Livestock and fish program gender strategy output deliverables

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  • Evelyn Namvua

The Livestock and Fish Research Program formally adopted a gender strategy in May 2013 which adopts both Accommodative and Transformative approaches to design interventions that seek to facilitate movement around a more gender equal society. To achieve this, the strategy looks at an overall gender responsive outcome of the program’s research, which will be achieved through four key outputs:

  1. Capacity development
  2. Access and control of resources in livestock and fish value chains
  3. Gender transformative approaches
  4. Gender and nutrition

Output 1 of the strategy focuses on capacity development, to increase gender capacity within CGIAR centres, partner organizations and value chain actors to diagnose and overcome gender-based constraints within value chains.

Making strides

In the year 2013, six workshops aimed at developing the capacity of gender experts and stakeholders in the program were conducted, in which 47% of the 232 participants were women.

table

The objective of the Ford Foundation workshop held in Nairobi in February 2013 was to bring together development practitioners working in livelihood programs which target women to share lessons and develop strategies for practical and simultaneous integration of livelihoods and rights based approaches for women’s empowerment. While facilitating a value chain integration training during a Livestock and Irrigation Value chains for Ethiopian smallholders (LIVES) project planning meeting in March, Kathleen Colverson (gender theme leader in the Livestock and Fish program) in her presentation emphasized the need to engender research in LIVES so as to achieve the objectives for the project.

“Change will not be achieved by individuals or organizations in isolation, thus the need for gender capacity building targeted at all of CGIAR, partner organizations and value chain actors”~ Kathleen Colverson

During the “In-depth smallholder pig value chain assessment and preliminary identification of best-bet interventions” workshop in Kampala in April, Colverson also facilitated gender integration training during which she took the participants through an exercise aimed at demonstrating how to integrate gender into a value chain. She further facilitated an FAO workshop on Gender, Livestock and Livelihoods in South East Asia held in Thailand in the month of June. The annual Livestock and Fish gender working group workshop was held in October, during which the need to push forward the objective of capacity development within the gender domain was highlighted as captured in this blog post.  In her presentation during this meeting, Colverson articulated that change will not be achieved by individuals or organizations in isolation, thus the need for gender capacity building targeted at all of CGIAR, partner organizations and value chain actors, and the need to influence partners to integrate gender and not mandate.

In the coming year, more capacity building activities and interventions aimed at achieving the objectives highlighted in this output are planned. Among these include a gender integration workshop scheduled for 20-22 January 2014 in Nicaragua, as well a similar gender integration workshop later in the year in Mozambique.

To address other outputs in the strategy, a study which looked at the gender dynamics of smallholder goat production and marketing in Mozambique was conducted using data from the imGoats project. This effort contributed to a gendered value chain analysis in line with output 2 of the gender strategy. Output 2 aims at developing and implementing strategies and approaches through which women and marginalized groups improve the nature and level of participation in Livestock and fish value chains.

We look forward to a more fruitful year 2014. Happy holidays!

Article by ILRI/Dorine Odongo