Jo Seed, Ag4Impact, asks Vicki Wilde, Director of the CGIAR’s Gender & Diversity Program and AWARD.

Women, Agriculture & the Developing World

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11, states that women comprise, on average, 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, yet they consistently have less access to helpful resources and opportunities for growth. 

Jo Seed, Project Administrator for Agriculture for Impact at Imperial College, talks to Vicki Wilde, Director of the CGIAR’s Gender & Diversity Program and African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a professional development program that strengthens the research and leadership skills of African women in agricultural science, about what is needed to help women advance in agricultural science.

Questions

In your opinion, why do women, particularly focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, get dealt the short straw when it comes to agricultural development?

There are all kinds of reasons why women are dealt the short straw in this field.  One reason is that most agricultural investments dedicate only a small percentage of their budgets to directly benefit women. 

Information on the importance of women’s roles within agricultural research and development has been out there for over 30 years. There has been ample amounts of talk, many papers produced and conferences held on the subject. New gender programs have also been created around these issues. However, despite all of this, things have not changed very much for the African women who struggle to feed their families. 

In terms of mainstream funding for agricultural development, gender programming remains only a small sub-item in the overall budget. Drawing on the latest data, and putting the reality of women’s roles at the centre of development plans and budgets, could have huge impacts for the poor, as argued in FAO’s new report. 

But the challenge isn’t just a financial one. With few exceptions, African women’s voices are missing from the equation. 

I would argue that a great way forward is to invest in African women. When critical advances and innovations in agricultural development for Africa are led and enriched by the contributions of capable, confident and influential African women, I believe we will also find the sector demonstrating increased responsiveness to the needs and contributions of rural women and other poor smallholders. 

So it seems that women have a significant disadvantage in this field.  Could you tell me a bit about AWARD and how it all came about?

AWARD’s goal is to strengthen the research and leadership skills of African women in agricultural science, empowering them to contribute more effectively to poverty alleviation and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. AWARD offers two-year fellowships focused on establishing mentoring relationships, building science skills, and developing leadership capacity.

One of the main reasons for creating AWARD was that I was tired of African women always being portrayed as victims. Of course terrible things are directed at women just because they are women. This is very true and very challenging. But African women also are an important part of the solution, and I see their potential for new and exciting innovations. The more women see potential in themselves, the more they can contribute to improving agricultural research and development.

AWARD equips women to have a more prominent place at the table. As you noted, African women produce, process and market most of the continent’s food, but only one in four agricultural researchers in Africa is female.  Perhaps even more importantly, less than one in seven of the managers of African research institutions is female.  With few women holding positions of influence when the priorities for agricultural research are being set, women and other smallholders continue to be underserved.

Why is there such a gap in capacity building and how can AWARD help women past bachelor’s degree level?

The talent pool in Africa is thin because of underinvestment in agricultural education and training over the past couple of decades. The number of MScs and PhDs among Africans is too low across the board, for both men and women, but it’s especially paltry among women. 

African girls are not widely encouraged to go into science. Traditionally, it was a male-dominated area of study, but now this is slowing changing.  Sometimes girls have the benefit of exceptional teachers or fathers who see their potential and encourage them to go against the grain. But as they move into the workplace, field, or lab, women struggle to find role models of women who have already succeeded. For this reason, AWARD assigns a mentor to every woman researcher in our program—a senior scientist or other professional whohelps them realize their career goals.

Like women everywhere, African women face particular challenges in continuing their science careers once they have a family to raise. In AWARD, we invite nursing mothers to bring their babies along to AWARD training courses, and we provide childcare. It’s such an easy and obvious thing to do – and it doesn’t even cost much. I believe that such flexibility and accommodation is what is required to enable women to participate fully.  As a result, AWARD has a dropout rate that is near zero.

Another issue is the presumed age of agricultural researchers. After their studies, African women often are expected to spend the first decade or so fulfilling their family and cultural obligations. When their children are nearly grown and the women are now nearing their 40s, they are ready to pursue higher degrees or more demanding research. Most institutions, however, don’t allow this flexibility and most scholarship and fellowship programs have a cut-off age of 35. Academic and research institutions need to be more flexible to accommodate the realities of African women. In some countries, for instance, universities are putting tenure on hold while female academics have their families. The clock is restarted after they return from maternity leave.

In your talk at the launch of Agriculture for Impact’s briefing paper “The Montpellier Panel Report”, in Montpellier, France, you stated that studying agriculture isn’t quite as appealing or lucrative as other disciplines. What is AWARD doing to attract more women into agricultural science? 

For many Africans, both male and female, agricultural is not always an appealing career option.  Often they are the sons and daughters of farmers; they may have grown up poor and hungry. The family pressures them to get an education and get away f rom agriculture, not to be a farmer, but perhaps a doctor or a teacher. We need to look into ways of showing how agriculture can be a compelling choice. Also, a gro-enterprises are becoming more interesting, with huge potential. If we could start persuading youth to se e farming as a business, agric ulture would attract more students . 

Each AWARD s cientis t organises an information-sharing event in her community or a local school to inspire more young students to go into the agriculture sciences. These talks are really well-received. We need to communicate to young people the range and importance of this field in combating hunger, poverty, malnutrition, climate change, as well as its potential to make money.

In your talk at the launch, you also said that only a small percentage of African w omen researcher s make it to management level.  Why is this happening and what is AWARD doing to try to combat this problem? 

Less than one in seven women agricultural scientists are in leadership roles, according to a study that we conducted with ASTI (www.asti.cgiar.org/gender-capacity). Such inequality isn’t just isolated to women in Africa. It’s a global challenge. However, Africa remains the hungriest continent. If African women are not well-represented in agricultural research and development, if Africa is using only a portion of the human resources available, then it is going to take that much longer to find solutions.

AWARD is helping women researchers to develop their leadership skills so they can achieve positions of influence and have a role in determining what research is conducted and how precious research funds are spent. For instance, women researchers are more likely to focus on developing improved drought-resistant crops and the post-harvest technologies that smallholder women farmers need to feed their families, while male researchers often focus on cash crops.

Land rights are also another important issue.  It seems that women are doing their equal share of the work, but only own 1 percent of the land.  What do you think is the root cause of this problem? 

Although I am not an expert on land rights, I believe that the bottom line is women’s low status and lack of economic empowerment.  African women do not have economic resources to buy land and societal norms and attitudes often don’t see women landowners as a positive thing. Legal and local practices need to make it possible for women to gain ownership and inheritance rights.

Finally, as you know, our team ‘Agriculture for Impact’ aims to persuade European policy makers to focus on providing more support to agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. What can Agriculture for Impact do to help promote and support AWARD?

It would be very helpful for Sir Gordon Conway, the Principal Investigator of Ag 4 Impact, to challenge policy makers on the budget question, asking what percentage of their contributions to agricultural development will directly benefit women. 

It would also help to spread the word about the state of women in agriculture in Africa more widely to raise awareness among governments, the private sector, and members of the public.  There is a long way to go, and there is no time to lose.