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	"Farming is not gender neutral" by Ann Tutwiler, Director Bioversity International Future Earth   18 Mar 2015   On the eve of a major conference on closing the gender gap in farming under climate change, we catch up with Ann Tutwiler, Director General of Bioversity International and a speaker at the conference.   Hi Ann. You’re participating in a forthcoming conference organised by CCAFS, Future Earth, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) on the topic of ‘Closing the gender gap in farming under climate change’. Why is this issue important to the work of Bioversity International?   Ann Tutwiler - Farming is not gender neutral; both men and women have a role to play. The 2 billion smallholder farmers who live in developing countries – often women – produce the majority of the world’s food, yet most live in poverty. Unfortunately, women farmers tend to be more at risk from climate change than men as they often lack the means to cope with the harmful effects of climate change. They tend to have fewer assets and less access to information, improved varieties and technology, so they tend to be especially vulnerable to climate change.   A recent FAO report calculated that if women had the same access to productive resources as men they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 per cent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5-4 per cent. This could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 per cent.   How is climate change interacting with the gender gap in agriculture? Do the effects of a changing climate affect men and women differently? What about strategies to adapt to climate change?   Ann Tutwiler - I think that climate change interacts with the gender gap in agriculture to the extent that women and men are growing different crops, raise different animals and at the same time have different and often unequal access to irrigation, land and financial resources.   In some instances, women may be raising the crops and the animals that in the future will provide more options for addressing climate change. Women are growing some crops, for example minor millets in India, that may be more drought tolerant than some of the crops that men are growing.   Bioversity International’s work funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in India is transforming the lives of marginalized rural women in southern India by helping them to grow more nutritious food for their families and communities, in some cases increasing their yields by 70% and creating small milling enterprises run by women.   In Uganda’s Kiboga district, women often raise goats where men might raise cattle, but you find out that in a particular environment, goats are actually a better option. But how do you introduce a different animal into a production system, when there is an inherent cultural perception of that animal or that crop, and whose role is it to raise that animal or crop?   There’s a large body of research on the gender gap in agriculture, spanning several decades. Tomorrow''s conference aims to turn knowledge into action. What do you think are the main priorities for action that could make a difference? What progress is being made?   Ann Tutwiler - Let me give you an example. I just came back from India, where I attended a multi-state training workshop for smallholder farmers. Four hundred farmers brought and shared knowledge on an array of diverse crops that they’re growing, and received training on how to register their varieties in the Indian system. There was not a single woman at this workshop.   But when I asked our researchers who they were working with in the villages, they said the women, they grow the crops. There is a cultural issue – women don’t travel outside their villages and thus can’t benefit from this kind of training.   We’re starting to make a lot of progress in terms of the approach of the research community and recognition that thinking about these gender issues is really important, and thinking how to make sure that we are empowering women as much as possible in a particular situation, but I think we still have a long way to go on ensuring that women have access to training, to new knowledge and this is not possible through research projects. These are deep cultural norms.   The research community needs to be thinking more about some technologies that it perceives as gender neutral, for example, breeding traits into certain crops. The selection of traits to breed into crops will have a different impact on men and women. People in the breeding community need to think more about who will be growing the crop, than just focus in agronomic traits.   As researchers behind our Seeds for Needs initiative often tell me, yield is not the only important thing. Is it resistant to pests and diseases? How can the research be used for food or animal feed? How will it taste when cooked one way rather than another? All of these things are important and have very gendered impacts and yet these aspects are probably not on the top of the list for many researchers. The research for development community has some serious thinking to do on how to make this gap smaller.   In India, our researchers have been working on making the minor millet popular again – it used to be what one could call an orphan or neglected crop. They asked – why aren’t these crops grown anymore when they are very nutritious and drought-tolerant?   What we found was that women were having to hand-mill these millets for hours and therefore didn’t want to grow these crops. If you can address that problem, which we have demonstrated, then you can increase the production of a highly nutritious and drought-tolerant crop.   The gender gap in farming, and the impacts of that gap, differ in different places depending on other factors such as local laws and customs, or differential access to resources and training, as well as intersecting with other inequalities. How can organisations with an international remit like Bioversity International or Future Earth tackle this kind of challenge that demands detailed local knowledge and action?   Ann Tutwiler - Information can have a big impact. FAO’s 2011 publication State of Food and Agriculture - Women in agriculture: closing the gender gap for development underlined the potential increase in yield if women had increased resources and the resulting impact on poverty reduction – this was a mind-set change for a lot of people because it communicated that it is not just about women’s empowerment, it is about really hard economic facts.   If women have more resources, more will be produced. That kind of information needs to be translated into what it would mean for an individual country, and what that would mean in terms of the economic benefit. These numbers appeal to finance ministers who want to know the quantitative benefit to the finances of a country – something that would reduce the poverty rate as well. They ask themselves: Will it reduce the need for economic growth? Will it increase feeding programmes?   I think that one role that an international research institution can play is to actually get that research down to a country level. Gender equality in agriculture is not just a good and decent thing to have and it is not enough to change policy if policy-makers can’t see the hard data.   How important is women’s own agency in closing the gender gap in farming?   Ann Tutwiler - A lot of this is at the personal household level and it is a transformation that requires both women and men to be involved and work on changing their behaviours and perceptions. Men are essential in this; after all the gender gap in farming often favours them and not their wives, daughters and mothers.   I do think that women’s cooperatives and associations give women a role and a voice in larger community and some economic status and some power to start changing attitudes. Bioversity International is working with such cooperatives in different countries – from India to Bolivia to Mali.   Ms Nagaveni Hegde – the leader of Matrabhoomi Women''s Group really inspired me: she said that “Unity is important in the group, otherwise the group will not survive. We should not forget that. Unity is strengthened when a clear message is shared that through the group we can achieve more than on our own”.   * Future Earth is a global research platform that seeks to provide knowledge and support to accelerate transformations to a sustainable world. Bioversity International is a global research-for-development organization, working with partners in low-income countries where agricultural and tree biodiversity can contribute to improved nutrition, resilience, productivity and climate change adaptation:   http://www.bioversityinternational.org http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2015-mar-18/farming-not-gender-neutral-q-ann-tutwiler http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2015-jan-16/great-acceleration http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2015-feb-6/planetary-boundary-biodiversity
	There are 100 million home based workers in the world - 80% are women by WIEGO, Home Net South Asia, agencies Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing   Mar 2015   There are 100 million home based workers in the world, with 50 million in South Asia alone, 80% of which are women. (Nepal Telegraph)   The information was shared at a press meeting on the "Delhi Declaration of Home Based Workers 2015" organized by SABAH (SAARC Business Association of Home Based Workers) Nepal, in Kathmandu.   Chairperson of SABAH Nepal, Ms. Sristi Joshi Malla, said in Nepal, there are 2.2 million home based workers.   Ms. Malla emphasized the need to work as a synergized network with like-minded organizations to bring this "invisible" group into limelight and avail formal identity and essential services which is long overdue.   Ms. Chandni Joshi, Enforcer of Home Net South Asia (HNSA), stressed the importance of Kathmandu Declaration in 2000 and the need to emphasize on the recently adopted Delhi Declaration by all in their respective areas of work. She also introduced SABAH Nepal and Class Nepal as the appointed organizations in the Advisory Board of HomeNet South Asia.   This global Declaration was adopted at the first ever Global Conference of Home Based Workers organized by HomeNet South Asia and WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) in New Delhi on February 9, 2015. It was attended by 95 participants from 24 countries across the five continents.   It recommends players in all walks of life to bring global solidarity, raise awareness and advocate for the rights of home-based workers, and ensure access to services, markets and social protection, and work towards their empowerment.   National Governments are strongly urged to recognize the contribution of home-based workers to their family income security and to local and national economies, and therefore, to prioritize them within poverty reduction and women’s empowerment initiatives; to formulate and ensure implementation of national laws and policies for home-based workers; include home-based workers in national statistics; facilitate more inclusive markets; recognize home-based worker organizations and networks; encourage collective bargaining and social dialogue; and give home-based workers a voice in decisions that affect them.   Ms. Gitanjali Singh, Representative of UN Women Nepal, admired the meticulous way the Delhi Declaration has been drafted. She emphasized the need to include this vulnerable group in order to attain inclusive and sustainable development.   http://wiego.org/news-events   Mar 2015   At UN Conference, Domestic Workers Push for International Labor Standards, by Rachel Cohen.   Between March 9 and March 20, member states and global NGOs gathered at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York City to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, the key international policy document aiming to achieve gender equality. Coinciding with the conference, the Clinton and Gates Foundations released No Ceilings: The Full Participation Report, which traces women’s demonstrable progress in global health and education since 1995, as well as their insufficient gains in economic participation, leadership and security.   Mobilized at the conference was a group whose organized presence was simply non-existent two decades ago. Representatives from the fast-growing global domestic workers movement came to New York to pressure the international community for the ratification and implementation of labor standards that would impact more than 52 million domestic workers all over the world, 83% of whom are women.   The domestic workers movement is relatively young; their first international gathering took place not even a decade ago, convening in 2006 for a conference hosted by the largest trade union in the Netherlands. Three years later, at the International Labour Conference in Geneva, they formed the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), tasked with organizing for an ILO Convention that would protect domestic workers’ rights. Two years later, in June 2011, ILO Convention C189 was adopted—marking a watershed moment for the movement.   ILO C189 outlines clear domestic labor standards, calling for, among other things, a guaranteed minimum wage, freedom of association, the right to collectively bargain, abolition of child labor, protection from abuse and harassment, at least one day per week of rest, formal employment contracts, social security and maternity leave. The convention was adopted with 396 votes in favor, 16 votes against, and 63 abstentions; the convention went into effect beginning in 2013, and today 17 countries have ratified it.   “After 2011, we finally had a rallying point for which we could gather internationally and push this issue,” says Daniel Naujoks, a political scientist at Columbia University who attended the recent UN conference. “C189 made it non-refutable, not just a pipe dream. Now you had this strong international backing and normative framing.”   After the adoption of C189, the IDWN decided to evolve from a loose international network into a formal federation, organizing its membership base and drafting a constitution. By October 2013, the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) officially launched.   “Once things start to get really concrete, like with the passage of conventions, there becomes incentives for networks to form associations,” says Naujoks. “It is a legal entity that actually represents [domestic workers], whereas a network doesn’t really have representative functions.”   One of the IDWF’s central goals for this UN conference was to ensure that the implementation of C189 remained high on leaders’ agenda for the next 20 years. “We are talking about at least 52 million very poor working women without rights,” says Elizabeth Tang, the IDWF’s General Secretary who flew from Hong Kong to attend the conference. “If the government can at least implement this convention, that will be a very concrete achievement for gender equality.” Though there has been real progress made since C189’s passage in 2011, Tang says it is too slow, and too many governments still do not understand why they should take heed.   “We want things to look very different when we convene again in 2030,” says Barbara Young, a national organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a group that represents domestic workers in the United States.   International Gains and an International Problem   Activists can point to some notable achievements since the passage of C189. For example, in 2013, Brazil adopted a constitutional amendment granting 6.5 million domestic workers overtime pay, unemployment insurance, pensions, and a maximum 8-hour work day.   In Africa over the past few years, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania all passed minimum wage laws for domestic workers. In 2012, Thailand passed a new regulation entitling domestic workers to at least one day off per week, in addition to public holidays, paid sick leave and paid overtime for work on holidays. The first Pakistani Domestic Workers Trade Union formed this past December.   “In Hong Kong, all domestic workers, including migrant workers, are covered by the same labor law as other local workers,” says Tang. “We are now trying to show other governments that it is possible to protect domestic workers like other workers, because in some places it is already happening.”   Though there is a country-by-country approach, given the global ramifications wrought through the employment of migrant labor, domestic workers’ rights are an international issue. The UN conference discussed the problem of “global care chains”—where people feel compelled to move from one (typically poor) country to another (typically richer) country to care for someone else’s children and aging parents—often leaving their own children and parents behind..   http://www.idwfed.org/en http://bit.ly/1CyyZbo Visit the related web page
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