| Women in Agriculture |
Tape #328 - Extension Services for Women
?: . . . begin with
their presentation. Um, the only
problem we seem to have this morning with some of the rooms, depending on the
size, is the temperature, so if you get too cold, let me know and I'll try to
get the temperature adjusted. Ah, the
other announcement I'd like to make is as, are all the other sessions, this is
being recorded on tape. The tape, of
course, will be available on same this, hopefully at the end of the day. If you're interested in purchasing any of
the tapes, ah, please go to the registration desk. Thank, thank you.
Mary Hilrowhouse (spelling?):
Hello, I'm, I'm, my names is Mary Hilrowhouse and, actually, I'm not on
the agenda. I'm here pinch-hitting, I
think that's a baseball term for two of our panelists, the facilitator and
(inaudible) who was on the panel. Both
are sick and so I am here in their stead, although I won't maybe making a
presentation so we will lengthen the other presentations a big.
Um, as I say, I'm Mary Rowhouse (spelling?) and I work what is
called the Widteck (spelling?) Project which is a project of the United States
Agency for International Development, their Office of Women in Development, and
we are to provide technical assistance and training within parti . . . , in the
particular sectors of USAID. Those
sectors are economic growth, the environment, education, um, population, health
and nutrition and democracy in government.
I have a colleague here whose . . .
?: Excuse me.
Hilrowhouse: Ah, huh.
?: I wonder if you have
handouts for your presentation?
Hilrowhouse: No, not
right now anyway.
?: Will there be, ah . .
.
Hilrowhouse: I don't
know. Do either of you have handouts?
?: (Inaudible) training
(inaudible).
Hilrowhouse: Oh, I don't
know. Are you leaving early or?
?: No, but I just want
to know.
Hilrowhouse: Ah.
?: I was hoping this was
going to elaborate on that but that was ah, done by (inaudible) by Kellogg.
Hilrowhouse: I think . .
. .
?: . . . to train people
and come to (inaudible) presentations and, um, what to do.
Hilrowhouse: Okay.
?: . . . (inaudible)
women (inaudible).
Hilrowhouse: I see, oh,
um . . .
?: I wondered if you had
that material access (inaudible).
Hilrowhouse: No,
actually, no, we, that's not this particular session. It may be another one, though.
?: No, it was, it
(inaudible) extension program (inaudible).
Hilrowhouse: Oh, I
see. No, it's not. Sorry.
Um, what we hope to do
today is a panel called improving Agricultural Extension Services by
integrating women. This particular
panel is based on three assumptions that we have learned over the years. The first is that women are major
contributor to the agricultural economy.
They are the main food producers in (inaudible) and Africa.
The second assumption is that 20 years of research has shown
that agricultural and training seldom reaches women.
The third assumption is that agricultural extension project,
projects assume that if men receive training they will pass this knowledge onto
the women. This is often not the case.
During this panel and the discussion that follows, we hope to
address several questions. First of
all, what can we do to change. Second,
what can we do to support women farmers and increase their earnings and third
what can we do to enhance their productivity.
Each of the two panelists will spend about 20 to 30 minutes
addressing the audience and then we will open it up for questions and
discussion.
The first panelist, we'll wait till people get settled. The first panelist is Lynn Brown and she is
a food policy consultant and member of the Gender and Rural Development Team at
the World Bank. Prior too this she
worked at the International Food Policy Research Institute where she co-managed
the strengthening development policy through gender analysis and integrated
multi-country research program. She has
published extensively on issues related to gender and development, including
economic reform, food security, property rights, time use and public works
programs. Her recent publications
include the gender dimensions of economic reforms in Ghana, Mali and Zambia
published by the North South Institute and gender, property rights and natural
resources, the product of an electronic conference held in 1995-96 published in
world development.
So, I'll turn the panel over to Lynn Brown.
Lynn Brown: Well, as you
will note, the World Cup's on at the moment and if . . .
(Inaudible)
As you know the World Cup's on and as you can tell by by accent
I'm English and it's genetically boring us that we're soccer mad. My team's playing this afternoon so (inaudible) terrible, so you'll find quite a
lot of soccer analogies in what I'm going to say.
And, I want to start, first of all, by actually looking at the
fact that in agriculture women have gotten a very, a . . .
(Inaudible)
Brown: I always have
this problem, don't worry.
But, actually in the agricultural sector we know that the
playing field is far from level.
(Inaudible)
Brown: So, anyway, so
those of us who work in international development we actually know we have a
very unlevel playing field for women in agriculture. They're actually always playing uphill. This is not an easy way to do it. I'm, in what sense do I mean the playing field's unlevel? I mean the fact that they don't own land
largely, that they only get to use it (inaudible), you know, maybe for one
season, maybe two seasons (inaudible).
But they don't have access to marketing opportunities. They don't have access to agricultural
extension services which often prejudices a lot of access, access to market,
access to credit, access to information, access to improve seeds. So, the agricultural extension role is particularly
important.
But, you know, the end
result of all of that is we find that women
have lower productivity as farmers.
They produce less output. They
have no incentive to manage that they actually farm because they don't own it
so you got higher levels and environmental degradation. But, it transmits all
through the system. If women are
invisible to the agricultural system then nobody does the research on the food
crops. Nobody does research on the
storage techniques. Nobody does
research on the way that women market their crops so you get this complete
neglect so prejudices their productivity, but it prejudices their ability to
get independent income streams and there's now a substantial body of research
that shows women and men spend their income differently and women are far more
likely to spend it on children's education, children's health, food, the sorts
of things that we actually want to see household spending on, particularly
where you already have a lot of malnourished children or micro-nourished
children.
So, it's, it's actually very important that we address the
problem at the unlevel playing field and we need to understand, one, why it
persists, and, two, where it came from and I think one the reasons it persists
sometimes is because a lot of people have this mistake and impression that
women aren't as good a farmer as men.
You know, we just don't cut it and that's actually not true. If you take a lot of the economic research
and take the simulation models that they can do, if you give women the same
levels of education, you give them the same quality of land, you give them the
same access to extension, to credit, to improve seeds, women can produce just
as high a yield as men, and in many cases, a higher yield so it's got nothing to
do with the fact that women are poor farmers.
It's circumstances that lead people to believe that and it's a complete
and absolute myth
So, if we level the playing field this playing field we actually
have a win-win proposition and there aren't too many of those in life. We increase the agricultural
productivity. We can improve food supplies. We improve the state of children. We improve women's empowerment. You know, this is a good thing to do.
We have to question, well, why on earth did we end up in this
situation in the first place and at the end of the day it's because
institutions and societies are actually gendered. It's not just the outcome ofch extension women get.
So, if we don't address these institutional gender relationships
then we're not gonna actually address the outcomes that we want so we need to
recognize in all the work that we do, we need to do gender analysis not just
the work that we think may have a gender component because that's where we
usually miss the critical ones. All the
projects, all the policies should be in, (inaudible) by gender analysis.
And, I think in particular, what I want to emphasis is, but, the
general analysis, per se, allows you to design a better project. It allows you to determine should this be a
women only project. There are certain
circumstances where that is really what you want. Should it be a women's component in a bigger project - that has
advantages in certain circumstances.
Should it be a fully integrated project - that has pluses and
minuses. The general analysis can help
you decide which one you want to do, but at the end of the day if you only do
it on your project, if you're only sort of looking at the outcome, you'll get
some results, but I don't think you'll get the depth of results that you would,
you could potentially get if you do it on the whole institution. You've got the institutional process that's
disseminating their project as well as the project itself.
So the particular extension project that I'm wanting to sort of
highlight today is one of the World Bank's projects but it's one that focuses
on process not on product. Okay. We're not actually looking at the actual
delivery of the extension products.
We're looking at the process that generates it and, to me, that's why I
find it particularly exciting and I think why it's being fairly successful,
although it's a little too soon to tell.
So this particular one is actually called, and if I can . . .
this isn't very far away so (inaudible) social and gender analysis and it's
capacity building in agricultural products.
In this particular instance it applies to agricultural extension but
there's reason why this process shouldn't be used for a number of different
agricultural activities and I'm using some examples from my situation in West
Africa. So as an overview let's just
look at the four phases of the project.
So, first of all is the getting started, where are we at, what's the
(inaudible). Then we need to build a
training capacity. Following on from
that we have a sort of what we call training in a cascade fashion. It's a sort of training of trainers approach
and then the follow-up in the field which is largely where we're at at the
present stage.
(Inaudible)
?: . . . people come in
late . . . Um, this session is
(inaudible) as are all the sessions in the conference, are being recorded on a
cassette tape. The tapes will be
available for purchase at the end of the day.
If not, we'll guarantee to have them the next day for purchase. Just go to the registration desk to make a
purchase.
(Inaudible)
?: No madam, audio tapes
(inaudible).
(Inaudible)
?: I don't, I don't
know. I don't believe there are, but I
can double check.
(Inaudible)
?: Every breakout
session is recorded, um, and . . .
(Inaudible)
?: I can share the
information, okay. I think our big
problem is the fact that we have (inaudible), but, I'll find out.
?: Is everybody hearing
alright now. Is the microphone good for
everybody?
(Inaudible)
Brown: Okay. Social and Gender Analysis.
(Inaudible)
Brown: Okay. First, look at Phase 1 the getting started
and in some sense what lead to this what a study of the that the World Bank did
the (inaudible) region (inaudible) Gambia, Mali, (inaudible) and Senegal and it
was sort of a standard results that most of us know. They look to agricultural extension provision and they sit us
down that women were major agricultural players but the extension service
really didn't recognize them at all and there were a number of reasons for
that. The extension agents were largely
male and in many of those cultures men can't go to a women's group to address
them anyway so that created a problem and, but they really realized that when
they tried to follow up on it and do some gender training that a lot of the
problem was in the institutions. It was
actually in the management. If you
didn't have a commitment to the management it was very difficult to change what
happened on the ground and they sort of felt, well, you know, this is odd because
in some regions of the (inaudible) quite extensive analysis training and I
thought, well, if you getting the training then why isn't nothing filtering
through and I found that largely it was the old story - well, this is a women's
issue so we'll only train the women.
The men don't need to know about this.
The fact that they're giving out the extension advice, you know, it's
really got not much to do with it and it was all done by Westerners (inaudible)
western orientation so a lot of it wasn't even appropriate thing. So, they decided, well, you know, this is
not going to produce the goods and so they followed up at the end of '95 with
what they call a needs assessment in two of the countries and they looked at the
problems that already been identified.
They looked at the extension tools that were being used, interviewed the
senior managers, the directors of our ag research, the directors of
agricultural extension. Some of the
field staff tried to decide what the core problems were.
So, they developed, so they gathered their baseline data and
sort of developed what they thought what was happening and who the prime people
were (inaudible) and some of them moved into Phase Two which was called
Building the Saga Training Capacity and what they did for this was they got
together a small group of people, two international consultants, one a social
scientist with gender experience, one a role development specialist who
understood all the technical agricultural stuff and a faciliator who is a
gender trainer from the World Bank and (inaudible) I did (inaudible) senior
people from those countries to participate in the training. People had to send their top trainers, not
women, their top trainers and the bank emphasized that and stuck to the guns
when the countries tried to send somebody different and they pulled a group of
people together to form what you might call to form the core of the saga team,
the people who would be committed to the program who would understand what it
was all about and the first thing they did was to look at the problems that had
earlier identified in the five countries and validate those. Was that really their experience? Was that really the way it was. Did the study correctly portray it? And, so having done that, they then decided
to sort of look at the four core areas that they saw in terms of delivering
agricultural extension. They said one
was the contacts with the community and the establishment of contact growth. Second, the diagnosis of the main problem to
be targeted by the extension services.
Then problem solving and then monitoring and evaluating the progress.
So, the way they set about it following on a, we sort of had a
minor pilot project in Mali but it used a similar approach and so what they did
was they used local stories, legends, proverbs and they came, and they sort of
brought in the services of a graphic artist and actually they took all of the
problems, one by one and they illustrated them with a picture and then they
developed the training tools to be able to share that problem, share how you
would deal with it and have all the training material and trainer's notes for
it and altogether they actually came up with ten and I think, here I have, I
have just one of the pictures I brought with one of the things that they
actually, actually developed so this would be in one of the manuals and
essentially I see this as the conflict inside a households in the (inaudible)
region. So you've got the backlog between
sort of, ah, the men and the women in terms of livestock. Livestock grazing on land that often the
women once farmed. The men are the
people who do the plowing in the (inaudible) region. The conflicts in the household about the rights to plow and here
you have a women who decides to plow for herself which is completely unacceptable in the region so it's one of the
key problems is women can't get get their own land and they can't get it ready
for planting. They have to wait until
male (inaudible) is available to do it for them cause that's the way the gender
division of labor works. This is one of
the things they came up with as a teaching tool.
So, then having got the core group of trainers, the core saga
group, the while idea was that this group would go up and train another group
and that group would train another trip so in 1996 there was a second training
program done by the initial group where they field tested the essential manual
that they brought together themselves and they used it to trainer the trainers
and the same thing applied. People had
sent five of their highest level of trainers from each country, but if they'd,
one country, and I'll protect the name of the country. I won't tell you who was guilty, tried to
send ten women who weren't high level trainers, who weren't even senior in the
ag extension service and they were turned back and they renegotiated and
eventually compromised and got sort of five of their high level trainers plus
some of the women. It was an
insistence, this project was directed to the people who would actually direct
policy in the country.
So, (inaudible) and then selected people from that group then
became the trainers for the next group at the end of December that year so by
this time some 60 people had been trained in the social and gender analysis. (Inaudible)
So, that now we're actually in the follow-up stage and it's here
we don't really have, we don't have hard impact data, although we have good
(inaudible) evidence that things are going well. I mean, at the end of the day all the countries involved in this
program should be developing their own training materials because that's what
this is about. It's not about saying,
okay, this is how we do it in this country.
Now we can go to another country and do exactly the same thing. The reason this system works is because each
country has to devolve its own system using its own agricultural problems, its
own agricultural extension training tools and modify it to include all the
dimensions of gender analysis and so far all the five countries who were
initially involved have finalized their saga action plans and funding in
national (inaudible) has been already marked for all of them.
Senegal's probably made the most progress and its included
turning all its national ag extension budget over to saga. It's had seven regional training sessions,
had a workshop to adopt the (inaudible) materials to Senegal, it's design
materials for other areas to, for training on the environment using the exactly
the same process. Its had training sessions
for its technical specialists, its training sessions for its decision makers
and partners in agriculture and its also used in the final trainer, trainer
sessions in December of 1996 one of the countries sent a group of people
experienced in monitoring evaluation and so they proposed a set of indicators
to monitor and evaluate programs and Senegal has operationlized that and is now
trying to field test some of its indicators.
In (inaudible), they've also made good progress. They've done their national workshops for
the technical specialists and four regional workshops for the actual field
agents so that has already moved all the way down to the ground. They've already started working on their own
training materials.
Mali's probably made the least progress. Um, I'm not quite sure why that is. I question whether Mali really owns it in
the same way that the other countries seem to have done. Most of the other countries have actually
done all their local organization without any intervention from us. Its not come from us pushing the country to
do it. They've been on the training. They've appreciated its validity and then
they've gone back and they've done what was supposed to happen, i.e., it should
filter from the top all the way through the system. Mali is being (inaudible) about that whether because the bank has
done gender training for them in the past and that's all they think, the bank
will come and do this for them too. I
don't know. They're still wanting
funding to do various things whereas the other countries have all funded it for
themselves. They funded their local
people for training. They funded it to
send them to the trainer of trainers.
And, I guess one of the things that really indicates that, you
know, countries in the region are seeing potential, is (inaudible) is now
joining the original group of five and is also trying to implement a program.
?: Are you finished with
that one? Do you want to do questions
now or at the end.
?: I think we should
take questions at the end.
(Inaudible)
Brown: Sorry. Monitoring and Evaluation.
(Inaudible)
Brown: Yea, take
questions of clarification. And,
so. (inaudible) there's so many
important considerations on this. Both
the technical and (inaudible) science skills are necessary. You have to bring a team with all the skills
together. They all have to essentially
teach other their own skill basis so you can come up with an integrated
product. And, also, the the social and
gender analyses capacity should be built up locally. We can't build it up here and then take it somewhere else. It has to be built up in country,
recognizing the in country circumstances and I guess the reason I'm stressing
that is because of the previous presentation of this material that I was out, at the end of it somebody
turned around and said, oh, can we get a copy of the manual for our country. And I thought, um, didn't really appreciate
the significance of this cause the whole point is you cannot take the manual
that's developed in one country into another country. Each country follows the process and develops its own.
So, just in summary, the guiding principles. There is no standard solution. We've got to take account of the societal,
cultural, gender relationship in each case.
The answer will emerge in the country.
The countries do have the answers.
We don't have to provide them.
People coming up with answers, solutions, (inaudible). That means something could be done about it
because they've discovered what the problem is. They've been covered or proposed as solution. They will have a commitment to try it, but
they won't have if we go in and say, well, this is what you should do
here. But, we have a role in
facilitating the process of bringing the expertise in if its not there already,
of getting the actors together, getting the communications set up. Okay.
Thanks very much. Do you
want me to leave this one up for a couple of minutes? Okay.
?: What we're going to
do is take questions after the second presentation cause the first presentation
was gender analysis and training in a regional sense and now we have a really a
case study from Kenya. So, when you're
finished with this overhead, in the meantime I would like to introduce to you
Professor Rose Moyia (spelling?) She
received her PhD in home economic education at Iowa State University. Professor Moyia is currently the Director of
the Center for Women Studies and Gender Analysis. (Inaudible) She's
currently the Director of the Center for Women Studies and Gender Analysis at
Edgerton (spelling?) University in (inaudible), Kenya. Professor Moyia has written and presented on
issues from sexual harassment to family life to the environment. At present she is working on the following
research and proposals: impact of
family life education of Edgerton University, status of female lectors in
institutions and an assessment of the impact of structural adjustment policies
on women in small scale enterprises.
In 1994 Professor Moyia served as Chairperson of the General
Resource Central Task Force at Windrock International and was a member of the
National Review Committee for Environmental Education at the International
Development Research Center in Kenya.
Professor Moyia received the African Women's Leader Agricultural Award
and Environment, as well as the Windrock International Award for Gender Re. . .
, for the Gender Research Center in 1993.
So, Professor Moyia.
APPLAUSE
Professor Rose Moyia:
Thank you very much Dr. (inaudible).
I will briefly talk about the gender (inaudible) in the institutions and
maybe what I need to tell you is that right now I'm on a full-fledged
scholarship at (inaudible) University and, um, I'm developing a gender manual
for training, gender planning, um, training in (inaudible) environment,
particularly for Edgerton University because for a long time we have been, um,
training but we do not have a proper manual that we have been using so now we are
developing one. Thank you.
Now, ah, what Mary has been saying that background is the same
in Africa. Um, the situation is the
same in Africa whether in Ghana or in Kenya.
Women are the major producers of food in (inaudible) and Africa, Kenya
included. Women are the contributors in
agricultural management. That is the
process of (inaudible), you know, that
they gain, that, the preparations, the planting, the harvesting, all those
management factors are actually done by the women and Kenya is a leading role
in that.
Ah, traditions and customs and culture still play major roles in
agricultural production and I think that this is the same whether you are in
Kenya or whether you are in West Africa.
Tradition has very major roles and are hampering quite a number of
things that we would like to see, um, done properly and then we have
information, training, research and extension education services but not still
reach the majority of the producers and the majority of the producer, as we
have said, are women. So, extension
services, I mean the majority of the producers are the women and the
information (inaudible) are actually extension (inaudible) and, um, studies and
observations show that this particular majority of producers are not actually
reached by those extension workers and, um, another study that I have been
seeing, um, that has been done or observation that has been done is that there
are very few extension workers who are women performing extension services. I train in a agricultural institution and
the total number of the women in the university are 26% out of 8,000 students,
we only have 1,000 and those women are not totally extension workers. They are also, ah, been trained in other
things so you can imagine the group that is out there. The group that normally qualifies to go out
to become extension workers.
Now, the question now is, we have done quite a number of things
on extension work. We have provided the
technical assistance in the extension services. We have provided input in quite a number of areas. What have we not done and where do we
go. I think one of the (inaudible) may
look very new and I think should be looked into very critical is the focusing
on the gender planning awareness training for particularly the senior people in
the institutions. This our policy
makers who are the managers of this institutions because they are the big
(inaudible). They are actually the ones
I feel that do not the information brought down the way we want. The professionals who are in this particular
institutions like the program officers, the curriculum develop parts like
(inaudible) University, all those heads of departments and senior lecturers,
they're extension workers, the ones that actually do the work and the program
and project (inaudible) because they give the money sometimes, they ask very
silly questions, why do you think, why should we give this to the women, why
should this be done and that's really (inaudible) people who are working on
extension. So, these are the people
that we really need to (inaudible) so that they can be able to understand what
is required of extension in the field so that they implement us and work
comfortably with less problems.
Now, so what, what is the center, ah, I come from Edgerton
University. I'm going in
(inaudible). I, ah, I am the Director
of our Center for Women Studies and Gender Analysis that was actually initiated
students and we have developed it to reach up to the level where we are. Ah, when we started we were just addressing
the problems of students, but nationally we have been asked to address other
issues like the gender issues so, as a result we have a formed a team of 24
lecturers who are facilitators on gender issues. Now, what we do is actually gender training in agricultural and
environment and we have been performing three to five day watches which include
presentation. When we present we
present the concepts on gender and explain what that is. We also do practical exercises where we do
roles, role plays, ah, including the things that happen in our own families, in
our own environment to the people to understand what exactly happens in, when
we talk of the relationship between men and women.
We also (inaudible) to find out some of the issues, the gender
concerns and issues in the various institutions that (inaudible) the
development of any, um of many things that happen in our, in our
situations. We do group discussions. We put people in groups of four, five to
discuss some of the very critical issues that affect the institutions like when
you are taking sexual harassment in a group like this you find everybody's,
like, they don't want to talk about it.
But when you put five people together they really talk about it openly
and all of these, ah, factors that affect institutions, whether they
agricultural or education or whatever area, they affect women and they hamper
development.
We then come to the (inaudible) sessions and we discuss some of
these issues so the five people in groups come together and we discuss some of
these issues. We also show videos, you
know, development issues, ah, videos that show the, the relationship between
men and women and we use the (inaudible) decided to use the (inaudible). I know in America this is not common, but,
but I've decided to use it and we don't forget the blackboard because it is the
easiest to use, okay, and we have it and very important we use
(inaudible). Where we are going to
sensitize an organization like the Administrator of Agriculture we ask them for what normally happens in their field
where their work and they send us cases and we read those cases and come up
with a case for them to analyze during the workshop. So . . .
CHANGE OF TAPE
Side 2
Moyia: . . . sensitized
or whom have we sensitized. We have
sensitized many (inaudible) agricultural, the livestock section because they
have been very much well ahead in their programs, and we have been, we have
been seeing that the relationship between men and women is very important in
livestock production so we have sensitized the group and they are quite, ah,
well ahead.
We have also sense, sensitized our researchers from the Research
and Agricultural Institute, the crop section, but normally do their trials in
the field with the farmer, so this group has come ahead and we have also
sensitized them.
Then we have the (inaudible).
I never know how to feel it, but it is crop something (inaudible) that I
got to explain, but the (inaudible) works with wheat, (inaudible) and wheat in
the region, eastern Africa and, um, the central Africa. They have, we have also sensitized them so,
um, we have (certified them in Kenya and also in Ethiopia so they are senior
researchers. Those are the (inaudible)
of the various institutes where (inaudible) are normally, um, focus their,
their work so from Uganda, (inaudible) Ethiopia, (inaudible) and Sudan, Mali
and Kenya, so we have done that.
When we have non-organized, um,
governmental organizations like the three (inaudible) Program, the
Institute of Cultural Affairs, the Kenya Wildlife Services. We have also, um, um, sensitized they are
people. We have the (inaudible) and
under this falls our own university, the five public universities. We have sensitized the vice chancellors plus
the top management of the university. I
did not know that that would happen, but it happened but it happened and, ah, I
thought, I thought we could open heaven sometimes when that happened. So we have sensitized the vice chancellors
of the university, their deputies and their principals of the five
universities. We have sensitized the
deans and directors of the five universities and I think we have opened the
gate for that because my (inaudible)
was Edgerton is the, is the, is the institution that actually produces most of
the extension workers and the senior personnel there, who are these people, had
not been trained so I was thinking something needs to be done and if we don't
do that then we are not teaching very well anywhere so I think as the producers
I feel much comfortable that we can now move to the implementors with ease
because the policy makers have already been touched and they are quite open
about it.
The next group that I feel needs to be touched is the (inaudible)
agriculture extension site because (inaudible) produces and (inaudible)
agriculture takes as the consumers and the two, if they can work together, we
gender sensitized them, I think we would have reached, actually done a lot for
the country. So that is, ah, that's
what I think and maybe we'll come to that.
When, what we normally do, what, what are the objectives of
these ah, these training? One of our
objectives is to increase gender sensitivity and awareness of gender issues in
agricultural development. That is our
focus and then to develop skills in gender analysis and planning. You've seen case that is from participants'
case work. Like when we take the
University, we are, ah, the developer of programs. We give case studies of programs and we also give case studies
of, ah, gender relations within the students and staff, ah, affairs and quite a
number of things normally come up.
You'll hear like, ah, they (inaudible) saying, what do you need, what do
women need and the, ah, the answer women need the things that you need, all of
the the things that you are doing, so, ah, so, so why are you not getting
them. The point is when you come to the
top cream of the university, I'm using the university because I am there, 90,
80% of the policy makers are men and you, you don't even need to go to do any
statistics. You just ask for them. In the room, here, how many are vice
chancellors and you'll find that there is none. How many are deans.
You'll find one or two women are deans.
How many for (inaudible)? You'll
just find one or two women and the rest are men, so it defeats, you know,
equations and, you know, from there on when they is any recruitment you hear
them saying, oh, you be careful, we need a woman here, so already there is that
consciousness that is being raised and then we also need to encourage
institutions to formulate and to implement policies which are gender responsive
and in our case like the university's I use that, I'm going to use in
particular because I'm more up, in need, I, they have committed themselves
because they call all these (inaudible) and they talk about what they talk
about what they are going to do so they are no choice. They have to meet, you know, the goals they
have set because they committed themselves to some of the, the things that they
are going to do in the formulatio of policies.
To initiate change among (inaudible) organizations, we didn't
(inaudible) organizations. We have some (inaudible) that, ah, are really, they
are not aware of some of the gender concerns and issues and if we can, um, tug
at them, I think it is very important.
So, after some of the (inaudible) you, you kind of see a change in
attitude which is very good and then we, we develop indicators for money
(inaudible). We come out from the
workshop and we say what do we want to see in the next six months after this
workshop, in the next one year, in the next that, and the, the participants
come up with some of those, ah,
evaluations and (inaudible) indicators and who normally, um ah,
facilitates. As I said we have a team of 24 men and women and, um,
out of that 9 of them are men and, um, you know, whenever we go for training we
make sure that there is a man and there is a woman so that we are not selling
that this is a women thing because that has been the thing in the past. You are always told, ah, that's a women
thing, but we make sure we have a man in our group and the man, you know, take
up some of the questions, but one thing, you know, they are, they are demeaning
in a way so that's what we have been doing.
Approximately, we have trained over 500 senior officers since we
started in 1995 November. We got the
training of trainers in 1995, um, August, and from that time on we started
training others and we have trained over 500 senior administrators. Everytime we get our training we don't want
to go beyond 25 and that's why maybe the number is not big enough. So, we always take just 25 so that
introduction can be done properly and then what are the outcomes. There is a remarkably change of attitude
noticed on those who attended the workshops.
In the earlier years when anybody would call for gender training, the
big men would send representatives and they would look for a woman, including a
secretary, to come to their workshop or to come to the seminar. This particular time I'm very happy to
mention that they come themselves and this is a remarkable change but needs to
be followed up to see if much more can be done with that and then in formal
feedback indicated that there are special considerations for women, concerns in
recruitments and promotions. This needs
to be (inaudible). We have noted
that. So, you know, you know, very
informally you meet people and say, oh, we did the interview and we weren't
sure there was a woman. I don't know
(inaudible), but, they are always conscious about that, okay.
Now, our problem, what is our problem. At the Center, one of our problem is the lack of follow-up. We have not been doing the follow-up because
when we write the proposal sometimes the money's just there for training and is
not there for follow-up so I would really like to see what has been going on
since the time the people we have trained.
What, what, what follow-up we need to do to know that so much has been
done or what impact we have on the people and then we have also difficulty in
maintaining regular training programs, you know. Our training, um, is not funded by the university per se. The university pays my salary and my
people's salary, but when it comes to the running of the programs we depend on
the people calling us or rewriting proposals and, you know, with the, with the
group that we want to train and, you know, it takes a while and it becomes
difficult. So, um, there is a kind of a
breakdown in, ah, in training . It is
not continuous so it's hard too say.
So, what are the recommendations from the training? All these trainings, I just picked a few of
the things that these training have come up with. They, they said that there is a need for follow-up and to them a
follow-up workshop so that the same people who can come back again and then we
find out what has been happening. We
need to expand the workshop to (inaudible) ministries (inaudible) agriculture.
We have many (inaudible) corporation, cooperative, but also work with
(inaudible) agriculture (inaudible) where the land business is a problem and
other ministries and organizations.
There is also need for training of implementors, program officers, ah,
curriculum, developers like (inaudible).
We need to now begin integrating gender into the curriculum and training
of the lecturers in various organizations.
We also need to do baseline data to find out what front line staff, the
farmers and some of the extension, ah, extension workers, think about who
benefits from the production and contributions that both men and women make in
agricultural development and we need to find out what the farmers actually,
what the, what is the preference of farmers.
Do they really prefer the men that are the majority of extension
workers. Yes, the majority of the, the
(inaudible) workers of the work being done for production are women. Why, then, do we just have too many men
doing the work when the women, too many women are the ones that are actually
producing. These are questions that, we
need to do some research to be able to convince our people.
And, so, um, so after coming with all these, ah, the question
that maybe we need to find out is what's next.
What, what is the Gender for Women's Studies and General Analysis at
Edgerton University is thinking of doing.
Ah, one very immediate thing that, ah, we think we should, ah, do is
improve and be consistent in offering the short time workshops. Continue offering those workshops to the
people who are interested and specifically to the extension workers in the ministry of agriculture as
the consumers of our people, of the people who have to be trained, together
with the curriculum developers, so that they can save their problems and see
how, um, problem developers can save them out of those problems to get, you
know, we need to do those training together.
That is how I feel.
Um, we also need short remedial summer courses on gender and
development for credits to be offered which can be built up to certificate
level or to masters level or masters degree level with the field work
orientation. So, what I'm saying here
is that it's very difficult for women to attain long-time courses. It has been a problem. I went though it. It is not easy and, ah, it is very strenuous to the families, so
I was thinking if we really need to top the (inaudible) number of women who are
already extension workers in the field to do some of the masters program and
build capacity we need to have a political, political, um, training which can
be a summer program to be done in a year and it can be done within a period of
three years and then the person finishes their course work. Meanwhile, they can do their research work
in the field. You know, then the
program would be finished. Quite a
number of women would be tapped in such a program.
Right now, we find quite a number of men are the one to go for
masters studies and the women, you know, they just give up. It is not their fault. It is very difficult to leave kids behind if
you have, if you have a family.
And, lastly, our program has not been advertised enough. It needs the money and we need to work on
(inaudible). That's, it's new and, ah,
quite a number of people do not know about it so we may need to work with other
organizations in training and research programs and find out those who have the
(inaudible) with us and how we can collaborate with others.
And, lastly, I will say that we have worked very well with, ah,
USAD in Kenya. They seed wheat of, USDA
has been very helpful in, um, you know, its actually the one that, as I said,
(inaudible) initiate the, the, the start of the program. The British Counsel in Kenya has been very
good. He is the one that has quite a
number of some of the programs that have mentioned and (inaudible) Canada has
been very helpful in helping us train the policy makers of the five public
universities.
So, in short, that is what I wanted to say about our gender
training program at Edgerton University.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
?: I think now we can
open it for discussion. I think one of
the themes has been institutional change in both of, um the discussions so I'll
turn it over to the floor and I'm going to repeat your question into the
microphone so it can be recorded. Yes.
?: Yea, I have a
question for Lynn. Um, I , I guess I
understand your insistence that the training program are targeted toward the
top officials in each of the countries, but I guess I see a, a barrier in that your then targeting towards
these men who in this cascade training can, sort of, (inaudible) that back into
this male dominated (inaudible) extension services and I see one of the main
problems, particularly in countries like Mali that one of the main barriers for
women receiving extension services is their limited contact with men and, and
sort of a tabu about, of, of contact which is laid out in the fields in the
rural areas and so I'm wondering what sort of challenges you see by targeting
these theses trainings towards men and, if maybe, it should be targeted more to
women even if they're not the top officials.
(Inaudible)
Brown: Yea, I think, the
problem is you've got to change the institutional thing and I think that men,
if you make the case to men and they understand that it will make their
agricultural better and it will improve agricultural productivity, then they
will reach women, but the problem is currently on the ground. They don't
recognize the problems and if they do they don't know how to address them and
so the issue in the training is to have the problems recognized by the senior staff
who have come up through the system.
They have, you know, sort of front line extension experience, too.
To get them to understand the problems, to create their own
solutions to dealing with it and then to take that back into their own training
programs so that the training comes all the way down. It comes down to the regions.
The regions train the front line and, you know, so coming back to the
Mali situation, that is one of the problems that they face, is one of they
identify. How do we deliver extension
services so women who can't meet with men.
Certainly in one of the countries when there was a problem they
actually got a couple of female engineers, sort of agricultural engineers. They brought them in with the men who
developed a system together. So, that's
one of the things that they do is to identify the problem and if that's the
problem, then work at how you have a solution such that you can still deliver
the extension method.
?: . . . just one
comment here. Ah, I just want to follow
up on, on what she had said because, um, I want to find out what are the unique
kind of things that you do to make sure that this cascading process takes off
because even if you're not talking about the kind of, um, cascading which has constraints
on gender balances, simple cascading.
I'll give an example. I'm
heading (inaudible) agriculture. I'm,
I'm the head of the department and all my managers are all male and when I talk
about cascading anything, let alone anything that I talked to you about, what
I'm saying, okay, we have a meeting every, every fourth night, we come and all
of you, your supposed to be telling your visions (inaudible) cascading the
policies. (inaudible) I've just gone
around the whole region (inaudible) Africa.
I went through the whole region in my, in my province trying to find out
we're talking about transmission of (inaudible) because the delivery before was
very (inaudible). Okay. No one can could change the face of
government in how we deliver services to remain they or previously
excluded.
I found out that over 90% of what I've been saving had
(inaudible) never reached. I got
managers, whether they're men or women.
So, there is a little problem with this cascading. We assume certain things happen and we find
out that they really don't happen.
Maybe you do have a, I want to find out how that process of cascading
come into you, madam. Who is doing this
training. Do you do it? You talked about this other
organization. Are they helping ? How are they helping? Are they doing the training themselves or
they're providing some kind of technical advice or they are, I just want you to
(inaudible) a little bit so (inaudible)
Thank you.
?: Can we just hold off
on that. Remember the question and do
you have a comment on the first part?
Brown: I think it comes
down to you have to get ownership. I
think it doesn't really matter whether your male or female in authority. If you tell somebody to do something then it
doesn't necessarily get passed down to the lower level and should really get a
commitment from those people and (inaudible) and I think the difference on this
system is that come together to solve the problems for themselves. Ah, you know, the banks (inaudible) come
into a country and saying, well, okay, this is your problems and this is how
you deal with it and, you, know, its completely the wrong approach and I think
the interesting thing on this is certainly when we brought the core team
together, um, they sort of looked at the initial study that identified problems
then we validated them and they enriched them.
The initial study was much richer for the invalidation of these people
and, I mean, they understood the situation much better then the international
consultants who had done the study and then having identified the problem, they
identified their own solutions so there were solutions that they believed would
work. There were solutions that they
were anxious to try and they really thought they had the answer and they wanted
to make sure that it worked and so, then when they went back they were invested
in training their people in the new set of solutions that they'd come up with
because all of the sudden they really understood the problem and I think often,
you know, he'd just go in and say to somebody, oh, there's a problem here and
it sort of like, um, it's like growing up like a kid, really, isn't it. I mean, we've all our parents turn around
and say you really don't want to do that, you know. My mother used to say to me it'll end up in tears. Well, occasionally I believed her. 99% of
the time I didn't. I thought I'd knew
better and, ah, 99% of the time she was probably right. It did up in tears. Um, you know, it's the process of learning,
isn't it. Often we have to make
mistakes to learn.
Moyia: Yea, the
trainings are done by Egerton University.
I'm one of the trainers. I'm one
of the 24 trainers and, um, we are all centered like that. We're centered, but, they, they, they the
trainers come from the various, they are selected from the various department
from the University and most of the trainers are from the agricultural related
fields. Natural resources and the
agricultural extension have grown on me and, ah, social sciences and then we
have the (inaudible) and a few of the people in English.
So, and then we work with the organizations that we normally
train. Like when we are going to write
a proposal, we involve the people that we are going to train. The training (inaudible) in that particular organization so we end up working
together like that, but we are the people who do the training.
?: Who trains you?
Moyia: We were trained,
we, we wrote a proposal to the British Council to give us a trainer and we got
two trainers from the British Council at, um, and, um, one from Tanzania and
(inaudible) we have been training ourselves.
(Inaudible)
?: I stand before you
that I would never have done this before.
There has been a research project called Family Community Leadership
Training which I am a part of now. What
you see here has been part of that. The
Kellogg Foundation, a number of years ago, started program which filtered down
through our cooperative extension service at our universities to implement and
help women to become more effective in the home, family and community. Through this I was developing skills to lead
a meeting that was affective, to also make a presentation like you saw this
lady do that, that was different from the other two ladies and I don't mean to
critize your presentation because you haven't gone through the Family Community
Leadership Program. This is now commonly
the box. the box contains way, ways in
which we, as women in agriculture who don't have the skills that corporate
companies have promoted within their own corporations and we now know that when
you give a presentation . . .
?: I think, actually,
you should ask the question (inaudible) because there's other people who need,
have questions.
?: Alright, but this
will help you and may I talk to you later so, help you because I also have a
friend from Kenya and this box, I'm sorry, should be distributed through
everyone so that can adapt this policy and development of developing
skills. It is, filters down from the
university staff through extension agents and we also included men later on but
it was carried on by the women in the community.
?: Thank you. Yes?
Helen ? :
Um, my name is Helen. I come from Kenya and I'm an extension worker from
Kenya. I'm a (inaudible) and my
question (inaudible) of women, but one thing that I'm always fighting about is
when you talk about extension workers being more males than females. What is the cause of that? I look at Kenya, for example, and I look at
the high school that I went to and there were like a hundred girls in high school
and when we went to (inaudible) to study most of the girls opted to go into
education and also to going to secretarial studies and very few of us went into
agriculture (inaudible). But I don't
know if we should really blame the men for taking over because in our
(inaudible) institute so many woman say I don't want to do agriculture. That's a man's job, you know. (inaudible) and change the way the women
think, think about extension and think about agriculture and also in the, in
the center we have very many women who want to be extension workers who are not
really (inaudible). I have to admit I
was one of them and so I became (inaudible) talk to the men, you know, and it
really took me a lot of time to (inaudible).
So, we also have (inaudible) target the women extension worker who are
there (inaudible).
?: Thank you very much. I think you've raised a lot of good
issues. You want to start
(inaudible)?
Moyia: Um, I went though
Edgerton University as a student in agriculture and home economics. When we started we always, I was one of the
person who complained why women want to take home economics when there were
other departments and at that particular time our principal then was, ah, very
sensitive to some these issues. That
kind gender issues had not come up and from that time on, the following year he
started picking, recruiting women in other departments. I think I've seen that institution grow and,
ah, right now he signed quite a number of women in, in different, um
departments which (inaudible) to be there, including engineering which have
five women now about to graduate. But,
the point here is gender sensitivity is not only for men. It should be for both men and women because
even women are problems in themselves and unless they understand and as unless
they understand as you say you are (inaudible) important we shall still have
these problems. So, that's why our
focus at Edgerton is to train both men and women and show them the relationship
between men and women in the various activities that happen in the
institutions.
?: That was interest. I think you started off by saying do we lose
by not having female extension agents.
The answer to that is yes and no and if a male extension agent
understood the female farming system as well as the male farming system and
delivered it (inaudible) based on the farming system, then, no, they actually
wouldn't lose anything. The problem is,
the, generally speaking the male farming extension agent ignore the female side of the farming system completely so we
lose a lot and do female extension agents do any better? Depends on how the system's set up. In many cases where you do have a female
extension service, it's largely if you like more of a home economic service
more than a technical agricultural service so in that sense then, yes, they do
lose out.
I think, we didn't target, per se, for this program. The program is actually, I'd like to say
it's the gender analysis side, but it's actually social and gender
analysis. It's about understanding the
situation in the community and one of the huge things, usually, is gender, but it's also for a more
(inaudible) so it's a system would be good for, um, areas that have lots
of (inaudible) peoples , too, who often
also marginalilzed out.
And, you know, the reason men are in our training program is
because of the way the extension service is balanced in most of the countries
we were dealing with. It's men who are
in the senior positions who are making the policy and that was the people that
we want on the course.
Julie Buckley: I wanted to
pick up both things, really. I'm Julie
Buckley from Australia. What is
necessary is what we would call a top down and bottom up approach at the same
time which is inclusive of all genders and the difficulty for women in
management, like yourself, who has male staff who are not, ah, cooperative in
trying, you have a vision and a strategy plan and they're not putting it down
into the organization in, in, in areas that you consider a priority. That's a management issue and how you
performance managed those men and because I have to do that and I'm lucky I've
got a team of really top guys. Ah, but
it's been a difficulty experience for them in changing the culture of the way
they think about accounting to a women.
So, it's all about performance managing through that and it takes a lot
of time and, I, you got to use a lot of managerial skills and, and just, um,
women's wilds, too, you know, because
you can't push too hard because your the hired bitch, ah, where a man can push
and, um, and push other guys to the limit.
Women can't do that. You have to
just often be very gentle but firm in your approach. But I think that translating this to the issues about women in
agricultural and more, ah, technically advanced countries the problems are
similar, but different, ah, because they're still the same issues but at a
different level. So I think, I'd really
like to think, you know, from what I've heard, I thought it's really been
interesting.
?: Yes, let's get some
at the back here. I'm, if you could
come up it would be the best because it's a little difficult.
Mary Marga (spelling?):
My name is Mary Marga and I'm from southern Sudan. Um, my question would be, I guess, my area
of specialization is agriculture and I've worked with research session funded
by ah, World Banking (audible). Um, at
the same time, also I worked with another organization in southern Sudan as
programer, general programer officer with (inaudible). Um, my concern and the question that I would
direct to (inaudible) is regarding the, um, the train, the trainers's situation
with the senior extension workers. She
probably did ask you that but I wanted to get more detailed, ah, perception of
what we're going to be doing in a situation whereby if you train the trainers
and as you raise up the issue I realize that, you know, because of funding
situation, because of, ah, funding (inaudible) right now that everybody's
focusing on gender issues, they tend to use that in order to get the funding,
but when it comes to the technical passing down to the grass-root level it
doesn't, it is not arising (inaudible) non-government organizations that are
morally having to believe of, of, using the train, trainers at the senior
level. My question is have you ever
done any, um, thing, you know, having done the train the trainer, have you ever
gone down to the grass-root level to monitor the session? At the district of county level, for
example, ah, to get a sample in order to get a feedback to see whether that
information has been filtered down to the grass-root level, have you also
(inaudible) the fact that that train, train the trainer thing, it maybe a
packet, for example, World Bank did a funding for our problem which was, you
know, promoting seaport activity to supply the whole country and what they did
was, you know, to kind of give that package and (inaudible) the (inaudible)
aspect of it where women constitute the majority and therefore the technology
has just been passed on, you know, been promotional that was, you know, the
male farmers will be able to grow and sell and yet the income goes to the
pocket of usually the head of the household.
Have you ever also thought about doing the assistance (inaudible) in
order to tug at the female farmer who would be down at the grass-root
level. Thank you.
?: Thank you.
Brown: Um, yea, I think
it comes back down to the case of ownership.
The reason bank didn't train anybody on this program, um, which is a
very difficult approach for the World Bank, really, given our normal
reputation. Um the person who did the,
whose was the World Bank faciliator, I know very well, and she's a very
powerful personality. She's very
charismatic. She's really good at pulling
people together and she called and aided in various agricultural projects in
the regional offices of the World Bank, um, with this training, um, but at the
end of the day she didn't train them and neither did the international
consultants. They trained
themselves. That was the, the whole
point was to have the expertise, that they were obligated to look at the
problems that had initially been identified, clarify them, decided, well, are
they true, are they false, what are the (inaudible) of these problems? Having got them, then to work out, okay,
what are the gender dimensions of this problem or what are the other
dimensions, whether it be the subsistence farmer, whether it be a particular
(inaudible) group, how it related to a particular crop. It was up to them to come out with these
dimensions and then work out how they would solve the issue so it was their
problems, their solutions. Then when
they go back to their own countries that the training cascades down so it
cascades as far down as the field staff so the field staff should be to
recognize when a new crop comes in.
They should be able to say, okay, how do I deliver this crop to this
community. Who's the contact
group? Who's growing it? Which farmers do I need to talk to? What's the best way to talk to them? How's the best way to train them? Is this a literate group or an illiterate
group? What training mechanisms do I
need to use? So, it should be a
training for sort of the whole process as opposed to the sort of, okay guys,
here's the new seed, you know, it's a new improved of maize. Take it out there and give it to the farmers
because, you know, te old approach as all know, was that they'll take it out to
the men and they'll think, well, the women will get it through the men and it
will be okay and, you know, I'll quote an example from Zambia where they do
exactly that. The new hyper maize came
out. Everybody in Zambia grows maize,
both men and women. Men often sell
their surplus. Women grow it for their
food crop so they thought, well, everybody benefits from this. We don't really need any, you know,
substantive general analysis, but they go back next season and they find that
households are growing both traditional maize and hyper maize and it's like,
here people are saying, are these people stupid. Why would they grow a crop that doesn't yield as much. Why don't they only grow hyper maize? The reason they didn't only grow hyper maize
was because women wanted it for a food crop and they (inaudible) traditional
maize and they did that. If you grow
the hyper maize you have to hammer millet and they didn't have any hammer
millets so they didn't want to grow the hyper maize. Also hyper maize takes a lot of weeding and weeding is women's
work so that increased that workload and lowered the time available for them to
put into their own maize crop.
There're all sorts of reasons why this was not a (inaudible)
decision for women to grow hyper maize.
Have they done it in the first place?
Had the agricultural extension agents have worked out how the farming
system had worked and how to target these, how to (inaudible) and be what
complimentary resources are necessary to facilitate women using it, then you'd
have a more successful project and that's what we're hoping that this program
will do.
From an evaluation point of view, it's too soon to tell. Um, the bank in terms of, their sort of, the
Economic Development Institute that this woman who worked for who coordinated
it initially dropped out in June of 1997 so the fact that it's still ongoing
shows that we breed a lot of sustainability into it. Um, the regional coordinator, whose based in Senegal, and he
visits the other countries . . .