Category: Uncategorized

USAID and Colombia’s Superintendence of Notary and Registry (SNR) continue recovering important land records by digitizing files and building the entity’s capacity to serve a healthy land market.

In 2016, when USAID tried to support the Colombian government with the digitization of rural land and property files, this initiative encountered resistance. In Cauca, for example, public servants opposed moving any physical land files off the premise. They locked and barricaded the doors, and when the files were finally loaded into a moving truck, they filmed the action and published videos on social media denouncing the “theft of Cauca’s land documents.”

In a country where issues of land ownership and access were at the heart of a six-decade conflict, the mistrust is understandable. Historically, a centralized land administration process has been carried out by a series of government agencies headquartered in the country’s capital of Bogotá. The Superintendence of Notaries and Registers (SNR) is the agency responsible for overseeing and protecting property in Colombia and houses the registry of all properties, including historical information about each parcel, including everything from who bought and sold a parcel to the mortgage used to purchase it.

Today, the SNR has 195 regional offices located throughout Colombia. In each office, millions of land documents rest in cardboard boxes, old filing cabinets, and mildew-filled basements. Each file represents a registered property, and some files include dozens of sheets of paper. In addition, there are more than 93,000 ledgers—large leather-bound books where regional superintendents, trained in calligraphy, wrote down information, such as liens, mortgages, and transactions, involving each parcel. The oldest of these ledgers date back to the 1870s.

Until the 21st century, none of this information was digitized or indexed in a central database. With the support of USAID programming, the SNR has digitized more than 5.5 million land files over the last ten years. Thanks to these efforts, approximately 30% of the country’s registered properties are now located in a digital database.

In 2020, under USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity, the SNR began digitizing an additional 580,000 files from eight regional registry offices, representing 64 municipalities. By April 2021, all these files had been fumigated, boxed up, and transported to Bogotá. Managing the Registry’s archives is key to identifying property owners. Having this information secured, digitized, and indexed allows the SNR to refer to it at any time and optimizes the processes of selling or transferring the ownership of a property.

Digital land files help to reduce time to access and share data for land formalization and restitution processes while ensuring the integrity of land information and strengthening land governance at regional and national levels. The digital database allows the SNR to oversee and protect property for the public.

Regional SNR offices play a key role in creating and sustaining a functional land market. In addition to storing data, regional registries provide ownership and no-lien certificates that allow landowners to access financial instruments and government subsidies. Over the last decade, the SNR has also been a key agency involved in Colombia’s ongoing land restitution process by registering judicial orders to return land to legal owners.

With USAID support, the half-million files expect to be digitized and indexed in the SNR’s main database before the end of the year. These files include land documents from regional offices of Chaparral, Tolima; Cúcuta, Norte de Santander; and Tumaco, Nariño, as well as offices located in the departments of Córdoba, Meta, Sucre, and Bolívar. In each of these places, USAID is also assisting the municipal governments and the National Land Agency with land titling activities. The digitized archives help these processes immensely.

USAID is taking its support one step further and providing five regional registries with office equipment like computers, printers, air conditioners, and furniture to ensure the offices are properly organized for the arrival of incoming files. Part of the reason for this is in preparation for a series of massive formalization pilots that will significantly increase the SNR’s workload, adding thousands of registered properties to its database.

The SNR regional office of Chaparral, Tolima covers registered properties across five municipalities in the region and is home to 57,000 land files and 525 ledgers, some dating back to 1902.

Magda Paola Gutiérrez Vanegas, the office register in Chaparral, is preparing for two massive land formalization campaigns in the municipalities of Chaparral and Ataco. She estimates there could be up to 40,000 parcels in the office’s jurisdiction that will be part of the land titling sweeps. At the same time, Gutiérrez and her staff are working longer hours with the National Land Agency’s ongoing land titling activities, which have increased the Chaparral Property Registry Office’s workload from an average of 35 daily documents to 100.

“The challenge to continue guaranteeing land tenure security is huge, and the effort is both physically and mentally taxing. Having all these municipalities in these development programs focused on land administration generates an avalanche of work for us that we hadn’t planned or budgeted for.”

-Magda Paola Gutiérrez Vanegas, Registrar, SNR’s Registration Office for Public Records in Chaparral

This blog is cross-posted from the Land for Prosperity exposure site. 

Originally published on the International Institute for Environment and Development blog.

Zambian land is governed through statutory and customary systems. Under the statutory system, the Zambian Constitution states that men and women have equal rights under the law, and the 2014 National Gender Policy gives traditional leaders a central role as champions of gender equality in their respective chiefdoms. These rights, however, do not extend to one of the most valuable assets that Zambia has: its land, and in particular customary land, which represents between 60 and 94% of the country’s land. Customary tenure is a form of land ownership that is communal in nature and held under the control of a traditional leader like a chief.

Women’s rights to inherit land, outlined in the Intestate Succession Act, do not apply to customary land in Zambia. This exclusion has profound implications for Zambian women, as customary land accounts for well over half of the country’s land mass. Cultural and traditional practices in many parts of the country further limit women’s access and ownership of land. As custodians of tradition, Zambia’s 288 chiefs have the power and authority to address the barriers that women face in land access, control, and ownership.

To strengthen the role of chiefs in addressing harmful gender norms and practices, promoting women’s rights to land, and increasing women’s participation in natural resource management, the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program has been partnering with chiefs in Zambia at both local and national levels to support and strengthen the role of traditional leaders to champion women’s land rights, bridging legal, policy, and gender norms to ensure sustainable management of land and natural resources. As discussed in this previous blog, the USAID ILRG program implemented a pilot initiative to engage Indunas – local advisors to chiefs – in a year-long dialogue focused on gender norms and women’s land rights.

At national level, USAID ILRG is working with the Zambia House of Chiefs, an institution that provides coordination and operational support to chiefs across the country, to develop a set of guidelines aimed at promoting gender equality and gender-responsive policies related to the management of land and natural resources in individual chiefdoms.

Chiefs champion gender equality in land and natural resources

Recognizing there was a gender equality gap in land and natural resource matters in the chiefdoms, two chiefs advocated for developing The Gender Guidelines for Traditional Leaders in Management of Natural Resources in the Chiefdoms, a tool to operationalize the gender equality mandate stated in the National Gender Policy.  In coordination with the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs, the Ministry of Gender, and a non-governmental coordinating committee, a sub-committee of the House of Chiefs developed the tool to address knowledge gaps and provide practical guidance on promoting gender equality in the chiefdoms in the areas of land, forestry, wildlife, water, fisheries, and minerals.

It includes guidance on strengthening chiefdom policies and governance approaches, as well as addressing discriminatory gender norms and gender-based violence that hinder women’s participation and benefit sharing from land and natural resources.

Leading the charge to advance gender equality

“We know the problem, we see it every day, we understand the need and we did this to get to the solution. It’s our solution summarized on paper.” – Chief Kaputa

The Gender Guidelines helped chiefs recognize the value of ensuring gender equality in the management of land and natural resources in their chiefdoms. Chief Kaputa, who chaired the subcommittee responsible for the guidelines, explained, “We are not utilizing the potential of women in our chiefdoms, we want to do so but [cannot] unless we know how. That’s why our idea was to have the guidelines as a training tool for chiefs that teaches them how to get women [actively involved] in the development agenda.”

Developing the guidelines was a locally-driven initiative, which directly led to its success. Traditional leaders designed this initiative to address an issue that they had identified as undermining the development of their chiefdoms. Through their leadership and direct engagement, the initiative addressed the specific needs of their chiefdoms and leveraged existing relationships with key stakeholders.

Expected to officially launch in the coming months, the guidelines will be piloted in two chiefdoms through targeted implementation plans, including a coordinated approach to garner uptake by civil society organizations active in these chiefdoms. This pilot will provide a pathway for Zambia’s 288 chiefs to take concrete action to increase gender equality in the governance of customary land and strengthen women’s land rights.

“For many of the Royal Highnesses, it is difficult to address gender equality in the chiefdoms simply because they don’t know how to engage around the issue. These guidelines will make a huge difference… . The guidelines give us a plan and our role is to lead in its implementation and realize positive change in our chiefdoms.” – Chieftainess Muwezwa

About the author: Zenebech Mesfin is a Gender Assistant on the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program. 

By: Tasha Heidenrich, Landesa Tanzania

In July 2021, listeners tuned in to hear the debut radio broadcast entitled, “Mwanamke na Ardhi,” or “Women and Land,” a radio program on Nuru FM, a local station in the Iringa region of Tanzania. The radio program is supported by USAID’s Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Equality (LEVERAGE) activity, which focuses on strengthening women’s land rights and women’s access to credit in Tanzania. This particular radio activity is being implemented by local partner Landesa in Tanzania.

Although rural women in Tanzania have the same legal rights to land as men, they are not always aware of these rights. For example, women may not realize they have a right to be listed on land certificates along with their spouses; or, if they are the head of their household, to claim land certificates in their own names. In certain cases, local customs and harmful gender norms  discriminate against women and prevent them from realizing their land rights. 

To address these problems, the “Women and Land” radio program will be broadcast throughout Tanzania over the coming 10 months. Each month, the program will cover a new topic related to women’s land rights, ranging from exploring the rules related to inheriting property to women’s roles in governance. Each radio segment will be complemented by a live question and answer session to give listeners the opportunity to actively engage around the topic of women’s land rights.

National radio programming, which will cover the same topics in a condensed format, will begin this fall 2021. These programs will be broadcast on a national radio station that is popular with Tanzanian officials and other influencers. Many of the radio segments were developed in partnership with local representatives and officials to ensure that they are timely and relevant to local audiences. 

Why Women’s Land Rights?

Improving land rights for rural women can yield large benefits, not only for the women themselves, but also for their children, their community, and for the environment. Research shows that when women have stronger land rights, they invest more in their land, invest more in their children’s health and education, and use more sustainable farming methods that can increase both crop yields and household income.^1,2,3,4 Importantly, some research also shows that women with clear, documented land rights are less likely to experience domestic violence.^5,6  

By sharing information with rural Tanzanians, including those in leadership positions, about women’s land rights – while also trying to move the needle on the local practices that can stand in the way of women’s ability to exercise their legal rights – the radio program works to increase awareness about women’s land rights and improve the enabling environment for women’s land rights throughout Tanzania.

Why Radio?

Radio programming is an effective tool for education and behavior change in Tanzania as it is by far the most popular form of media throughout the country. It is made freely available to its audiences, has a wide reach that includes the country’s most remote areas, and is a popular source of news and information for men, women, and youth. In addition, radio is accessible to illiterate populations, and is a safe and practical way to communicate to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interactive portion of the “Women and Land” radio program will directly engage its audience, bringing practical concerns to light, and make the information relevant and actionable.

By increasing Tanzanians’ knowledge about women’s land rights, “Women and Land” aims to help shift attitudes and behaviors around this important topic. By openly and widely disseminating information about the benefits that women, their families, and communities gain from women owning land in Tanzania, the radio program hopes to give women confidence to become more engaged in decision-making pertaining to land, and to encourage women, men, and local and national leadership to actively advocate for equitable land rights practices across Tanzania. 

***

LEVERAGE is administered under the USAID Communications, Evidence, and Learning project and is implementing programs, research, and evaluations to increase women’s land rights.

For more information on USAID’s work to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in the land and resource governance sector, check out the new landing page on LandLinks.

References

¹Ali, D.A., Deininger, K. and Goldstein, M., 2014. Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda. Journal of Development Economics, 110, pp.262-275.

²Allendorf, K., 2007. Do women’s land rights promote empowerment and child health in Nepal?. World development, 35(11), pp.1975-1988.

³Bezabih, M., Holden, S. and Mannberg, A., 2016. The role of land certification in reducing gaps in productivity between male-and female-owned farms in rural Ethiopia. The Journal of Development Studies, 52(3), pp.360-376.

⁴Santos, F., 2014. Can microplots contribute to rural households’ food security? Evaluation of a gender sensitive land allocation program in West Bengal, India. GAAP Case Study.

⁵Grabe, S., 2015. Participation: Structural and relational power and Maasai women’s political subjectivity in Tanzania. Feminism & Psychology, 25(4), pp.528-548.

⁶Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing, A., Doss, C. and Theis, S., 2019. Women’s land rights as a pathway to poverty reduction: Framework and review of available evidence. Agricultural Systems, 172, pp.72-82.

Understanding gender dynamics and the active participation of women in environmental and natural resource management is a critical part of effective development. A more strategic and intentional focus on gender equality can result in improved conflict management, enhanced governance and human rights, reduced poverty, and greater environmental sustainability. In this light, INRM considers gender equality foundational to effective integrated programming.

See below for some related updates from INRM and resources from across USAID and sector-wide that explore the interactions and linkages between gender and key development objectives.

In this digest:

INRM’s current gender equality work

• Assessing gender disparities in fisheries and aquaculture
• Including gender in the development of common indicators for HEARTH
• Assessing the evidence of the benefits of inclusion on achieving democratic outcomes
• Achieving gender integration in USAID environment programming

Additional USAID resources on gender and environment

• The voice of leadership: Women in wildlife governance in Zambia
• Empowering women farmers for climate-resilient livelihoods
• Understanding the dynamics between gender and the illegal wildlife trade
• Empowering women as leaders against the climate crisis

Read more in the August digest here.

This blog was originally published on Agrilinks.

By Jenn Williamson

In Northern Ghana, women face many challenges accessing and owning land. Customary lands, which make up an estimated 80% of the country, are managed by traditional authorities and governed under cultural lineage and inheritance systems. In Northern Ghana, this system is largely patrilineal, which means that men receive exclusive rights to land and women have access to land mainly through male members of the family. Women’s access to land is, therefore, tied to their marriage and husband’s lineage.

Women’s lack of ownership and decision-making power over land has many negative impacts. Women who farm independently or raise crops in addition to their family’s acreage are often allocated plots of land that are less fertile and far from their homes. This adds significantly to female farmers’ time and work — particularly if it’s in addition to labor required to contribute to their husband’s or family’s farm — and places them at increased risk of violence as they travel between work and home. Because women remain the primary caregivers and are responsible for the majority of household labor, these additional time burdens also make it difficult for them to both farm and care for their families. Women’s access to land is also unstable, and they can lose access to land they have been living on or farming in the event of divorce or if the landowner — a husband, father or other male family member — passes away.

The Feed the Future Ghana Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE II) project noticed women’s challenges in accessing land and its impact on women’s livelihoods and empowerment during its start-of- project gender analysis. ADVANCE II supports the scaling up of agricultural investments in smallholder farmers to improve the competitiveness of the maize, rice and soybean value chains. An important part of this approach is to create sustainable opportunities for women within these value chains. This requires increasing women’s access to and control over not only finance, markets and information, but also land.

ADVANCE II adopted three strategies to improve women’s access to farmland:

1. Using existing outgrower business — or contract farmer — networks in communities to influence traditional custodians to provide land to female farmers. Outgrower businesses, which provide services to smallholder farmers (also called outgrowers), take on the initiative of raising awareness about the economic opportunities for female farmers to produce and achieve high yields, making the business case for their inclusion.

2. Collaborating with other Feed the Future projects, such as the Ghana Commercial Agricultural Project (GCAP), that award grants to outgrower businesses for land development. Through ADVANCE II’s collaboration with GCAP, over 40% of such land development grants were awarded to female producers.

3. Working with local advocacy groups, such as the Coalition for the Development of Western Corridor of Northern Region (NORTHCODE), to convince traditional leaders and landowners in Northern Ghana to allocate acres of land to women.

Outgrower business owners were incredibly successful in advocating for women’s access to land. They built their case based on experience working with female farmers who were not only achieving high yields but also making reliable payments for services and inputs provided by the businesses. Nicholas Lambini, an outgrower business owner in the Chereponi District in the Northern Region, successfully negotiated with traditional authorities and husbands of female outgrowers to secure 500 acres of fertile land for 500 women to grow maize and soybeans by demonstrating how investment in women yields greater returns. In partnership with ADVANCE II, Opportunity International worked with outgrower business owner Yakubu Hussein in the Gushegu District in the Northern Region to help 23 female smallholder farmers acquire one acre of land each to cultivate soybeans. Abdul Rahaman Mohammed, an outgrower business owner in the Garu-Tempane District in the Upper East Region, convinced local chiefs and opinion leaders to release land for 100 women to cultivate rice.

ADVANCE II supported the efforts of outgrower business owners in a number of ways. It organized community sensitization meetings and advocated for women’s land access among male landlords, chiefs, husbands and female leaders in the community. As a result, leaders like Amidu Kala, an outgrower business owner in Fatchu in the Upper West Region, released five acres of farmland to five women; and Margerate Tablah, a farmer in Bussie in the Upper West Region, was granted 10 acres of her deceased husband’s land by his family.

“After the training, I decided to give two acres of land closer [to] home to my wife for her maize farm. Now I realize she gets home early from the farm to prepare my evening meals and takes care of our two children when they return from school,” says Mark Adams, an outgrower in Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District.

ADVANCE II also awarded grants to local advocacy organizations to conduct research and carry out initiatives designed to influence traditional leaders in favor of increasing women’s access to farmland. NORTHCODE, a local nongovernmental organization that operates in the Northern Region, collected data in four northern districts that showed that when women are given access to land far away from their homesteads, it negatively impacts their productivity. NORTHCODE shared its research findings during a regional stakeholders’ advocacy workshop in Tamale in the Northern Region, where stakeholders pledged their support to address the issue. The organization continued its advocacy work in 16 communities in four districts, resulting in leaders allocating 1,600 acres of land to 1,000 female farmers to produce rice, maize and soybeans.

“We are ready to hand over some of our fertile lands to our women and support them with inputs to farm… . If women have access to fertile lands for production, there will be a sustainable food supply and the nutritional benefits of our foods in our homes will be enhanced to reduce malnutrition among our children.” — Pledge made during an ADVANCE II forum on land for women by the Bussie chief in the Upper West Region

In addition, ADVANCE II facilitated district- and community-level dialogues in select communities in Northern Ghana, bringing together traditional leaders, women’s groups, landlords and youth groups to discuss the research findings and advocate for the release of farmland to women. Subsequently, draft memorandums of understanding (MOUs) were prepared and discussed with 16 traditional leaders, who then brought the MOUs to their respective councils of elders. Follow-up visits revealed that all 16 traditional leaders agreed to set aside parcels of land for land banking (aggregating parcels of land for future sale, development or farming) purposes. NORTHCODE organized district-level MOU signing ceremonies, where traditional leaders and landowners committed to provide land tenure rights for 1,600 acres of land to more than 1,000 women over a 10-year freehold lease period.

Overall, these strategies have led to over 3,000 women accessing more than 5,000 acres of land that they would not have otherwise. With more access to land, female farmers in Ghana and around the world could substantially increase food production and reduce hunger. With the stakes particularly high for ensuring food security in Ghana during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, women’s access to land offers immense potential. Closing this gender gap could mean boosting agricultural value chains and providing long-term benefits to farming households. As more women gain the same access to the land as their male counterparts, entire communities and markets stand to gain.

This blog was originally published on Agrilinks. 

By Chloe Bass

A discussion on sustainable food systems would be incomplete without attention to women’s contributions; yet too often they are a mere afterthought for policymakers, private sector strategists and international development program designers. While they may not be recognized, female producers, entrepreneurs and consumers make important contributions within food supply chains, food environments and food consumption domains of the world’s local food systems. Promoting women’s equitable engagement across all domains of a food system leads to increased food security, business profitability and country business profitability and country gross domestic product (GDP). As development practitioners, we must be intentional about including women and promoting their empowerment within all domains of the food system. The “3 Rs” Framework provides a useful lens for women’s integration.

R1: Recognize Women’s Roles in Food Systems

In many countries and contexts, women’s roles and contributions as producers, processors and consumers are underappreciated, and not formally recognized by policymakers and program designers. This can lead to exclusion from important training, planning, financing, decision-making and leadership roles. This can also have negative psychosocial effects on women. Across all food systems domains, when designing programming, it is critical that all actors — government, private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities — recognize the roles women play. This means placing a premium on generating data, documenting women’s roles and communicating evidence of their impact within food systems. Women should be central to developing and sharing these narratives.

R2: Reinforce Women’s Access and Agency within Food Systems

For women to be economically empowered, they need to have both access and agency. Within food systems, this means having access to assets, capital, information and group membership. Agency is equally critical, as women need to have power to make decisions, to act on them and to be supported in the exercise of their agency. Reinforcing women’s access and agency are critical to empowerment and inclusive food systems.

For example, when considering ways to strengthen a local food environment (physical access to food, quality and presentation of food), governments can enforce existing laws and policies that support women’s equality, mobility and safety and ensure that accountability measures are in place, and NGOs can ensure that they design and implement programs that promote women’s participation and leadership.

It is also critical to reinforce women’s participation, promotion and leadership at multiple levels: at an individual level working directly with women; within households to promote female power; within communities and community institutions; within food and agriculture associations to levels of leadership and influence; and systemically through laws, policies and procedures. When this is done, it will benefit the whole system.

R3: Remove Barriers to Women’s Equitable Participation and Leadership

Reinforcing women’s current levels and types of participation within a local food system addresses questions of scale potential. These must be complemented by actions designed to increase the scope of women’s participation, including recognizing and addressing the most critical barriers to effective engagement for equitable participation and leadership. Within food systems, common barriers include:

• Inequitable access to knowledge, influential networks, technology and training.
• Inequitable laws and social norms around women’s ownership of land and other assets, women’s mobility, unpaid care work and household food consumption practices.
• Prevalence of gender-based violence against women.
• Blockages by gatekeepers.
• Inequitable pay for women (impacting income available for food expenditures).
• Barriers to women’s voice, decision-making and leadership.
• Lack of women’s representation.

As this list is not exhaustive, conducting inclusive market assessments, gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) analyses or other surveys/formative research in the beginning of programming assists in identifying the critical barriers for women, especially as the intersection of varying points of marginalization and vulnerability (age, ethnicity, religion, marital status and sexual orientation) can compound upon one another. Once identified, the proper interventions can be set in place to remove the relevant barriers.

For example, in the domain of consumption, agribusinesses can create relevant products and marketing targeting women as a viable market segment and implement women in leadership pipelines and safe work standards. Private sector actors can also ensure they have equitable hiring, remuneration and mentorship practices. Likewise, industry associations and cooperatives serve a critical function in mentoring women historically excluded from enterprise ownership and contributing to agribusinesses maintaining the competitive edge. These organizations provide opportunities where women can be mentored through invaluable connections with people who are influential, knowledgeable and experienced in their respective markets. Continual learning to upgrade an enterprise while establishing relationships with gatekeepers of a market segment through association mentorship helps bridge the gap for women to lead resilient agribusinesses.

World Vision Example: the 3 Rs in Practice

In its USAID-funded Nobo Jatra program in Bangladesh, World Vision uses multiple approaches to address the drivers of food insecurity. To promote R1: Recognition, the program worked with 200,000 households and the local, regional and national government structures to promote improved nutrition in a sustainable way by recognizing the important role mothers and grandmothers have in food preparation, and working with them to better understand the health and nutritional needs of women of reproductive age and infants and young children. To promote R2: Reinforce, using our graduation model, that provided up to $188 in cash grants for start-up capital, World Vision coached/mentored 21,000 women in literacy, numeracy, financial management and skills needs for various trades, many of them within the local food system. In this area in southwest Bangladesh, previously only 15% of women participated in paid employment. On average, they earn $54 to $75 a month, a sizable amount in this area.

To Remove Barriers (R3) and address sociocultural drivers and inequitable gender norms in the production and nutrition domains, World Vision promoted more positive household relationships that improved the status of women in and out of homes. Men who think that women should be consulted on household budgeting and purchases rose from 43.3% to 79.6%, while those who think men and women should share household tasks rose from 8.3% to 53.5%. The project increased leadership opportunities for women to participate within influential community networks: food producer groups; village development committees; disaster management committees; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) committees; and community clinic support groups (R1, R2 and R3).

Call to Action

There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the benefits of including women in economies and food systems. The 3 Rs — recognize, reinforce and remove barriers — offer a practical lens to assist in the development of more equitable, sustainable food systems that benefit communities worldwide. Repeatedly, data show that including women’s involvement yields better household outcomes, increased idea and profitability and lower risk for businesses, and more representative government budgets and policies. We encourage all development stakeholders to examine where each might employ the 3 Rs in your food systems programming and how you might affirm other stakeholders who are employing these approaches. When food systems are more inclusive of women, we will see the rewards.

This blog was originally published on Agrilinks. 

How women, gender equality, and social norms are critical to recovering from the COVID19 crisis — and building back better.

The World Food Program says that the number of people facing food crisis will likely double as a result of COVID19. A combination of disrupted markets, lack of international trade, lower travel, and mobility restrictions are going to impact people’s ability to grow, buy, sell, or prepare the food they need to stay healthy. By the end of 2020, 265 million people are likely to face starvation.

These numbers are dire, and the picture for women is worse. Women already bear the brunt of hunger. 60% of the hungry people and 76% of displaced people in the world are women and girls. Women-headed households are the most likely to suffer from food crisis. Add that to the incredible burden COVID19 is putting on women, rising rates of GBV, and the other gender implications of COVID19, and the potential impacts are staggering.

Women are also a core part of the solution. They are leaders, innovators, farmers, caretakers, and saleswomen who can help solve this problem. Investing in women works. CARE’s research shows that every $1 we invest in a woman farmer turns into $31 of benefits to herself, her family, and her community.

For women to further unleash their leadership, we need to transform the social norms and barriers that stand in their way as they respond to crises, feed their families, influence markets, and negotiate a better future. Laws, assumptions, data gaps, and traditional gender roles all put additional barriers on women’s ability to respond to crisis. If global responses to COVID19 perpetuate those inequalities—such as by releasing gender blind data about food security and COVID19—we will lose the chance to build back inclusively and equitably.

This review examines how COVID19 will especially challenge women and their food and nutrition security. It also shows women can be a part of the solution if they have a seat at the table and a greater voice in decisions.

Women grow food

Women are a key—and yet often invisible—part of our food systems. Women are 43 % of the farming workforce in developing countries. More than 60% of employed women in sub-Saharan Africa are working in agriculture—for half the wages men make. How is COVID19 challenging women growing food?

• Increasing the burden of care: Even in a regular year, women are already working 1.5 times more hours a day than men are. Caring for children, collecting water, preparing food, cleaning house—women do 76% of that unpaid care work. COVID19 is increasing women’s caregiving burdens because children and the elderly are at home more and women are much more likely to be caring for the sick. That extra time makes it challenging to spend the time they need on farming, and productivity will suffer. All guidance must aim to reduce burdens on women’s time and encourage men to share the caregiving burden.
• Reducing access to information: Many women rely on informal, person-to-person networks to get access to information. COVID19-related mobility restrictions and social distancing are compromising this kind of information sharing. As agriculture extension services move to digital platforms to accommodate social distancing, women will get left behind in the widening digital divide. Globally, 327 million fewer women have access to smartphones than men. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 58% of women own a mobile phone compared to 71% of men. Men are more likely to control radios and other means of communication. Access to technology is not gender neutral, and we must not assume this in guidance, advisories, and response plans.
• Closing access to markets: Normally, women’s lower access to resources means they produce 20-30% less than men do. COVID19 is likely to widen that gap. As markets close and cross border trade deteriorates with COVID19 quarantines, women struggle to access the seeds, tools, and fertilizer they need to plant crops this year. In addition to the challenges men face, mobility restrictions and caregiving burdens make it harder for women. When input prices rise, women—who already have lower incomes—will get priced out of the market for seeds, tools, and labor before men do. It is imperative that our guidance, investments, and technical support do not neglect this reality.

Women buy, sell and prepare food

Globally women do 85 – 90% of the cooking. They also do most of the grocery shopping. Women invest more of their money in buying food than men do. In most contexts, women are also almost entirely responsible for child nutrition. Cooking and feeding the family are often considered to be a profound part of a woman’s worth; that’s why standard questionnaires about GBV ask if it is acceptable to hit a woman who has burned the food. How is COVID19’s impact on food systems likely to have a bigger impact on women?

• Lowering mobility: In many countries, women already have lower mobility than men, often requiring permission to leave the house. Some policy decisions in the COVID19 crisis restrict women more than men. Malaysia famously only allowed heads of household to leave the home. Caregiving burdens also keep more women at home.
• Decreasing immunity: When a crisis hits, women are usually the first to start eating less, or eating last, to make sure that the rest of their families can get enough to eat. They are also 3 times more likely to be anemic than men. Not only does this mean more women than men are likely to go hungry when the COVID19-related “hunger pandemic” hits, it also means that women will have fewer of the nutrients so vital for boosting the immune system to fight disease. High rates of anemia for pregnant women and children increase these risks.
• Raising risk: Women are also facing higher risk of Gender-Based Violence and sexual exploitation as food quantity and quality decreases and stress goes up—especially when many men consider inadequate food preparation a justifiable reason to abuse their wives. Where women can be more mobile and continue their role of buying food for the household, that may put them at higher risk of exposure to COVID19. Women are spending more time collecting water to meet higher handwashing needs, which increases women’s and girls’ risk of COVID19 exposure and GBV.

Women face social barriers and harmful norms

The COVID19 crisis risks rolling back women’s rights and economic gains, as so many crises have before. CARE’s research in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe nutrition programs showed that gains in women’s decision-making power at home regressed when crisis hit. In Mali and Niger, women are the first to lose access to land and income when crisis puts pressure on resources. The Arab Spring was catastrophic for women’s rights in the Middle East, as people seized a moment of crisis to roll back social progress—a pattern that is already repeating in COVID19.

The 2008 financial crisis rolled back women’s rights and employment. In the wake of COVID19, millions of women are losing their jobs in female-dominated industries like garment factories in Asia or domestic work in Latin America. Women who own small businesses in West Africa are now putting all of their capital into buying food for their families. For the poorest and most vulnerable women, losing these economic gains may also risk the empowerment and decision-making roles that women have been able to claim for themselves.

Women are not at the table when key decisions are made and are often invisible in the datasets leaders use to guide decisions. The current data around COVID19 and food crisis is replicating this pattern, putting women at risk of losing the gains they had made around rights, agriculture, financial inclusion, and decision-making.

Women are an essential part of the solution

COVID19 is putting unprecedented pressure on women, their rights, and their food security. But women can also be powerful actors to solve the problem. Their ingenuity, solidarity, adaptive capacity, and key role in food systems means that if we keep women at the core of COVID19 response, we may see better results. How can we work with women to mitigate the coming food crisis?

• Treat women and girls as leaders: CARE Zimbabwe’s Masvingo El Nino Recovery Project, funded by USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, encouraged women to be in leadership roles during crises to ensure that women’s needs are met, and that women have a voice in community decision-making on crisis response, to find long-term solutions to agro-input market disruptions. Women have different needs in a crisis and need to be a part of shaping the solutions.
• Build all guidance, data, and policies with reference to women’s rights and needs.  As development and humanitarian actors adjust plans and programs, it is imperative that all plans address different needs and vulnerabilities of women. Much current technical and policy guidance in the food and nutrition security arena is gender-blind. These omissions risk reinforcing existing biases in the way services, incentives, and information are delivered to women—further eroding women’s rights.
• Ask women and girls what they need: All data collected in COVID19 should be sex-disaggregated, and include specific questions that ask women themselves what they need because women, men, and youth have specific needs. The current data on COVID19 and food crisis has a significant gap around the experiences and needs of women and girls—a gap we should urgently fill. Understanding how this shock is affecting women’s food security is key to finding solutions to the looming food crisis.
• Work with women’s groups: Women’s groups—savings groups, farmer groups, producer groups, and social groups—exist all over the world. With savings groups alone, CARE reaches 10.3 million women. These groups are already taking steps to react to COVID19. In Niger, women savings groups negotiated with a local energy company to get handwashing equipment they could install in their community. In the 2012 crisis in Mali, savings groups took charge of helping refugee families get access to resources.
• Get women cash and food now: Because of quarantines during Ebola, 60% of people in Sierra Leone ate their entire seed reserve and could not plant crops the following year. 26% of people sold off all their livestock, and 40% had used up all their savings. Depleting assets this way can depress agricultural production when farmers—especially women—can’t afford to buy seeds, fertilizer, or other tools they need to grow food. The effects can last for years, with below average production as families struggle to rebound. A combination of seed vouchers, cash transfers, and support to savings groups helped keep Sierra Leone’s crops growing, and 84% of people were eating more meals.
• Recognize women as farmers and producers: Any COVID19 agricultural support, programs, and subsidies should explicitly target women producers. That means not only setting specific targets for at least 50% of support to reach women farmers, but also designing interventions that meet women’s needs. When we aim to keep inputs flowing, we need to consider what women need. One example from Ethiopia includes packaging inputs in smaller bags so women can afford and carry them.
• Think of women as market players: Women are critical players in many markets and help keep economies flowing. In Haiti, 43% of female vendors in the social safety net program hired additional labor to help with their businesses. Women entrepreneurs in Rwanda created nearly 100,000 jobs and increased business profitability by 75%. Every COVID19 food security response should explicitly consider how to support women in markets, agricultural value chains, and business to support recovery.
• Support women to build connections to markets: In Bangladesh in 2014, political unrest shut down markets in some areas for several weeks at a time. Communities were not able to tap into normal market activities. Women who had built links with market buyers bounced back from crisis faster. They saw production drop by 3.8% and were able to return to pre-crisis levels in 2 weeks compared to 7 weeks and 7.1% drop for disconnected women. Connecting these women to markets was only possible by convincing private sector actors to change the way they thought about women as market players.
• Enable women (and men) to access information: In Ghana, Talking Books and radio were used to convey seasonally appropriate key recorded messages. As one male Gender Champion put it, “The talking book was a very powerful gender tool. (…) Women would bring the talking book home and play it. The talking book had a significant impact on hard to reach men in the village.” Radio programs and WhatsApp groups are also used to broadcast shows and information on nutrition, agriculture, and child health. When conflict and insecurity in Mali made it difficult to reach farmers, CARE worked with in partnership with Farm Radio International and local radio stations to host shows on nutrition, agriculture, and child health, and the intersections between them.
• Allow as much mobility as possible: Social distancing is a critical tool to contain the spread of COVID19, and quarantine measures are designed to support that. These measures should still allow as much mobility as possible, and particularly support women’s mobility. Restricting travel between communities while ensuring that small-scale women farmers can get to their fields, encouraging men to take on child care responsibilities while women leave the house, keeping markets open with adequate social distancing measures, and investing heavily in public handwashing facilities can reduce the spread of COVID19 without crippling markets or making it impossible for women to access food.
• Engage men to support women: Working with male leaders who can advocate for women’s rights and speak out against GBV is one key to success. Another is getting men to support women with caregiving work, household chores, fetching water, and other traditional roles for women. This gives women time to tend their crops and ensure food security in the long run. Men should also ensure women get equal access to food.

Build back equal

We must consider women’s rights and empowerment as an essential element of the COVID19 response and long-term resilience—not a trade-off between immediate crisis response and a longer-term goal of women’s rights. Women and their rights are at risk in the COVID19 crisis. Gender-blind policies now will risk not only women’s rights now, but also our global food and economic systems where women are critical actors. Women have the skills and abilities to lead in crisis, and our programs must empower them to do so. It is only by leveraging every resource available in the world—including the incredible, often ignored and oppressed—skills women bring that we can overcome the crisis we all face.