Conditions for effective gender integration in policy instruments in agriculture. - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2015

Conditions for effective gender integration in policy instruments in agriculture.

Résumé

Prior to the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the government delivered agricultural services, most often through direct farm a dvisory services (Hugon, 2013 [1993] ; Rodrik, 2006; Williamson, 2005; Stiglitz, 1998; Kolodko, 1999). After the adjustments, the policy landscape underwent large structural changes, in particular in the context of agricultural extension services and how information and knowledge was transmitted. It led to the introduction of new implementing institutions, the development of new policy devices, e.g. knowledge-based platforms, and action guidelines, e.g. gender mainstreaming (Davis, 2008; Adolph, 2010; Faure et al., 2010). These changes occurred in a number of African countries, Kenya being one of them (Eicher 2004). They are in turn having an impact upon women, more particularly rural women. (Barker and Feiner, 2007; Manfre et al., 2013). Agriculture is an important sector in the Kenyan economy, contributing 26 percent of the GDP annually (GoK, 2011; WB database 2014). The sector provides more than 70 percent of informal employment in the rural areas in Kenya. It has been stated that rural Kenyan women contribute to 75 percent of the labor force in small-scale agriculture (Alila and Otieno, 2006). Nevertheless, women in rural areas are disadvantaged when it comes to access to resources, i.e. land, capital, knowledge and information (Adolph, 2010; Berlekom et al., 2009; FSD, 2013; UN Women, 2002). For instance, Kenyan women are less literate than men (WB Database, 2014). Also, 29 percent of those earning a formal wage in Kenya are women, leaving a lae percentage of women to work in the informal sector. Hence, economic and institutional models and their explicit (i.e. known, transparent, intentional) and implicit (i.e. somewhat unknown, less intentional, yet to be revealed) components have altered with the introduction of a number of actors other than the government, and thus the intentions, mandate and objectives of respective government (Lascoumes and Le Gales, 2007; Adolph, 2010). Indeed, there are changes in the delivery of agricultural services and how knowledge is transmitted. It has been revealed by different authors that female farmers have less access to agricultural extension services compared to male farmers, as a result of privatization of these services during the SAPs and the introduction of new extension methodologies, e.g. Training and Visit Systems (Verma, 2001; Davis, 2008). It is thus possible to obsee a fragmentation of policy devices and action guidelines, i.e. policy instruments, disposing of different ways and capacities of procuring knowledge and information to rural women. In this setting, a number of modifications are supposed to this situation, e.g. the reinforcement of action guidelines (Councilof Europe, 2005; Dauphin, 2010) followed by the development of new or emerging policy devices (via public private partnerships) to facilitate the access to knowledge to the public at large (Dhiab et al., 2014 ; Dougherty, 2004; Gallouj, 2002; Hertog, 2000). The hypothesis is that these alterations have led to new discrimin ation mechanisms for women. It is thus required to question and review the conditions for effective gender integration in one policy instrument in agriculture, i.e. a knowledge based platform combined with gender mainstreaming.The discussion questions the content of the knowledge based platform as being the major obstacle for these women to accessthe policy device. This will be exemplified by a case study from Kenya.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
2015_Madeleine Jonsson_EAEPE Conference_1.pdf (360.36 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte
Loading...

Dates et versions

hal-02742265 , version 1 (03-06-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-02742265 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 358576

Citer

Madeleine Jonsson. Conditions for effective gender integration in policy instruments in agriculture.: A Kenyan case study. 27. Annual EAEPE Conference, European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE). INT., Sep 2015, Genève, Switzerland. ⟨hal-02742265⟩
65 Consultations
25 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More