Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus Global Food Security - Seminar 3

Summary

The third seminar in the Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus series dives into the intersection of gender and global food security. This event explores how gender roles and the gender gap affect food security globally, with insights from experts Dr. Lillian In Kangla of Oxfam and Dr. Janelle Larson from Penn State. The seminar highlights systemic disparities and discusses how overcoming gender inequality can lead to enhanced food security and community wellbeing. Through discussions and case studies, the seminar presents evidence and strategies to empower women in agriculture and foster a more equitable distribution of resources.

Highlights

• Dr. Lillian In Kangla from Oxfam discusses gender disparities in agriculture. 👩‍🌾
• The seminar highlights that equal resource distribution can reduce food insecurity by 150 million people. 📉
• Dr. Janelle Larson shares her research on gender dynamics in food security and time poverty. ⏱️
• Participants explored the differences in food insecurity experiences within the same household based on gender. 🏠
• The event introduced strategies for changing gender norms to improve food system equity. 🔄

Key Takeaways

• Understanding gender roles is crucial for addressing global food security. 🧠
• Empowering women in agriculture could significantly decrease food insecurity. 🌾
• Gender norms are deeply ingrained but can be shifted with intentional efforts. 🔄
• Technology in agriculture offers potential, but access remains a barrier for many women. 📱
• Informal economies play a critical role in the livelihoods of women in agriculture. 💼

Overview

The seminar kicks off with a discussion led by Dr. Lillian In Kangla from Oxfam, who dives into the gender disparities deeply seated in global food security issues. Her presentation focuses on how unequal access to resources, such as land and capital, disproportionately affects women in agriculture. She emphasizes the significance of transforming gender roles and fostering resilient food systems.

Dr. Janelle Larson from Penn State brings her expertise in agricultural economics to the table, delving into her research on gender and food security. Her studies reveal that households where women control income or have access to credit experience more diverse diets and reduced food insecurity. Her findings underscore the potential impact of empowering women economically to cultivate broader benefits for communities.

Throughout the seminar, the importance of addressing traditional gender norms and leveraging technology in agriculture is highlighted. However, experts acknowledge the challenges in ensuring these technologies benefit women, due to a persistent lack of access. The session concludes with calls for integrating gender awareness into agricultural policies and supporting informal economies to bolster women's roles in food systems.

Gilman Foreign Policy in Focus Global Food Security - Seminar 3 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 was the second seminar series was uh looking at climate change and its effects on food security and our third seminar Series today is Big reveal here uh the gender the relationship between gender and Global Food security um maybe this is something you've thought a lot about maybe this is something you've not thought very much about but this is a a really significant uh conversation that we're having in terms of access to resources
• 00:30 - 01:00 Trends and availability of food between men and women um children and so we're going to dive into some of this here we've got a couple of pretty extraordinary guests with us um Dr Lillian en kangla from Oxfam and Dr Janelle Larson from uh Penn State who has worked with several grants from several agencies including us agency for International Development so we'll we'll get to them in a couple of minutes I'm going to start us off with just sort of setting the stage of what are we seeing what do we know um what our trends that
• 01:00 - 01:30 we are identifying and to do that um I want to do a couple of things uh first of all I want to get to know a little bit about you and where you're coming from so if you've joined us before this this might look familiar I'm going to have you use slido so if you can either go to slido.com and enter that number 37445 47 um or use your phone or whatever device that you can read a QR code um I want you to join the that meeting or that session and let us know where where in the world are you joining
• 01:30 - 02:00 from and where if you're from the United States there's a lot of people joining from the United States what state are you from um if you're from outside the United States what country are you joining from so we've got a a good mix of people here um we'll see if anything starts to to develop so okay we got strong representation from Michigan USA New York California Texas we also have Colombia um I saw Togo in there K
• 02:00 - 02:30 Kyan um Panama South Korea the Philippines Mexico Minneapolis um so this is terrific this is this is great representation from sort of across the US and around the world so thank you very much um as we're going through we're going to have a time for question and answer at the end of this meeting um uh so we'll we'll if you have questions you should look if you should see at the bottom of your screen a Q&A function so if you have any
• 02:30 - 03:00 questions please put them in there we'll get to a time of Q&A towards the end so just to let you know where we're going right for this intro here I have three main questions to look at one what is gender even let's get on the same page about what that term means what is the gender gap and how does the gender gap affect food security so first off what is gender so we could spend a lot of time in this conversation and we're not going to we're going to just go over this really quickly so many of you may
• 03:00 - 03:30 be like oh no no no wait wait wait there's so much more to talk about within that we're not going to do that um we're just identifying okay A lot of times these the terminology of gender and sex get used sort of very often interchangeably so what are we talking about when we're saying gender and at the most sort of basic and fundamental level um we're saying you know sex is physiology gender is all of the sort of social components so here we've got thoughts actions meanings perceptions identities worldviews responsibilities opportunities constraints it's the
• 03:30 - 04:00 things that if I say nurse and you have an image in your mind is it a man or a woman there's nothing physiological about well could a nurse a man or a woman be better suited to be a nurse but social there's a very strong social perception the same if I said fighter pilot or neurosurgeon or you know like kindergarten teacher we kind of have this image that very often T tends to be well a man or a woman would be more likely to be in that role those are all
• 04:00 - 04:30 the sorts of like social components and these are very much the things that um dictate a lot of our interactions over the course of a day and our our lifetime of of opportunities that certain people may or may not be afforded um this is true for gender there's lots of other components in life that we could talk about but in particular right now where we're talking about gender and this is a really significant conversation in lots of places um we mentioned the sustainable development goals before this uh sdg number five is gender
• 04:30 - 05:00 equality so looking at how do we promote opportunities for men and women and and access to similar sorts of resources um and that becomes a really significant conversation especially as we get into the topics of food security so second question what is the gender gap so the the sort of textbook definition of the gender gap is it's a division between what men and women do know access to
• 05:00 - 05:30 decide and own um so this can play out in lots of settings right we'll talk about the pay Gap that's sort of the classic example the gender pay cap um access to education we're g to talk about a food security and access to food resources there's lots of places where you might see this gender gap come into play in terms of um you know I talk about this in class with students who are saying well I'm on a sporting team and the men's hockey team gets a lot more unities than the women's hockey team
• 05:30 - 06:00 does right like even though maybe the women's hockey team is doing a lot better um you're seeing these places where there's there's this unequal footing between men and women sometimes on occasion right there there might be some guys who might say like oh wait but like sometimes there might be a few instances where women might have more opportunities but the overwhelming majority of times we're seeing is where okay men have a lot more opportunities than women so looking at a couple of examples here this is the Go Global Pay Gap and you can see this over time and
• 06:00 - 06:30 there's you know limited data for countries around the world but what we do have data on you're seeing this gap between what men and women are earning um and the darker green there's there's a more stark contrast for those of us who are in the United States um there's there's a gap between men and women also based on R race and ethnicity you're seeing a gap between what people are able to earn and this isn't many times these are controlled for um
• 06:30 - 07:00 education for job that in the same sort of role men and women are making different opportunities to say nothing of uh people of color and and you can see here oh hey on the average salary for men versus women um you're seeing a big disparity in terms of what they're earning so this is this is the gender gap in general right we could talk like we said we could talk about education we could talk about all sorts of different aspects in life we're going to talk about food security and especially how this relates to access to
• 07:00 - 07:30 resources for women who are involved in agriculture and producing food and who has food um but before we get into this my question for you all is have you personally seen an example of the gender gap in your own life or in the world around you so maybe this is something you've seen personally um maybe this is something of like oh hey I am I am around people who are I can see this right like I haven't seen this directly myself but maybe there's other instances where as I look around the world around me either I have seen firsthand or I have um seen other places in the world
• 07:30 - 08:00 geographically or in my own neighborhood or Community places where we're seing that so we're seeing like very large majority of people are saying yeah I I definitely have seen something that to that effect um in the interest of time I'm actually not going to do this clip but what I or that question but what I'm gonna do I'm GNA play a short video here that illustrates this especially in the context of Agriculture and producing food um so we'll just play this short video here
• 08:00 - 08:30 meet Amina she's a actually I'm sorry I'm G to share my screen again because I think I need to make sure to share audio farmer she swws and harvests she feeds and tends her family's animals collects fuel wood carries water she sells crops she grows she shops and Cooks she funds her children's education cleans house takes care of the sick and
• 08:30 - 09:00 elderly despite all of this am minina has less access to assets opportunities and benefits than her husband her brother her father or her son much less this inequality hurts more than women and girls it holds back whole communities and societies if the world's women and men food producers had equal access to resources yields would increase and
• 09:00 - 09:30 everyone would have more and better food the number of hungry people could be reduced by 150 million if women and men had equal access to land loans and learning if the norms and policies that favor men today included women's preferences realities and Ambitions together men and women could trans form lives and
• 09:30 - 10:00 livelihoods join the cgir gender platform help us build and use evidence to make gender equality Central to Agriculture and our entire food system because when wives sisters mothers and daughters move forward on equal footing with their husbands Brothers Fathers and Sons both people and Planet will be well and truly
• 10:00 - 10:30 nourished finally okay so as you can see from the video it's it's not necessarily so much an opportunity of uh men versus women and it's really like how does everyone benefit when everyone has access to more opportunities um and we can see this in a a variety of settings and contexts where the opportunities afforded to uh
• 10:30 - 11:00 women especially related to agriculture are often very reduced and and there's a significant disparity in terms of who has access to certain resources so this is from uh this report you can look at the the link there the QR code and actually Mary if you don't mind dropping into the chat the the first URL there the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations came out with a report the status of agricult of women in Agra Food Systems um and they were
• 11:00 - 11:30 looking at a variety of factors but what sort of opportunities women had who were engaged in agriculture and you can see we've got um a lot of data here in terms of who owns land of people who are engaged in agriculture and owning land is a tremendous opportunity because it allows you to make investments for a longer term things that you may not see benefiting after the first season you might see after two three four five seasons you can make those sorts of Investments because you know you'll be on the land allows you to build equity
• 11:30 - 12:00 um and you're seeing these Trends where there is a big disparity between men and women we can see the percent of men on our y- AIS here percent of women on their x-axis and so we can see this sort of large disparity where men have consistently are owning more land than women uh another act component is access to extension services um so for those not familiar extension services takes a of shapes and forms but this idea of
• 12:00 - 12:30 education training resources in order to develop um ultural practices and so you're seeing there's a significant disparity there um we're seeing this as well in terms of access to resources whether it's uh equipment tools seeds um loans there's a lot of variation in terms of who has access to these sorts of resources and overwhelmingly men have more access to those sorts of resources so what does this actually mean for food
• 12:30 - 13:00 security well in a lot actually um so you're seeing uh Trends here in terms of food security globally so if you see here on the um the lighter lines here of men and women experiencing moderate or severe secur food insecurity you can see during covid right right in here we got 2020 you there starts to be an even further widening of that Gap um and you can see regionally especially in Latin America and Caribbean there's a pretty significant uh Gap about 10 percentage
• 13:00 - 13:30 points difference in terms of who is experiencing food insecurity um you can see in terms of here the share of women of all workers employed in agriculture so of people employed in agriculture a very large number um between a third to nearly a half in some instances um are women about 36% of women who are working are working in aggr Food Systems globally so there's a very large number of um women who are
• 13:30 - 14:00 engaged in agricultural work but if they're not having the same access to resources that puts them at a um there's a shortcoming and the argument is by many people um that if women had the same sort of resources well that would be a real make a really significant impact on the amount of food produced so globally men produce more food but the argument is well a lot of that is by limited access to resources and so there's lots of numbers that get thrown out but one number that's pointed to is
• 14:00 - 14:30 this idea of well if women had more access to resources um there could be a reduction of the people who are facing food insecurity of 100 to 150 million people or a reduction of about 12 to 17% of the overall numbers of people facing food insecurity so those are the three questions that I've taken a look at here um that's just a quick little intro to set the stage um we've got two guests here so I'm going to introduce our first
• 14:30 - 15:00 guest Dr Lillian inanga who is a senior advisor for agriculture markets at Oxfam America and she's engaged in the Strategic program planning and design uh research and partnership managment within the Food Systems theme um prior to being at Oxfam Lillian has worked extensively as a gender scientist at various International organizations including the International Institute of tropical agriculture International crops Research Institute for for semi-arid
• 15:00 - 15:30 Tropics uh she's has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed articles book chapters on gender climate change food security she's also a fellow for gender responsive researchers equipped for agricultural transformation great uh which is a partnership with universities of Cornell University in the US and MCC University in Uganda so Lil thank you so much for being here thank you thanks so much I'm really excited to be here
• 15:30 - 16:00 and thanks everyone um I would just start by sharing my screen please let me know if you can see my screen we can see the um we can see your screen here uh lilan
• 16:00 - 16:30 and if you present we'll tell you which which screen we see so we can see the one with the slides on the side can you see it now y that's perfect we can see it oh thank thank you so much and once again thank you so much no and Tim for inviting me here to to present our on our work from oxone um just to
• 16:30 - 17:00 mention that I'm going to present today um our work uh from oxam America and specifically on our uh work regarding systems within the inclusive and resilient Food Systems team and just to give uh the content of my presentation so I will give an overview of who ofam is as a configuration and then will narrow it down to oam America and to the
• 17:00 - 17:30 Food Systems team and how we are integrating gender in our program interventions so just to give a little bit of uh an overview of Who We Are Who o oxan is so oxan is actually a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to beat poverty and Injustice as Noel already pointed out the gender
• 17:30 - 18:00 gap uh and the issues of inequality oxfarm has also uh seen that and it's really uh trying to ensure that all interventions actually have that gender lens and ensure that those who are vulnerable or un under served are actually given the opportunity to voice their rights and also have a fair share of whatever they do so oan is actually a global Confederation of about three 23
• 18:00 - 18:30 member organizations which we call Affiliates and this is across the different regions um Asia Latin America Africa Europe and America and also um Oxford Works across about 80 countries of now and we are reaching to over 15 million people and our main target group is women and
• 18:30 - 19:00 girls and we are also working with youth as well and we work quite closely with partners and so far we have 3,600 partners that we work with so that is just briefly what Oxfam is all about and just to narrow it down to Oxfam America per as I wrly said we have like 23 Affiliates but for this presentation I'm focusing on oam America and particularly the Food Systems uh
• 19:00 - 19:30 department so um as I think no already provided a very great uh background really uh bringing out uh the gender the issues of inequality um and that is really resonates with our food systems uh work where we try to tackle issues of gender Injustice entren poverty climate crisis es and unchecked corporate Powers so
• 19:30 - 20:00 just looking at all the events that have been happening the multi-layer pric uh including uh covid-19 and then the conflicts that are happening and also the increasing climate change impact this has further exacerbated the gender gap the inequality Gap and that is the reason why uh we really focus on inequality that is preventing people from having an equal F or making decisions that
• 20:00 - 20:30 affect them so our vision for the food system is really uh to promote an equitable resilient and inclusive food system so our goal is by 2030 we should have food value chains that are more Equitable nourishing and resilient which means that the people who grow process Pick and Pack our food are better off have a power to change
• 20:30 - 21:00 laws and policies that affect them and also they're able to withand economic and weather St and regarding the corporate uh sector it is our goal that food and Bri companies will respect human rights they will Implement living income and they'll address issues that actually impact the environment So based on that our Focus area have really been are three one to
• 21:00 - 21:30 support economic opportunities for women and youth in food system second to build resilience by addressing the drivers of hunger particularly climate change as we already know climate change has impacted the world and and and and we are now really like it is really critical for us to look for Solutions but then we also have to look for solutions that will will address the need of especially
• 21:30 - 22:00 those who are greatly impacted like the marginalized uh populations mainly women Youth and girls and the last aspect is really harnessing and challenging corate pow what do we mean we mean working with with with companies like bage companies and challenging their policies and their practices that influence climate change or other discriminative practices
• 22:00 - 22:30 so as a result of that just to take a step back and said o from America really seees gender justice as one of his pillars as it is as it is included in the Strategic framework so we have a dedicated uh Department called gender justice and inclusing po that actually works to ensure that gender is integrated in every intervention that oam is doing and
• 22:30 - 23:00 we really try to focus on gender transformative approaches why because we think that transformative approaches will help make lasting changes that will really tackle the root causes of inequality that will tackle the root causes of gender Injustice in the in the communities and in the society and we use this framework which is actually adapted from the gender at work
• 23:00 - 23:30 analytical framework which speaks to to to toe change from the individual to the systemic both in the informal sector and the formal sector so looking at individual change in some of our interventions we try to change people's Consciousness attitudes and behavior in other words we try to build that agency to be able to make decisions on their own and then we also try to to to to to to
• 23:30 - 24:00 implement interventions that will increase women's access to Opportunities and resources just as no mentioned earlier access to land access to Capital and even ownership of the land as well and then the other one which is more systemic inclin is really looking at the cultural norms the exclusionary practices in the society that actually prevent the the women or prevent the
• 24:00 - 24:30 vulnerable population from exercising their rights and being able to make decisions on their own and the other aspect is really looking at institutions within a country the laws and the practices and regulations which are discriminatory and working with governments to ensure that some of these laws are some of these laws that either change or are revised to make them more
• 24:30 - 25:00 inclusive and more Equitable So based on that why did oam America choose a transformative approach because we really realize that sometimes we try to address symptoms meanwhile there are root causes that if we address just the same symptoms then we will not be able to to to get the results we want for instance if you want to to talk about
• 25:00 - 25:30 challenges of maybe rur women access to land providing your land might not solve the problem because there may be rooted causes of other things other connected aspects that are really making them to be where they are for instance there may be loans that are not favorable for this week women to be able to get access to land there may be
• 25:30 - 26:00 um social norms or cultural norms that are preventing them from getting the land so looking at some of these this challenges and trying to address them from a more fistic and integrated approach will help solve some of these problems and that's why oan is really I mean focus on transformative approaches the second point is really trying to change policies and practices
• 26:00 - 26:30 of Institutions as I also as I already mentioned by tackling these social norms attitudes and behaviors that exacerbate discrimination in the society and the last point is really applying an intersectional lens to gender equality issues by this I mean we try to go beyond the binary recognizing the impact of issues like race age class disability
• 26:30 - 27:00 for instance if there is if we want to address access to land for women in the community which women because sometimes we we we we use Concepts in a homogeneous manner meanwhile within that group of people there are still some differences so we really try to use that intersectional lens to look at other aspects that could still affect you know the the the interventions if we don't uh address them
• 27:00 - 27:30 and this is just to give some of a genda rubric some of the things that we we we we have uh seen in the course of our interventions some of the interventions at for instance in general some interventions are just like gender aware some are gender sensitive some are gender responses and some are gender transformation so oam about two years ago actually develop a gender tracker where we did
• 27:30 - 28:00 some we developed some indicators and we have to track all of our interventions to see where we are in this gender rubric and to see how we can improve so I just want to notify here that yes we do agree that some interventions can really be more specific to gender sensitive gender responsiveness but we strive to be gender responsive in our intervention just so that we are able to
• 28:00 - 28:30 tackle the root causes of all the problems and cause a systemic change rather than isolated changes within the community so just to give a flare of some of the activities that we have in the food system that are that we really that are gender transforma we try to transform traditional roles the norms and cultures and some of the the inter specific interventions are like the number number of you know women or youth
• 28:30 - 29:00 that that are sustainably producing rice and and that their rights is being purchased in this case it will help to to to enable them have increase in income and it will also help to increase women economic empowerment which in turn will give them some sort of agency to be able to make decisions and then we also try to develop policies and create an enabling environment that helps women to access
• 29:00 - 29:30 land or or other assets for agricultural production we also try to um Institute tools that will help change their behavior their Consciousness for instance the the gender action Learning System is a tool that we integrate in most of our interventions because it helps to give them some of vision it's more or less visioning exercise which helps them to think about their lives in the next two years in the next three
• 29:30 - 30:00 years who are those who can be part of that process to make it succeed so it's it you can do it at the level of the household and you can also do it at the level of the community and what we realize is that integrating this aspect has really helped households to to to to come together it has improved on their gender relations because at the end of the day they have one vision of how they want their family to be in the next next three years the kind of business they would want to do the kind of decisions
• 30:00 - 30:30 they will want to take together the kind of steps they will want to take in order to be sure that that vision is accomplished this is just an example of a tool that we use quite often in our program intervention areas then um we have another aspect which is really the enabling environment this one is really like more policy Focus how do we work with governments how do we work with the private sector how do we work with other stakeholders to ensure that
• 30:30 - 31:00 discriminatory policies it could be towards women it could be towards youth how can we ensure that this these policies are revised and make and and and and and are more inclusive to other populations or other aspects that will benefit especially the vulnerable communities and a typical example I would like to give is really on gender responsive budgeting it's a program that we have in about um four countries in Africa in Ethiopia Kenya Nigeria and
• 31:00 - 31:30 Bina Faso and the idea came after we did our research before the the the pro the program before developing the program and we realized that the agricultural budget from governments does not really include gender it doesn't specify you know what percentage goes to women what percentage goes to men or to Youth and as a result of that women were always left out and through this program we
• 31:30 - 32:00 were able to train uh government officials we were able to train even State Civil Society organizations and even the farmers themselves and through that the policy the agricultural policy in some of the countries have included the aspect of gender and they Now understand how they can do gender B they can do budgeting that is more gender responsive and then the the other part
• 32:00 - 32:30 is really increasing agency and Leadership which is really like helping women or helping Co farmer Cooperative building their capacity to such a level where they can sit and participate in in in in in decision making spaces like the case of Colombia we've been working with the the pisant women who are part of the c cusino um movement and through this leadership training they were able to
• 32:30 - 33:00 work together with other uh Civil Society organizations and they developed a policy uh paper that was forwarded to the government and through that they were able to to to influence uh the the national food security strategy to include gender as part of that and secondly they were still through this process they were able to get a a a a budget for specifically for Rural pron
• 33:00 - 33:30 women included in the National agricultural budget of the country so um this is just a flare of some of the the the interventions that we do I know I don't have enough I have just seven minutes so I don't want to take much time but I'm happy to respond to any questions thank you thank you so much that is that is excellent thank you so much Lil we're really appreciate that um so as we
• 33:30 - 34:00 mentioned if you have questions we've seen a couple questions come in some people have submitted questions before um we're g to hear from another one of our speakers here and then we'll have a time for question and answers at the end so I I'm now uh very pleased to introduce Dr Janelle Larsson she is a associate associate professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University and her research focuses primarily on International Rural Development with worked in gender and development land markets and value chain
• 34:00 - 34:30 analysis um she's been involved in several USA ID funded research projects on gender and horiculture in Honduras on gender in Cambodia and on women's time poverty in Ghana Dr Lon is also the gender consultant for the horiculture Innovation Lab at UC Davis and is the co-chair of the Innovation lab affinity group for gender so Janelle Dr Larsson thank you so much for being here well thank you um and the benefit of going last is that
• 34:30 - 35:00 I get to build on what everyone else has said and I'll try not to repeat um but to maybe drill down a little bit um so as NL mentioned I've been involved in a couple of research projects that were funded through uh various Innovation labs and just to provide a little bit of background so feed the future is the US government program that is focused on Global Food security and poverty
• 35:00 - 35:30 reduction um feed the future was created under the Obama Administration back in 2010 it really came about as a result of the global food crisis for those of you who are old enough to remember things in the early 2000s um and so feed the future is really focused on a collaboration between the US government and the host country government there's a number of criteria that they use to identify countries that to be uh part of Feed the
• 35:30 - 36:00 future It's a combination of having higher levels of poverty in rural areas and having potential for agricultural growth um the local government having the interest and the capacity to Be an Effective partner so there are currently 20 feed the future feed the future countries the bulk of them are in subsaharan Africa but there's still a couple in Central America a couple in South Asia and the overall objectives of
• 36:00 - 36:30 Feed the future um and these have been more or less consistent throughout are really to Foster inclusive and sustainable agricultural Le growth um strengthening resilience among people and systems um and then finally developing or creating a well-nourished population especially focused on women and children so as you can see the goals are are broad but really um really
• 36:30 - 37:00 critical so under feed the future so feed the future is the US government initiative um under feed the future we have what are called Innovation Labs um so these are entities that are housed at us universities primarily land grants but not exclusively and The Innovation Labs really set and Lead uh the research agenda to implement the objectives of Feed the future so in other words you know how can we use the resources and
• 37:00 - 37:30 the expertise of American universities to help get to those end goals to increase and enhance nutrition among populations to build agricultural growth and to support resilience um there are currently 21 Innovation Labs um they're all structured a little bit differently um and they have different areas of focus and different even ways to think about a focus um some of them are very narrow
• 37:30 - 38:00 and specific there's one for Applied wheat genomics uh some of them are much broader and kind of conceptual there's one on sustainable intensification um so and there's you know some on nutrition there's there's one that's focused more looking at the finance side of things I'm an agricultural Economist so there's one that's markets risk and resilience that really looks at how do people deal with um dealing with risk and um finance and you know sort of the
• 38:00 - 38:30 human behavior aspect is a focus so each of these Innovation Labs as I said has a different way to to structure how they work um but they have multiple partners both within the US other universities sometimes the private sector and then very much internationally especially within the feed the future countries and the regions where where they're working um and the goal of of what they're trying to do is to have research but it is very much
• 38:30 - 39:00 applied research it's research that's focused on development um so I've been involved in a couple projects and we kind of split it out that we're doing probably 60 to 70% of of our time and effort is focused on Research with the remaining 30 40% on implementing what our research has indicated should be done in a specific area um so just a you know examp give examples of that a little bit um I was
• 39:00 - 39:30 involved in two projects that were really focused on gr on gender um the first was uh in Honduras it was funded by the Horticulture Innovation lab and it was looking at the potential for Horticulture to help increase women's empowerment and through that to increase the wellbeing of their their households and their communities and that did have um we did have a f us within that on looking at Food security and and dietary
• 39:30 - 40:00 diversity so I'll come back to that in a minute um and then the second project that I've been involved with that again had a heavy gender Focus was in Ghana and that was funded through the peanut Innovation lab and we were really looking at Women's time poverty and what time poverty means is just that somebody works so many hours in a day we we use the benchmark of 10 and a half hours if they work more than 10 and a half
• 40:00 - 40:30 they're considered time poor um they work so many hours a day that they're not able to take advantage of say additional training or improve practices in this example we were looking at peanut production but that could be applied very broadly um with that study we didn't have a specific focus on food security but it did take place in a region that experiences very frequent uh food insecurity so those are just you know two examples of the types of
• 40:30 - 41:00 research projects that that come out of innovation Labs that dig a little bit more deeply into how gender and food security are connected um and so then just to to give a little bit of what we found um so when we're thinking as we've already seen here when we're thinking about gender and food security there there are sort of two ways to look at that um one is looking at the connection between the gender of the producer the agricultural producer and how that
• 41:00 - 41:30 affects food security for their family um and then sort of the flip side of that and nol had a a slide at the beginning that showed that is how does one's gender affect their own food security and obviously these are are connected but there are slightly different research questions um so with our research in Honduras we we interviewed we used a tool where you interview both the male and the female household head the husband and wife in a household um which is really
• 41:30 - 42:00 interesting because that allows you to compare how they perceive things it allows you to compare decision-making within the household and access to resources within the household um and I will just reiterate as we've as we've seen you know throughout this session we found in in both the regions where we work that just as we anticipate uh women do have much more limited access to all of the resources that we've been talking about land credit inputs time um and
• 42:00 - 42:30 again as we've mentioned it's also important when you're doing the research collecting data and developing an intervention that you're thinking about other aspects that affect someone's identity you know their their race or ethnicity their age and marital status sometimes within households there you know the Mother-in-law might have a very different status than a young newly married woman okay so within our our studies in Honduras um [Music] things that we found that were related
• 42:30 - 43:00 specifically to food security and dietary diversity we found that within households where women have access to control access to credit or control over income those households have more diverse diets so again that we we found a household outcome it's not just for the individual women and in the households where women have access to credit those households were less likely to experience food insecurity okay so again
• 43:00 - 43:30 these are correlations not necessarily causality but it was you know a very clear correlation um one thing that we found that was really interesting within the Honduras study is because we were you know interviewing men and women within the same household Sometimes women within the same household would report higher levels of food insecurity than the men in the same household so in other words you know the wife says there's a higher level of food insecurity than the husband um often when we think about that Gap that n showed we think about completely
• 43:30 - 44:00 different households or households in different circumstances but it's important to keep in mind that sometimes that can happen even within the same household um as I mentioned in our in our GIS study we didn't collect any information on food security and dietary diversity um and that was that was an interesting study because it was in polygamous households so we interviewed the husband and then up to three wives um when there were up to three wives and
• 44:00 - 44:30 we found that there the time poverty was was very clear and we also interviewed it at three different time periods during the planting season the harvest season and then the dry season and across all seasons men typically work two hours a day less than women women work two hours a day more than men however you want to look at that um and that was that was consistent across seasons and and marital structure more or
• 44:30 - 45:00 less um so those were some really interesting findings about how gender and food security can kind of play out at a sort at a granular level and then uh I was also asked to mention opportunities and challenges in in the relationship between gender and food security and again the the prior speakers have touched on some of the same things that I would say one of the challenges is that we have seen some improvement in closing the gender gap especially an access to resources and decision making over time but it's
• 45:00 - 45:30 still still quite pronounced um and the opportunities I would build on the some of the last couple slides that Lillian was showing in that there is much greater awareness of the importance of gender and then there's also an awareness that there's that there are tools and there are ways that we can change gender Norms I think often going into this type of work we think well people have thought this way for generations and we're not going to change them in a you know a three-year
• 45:30 - 46:00 project but they're actually can be ways to change um some of these attitudes and perceptions that lead to again not just uh it's not it's not a zero sum gain between men and women but that lead to better outcomes for for households and communities um one tool that we used in in both of the studies that I mentioned was farmer fields schools so that we combine training on technical production
• 46:00 - 46:30 with gender topics and that varied but you know looking at the distribution of Labor within households decision making within households um attitudes about leadership within you know different types of individuals and you it's possible to see you know not dramatic but at least incremental change um in a reasonably short period of time but it is important as lilan was saying to to be intentional and to have
• 46:30 - 47:00 the goal of being transformational and not just either you know accommodating or or you know accepting things as they are all right so I'll stop there so we still have a couple minutes for Q&A all right thank you very much um so we have lots of questions this is the the the the challenge and the opportunity of looking at all these questions and where do we go um so there's actually one question in the chat that was posed here and Dr inega I
• 47:00 - 47:30 think you might actually be typing an answer to it as we speak but it's elaborate enough I was wondering if you wanted to to speak on it so the one question is um what are some challenges you face when trying to change the traditional roles and how do you address them through your programs for example some men or even women may be against these policies or programs gender is something that is and gender roles are so culturally um developed constructed and and kind of brushes against culture at lots of different compon components um you know more so than there's
• 47:30 - 48:00 cultural implications from climate change but you know this is something that has a real cultural component to it I I don't Dr en Kanga I don't know if you're there and able to respond to that if you wanted to yeah thank you so much nor and thanks um Elizabeth for that question um great question and I think that's something that we have also really like been trying and grappling with um on how to address some of these issues and as J mentioned there is no one way there many
• 48:00 - 48:30 um approaches out there to and address uh some of these issues particularly uh regarding traditional uh roles which of course are L to uh cultural norms um in in in in community um so um what I would like to say regarding this and how from America specifically I team the food system has
• 48:30 - 49:00 been trying to cackle some of these issues which I think are quite related to agriculture as well gender rule it's really um using a tool called gender action loading system so um that tool is really uh trying to to to to to bring like two CES like a man and a woman together those a couple together and asking
• 49:00 - 49:30 them how they Envision their future how what will make them what will enable them to achieve a better life or live a happy life as a family so taking from that perspective you have it's longterm that's why has like the visioning for two years three years how your family could be a happy family or your wellbeing could be and bringing them together and talking with them some of those issues do come
• 49:30 - 50:00 up but what helps in the long run is that we try to bring to that understanding the the the the advantages of for instance not allowing your wife solely to be the fa taker of the children he can also do this if she does this this will only lead to a better or a happier life for both of you or this will only lead to helping you achieve
• 50:00 - 50:30 the vision that you have you know develop so that has at the level of the household has helped a lot to change the mindset of the different uh um um I would say the different within the and and and this this this methodology really like it uses just simple mapping and uh diagram tools for
• 50:30 - 51:00 couples to say okay probably in the next three years we want to own a shop we want to live a happy life we want we want to have like some basic amenities in our home we want our children to be educated so if want to do if you want to have that in the next three years what are we what are the steps that we need to take to get to that place and who are those that are to be part of it so when you put all those together and then you see that the gender roles within the
• 51:00 - 51:30 househo start changing because the husband will say okay if I'm able to take care of the children and then she will go to the market and sell the food then why can't I take care of the children at the end of the day because we want to have you know enough money to be able to CER for everybody to be able to live comfortably so changing that mindset at that level then can take another step forward now to the community because if you have like let's
• 51:30 - 52:00 say in an intervention you have about 10 pures that they are working with and they are able to ingrain in themselves that these changes will actually lead to the betterment of our familyes through them now you are able to move now to the community where you can talk with the local leaders and you can talk so you use them as Champions to be able to help uh a a change I mean it wouldn't take a day it wouldn't take even like some
• 52:00 - 52:30 months but it would take time because most people always like to see the result once they see that this family is established they now living better than they used to be then they'll say okay it seems that approach is working and that is how we have been able to to get H A results from this uh um B methodology and we have even been able to spell it out to other uh inters as well hope I was able to un tell
• 52:30 - 53:00 fist it's a real easy to answer question right no thank you very much that's that's I think you that's tremendous response for a very complex question um maybe for the next question here we've got a question about technology and the gender gap and I don't know if either of you have thoughts on this but um maybe Dr Lon I don't know if you want to take a first crack on this and which ways can technology and Innovation agriculture serve as a tool to bridge the gender gap
• 53:00 - 53:30 in food production and what are some successful examples of this happening on the ground how do we ensure these technological solutions are accessible and beneficial to me to women in diverse agricultural settings any thoughts on that well I'll take a stab and just to be cautionary because very often you know there there has been a push recently for ICT you know using cell phones to share information about prices and and access to markets um and for one thing we know
• 53:30 - 54:00 that that poor people are they might have a smartphone but paying for the data and paying for the time to use it is a barrier for all low income Farmers so it's not necessarily A a be all and end all for any small holder producers um but another number of Studies have found that within households women are less likely to have smartphones than men um and often there was a study done
• 54:00 - 54:30 in Honduras where we had our fieldwork that if their household had a second cell phone it was the teenage son who had it and not the wife so so don't assume that just because a technology can improve access for women that it will improve access for women um and there's also been a number of studies that have found that sometimes they'll try to Target women and then the technology will be appropriated by the men in the household or the men in the community there was an
• 54:30 - 55:00 irrigation scheme that that that has happened um so not that it can't work but that you have to be very very intentional um one one way that can be helpful with that is to work through groups and organizations um there a lot of a lot of development work in gender and specifically when you're trying to to change Norms or to sort of you know reinforce women's empowerment it can be helpful not to do that on an isolated
• 55:00 - 55:30 basis so if there's a women's producer group or or cooperative um if they could have ownership and control of a technology or help give access to that technology to the women then that can be useful um but it is something that you need to be very cautious about thanks very much um I don't Dr did you want to add anything on that yeah thanks and thanks um for that I I
• 55:30 - 56:00 think um technology is good and it could really help uh small holder Farmers but again um it also has there are also some challenges or some barriers that could actually Piner those that really need it the most not to be able to access it as J rightly said so some of the things we is really being training training of you know
• 56:00 - 56:30 Farmers mainly like fores and uh enabling them have access to some of this technology which could help in in accessing uh weather related information uh Market uh information and so on so I would say technology is a good thing but we have to Beal because uh there are also some
• 56:30 - 57:00 thank you um so I have a a question I don't know if either one of you had have a wanted to start with this but can you speak to the importance of informal economy so um you know these are people who are places when people where you're not having a formal paycheck and a consistent job it's you're out sort of hustling and either selling things on the Street or Village markets or lots of different places when considering food
• 57:00 - 57:30 security access for small share farmers and economic opportunities for women so the role of informal economies uh in terms of opportunities for women to I don't either one of you want to start with that or speak to that I'll just say that that most of the people that we work with are involved in informal economies and most people have multiple paths that contribute to their livelihood so you know I was talking about small holder Farmers but they're
• 57:30 - 58:00 often you know they're selling vegetables on the side they might be employed as a farm laborer on the side they might have a small shop where they sell you know odds and ends to the local community um so I think most when we're when we're looking at small holder producers or people that are at the lower income scales you're almost exclusively working within any informal economy um in terms of how gender can relate to that sometimes there can be constraints on women women's ability
• 58:00 - 58:30 either cultural or just practical because they're they're dealing with children and cooking and cleaning that that keep them confined to the home or the home area the home proximity um sometimes there can be issues about safety and violence you know that women going to Market areas is it an area that they are going to be safe are they going to be harassed is you know is it lit well if they're going to have to be there at 4 in the morning um so again it it varies but most of the
• 58:30 - 59:00 people that we're talking about live and and live their entire lives in the informal economy yeah just to add to that um I I totally agree uh those are the um the populations Target populations and um as Kenna already mentioned some of the challenges like you know also have issues of transportation and as a result of that
• 59:00 - 59:30 we we try to um um like establish like groups for this women um to to make sure that um whatever um for instance inut or or inputs from the government are accessible to them and we also try to establish agation points uh with agation points uh women who maybe uh because of C or even culture or limited
• 59:30 - 60:00 uh finals cannot travel to the markets we are able to have aggregation points where we get their produce and then we help you know link them up uh to Market um a typical example is really the work in Colombia with the p and women so they they they produce their food and they have realized that um because they can't move the middle men take advantage they buy it at very low prices and then they
• 60:00 - 60:30 move to the market and they sell it so our what our our intervention then has really been to shorten the supply chain how do we enable them to get their food directly to the market without having this middle men so um we train them on the production side and then we also uh help uh support to to establish FKS so they have specific days within the week that they have and then they have
• 60:30 - 61:00 specific locations where you know the food is aggregated and taken there for sale and in that case they are able to have some sort of a fair share on the the benefits from their from the product thank you very much well unfortunately we are at time I know we could talk a whole lot more more um but would you all please from your homes join me in thanking Dr Kanga and Dr
• 61:00 - 61:30 LaRon it it was a real treat to have you all here um if you are thinking wow I wish I could read more about this or learn more about this or dig into this more in the chat there's a couple of uh resources one link is a a a chapter on gender and Agriculture and development um that's available free of charge from a a a book that several of us were working with and so so it provides sort of a good foundational um examination of a lot of the concepts if you want to dig
• 61:30 - 62:00 into this even more there's actually a a certificate program that we got available um there is a cost it's $39 but if that's something you're interested in please take a look at that um to be able to walk away with sort of a verified certificate from that um and if you think man I want to continue having more conversations about food security you're in luck because the last Friday of April April 26th is going to be our fourth seminar looking at the role of government and food security and
• 62:00 - 62:30 it's going to be a great team of um several folks from the United States from we've got guests from El Salvador Nigeria and Nepal um to share insights from from each of their their home countries so um that's all that we have for for today but we will see you all next month uh April 26 at the same time 1M Eastern so thank you all for joining and have a have a wonderful day thank
• 62:30 - 63:00 you