Understanding Dimensions of Women’s Empowerment in the Livestock Value Chain Development Program in Ethiopia

Abstract

<p>Women’s empowerment constitutes an important aspect of the research and development agenda in the global south and has become a much-studied construct in recent years. Nevertheless, despite decades of empirical research on determinants and outcomes, there remains much that is not yet understood about the process of women’s empowerment. This includes a lack of clarity regarding the associations between empowerment resources, agency and achievements, and how agency is strengthened and constrained under different normative social contexts. This thesis contributes to closing these gaps in knowledge through the investigation of women’s empowerment within the mixed and livestock-based systems in Ethiopia. Specifically, the program of research relates to the Small Ruminant Value Chain Development (SRVCD) program that is run by the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)-Ethiopia office.</p> <p>The study of empowerment aspects of development programs is often absent within the broader empowerment literature, with this being primarily due to three reasons. First, the multi-dimensional nature of agency and empowerment poses measurement challenges in development programs. Second, indicators used for measures of agency within studies on development programs can vary significantly across contexts. Third, the quantitative measures used in such studies often fail to capture people’s values and meaning, including whether or not agents value the agency they exhibit. For this reason, concerns have been raised by many researchers regarding the tendency of empowerment studies to solely use quantitative indicators. Hence, it has been suggested that there is a need for qualitative assessments of motivations, meanings and values behind choices to enable comprehensive understanding of empowerment. Another common problem in many studies that attempt to measure women’s empowerment is that they lack clear conceptualizations of, and differentiation between, the dimensions of empowerment. This is particularly evident in relation to stating which aspects of empowerment (i.e., empowerment resources/ preconditions, agency or achievements) has been measured. Such a lack of specificity in the literature hinders the ability to understand empowerment processes as they work in practice, which further limits the ability of organisations to develop programs that successfully facilitate women’s empowerment. For example, the existing development literature demonstrates that, while women have increased their perceived levels of empowerment and freedom in many countries, the social norms that act to restrict women’s empowerment within those countries often remain unchanged. Few studies have examined the underlying reasons for this discrepancy. Moreover, most of the existing studies that investigate agency and empowerment within development program have been undertaken in relation to nonlivestock-based systems. This means that relatively little is known about women’s agency and empowerment within mixed crop and livestock systems, despite agency dynamics being known to differ from those in other types of agriculture. As such, the current program of research aimed to contribute to these knowledge gaps by addressing some of these problems ―understanding empowerment within context, clarifying empowerment pathways and the nature of agency and achievements that women and men livestock keepers’ value. It aimed at enhancing our understanding of pre-conditions for empowerment, the nature of agency and achievement, and their associations with contextual factors from gender perspectives within the mixed and livestock-based systems of Ethiopia.</p> <p>The thesis has two studies each with parts. Study 1 alone has three parts that focuses on investigating the pre-conditions for empowerment (empowerment resources) and agency dimensions (decision-making areas) along with their gendered valuations. It also explored how agents exercise their agency by deviating from the normative contexts to achieve expanded agency living within a constraining social environment. A mixed-methods approach was used for Study 1, with qualitative data gathered through 30 focus group discussions (FGDs), 44 key informant interviews (KIIs), and 18 case studies of deviance in gender relations. Participants included men and women livestock keepers, community leaders and facilitators, and staff of the various SRVCD program service providers at community and district levels. Quantitative data was collected via a structured questionnaire as part of a Household Survey, which was completed by 381 livestock keepers. Key findings from Study 1 include that the social environment within which the livestock value chain development takes place is generally non-autonomy supportive for women, and that systems of access, ownership and control are biased towards men. The major empowerment resources and decision-making processes that are valued by livestock keepers are mediated by gender and location (particularly the farming systems) and play an important role in forming the contextual conditions for empowerment in mixed and livestock-based systems. Psychological well-being (autonomy, self-acceptance, and positive relations) was found to be one of the most important resources and was mediated by the interaction between gender and context. The analysis of how and under what conditions women (and men) can exercise their agency in spite of the constraining normative environment also resulted in notable findings. Agents (particularly women) own the capacity to deviate, and the intentions that lead to such new behaviors emerge not only from individuals’ attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (as suggested by the Theory of Planned Behavior; TPB), but also in combination with other socio-economic factors. Specifically, self-conviction (attitude and perceived behavioral control), subjective norms (within household and community), and structures (state and non-state institutions) were found to be critical factors affecting agents’ ability to deviate for positive gains. The study findings make evident that livestock keepers are aware of the negative influence of normative culture but lack the power to challenge it. It was also evident that conceptualizations of agency differ along gender lines and across locations. For example, agency indicators such as ‘joint decision-making’ need to be reconsidered within empowerment measurements because study participants reporting this do not necessarily mean that they have engaged in egalitarian decision-making processes, as is widely assumed within the field. Rather, ‘joint decision-making’ is often another indicator of men’s dominance in decision-making. </p> <p>Study 2 has two parts. It incorporated relevant variables associated with the agency dimensions, as identified in Study 1. The first Part of Study 2 investigates what are the gender differences in relation to access to value chain inputs, ownership of value chain resources, decision-making, and control over value chain outputs in the context of mixed and livestockbased systems. The study involved 723 small ruminant keeping households from six districts completing a baseline questionnaire designed to analyse the small ruminant value chain in Ethiopia. Overall, the findings supported the reported gender differentials with regards to systems of access, ownership and control of major value chain inputs and outputs. Estimation results of the Binary Logistic Regression Model (BLRM) identified several variables that are significantly associated with agency dimensions, achievement, or both, with mixed results. Overall, the findings of Part 1 of Study 2 indicated that participation in small ruminant value chains may encourage more egalitarian decision-making behaviors but it does not guarantee the capacity of women for autonomous decision-making, and thus needs to be coupled with interventions targeting empowerment dimensions. The second part 2 of Study 2 explored the effect of gender transformative approaches on the normative challenge to empowerment identified in Study 1 through a qualitative literature review of ICARDA knowledge products (e.g., program reports). Drawing on the phenomenological method of qualitative literature review, community conversations (CC) were found to have positively impacted the gender aspects of social norms. Changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices related to livestock at household, community and institutional levels were identified. Nevertheless, since the knowledge products available for the review were primarily process oriented, relating to CC design and implementation, there remains a further analysis based on primary data to generate evidences that would help in scaling the experiences and outcomes locally, regionally, and nationally. It is recommended that these transformative approaches are institutionalized, such that they included within all public extension and related programs. There is also a need for the development of national gender policies, which should focus on simultaneously cultivating/strengthening intrinsic agency of women livestock keepers and transforming the socio-cultural contexts to facilitate changing gender norms, which is necessary to support women’s empowerment.</p>