Value Chains | Country Level Sector Studies
Mainstreaming Gender Research in Organisations

Value Chains

I have worked for many years on analyzing crop, livestock and fisheries value chains and finding ways to make them work better for women as well as men. I assess the ability of the value chain to deliver food and nutrition security alongside other important development indicators. I have a special interest in innovative approaches to value chains, for example those which engage producers themselves as leaders of learning processes, and which use decision-systems mapping.

My PhD was about the ability of poor farmers in Madagascar to realize quality of life benefits from their participation in organic spice chains. I conducted fieldwork in Madagascar with producers and in Germany with consumers. One aspect of the work was to try and develop a new Fair Trade label which combined producer and consumer values.

For the World Bank's Gender and Agricultural Livelihoods Sourcebook I prepared Module 5 Gender and Agricultural Markets and I co-wrote the Background Paper on Fair and Ethical Trade for the World Development Report 2008. I also prepared a paper for a UN Women conference: Gender-aware value chain development.

In Ghana I conducted a maize value chain study for GIZ, and in Malawi I researched coffee and rice value chains (with a particular focus on the participation of producer organisations) for FAO. Recently I led a tobacco value chain study in Malawi for the Foundation for a Smoke Free World and this is currently being developed into a working paper and briefing document.

Publications

• Post-harvest maize storage systems in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia - Journal paper

• Gender integration in aquaculture research and technology adoption processes in Bangladesh - Journal paper

• Gender in outgrower schemes - Guidance Note

• Gender opportunities and constraints in the small ruminant value chain in Ethiopia - Journal Paper

• Gender integration in livestock and fisheries value chains: Emerging good practices - Journal Paper

• Gender-responsive recommendations for goat and root crop production for food, nutrition and income security in Tanzania - Report

• Gender integration in aquaculture research and technology adoption processes in Bangladesh - Report

Country Level Sector Studies

I have led several country level sector studies in East and Southern Africa. Some of these go beyond agriculture to examine gender in all key sectors like education, health, and natural resource management.

In Cambodia I co-prepared, based on extensive fieldwork, a call for proposals by the European Union Delegation for support to fishing communities' livelihoods. I prepared a study for UNDP on Best Practices for Women’s Empowerment in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Philippines, and Vietnam (and worked with a national team to help them create a gender study of the country).

I lived in Kenya for two years. During this time I was a member of a NIRAS team working with the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture to develop its Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme (ASDSP). As part of this I worked closely with national colleagues to develop strategies to promote gender and social inclusion in national value chain development. Other work in Kenya includes as team leader to a USAID Kenya cross-sector study: Kenya National Gender Strategy and Action Plan and a Kenya Country Report on SIDA's agricultural programming. This was part of a five country evaluation I led for SIDA (which also included evaluations in Zambia and Ethiopia, among others).

In Zambia I led two studies for USAID Zambia: USAID Zambia Feed the Future Gender Assessment, and a cross-sector study for USAID/Zambia Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS). I contributed to an evaluation by SIPU of Norway’s support to women’s rights and gender equality in development cooperation, including developing a special case study on Zambia.

More recently I provided input into an East African Community Integration Processes (GIZ/GFA) project through providing comparative data analysis of gender and environmental standards in four agro-processing value chains: cotton, horticulture, dairy and leather in five countries: Uganda, Burundi, South Sudan, Kenya, Burundi and Tanzania.

Mainstreaming Gender Research in Organisations

My work on gender mainstreaming in organisations focuses on collaborating with them to strengthen their gender research capacity.  This involves assessing their research portfolios, identifying gaps, and developing measures to address those gaps.

Examples include: International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) to deepen attention to gender across their research portfolio; CIMMYT-CCAFS on their research portfolio - later I worked closely with individual researchers based in SSA and South Asia on implementing the recommendations; AGRICORD and its member organisations globally to produce a gender policy.