people; sexuality norms, integrating 36 Norway 440–441 Norwegian Farmer’s Union 293 nutrition 306; 1,000 day window 86–87, 89, 90, 94; agricultural impacts on 88; and empowerment 371–372; from fsh 171, 178; scholarship focus on 371; and social position 94–96, 97; text messaging study 162 nutrition-sensitive programs: and agricultural nutrition pathways framework 90; defnition 88; evaluations of 87; and food system analysis 92; and gender 89 nutrition-specifc, defnition 88 O’Brien, D. 281 O’Brien,W. 424, 427, 430 occupational closure 76–77, 81

462

Index Odell, Å. 442 Odhiambo, N. 165 Ofei-Aboagye, E. 216 Offce of International Cooperation and Development (OICD) 151 Okolo-Obasi, E. 163 Oladeji, D.O. 215 Olff, M. 426–427 Orr, A. 192 out-migration, effects of 17 Owusu, A. 165 Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) 299–300 Pabellon, M. 270 Paciulan, M. 399 Pahl-Wostl, C. 139 Pakistan 396–397 palm plantations 117–118 Pals, H. 363 Paris Climate Accord 141–142 Partey, S.T. 75, 80, 164 participatory action research 258–259; and AR4D/ ARinD 75 pastoralism 132; and climate change 132; and livestock 128–129 Patel, R. 60, 62–63 patriarchy 265, 271–272, 399, 411; bargaining with 78; confronting 108; contract farming 119; and cultural identity 62; and family farms 62; LVC fghting against 60; reinforcing 117–118; and traditional knowledge 63, 117 Payes, D. 326 Pearsall, H. 215 Pearson, J. 364 peasant agriculture, and capitalism 127 peasants 128 peer-to-peer learning 234, 257; see also learning circles Peluso, N.L. 339 Penniman, N.L. 215 Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) 232–234, 275, 279–281, 283n4, 291 pensions, women’s access to 21 Perch, L. 206–207 Peru 339, 396 Pessar, P.R. 394–395 pesticide exposure; see also agrichemical exposure pesticide/herbicide exposure 51, 72, 327, 331–332, 370, 372–373 Peter, G. 389 Petrzelka, P. 106–108 Philippines: fshing/aquaculture in 175; urban agriculture 213; value chain studies in 37–38; women’s marginalization in 115 Phillips, D. 252

Phyllis 108 Pini, B. 185, 193, 289, 386–388, 390, 426 Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) 270 Pionetti, C. 61 placeholders, women as 105, 107 Plumwood,V. 57, 63–65 pluriactivity 317–318 policy approaches 5, 7–9, 12; and gender inequalities 137–138 political capital 154–155 political economies 188, 395 politics, and policy 320 polygamy 133 population displacement 143, 145 post-productivist/multifunctional agriculture 361 Pottenger, K. 330–332 poverty 133n1; gender links 144; levels of 47, 128; and vulnerability 144 poverty reduction 289; and livestock 126, 129, 131; and mobile phones 165; and urban agriculture 213; and value chains 33 power: and agency 35–36; defnitions of 35, 36; and technology 179 power relations 318; analysis of 97–98; and GMO crops 189–190; sons vs. daughters 384; and WNOLs 103, 105–108, 110 Prain, G. 77–78 precarious employment 46, 53, 58, 119, 180, 213, 327, 435–436; see also wage employment Preibisch, K. 399, 402, 429 Pretty, J. 154, 157 Price, L. 422, 424 Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment 120–121 private standards 46–47, 50; food-related 3–4; and gender inequality 50–55; studies of 51; and unpaid labor 52–54; and worker safety/health 51 private voluntary food standards (PVS) 3–4 privilege, and exclusion 25 Pro-WEAI 303, 304, 305–306 production/internal system orientation research 70–72, 75 property inheritance 34, 62, 104–105, 107, 214– 215, 287–288, 384, 403; see also land ownership protests, land grab related 120 Prügl, E. 21 pull factors 319 push factors 319 push-pull theory 394–395, 397 queer 356n3; defning 351 queer environmental theories 349–350 queer farmers 326, 352, 426, 429 queer people 10–12, 62, 66n1, 67n5, 272n2, 276– 277, 429; and COVID-19 450–451; oppression of 348; see also sexuality

463

Index queer theory/scholarship 349–350, 353, 355 quilting metaphors 64 Quisumbing,A. 40, 308, 371–372 Radical Faeries 353, 450 radical positivism 315 radical relativism 315 Ragasa, C. 253, 255 Ragnekar, S. 216 Rainforest Alliance 50 Ramirez-Ferrero, E. 425 Ravera, F. 138–139 REKO rings 441–442 rematriation 416, 418 remittances 143, 397 reproductive justice 326–327, 334 research 244–245; case studies 244; challenges in 245–246; feldwork 245–246; mixed methods 243; participatory 243–244; qualitative 242; quantitative 242–243; refexivity 246–247; and safety 246 resilience 138, 140, 145, 151, 291; and CSA 200; and gender-based inequality 137 resistance, to the global land grab 119–121 resources 116; access/control of 35 Resurreccion, B.P. 173, 178–179 Reynolds, K. 215 rhetoric, vs. change 54 Ribot, J.C. 339 Rietveld, A.M. 79–80 Riley, S. 412 rinderpest 438 risk: and COVID-19 438; and information access 161–162; perceptions of 372–373 Robertson, C. 217 Robinson, R. 145 ROC United 270–271 Rocheleau, D. 111 Rogers, D.M. 104–105 Rosan, C. 215 Rosenberg, G. 351 Rosenfeld, R. 364 Roy, S. 40 Rwanda 128 Sachs, C. 78, 80, 215, 217, 279, 283, 362, 364 Sackett, R. 340 Salamon, S. 111 Sally 105 same-sex marriage 353, 356n6 Sandra 108 Sari, I. 178 Saugeres, L. 386 Sbica, J. 365 Scaling Up Nutrition movement 86–87 Scarborough, W.J. 178 Schurman, R. 188

science, and knowledge forms 190 “science for impact” 69–70 Scotland 292 seasonal guest worker programs 328 seed saving 61, 152; and GMO crops 189 seeds 188, 345n7 Sekabira, H. 162 Senanayake, N. 378 Senegal 154, 157; urban agriculture 213 settler colonialism 416–417 sex-segregated data 80; failure to get 241; importance of 17 Sexsmith, K. 51–54, 240 sexual harassment 41, 265, 268, 326, 329–330, 332–333, 403, 429, 442; accounts of 19; H-2A visa program 330; and racial minorities 329; reporting 326–327, 333; vulnerability to 58, 330; see also gender-based violence; violence sexual violence 329–330, 438 Sexualidades Campesinas digital storytelling project 355 sexuality 348–349, 366; guest workers 330–331; lack of research into 348–349, 352–354; lesbians 353; Radical Faeries 353; see also heteronormativity; nonbinary people; nonbinary people; queer farmers; queer people Shah, N. 353 “Sharon” 103, 105 Shaw, A. 81 Shisler, R. 365 Shortall, S. 21, 23, 76, 317, 361, 363 Sierra Leone 176, 179 Sikundla, T. 165 SIMLESA 154 Simon, D. 394 SisterSong collective 327 Slack, F. 162 Smale, M. 339 smallholder farms 288; increasing sustainability of 150–151; and livestock production 127 smallholders 128 Smelser, N.J. 315 Smyth, J. 365 social capital 154 social inequality 375; and FFS 256 social justice: and ecological sustainability 60; and value chains 33 social networks, and migration 396, 400, 406n1 social/political inclusion 151 social proximity 429 social reproduction 116, 120, 327, 333, 370, 377–379 social systems, importance of 241 societal system orientation research 70–72 socioeconomic drivers, of food systems 93 solastalgia 426 solidary alliances 65

464

Index South Africa: information access in 164; livestock production 128; value chain studies in 32 Spain 349 Sraboni, E. 308, 371–372 Sri Lanka 377–378; information access in 162; urban agriculture 212, 215 standpoint theory 415 statistics: Black womxn 413, 414; climate change 142, 205; crop yields 289; family farms 350; fshing/aquaculture 170–171; food service industry 266, 268–269, 272n7, 272n8; gender inequalities 234–235; Ghana mango plant 119; GMO crops 187; inadequacy of 289; labor divisions 119; land ownership 414; livestock in SSA 126; LRF 22; meat consumption 127; migrations 397; no-till farming 149; peer-topeer learning 234; poverty 144; seed-supply companies 189; sexual harassment 265, 330; smallholders 128; SSA 126, 128; suicide 423– 425; unpaid care work 48; urban agriculture sales 212; wages 268;WNOLs 104–105, 107; women’s agricultural involvement 47, 143, 145, 160, 232, 289, 298, 328, 360–362, 362, 414, 438 stereotypes, gender-based 26, 41 Stets, J. 363 Stoian, D. 19 structural inequality 26, 263–264; and CSA 208; and private standards 47; and technology 205; unions combating 270; see also land ownership structural oppression 264–265 structure, and value chains 34, 36 Stryker, S. 363 study circles see learning circles Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 126, 128–129, 288, 320; see also Africa; specifc countries subsistence farming, attitudes towards 127 Sudan 396–397, 400 suicide 389, 421–425, 430; see also mental health Suri, T. 165 sustainability 151 sustainable agriculture 149–150, 352, 361, 385 Sustainable Intensifcation Innovation Lab (SIIL) 156 sustainable intensifcation (SI) 149–150, 154–155, 157; framework 152 Sweden 23, 441–442; see also Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) swine fu 438 Syria, urban agriculture 213 system sustainability 151 Tanzania: global land grab 117, 120; labor in 119; urban agriculture 213; value chain studies in 39 Tavenner, K. 129–130, 133 taxes, and gender inequality 53 Taylor, M.J. 399

technology transfer models 154 techology 202; and agricultural extension 226– 227; designing 156–157; gendered use of 176, 179, 190, 202, 256, 385–387, 399; recognition of 190; reduction of bodily contact 387 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) Survey 103–104 Termine, P. 54 Thailand 173, 179, 403; urban agriculture 213 Thebol, A.L. 212 Thelen, K. 287–288 Third-world feminism 417–418 Thompson, M. 208 Thothela, P.N. 164 Tickamyer, A.R. 240 time poverty 49, 58 toxic masculinity 265 tractors 157, 386–387 traditional knowledge 63, 344n1, 411; and family farms 62; and patriarchy 63, 117; see also gendered knowledge training programs, women’s participation in 109–110, 208, 227 transformative learning theory 252 transgender identities 350 transgender theorizing 350 transgenic crops see GMO crops transnational corporations 189, 424 Trauger,A. 217, 253, 276, 385 travel restrictions 176–177, 202, 292, 317, 320 Trump, D. 141 trust, and women’s groups 156 Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS) 150 Tsikata, D. 119 Tsimbiri, P.F. 372 Tuck, E. 416 Tufan, H.A. 73–74 Turkey 396 Two-Spirit identities 356 Twyman, J. 35 Tyler, M. 389 Tyler, S. 81 Uduji, J. 163 Uganda 245; agricultural extension 255–256; information access in 161–162; nutritionsensitive programs in 89; pastoralism in 132; protests 120; value chain studies in 39 UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 85 “UN Decade of Family Farming” 336 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 140 UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 1, 48, 298 UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 140

465

Index UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 48, 70–71, 76, 140, 242, 298; #5 76, 80, 298–299, 309, 343 UNICEF malnutrition framework 86–87, 89–90 unions 267–270, 273n14, 273n16, 333; see also Alianza Nacional de Campesinas; UNITE HERE! UNITE HERE! 267–270 United Farm Workers Union 271, 333 United Nations 47; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 57, 71, 128, 143, 150, 289, 298, 352, 360, 436; see also UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 257 unpaid/household labor 21, 26, 33, 46–49, 52, 55, 57, 65, 88, 119, 144, 216, 231, 282, 319, 327, 377, 436, 446; and family farms 65; and fshing/ aquaculture 171, 177; see also domestic labor urban agriculture 212; and COVID-19 444; and gender 212–213; land for 214; queer farmers 355; support networks 215, 217 urban land, cost of 214 US Agency for International Development (USAID) 257, 299–300, 343 US Census of Agriculture 362, 367n1, 418n2 US Committee on the Role of Alternative Farming Methods in Modern Production Agriculture 150 US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 265, 326 USDA 352; discrimination by 110–111 UTZ Certifed 50–51, 54 value chains 32, 47–48; and agency 34–35; and decision-making power 35–36; development toolkits 36–37; exploitative nature of 33–34, 53; fshing/aquaculture 174, 178; and food 97; gender equality trends 33; and gender gaps 39; and gender norms 34; governance 36; interventions in 39–40, 42; into the future 41; private governance of 49–50; and resource access 35; and structure 34, 36; studies of 32–33, 37–39; upgrading 32–33; and women’s empowerment 38; see also global value chains Value the Feminine strategy 278 Valverde, A. 163 Van Berkum, S. 91 Van den Berg, H. 252 van Eerdewijk,A. 19–20 Vandeman, A.M. 104–105 Varley, G. 75 Venezuela 339; agricultural extension 255 Venkateshwarlu, D. 192 Verma, R. 121 Vermont Women’s Agricultural Network 280

victims, women represented as 137, 200–201, 206 Vietnam 396, 399, 401–402; fshing/aquaculture 178;Thai farmers 78 violence 264, 272, 326; cultural 264–266; defning 263–264; direct 264–265, 269; gendered impacts of 41, 132, 144, 175, 391; patriarchy as 265; sexual 329–330; structural 264, 266; see also gender-based violence voluntary standards 46; see also private standards; private voluntary food standards (PVS) voluntary sustainability standards 46 vulnerability 138–139; and gender 143–145; and poverty 144; and rurality 144–145 wage employment 3, 46, 119, 318–322; and climate change 131; and COVID-19 441; and fshing/aquaculture 171, 174; food service industry 266, 272n9; importance of 48; inequality in 267–269; and migrations 154, 396–397; palm plantations 117–118; poor wage levels 331; remittances 143, 397; unions 267–269; see also precarious employment wage theft 331 Walby, S. 327, 329 Wanyama, F.O. 290 Waris, A. 253 Warren, K. 57, 64–65, 280 Washington Consensus 174 water, contamination of 142 Water, Land, and Ecosystems (WLE) program 16 water management 205 water management projects, in Nepal 20–21 water security 142–143 Waugh, I.M. 333 WEAI 8, 37, 94–95, 243, 299–301, 302, 303, 307– 309; A-WEAI 301, 302, 303, 308; Five Domains of Empowerment Index (5DE) 300–301, 302; Gender Parity Index (GPI) 300; Pro-WEAI 303, 304, 305–306 Weber, M. 288–289, 293 Weber, S. 163 weeding 202, 204, 206 welfare responsibilities, outsourcing of 53 Wells, B. 111 Weltzien, E. 73–74 West Kalimantan 115, 117; see also Indonesia Whatmore, S. 111, 364 White, B. 115, 117 White, M. 415 Whitley, H. 213, 216–217 Wilbers, J. 214–217 Williams-Forson, P. 412 Williams, J.R. 394–395 Williams, S. 422 Wolf, D. 245 women 272n2, 276, 390; agrarian health risks 370, 378; agricultural innovations 78; as

466

Index “changemakers” 107–108; and cultural capital 153, 157; disempowerment by 80; education levels 154; essentializing 137; exclusion of 24–25, 106, 115, 132, 140, 174, 190, 252, 276, 278, 293, 336; gender-specifc constraints of 57; historical property ownership 104; as household heads 154, 156, 165, 202, 230, 255; identities 10, 61, 206, 276, 280, 288, 321, 360, 362–363, 366; in leadership 213; left-behind 399–400; marginalization of 80, 154, 172, 178, 207, 291–292; migrating 173, 400–406, 443; negotiating power of 179; not identifed as farmers 230, 362; onus placed on 41, 277–278; as “placeholders” 105, 107; at protests 120, 192–193; refusing gender mainstreaming 19–20, 28n9; represented as victims 137; roles of 88, 90; self-harming 423; social capital of 154; specifc needs of 51; underrepresentation of 58; and unions 267–268 Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) see WEAI women farmers, roles of 385 Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN) 275–276, 278–282 Women in Agriculture National Learning Network (WIA LN) 275, 283n2 Women in Agriculture Network (WAgN) 257 women non-operator landowners (WNOLs) 103–104; compared with NOLs 105, 110–111; invisibility of 104; learning circles 109–110; levels of involvement 104–105, 107–108; pressures on 103, 105–106, 108–109; renters deceiving 105; studies of 109–110 women’s agricultural organizations 275, 279–280, 283, 288, 290–291, 293; exclusion of queer women 349, 354; history 276–279; and identity 280; and marginalization 291; see also farming organizations; specifc organizations; women’s groups women’s empowerment 97, 171, 178, 306–308, 380n1, 385; FFS 228, 256; and ICTs 162; and information access 161–163; measuring 90, 94, 98, 371

Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) 307 women’s groups: organization of 24; and trust 156 women’s issues, marginalization of 58 women’s labor 216, 231, 282, 301, 317, 319, 327; COVID-19 impacts 436–437; lack of acknowledgement of 21, 26, 33, 46, 153–154, 171–172, 287–288, 377; and livestock 130–131; and technology 156; underreporting 47; see also domestic labor; labor increases; unpaid/ household labor women’s roles 366; black womxn 411; reinforcement of 85, 88, 98, 138 Wong, F. 258 worker centers 270, 273n16; see also unions worker safety/health, and private standards 51 World Bank 47–48, 229, 258; and IWMI 20; Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefts? 116, 118 World Development Report on Gender Equality 17 world economic growth 151 World Health Organization (WHO) 142, 423 World Trade Organization (WTO):Agreement on Agriculture 59;Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement 59 WorldFish 79, 257 Wossen, T. 165 Wright, W. 390 Wypler, J. 349, 351 Yaro, J. 119 Yeoh, B.S.A. 404 yield/product/component orientation research 70–72, 73 Young, I.M. 264 Young Workers United (YWU) 270 Zambia: fshing/aquaculture 178, 258; urban agriculture 213; value chain studies in 32, 37 zero-tillage (ZT) 202, 203–204, 206; see also no-till farming Zhang, H. 398 Zimbabwe 38; urban agriculture 213 Zimmerer, K.S. 339

467