ACIAR committed to gender equity, food security and working to eradicate poverty globally

This week ACIAR joins the world in celebrating the International Day of Rural Women (15 October), World Food Day (16 October) and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October).

Globally, women comprise on average 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, and more than 50% in some parts of Asia and Africa. Research shows giving women access to agricultural resources, training and services helps them increase their farm productivity by 20 to 30%. As women gain increased control of household resources the outcomes for the next generation are improved, and women have a greater role in decision making.

ACIAR recognises the critical role women play in rural economies to grow food and help alleviate poverty. We all know women can be powerful agents of change—this is an important consideration when research and development programs are conceived, structured and delivered. ACIAR’s policy views gender equity as central to its activities. ACIAR assesses gender equity issues during project design, implementation and impact assessment to bring sustained change to women and men by influencing policies and laws, increasing access to services and changing attitudes and beliefs about women’s and men’s roles in our agricultural research projects. By working to better understand access to—and decision-making power over—productive resources such as land, livestock, agricultural equipment, extension knowledge and credit, ACIAR is better able to guide research on agricultural interventions so that benefits are accessible to women, men, girls and boys

Below is a collection of stories that demonstrate ACIAR’s commitment to gender equity, food security and working towards a world where no one lives in poverty.

In Papua New Guinea, a fisheries project has far greater influence thanks to the participation of women 
The aim of the PNG inland aquaculture research project is to improve the practice of fish farming in a region where 80% of the population is unemployed, experiences protein deficiency and is subject to recurring tribal and gang violence. The project has been especially beneficial to women because of an innovative training program managed by Sister Pauline Kagl.

“Every person, whether they are the perpetrator of crime or the victim, can change their lives. Time and time again we have transformed people through the combined action fo fish farming and personal viability training” – Sister Pauline Kagl.

Sister Pauline Kagl (right) in Jiwaka province, Papua New Guinea. Photo: Jes Sammut

Blazing a trail for women in tree breeding in Vietnam
In Vietnam, significant steps towards gender equality have opened up new opportunities for
women. ACIAR is contributing by supporting talented women—such as Dr Nghiem Quyen
Chi—to pursue careers in agricultural research.

With ACIAR support, talented young women in developing countries are building their careers in agricultural research, with benefits that span individual, societal and national levels.

Check out this video about the project. 

Tropical acacias play an important role in Vietnam's forestry systems. Helping to ensure the acacias' performance is Dr Nghiem Quyen Chi of the Vietnamese Academy of Forest Sciences. Photo: Sally Ingleton

Left behind women find empowerment in the eastern Gangetic Plain
An A$11 million project has been launched to improve the sustainability and resilience of farming systems in a region with the greatest concentration of rural poverty in the world—the eastern Gangetic Plain.

Women-headed households especially stand to benefit, with the project adopting gender-sensitive designs and extension tools.

Out-migration has given rise to a new caste - the so-called 'left behind' women. Photo: Melissa Marion.

A horticulture project is helping women in Lao PDR villages produce and jointly market a surplus of organic vegetables
Women in Lao PDR villages are producing and jointly marketing a surplus of organic vegetables, increasing their family income while improving consumer health and environmental sustainability.
ACIAR support is helping the women’s association spread economic benefit by expanding its
organised marketing from fewer than 30 women to include more than 160.

Mrs Khamdta (right) has turned her garden into a model of integrated organic farming. She is pictured with Ms Buachanh, the president of the board of directors of the organic vegetable growers’ association, which is expanding market opportunities for farmers such as Mrs Khamdta. Photo: Michael Jones 

The women who broke the poultry disease cycle in Africa

A team led by Associate Professor Robyn Alders has pioneered an effective way to treat malnutrition among smallholder farmers through the use of a vaccine that protects poultry from Newcastle disease. First trialled in three African countries, the method is now being adopted in other countries, including Timor-Leste.

Carolina Mwaluko (right) works as a “community vaccinator” in her village in central Tanzania, administering a thermotolerant vaccine as an eye drop to chickens in exchange for a small fee from farmers. Vaccination programs against Newcastle disease, a key production constraint in many developing countries, allow chicken flocks to increase in size and households to benefit from the sale or consumption of poultry products. Since Carolina was trained in May 2014, local traders have noticed the greater availability of chickens for sale and the reduced risk of disease among birds in transit to regional markets. Sustainable Newcastle disease control programs are part of an integrated approach to increasing income and improving nutrition for households in Tanzania and Zambia. Photo: Robyn Alders

In Pakistan’s dairy sector, women and children proved instrumental in the adoption of productivity-improving know-how, both as farmers and extension officers
Innovation in the way extension services are delivered to Pakistan’s subsistence dairy farmers is raising productivity. Women and children proved instrumental to the rollout of productivity-enhancing extension services to Pakistan’s dairy sector. Women have helped raise productivity both as farmers

Sobia Majeed (centre) with some of the female dairy farmers she worked with in Sindh, Pakistan, over the four projects in which extension services were innovated and tested in partnership with ACIAR. Photo: ACIAR

Women farmers in Vietnam’s impoverished north-western highlands are the essential ingredient needed to solve a set of inter-related nutrition, poverty and marketing problems involving vegetables
Vietnam’s north-west provinces face a dual need for improved vegetable production systems and access to markets. An ACIAR project working to achieve both goals in ways that reduce poverty and malnutrition has found that the key to success is women.

This video will tell you more.

Mother and child in Vietnam's north-western highlands. Photo: Phan Thuy Hien

Women in the Philippines take the lead
In 2015, the Philippines climbed to ninth in the World Economic Forum’s report measuring gender equality among 145 countries, the highest rank in the Asia–Pacific region. The strength of women is on display in an ACIAR project that is helping smallholder vegetable producers in the southern Philippines overcome low yields, pests and diseases so as to meet local market demand and improve nutrition and livelihoods.

(From left) Dr Zenaida Gonzaga, Dr Lucia Borines and Dr Reny Gerona. Photo: ACIAR.

Learning from engaging women leaders at the inaugural Women Leaders in Public Sector Forum

What makes a good leader? How to be a successful leader? How to remove traditional barriers to achieve improved gender representation in the public sector?

These were some of the questions explored and discussed at the inaugural Women Leaders in the Public Sector Forum, held at the Australian National University on 6 April 2016.

This quote was displayed during the forum.

Gender equity in agriculture

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates women comprise 43% of the agricultural labour force and that productive outputs could increase by 20 – 30% if women received the same access to agricultural services and inputs.

So how do we integrate gender equity and women’s economic empowerment into agricultural programing?

This is the question we explored over a two day course at the CSIRO in Canberra. Linda Jones facilitated the workshop which was attended by around 20 participants from the CSIRO, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), ACIAR and World Vision. Each participant brought unique experiences and knowledge to address the constraints and benefits of empowering women in agriculture in developing countries.

Women-only focus group and farm practice discussion, Eastern Gangetic Plains, India. Credit: ACIAR

Fijian women take the lead on cocoveneer

ACIAR is funding innovative research and training to help Fijian scientists conduct research on how to produce high-quality veneer products from ‘senile’ coconut stems. On this International Day of Rural Women we would like to highlight this important project that is building the capacity of Fijian women and enhancing livelihoods in the South Pacific. In many Pacific Island countries there are vast areas of coconut palms  that are too old to produce fruit, which provide little use to farmers. However with ACIAR’s help, Fijian locals are developing a better understanding of how to turn unused resources into a higher value, profitable product.

Eric Littee (QDAFF) , with Sainiana (measuring veneer), Temo and Elenoa from Fiji Department of Forestry.

Photo: Tony Bartlett.

Voicing the needs of women farmers

“Women farmers are vital, in the poverty-ridden Eastern Gangetic Plains of South Asia”, says Dr Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, of the ANU.

ACIAR, with DFAT, funded a report by Dr Lahiri-Dutt highlighting the ‘feminisation of agriculture’ and the challenges facing women-headed farming households, in the Eastern Gangetic Plains. This is one of the poorest parts of the world – marked by male out-migration and deteriorating livelihoods.

Social and economic factors, and the need for off-farm income, have seen men increasingly move away from rural areas, to the point where up to 70% of South Asia’s agricultural work is done by women.



Dukhni Safi runs a farm of less than a tenth of a hectare in the Madhubani district of Bihar, India.

The farm is now so small it can only provide 4–5 months of the food required yearly for the household.

Women have emerged as the key producers, performing a wide range of tasks related to planning, cropping, managing, processing and marketing, in and around the agricultural fields.

The resulting women-headed farming households are often poor with small landholdings. These families and their livelihoods are further constrained by the lower levels of education and training afforded to women, and the discrimination to which they are subjected when accessing agricultural technologies.

Dr Lahiri-Dutt’s report is based on a detailed survey of the serious constraints being faced by women living in this extremely poor setting. She knows this region and its challenges for women farmers intimately. Dukhni Safi and Sajjan Devi are farming women whose voices can be heard in two short but insightful case studies featured in the report.

 

Dr Lahiri-Dutt canvasses the opinion of these women – of their perception of obstacles and constraints, and of possible local solutions.

Dr Lahiri-Dutt recommends a series of strategies, that are gender sensitive, to improve education for women-headed farming households – for example, introducing women to more productive agricultural methods and extension services.

The burden of work on women is exemplified by the case of 30-year-old Sajjan Devi, a widow, pictured here with two of her three young children.

She also sees knowledge sharing among peers, and in group situations, as a necessity. Dr Lahiri-Dutt suggests that these informal and safe peer groups could evolve into cooperatives, aimed at securing training and improving access to money, resources and equipment.



In the Eastern Gangetic Plains region gender roles have significantly shifted in the past 50 years. Feminisation holds implications for agricultural productivity, food security and gender equity issues. It’s of interest as much for agricultural scientists as it is for development agencies.

Ultimately, Dr Lahiri-Dutt’s report adds substantially to the field of agricultural knowledge by incorporating the voices of women. It will assist agricultural scientists and development agencies alike, in ensuring their programs and project activities are in tune with the actual needs expressed by women.

 

To reiterate, and as Dr Lahiri-Dutt says, the need to empower these women in their farming households is vital.

By Mr David Skinner (ACIAR Program Support Officer) and Dr  John Dixon (ACIAR Principal Adviser)

More information and further reading

ACIAR publication TR083 - Experiencing and coping with change: women-headed farming households in the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta (Yale University Press, 2013)

 

 

Helping women revive natural dye-making traditions




Some of the naturally dyed yarns produced by the village women.

In Indonesia, hand-woven and dyed textiles play an important role in the spiritual, social and economic aspects of life. These textiles are worn in ceremonies, traded, bartered and given as wedding gifts. They are made by women, with the traditions passed down through generations. Increasingly these textiles are produced using synthetic dyes. However, new research is encouraging women to revive their natural dye-making traditions, and increase their incomes in the process.

An ACIAR-funded project in eastern Indonesia is supporting the development of integrated agroforestry and non-timber forest product systems. The project partners include government researchers and non-government organisations, including a Bali-based fair-trade organisation—Threads of Life—that uses culture and conservation to alleviate poverty in rural Indonesia.


William Ingram, founder of Threads of Life, discussing dying with Halena Kase at Bosen.

Threads of Life works directly with over 1,000 women in more than 35 cooperative groups on islands from Kalimantan to Timor. The proceeds from sales of the textiles help weavers establish cooperatives, manage their resources sustainably, train younger generations, and keep their traditions alive while alleviating poverty. Threads of Life staff also teach the members of the cooperatives simple business skills, as well as how to manage and protect the plants used in dye making.

Under the ACIAR project, with the support of Threads of Life and the project researchers, women in the village of Bosen, East Nusa Tenggara, are reviving their ancient traditions of making natural dyes for use in weaving to enhance their livelihoods. Since the project started a year ago, the local researchers introduced the Threads of Life staff to the potential opportunities around the Bosen village study site. Women in this village were practising weaving but they had made the transition to using synthetic dyes. Only the older women in the village could remember which local plants had been used to make dyes and what the traditional practices were.


Margarita Liukae reducing indigo dye.

When we visited Bosen during the project’s annual workshop in August 2014, the local women were making a purple dye from the plant Indigofera—a plant that’s been traded around the world for centuries. Interestingly the genus Indigofera is widely distributed with local species occurring in Indonesia and Australia. However, the most commonly planted species in Indonesia is Indigofera tinctoria, which originated in India and was brought to Indonesia in the 19^th Century. 

The plants, which are nitrogen fixing, are grown in the village gardens and the leaves are then used to make the indigo dye. Following soaking and partial fermentation, lime is added to reduce the indigo and make it more colour fast.




Halena Kase using the indigo to dye threads for weaving.

By reviving and adopting the traditional dye-making processes, and then using these dyes in their textile weaving, the women of Bosen are receiving up to four times as much for the textiles as they did when they used synthetic dyes. The project staff are supporting these activities and researching how the natural dyes can be made more uniform and colour fast.

By Tony Bartlett, ACIAR’s Forestry research program manager

More information

ACIAR project FST/2012/039 – Development of timber and non-timber forest products’ production and market strategies for improvement of smallholders’ livelihoods in Indonesia, led by World Agroforestry Centre

Oranges and mangoes in Pakistan (Part II)

Another story of sweet success from the Australia-Pakistan Agriculture Sector Linkages Program (ASLP)..

Ms Aasia Akbar is a woman on a mango mission. A food technologist researcher from the Institute of Food Management Sciences, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam-Pakistan, she has worked out how to use the whole mango to make a swathe of delicious products such as mango pickle, jam, jelly, slices and squash.

Women at the training workshop

Kau kau is a key to improving livelihoods in Papua New Guinea

ACIAR Graduate Officer Rebecca McBride recently travelled to Lae, on the north coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG), to visit two ACIAR projects that are directly and indirectly looking at sweetpotato production, processing and marketing.

Sweetpotato, or 'kau kau' as it is called locally, is a key staple in PNG. It makes up 43% of the total dietary intake there. Although annual production is estimated at 3 million tonnes, only 2% of this is sold in markets. The rest is used for household consumption or fed to livestock.

Sweetpotato at the markets. They are commonly sold in piles at a set price.
Piles at the same price can vary significantly in quantity and quality.
(photos: D.Irving and C.Chang)

Celebrating International Women's Day 2014

ACIAR works with women smallholder farmers across a wide range of countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea (PNG), and countries in south-eastern Africa. Our research aims to make agriculture more equitable for these women, to enable them to make money to send their children to school, improve housing and provide basic family necessities. The research particularly seeks to understand the constraints and opportunities faced by smallholder women farmers and to improve their knowledge and capacity. 

The emphasis on women is especially strong in PNG. Research covers a range of commodities, including staple crops grown for domestic markets (e.g. sweetpotato) and crops for potential export (e.g. coffee, oil palm and cocoa). A key area of focus is teaching women business acumen (‘liklik bisnis’), including financial literacy and management, how to match market supply with demand, and how to access credit.

Who says forestry is men’s domain?

While reviewing the forestry component of ACIAR’s Pacific Agribusiness Research and Development Initiative (PARDI) program in the Pacific recently, I was acutely aware of the substantial contributions that women make to forestry research and the development of related business enterprises.

(L-R) Prof Helen Wallace, Elektra Grant and Votausi
Mackenzie-Reur with a jar of the new tamarind  chutney

This research has been very well led by Professor Helen Wallace of the University of the Sunshine Coast. Helen had previously led an ACIAR project researching improved processing of canarium nuts in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. Under the current PARDI program, Helen leads two forestry projects: one researching enhanced processing and markets for canarium nuts in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, and the other developing processing and markets for tamarind products in Vanuatu. As with other PARDI research, this work has a strong focus on markets with grassroots benefits to smallholder producers.

Speaking out on feminisation of agriculture in Nepal

Ms Sujata Tamang is a good example of a young female scientist making a significant contribution to her country’s forestry research through ACIAR. She works for Forest Action Nepal and is involved in ACIAR’s project Enhancing livelihoods and food security from agroforestry and community forestry in Nepal.

Ms Sujata Tamang presenting at the
3rd World Agroforestry Congress in New Dehli

Seeds of Hope in Aceh

Ongoing ACIAR work in Aceh, Indonesia is helping farmers recover and improve livelihoods after the 2004 tsunami. Mirah Nuryati, ACIAR’s acting Country Manager Indonesia, recently visited the region and saw firsthand how an alliance between a women farmers group and project partners is setting an inspiring example to others...

It was a hot sunny day when I visited the beautiful village of Naga Umbang, in Aceh Besar District in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, the western-most province of Indonesia. It was in this province that more than 150,000 people lost their lives and many more lost their families and properties in the 2004 tsunami.

The tsunami has devastated this village. Tonnes of debris were dumped by the catastrophe and caused severe damage to the agricultural lands. The soil has become very saline and thus infertile to plant new crops, and much of it has been abandoned. The farmers have gone through very difficult times due to low agricultural productivity and unsuccessful harvests.

(image: P Jones)

A woman’s touch to woodworking

An ACIAR initiative is helping build capacity of young professionals in the Indonesian furniture industry—Tony Bartlett, ACIAR’s Forestry research program manager, tells us more...

Ibu Ria with her coffee table

Prize-winning innovation and craftsmanship has given a young Indonesian woman a trip abroad to refine her skills in furniture design.

Success stories of socioeconomic research in Papua New Guinea

A recent workshop in Papua New Guinea (PNG) brought Australian and PNG project personnel together to learn from current and recent ACIAR socioeconomic work. Dr Caroline Lemerle, ACIAR’s Agricultural Systems Management research program manager, describes some of the successes of this work...

Women working wonders in Vietnam

Mrs Nguyen Thi Oanh and Mrs Bui Thi Hob
who grow indigenous vegetables in NW Vietnam
(Photo: Vu Thi Hai Hau)

Celebrating International Day of Rural Women, 15 October, Mandy Gyles brings us the story of women growing and marketing indigenous vegetables in Vietnam.

“Since joining the co-operative and learning new production skills our crop has been increasing and our income has grown three fold,” said Mrs Nguyen Thi Oanh (pictured left), a Vietnamese farmer who is now harvesting and selling 100-220 bunches of indigenous vegetables daily.

International Women's Day 2013

Today is International Women's Day.

Here at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) we're continually striving to take steps forward towards an integrated approach to gender in our projects. Addressing the gender disparities between women and men farmers in the developing world represents a significant development potential in itself.

An ACIAR project in Papua New Guinea is helping to increase women's business skills.
(Photo by Paul Jones)

The gender issue

Promotional art for The Simpsons episode,
Girls Just Want to Have Sums
(copyright Fox)

There is an episode of the animated television show The Simpsons, where one of the characters gets himself into a lot of trouble for making a series of unintentionally disparaging remarks about the achievement of a woman. That character, Principal Skinner, the head of the elementary or primary school is trying to praise a past student, who has returned to her hometown as director of a stage show.

Each remark, is interpreted as sexist, until Skinner is seen begging anyone to “just tell me what I need to say to make it all go away”.

I kept running that through my head when trying to write this post on gender issues. Was I saying the right thing, or was I about to drop myself in it, saying something inadvertently wrong.

The point here is how complicated the whole issue can be (warning – potential dumb, Skinner-style comment following). The cause of at least some of that complexity is the differing circumstances of women in the developing world, particularly those who run smallholder farms, particularly when viewed from the lens of the expectations and realities surrounding equality in the developing world. 

And the reality is that the majority of the 500 million or so smallholder farms in the developing world are run by women.

Building markets for Vietnamese indigenous vegetables

Armed with a Masters degree in agricultural business from the University of Adelaide, Rebecca McBride recently spent 12 months working in north-west Vietnam as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development.

Rebecca was engaged as an agricultural marketing officer on an ACIAR project that is helping women from often poor families in the north-west highlands to grow and market local indigenous vegetables in rapidly transforming markets.