Gender Issues In Farming Systems Research And Extension

Susan V. Poats

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429712814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book is the product of an international conference hosted by the Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD) Program at the University of Florida in 1986. The purpose of WIAD program is to promote an understanding of gender and its relevance for agricultural development processes.

Part I. Theoretical and Methodological Implications of the Inclusion of Gender in Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR/E)

1
Linking FSR/E and Gender: An Introduction

Susan V. Poats, Marianne Schmink, and Anita Spring

The title of this book is like a code. The two teems "gender issues" and "farming systems research and extension" are shorthand. Each represents an extensive field of research and practice: women and development or WID, and farming systems or FSR/E, respectively. The two fields have much in common. Both emerged relatively recently in response to dissatisfaction with the results of technological change in agriculture in developing countries. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s development theory and practice emphasized growth in productivity, by the 1970s there was a renewed concern to implement programs that conceived of development more broadly, to mean the possibility of better lives for most people. This perspective challenged a development field dominated by technical and economic expertise. Efforts to develop more comprehensive approaches that would bring together technical, economic, and social considerations led to the two interdisciplinary fields of WID and FSR/E.

In this brief introduction, justice cannot be done to either field in its own terms. Rather, the historical and practical considerations that favor their interaction and the conceptual problems such a union can help to overcome are reflected. The discussion will indicate how the following chapters in this book contribute theoretical and methodological insights that can help to make agricultural development programs more efficient and equitable.

Farming Systems Research and Extension

Most farms in developing countries are small scale, with few resources other than family labor. Their subsistence activities are multifaceted and their goals complex, including both market and non-market considerations. Minimizing risk is especially important when family survival is at stake. Given the constraints they face, small farmers actively seek ways to improve their productivity and to maximize the few resources at their disposal. Agricultural technologies (including equipment, inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, and management practices) are often designed for farmers with greater resources and market orientation based on an essentially economic calculation of costs and benefits. By the 1970s, development practitioners became concerned that the benefits of agricultural innovation accrued most easily to these wealtTher farmers. Yet small farmers constituted the majority of producers and, ultimately, those most directly responsible for the welfare of rural families and communities. What were the social and economic costs of neglecting them? The design of technologies appropriate to the majority of low-resource farmers required an understanding of their particular constraints, goals, and practices that went beyond strictly technical and economic criteria. The farming systems concept emerged as a response to this challenge.

FSR/E is not a single approach, but an array of different perspectives and methods. This diversity is a source of debate and dialogue that continually enriches the field. In this book there is likewise no orthodoxy, but rather a collection of different points of view as to how to conceptualize and carry out farming systems work. The common elements that underly most versions of farming systems include: an explicit commitment to low-resource producers; a systems approach that recognizes the complexity of small farm enterprises; a focus on the farm family or household; and a recognition of the importance of including farmers in the research and extension process. The concept of "domains" is used to denote the specific client group (defined by environmental, ecological, and/or socioeconomic criteria) to whom the project is oriented.

Women in Development

The WID field, similar to FSR/E, began with a concern for the distribution of development benefits. Like farming systems, women and development is far from a unified field of knowledge. Not only does it include many strands of research and practice, but the field has evolved rapidly over the approximately 20 years of its existence, since economist Ester Boserup published her ground-breaking work Women's Role in Economic Development in 1970. Boserup's work challenged the prevailing notion that economic development, or modernization, would automatically improve women's status by replacing traditional values and economic backwardness with new opportunities and an egalitarian ethos. She argued instead that economic innovations often replaced women's traditional economic activities with more efficient forms of production controlled by men. Examples included the decline of women's cottage industries due to competition from factories hiring predominantly men and, in some parts of the world, the growth of modern service and commerce sectors in which men predominated, in place of women's traditional marketing practices. The recognition that development, as practiced, might actually worsen women's position relative to men's crystallized the new field of women and development around a concern with equity.

By the late 1970s, however, a growing research base on women's economic activities showed that equity was intimately related to more technical problems of efficiency and productivity. If development undermined women's traditional economic contributions, was this loss compensated by the output of new forms of production? Were new economic opportunities opening up for women? What was the impact of these shifts on the welfare and productivity of the poor populations of the world? The new emphasis on the poor focused attention on women's importance as household producers and providers in addition to their domestic roles. No longer were they to be viewed simply as potential welfare beneficiaries whose needs might be neglected by development efforts. Instead, women were a mainstay of family and community welfare, active producers whose potential contributions were often overlooked or undermined. A clearer understanding of changes in women's role in production therefore was essential for the success of agricultural development projects.

A decade of theoretical experimentation and empirical research on women's role in development moved the field from the stage of raising awareness and clarifying issues to a search for practical applications. How could the WID insights be applied to development work? One solution was to create special projects or components devoted to women. While sometimes successful, these all too often emphasized women's domestic responsibilities rather than their productive work. They also distracted from the more general problem of improving the effectiveness of "mainstream" development projects by making them more responsive to gender differences among the client population. By what practical means could such a formidable task be undertaken? The first attempts to answer this question produced an array of checklists of questions to be asked and data to be gathered in each project setting. A series of case studies were published as examples of how gender affected development projects. Various institutions compiled handbooks that specified how gender issues could be addressed at each step of the project cycle. But there were not enough experts trained in the analysis of such complex and variable matters as household division of labor, decision making, and income management. Some of the basic issues could be specified in advance, but each setting required a unique assessment of their relevance and of the interaction with other important variables. While hiring more women as project staff members appeared to be a good idea, the gender of the researcher or practitioner turned out to be no guarantee of the requisite analytical skills.

In response to this dilemma, WID efforts in the 1980s sought to develop the tools of "gender analysis" and the methods by which development practitioners could learn and adopt them. USAID fostered a major effort to adapt the Harvard Business School's case study teaching method to training on gender issues in development projects. The Office of Women in Development sponsored the writing of several new analytical case studies that were compiled in a handbook that also provided a framework and set of basic concepts to be used in the case study analysis (Overholt et al. 1985). The cases and the training method have been widely used in training workshops that provide practice in tackling a set of questions that might otherwise seem hopelessly complicated. The strength of this approach is its emphasis on the link between project or development goals and gender differences in the client population. This focus helps to clarify the relevant issues and to indicate priorities for research and action.

Gender Issues in Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR/E)

The farming systems perspective is especially appropriate for such a process-oriented approach to gender analysis. The FSR/E methodology consists of a series of stages (diagnosis, planning and design of technology, experimentation and evaluation, and dissemination) that facilitate the specification of steps to be taken to address particular aspects of research and extension and how to make the best use of different kinds of data. But FSR/E is also conceived to be an iterative, adaptive process in which, once the project is well underway, the various stages of research take place simultaneously. This philosophy is intended to maximize the potential impact of on-going farmer evaluations on the design and dissemination of future technological changes. The research process allows time to learn about the intricacies of farming systems and to incorporate new insights into more refined measures and project adaptations. Other characteristics of the farming systems approach especially important for gender analysis include its focus on small farm households and on the participation of farmers in the research and extension process.

Disaggregating Development Beneficiaries

The farming systems emphasis on reaching specific low-income groups helped to illuminate women's roles in agricultural development, identifying small farmer constituencies required the disaggregation of society into "target" or "client" groups which brought women's activities into greater focus. The interaction of socioeconomic standing and gender was brought home by the growing recognition that women in poor families played essential economic roles that bore little resemblance to the activities of middleclass and elite women in the same societies. These observations were confirmed by mounting evidence from research that documented poor women's multiple economic activities, low earnings and long work hours, and restricted access to productive resources. Women played a central role in the low-resource farm households that were the focus of farming systems work.

The surprisingly high and growing proportions of female-headed households dramatized women's economic importance in poor populations and revealed the extra constraints under which they often labored to acTheve family welfare (Buvinic and Youssef 1979). Rural out-migration of men was rising in many parts of the world as a result of development, leaving many women either temporarily or permanently in charge of their households (Palmer 1986). Their efforts were often undermined by labor constraints or by lack of access to productive resources, in part because research and extension services were primarily oriented to male f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• PART I THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE INCLUSION OF GENDER IN FARMING SYSTEMS RESEARCH AND EXTENSION (FSR/E)
• PART II LATIΝ AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
• PART III ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
• PART IV AFRICA
• CONTRIBUTORS