Key Gender Issues in Value Chain Development

1. Key Gender Issues in Value Chain Development

2. Examining our attitudes • Do you really want to see women succeed as businesspeople and entrepreneurs? • Do you want women to own large businesses? Manage staff? Control new technology?

3. Gender inequalities each stage.

4. Gender inequalities when comparing one stage to the next.

5. Gender Inequalities Between Value Chains

6. Ideal Business Cycle Start up capital through loan or savings Access supplies and inputs from competitive sources. Working capital helps to buffer business cycle valleys and shocks. Profits invested back into business. Financial and BDS provide advice as needed Sufficient market access and demand.

7. Unequal access to collateral, start up cash, and credit. Different forms of payment required for different types of goods: gender harmful effect. Not all supplies equally in circulation, along gender lines. Gendered coping strategies liquidate women’s assets and increase men’s business risk. Wide gender gap in profit re-investment and ability to harness cash for capital infusions. Prior lines of business buffer cash flow bottlenecks.. Profit leak. Men better able to manage peaks and valleys of business cycle

8. Probe those Gender Stereotypes About Women About Men Women are more honest. They will admit their mistakes and ask for help. Men are not transparent. They use their credit for a variety of business dealings and then when they get in trouble they will not admit it. It’s necessary to follow up with them more. Women are more risk averse than men. Women will only take the credit they need to meet basic business and livelihood needs. Men will expand into too many businesses too quickly. Men are more pushy than women. They will ask for large loans and will keep asking until they have received what they think they need. Women are not interested in expanding their businesses once their profits meet their basic needs. Women are more likely to reinvest in the business or in basic needs. When women default, it is because they have put the money into a pressing household need. Men are more likely to use their profits to invest in luxury or prestige goods. When men default, it is because they have taken on too much risk, spread themselves too thin, and not reinvested back into the business Men take business decisions independently Women are more cautious than men. Women want to know more about the product lines and will only invest in something they think they can sell. Women are more likely to take advice and to consult with other family members before making a business decision. This leads them to take more robust decisions. Men take more risk. They will take on a new idea or product line without testing it or seeing how it fits in their business plan.

9. Examples of What Works from Other CARE Projects Will these approaches change gender relations? structures?

10. Common Lessons • Explicitly go and find the women and ensure they participate in all processes of economic development. • Training, training, training. • Focus on women as small and medium enterprise owners and cooperative managers (not just better producers). • Specifically combat the “businessman” mindset at household, cooperative, government and private sector levels. • Link women’s organizations directly to government schemes and private sector services and products. • Work with both mixed-sex and same sex groups (but remember to change your strategy!) • Give control over key technology over to women.

11. Indonesia: Choosing the right chain The chain needs to have sufficient liveliness to work on access, control, participation and decision making issues in at least two stages and processes. Seaweed VC Fish Processing VC • Is quite flat. The only real value add done in Indonesia is seaweed growth and some initial cleaning. • In this context, there is little room to push different patterns in access to and control over key processes and products in the chain. • Many types of value add and market segments within the chain means that there are more possibilities to engage women in valued trade and diversification. Processing skills and standards Value addition, contract negotiation, develop network of buyers and markets, develop niches and brands, package

12. India: Intentionally involve women in new markets • Challenges notions about what women can and can’t do. • Allows greater access to and control over high valued goods. • Work at a very small scale, but on multiple levels and in multiple processes. • Engaged a large variety of stakeholders with mutual gain and mutual risk. Focus on more than one aspect of the value chain through partnerships. • Used women’s producers’ groups to create trust among different classes and castes. (Nepal, Rwanda). • Needs a strong community engagement strategy.

13. MEDA Pakistan: Going beyond IGAs • First phase concentrated on business management and home-based production. Focus was on the idea of women earning an independent wage or salary from their sole proprietor businesses within the family context. • Second phase developed female aggregators and intermediaries and promoted women in non-traditional jobs such as small appliance repair. Link with ILO to complement VC studies. • http://www.meda.org.pk/pathways-pursestrings/ Yes, there is a value in working on basic management and technical skills for women’s home based businesses, but there also needs to be a strategy to push the envelope at downstream stages and within stages.

14. Rwanda, Kenya: Limits to group savings Advantages Disadvantages • Good to build up a savings culture and instill basic money and budget management principles. • Good for start ups and entrants. • New VSLA manual provides some simple tools to address gender issues arising from women’s increasing economic activity. • VSLA recommended only if no indigenous system exists. • Not appropriate for entrepreneurs as focus is on savings and livelihood behavior change, not on business growth and sustenance.

15. Ghana: Prevent gender harm before it happens The Structural Risk The “Power With” Solution • Understand that if soybeans and cowpeas suddenly become valuable, men will begin to control the more valued stages of these two traditionally female-dominated chains. • Form women’s buying and lobbying associations. • Work with current male-dominated associations to include women who have been strengthened through their marketing groups. • Engage male champions for women as entrepreneurs right at the beginning.

16. Cuba: Promote women in skilled jobs • To break barriers and stereotypes, if the base education and skill level allows, engage women in: • Sorting, grading, packaging • Maintaining and managing machinery or mechanized processes • Certification and standards • Transportation Don’t have to address mobility or non-traditional job issues while expanding job variety and increasing wages.

17. Zimbabwe: Agro-dealers make structural change Advantages Disadvantages • Brings goods closer to women in the quantities in which they need them and allows them to sell the quantities they are able to still at a fair price. • Allows women to adapt to any climate change issues. • Women need to have clear control over the business in order for it to be sustainable.

18. Peru and Pakistan: Women can be visible Women can deliver mobile services if an appropriate model has been established. Peru: Cattle Marketing Project Pakistan: Earthquake Recon • Trained 109 community vets who acted as technical assistants and market intermediaries. • Responsible for 81% increase in income in related households. • All vets were young men. • Set men up as mobile vets in remote hilly areas and women up in point-of-sale shops in the valleys. • Met coverage needs without oversupply of services. • 35% - 40% of vets were female.

19. Bolivia: Women own technology

20. Bolivia and India: Same sex or mixed sex cooperatives? Bolivia Peanuts India Cashews • Will perform gender assessment of business associations to change gender biases in existing cooperatives. • Women as well as men to register. • Quotas for membership and leadership. • Change jobs that women do as cooperative members to include control and management of key pieces of technology and selling. • Women’s businesses and cooperatives means women learn about all stages of business, from regional management to processing. • Women’s businesses then entering into a male-dominated field downstream in the chain. Attempts to increase women’s power within the center of power, but baby-steps for long-term change. DFATD’s preferred method. Diversity of jobs, very decent work, still power to engage in downstream, but have women been ghetto-ised?

21. Bolivia and Zimbabwe: Add women and stir? Zimbabwe: It didn’t work Bolivia: It worked • 40% of agro-dealers women, but no clear ownership over business assets. • Where ownership clear, could reinvest 70% - 80% back into business. Where unclear, reinvesting less than 30%. • Loan sizes smaller, businesses less secure, less able to compete with men engaged in the same size and volume of business. • Women carried men’s bad debt in traders’ associations. • Women self-identified as entrepreneurs, and men supported them in their roles. • Women better able to manage the technical aspects of the “family” business and have a more equal say with men in business management. • Increase in the number of women participating meaningfully in leadership positions in cooperatives.

22. Lesotho

23. Kenya: Empowerment for Women Entrepreneurs in Nyanza Provided mobile phones Orange mobile Equity Bank Provided financing Ministry of State Leader buy in Training of trainers on group savings and lending and business management Community volunteers and organizations Kenya Standards Bureau Product standardization and public health requirements for foodstuffs Demonstrate new technologies, grafting, how to grow valued crops Kenya Agricultural Research Institute Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation Training and technical assistance on beekeeping National Beekeepers Station Ministry of Cooperatives and Marketing Association and registration of associations

24. What are others in SL doing? • Oxfam is doing dairy in SL but admittedly fewer women have participated the more developed the chain has become. • ILO