Attachment_J.15_-_Gender_Analysis.pdf

GENDER ANALYSIS

Background

Afghanistan’s leaders have historically allowed the active participation of women in society. In 1919, during King Amanullah Khan’s reign, Afghan women went abroad for studies, the first women’s school was established in the capital, and the queen went outside of the house without her veil. A family law was passed in 1921, which banned child marriage and the domination of the widow and her children by her deceased husband’s family (Ghosh. p.3). Then in the rule of King Zahir Shah (1933-73), women achieved their basic right of access to education, the ability to decide about their appearance (including the voluntary removal of the veil and non-use of the burqa), and the choice to be in public spaces and become financially independent, thus it was considered the “golden era” for Afghan women (Ghubar, 1968, p.450). During Daud Khan’s reign (1973-1978), women were granted the right to vote and to be elected, and they gained rights to own property and choose their partner in the Afghan Civil Code of 1977.

However, from the time of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the Soviet Union’s invasion and defeat and finally the Taliban era, the lives of Afghan women became subjected to increasing restrictions if not repression. The dismal state of Afghan women’s rights was one of the widely publicized humanitarian tragedies which the U.S. intervention wanted to address. While there are still significant gender gaps, Afghan women are currently allowed to attend school, join public spaces, and work in government and media. The Afghan government has instituted local laws and signed international agreements that seek to eliminate violence and discrimination against women, as well as development policies that recognize their integral role in development (Afghanistan National Development Strategy) and seek to empower them further (National Action Plan for Women of Afghanistan). These reforms are challenging the ideologies, principles and values of the predominantly Islamic society, and it is in this context that USAID assistance in agriculture is aiming to positively contribute.

In Afghanistan, 80% of the population resides in rural areas, where agricultural activity is the main form of livelihood.1 While most farming in Afghanistan is subsistence-based, agricultural activity is diverse in its range of products, methods, climates, and conditions. Women partake in both family compound-based agriculture and outside-the-home activities, but these differ significantly by location (by province and even by district) and according to local dynamics. There are two types of family labor – labor that contributes to household livelihoods, such as subsistence farm work and domestic duties, and labor that generates income in cash or kind. In certain regions, traditions restrict their women’s work to the household where they are involved in crop processing and household-based activities. Within key value chains such as grapes/raisins, almonds, and saffron, women are involved in weeding, watering, harvesting, cleaning, drying, and grading and packing activities.2 Yet, their presence is clustered at the low end of the value chain, and women’s involvement diminishes significantly in the upper parts of these value chains. Rural women have additional responsibilities within the household, including child rearing, preparing meals, and other domestic duties, and these time-consuming responsibilities constrain women’s involvement in agricultural activities and their ability to take advantage of income-generating opportunities.

Women play a critical role in all dimensions of agricultural production, although, given the limited socio-economic survey data available, the estimates of the level of that involvement are varied.

According to GIRoA’s National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA) 2007-17, women make up approximately 30 percent of those working in the agricultural sector. 3 This was

1 USAID, A Guide to Gender Practice in Afghanistan, p. ix 2 ibid., p. x 3 Crawford, The Role of Women in Afghan Agriculture: A Literature Review, p. 17

ATTACHMENT J.15

also the figure cited by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Afghanistan Factsheet 2008. 4 The 2010-2011 State of Food and Agriculture Report of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that the female share in agricultural production was 32.1 percent in 2010 (as opposed to 28.5 percent in 1995). 5 It is estimated that women represent a majority of the workforce (formal and informal) in the livestock and poultry sectors, and approximately half of the workforce in the farming and horticulture sectors. Women’s participation is primarily family-based and unpaid, and therefore is not accorded significant status in economic indicators.

On the part of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), it has expressed full support for the goal of improving the conditions of women in the country. The NAPWA 2007-2017 6, GIRoA’s main vehicle for guiding policies and commitments to advance the status of women, recognized that “the current situation of women in the country presents a serious challenge to human development and that the women of Afghanistan are among the worst off in the world, both in comparison to Afghan men and with women of most countries.” The commitment of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) to “promoting and supporting the mainstreaming of gender issues in all its programs and projects with the aim of providing increased opportunities for women to participate in and benefit from agricultural development processes”7 is expressed in the MAIL Master Plan, the Agriculture and Rural Development Sector Strategy, and the National Agriculture Development Framework. With technical and financial support from USAID, MAIL established in May 2014 a Women’s Empowerment Working Group (WEWG), which conducts regular coordination meetings involving MAIL implementing partners, donor representatives, and line ministries, to discuss gender issues as they relate to MAIL and the agricultural sector. The WEWG serves as an Advisory Committee to MAIL’s leadership on gender topics, and will assist the Home Economics and Gender Directorates in the design and planning of MAIL programs and projects.

Constraints In order to reach women, a better understanding of the nature of women’s participation in the agricultural sector and related gender gaps is required, as well as overcoming the constraints that hamper efforts to reach and mobilize women in significant numbers. These constraints include the following:

Access to Assets - Women rarely own land, equipment, livestock, and materials, although they share the use of these assets with the men who own them. In remote areas, women often do not possess official identification, which can limit their access to government and donor assistance (including the distribution of subsidized inputs and access to credit). In addition to unaffordable interest rates, women also lack access to agriculture credit due to lack of assets (land) to offer as collateral, which reduces opportunities to start activities that require an initial investment.

Balance of power and decision-making - Women traditionally have had little decision-making authority on land use (e.g., what crops to grow and when), farm labor allocation, input purchasing (including access to irrigation water), or crop marketing. Even when women's domestic production (e.g., carpet weaving) forms the main income of the household, 4 ibid.

5 ibid.

6 ibid, p.14 7 ibid.

they rarely control the marketing of these products, which is most often managed by male relatives or middlemen. The Millennium Development goal of having 50 percent of civil servants to be female by 20208 will be a challenge for the MAIL, given that as of August 2015, MAIL only has 623 women out of its 8,974 employees—under 7 percent—located throughout Afghanistan.9 MAIL leadership positions are largely staffed by men (including the Minister, three Deputy Ministers), and only two out of 32 directorates are headed by women (Home Economics Directorate and the Horticulture Directorate). There is a shortage of women extension workers in the provinces, districts, and villages; only 21 of the 678 employees of the MAIL Extension Directorate are women (15 in MAIL in Kabul and six in provinces). The limited agricultural research taking place in Afghanistan also largely excludes women; only 11 of the 357 Research Directorate employees are women (eight of 117 in Kabul, 3 of 240 in the provinces).10

Knowledge, Beliefs, Perceptions - Rural Afghan women also have low literacy and numeracy rates, and women in some ethnic groups may not be fluent in the primary languages of Afghanistan. Women in much of Afghanistan (particularly in rural areas) face cultural norms that limit their mobility outside of their residential compounds and restrict their contact with strangers. Tradition has confined women’s roles to the private space of the household for safety and security, due to the belief that they are keepers of the “family honor.” This can virtually preclude their access to input suppliers or output markets, and thus frustrate their ability to directly commercialize their output. Also, there is a stigma among some ethnic groups and in some regions of the country against women, particularly young women, working openly in agriculture, implying that agriculture work is only appropriate for elderly women or those from poor households. In the MAIL, senior officials perceive women’s participation in agriculture in a narrow sense, not fully recognizing both the existing contributions that women make in the agricultural sector and the potential for increasing their productivity. Despite this concern, MAIL received the highest overall score among 23 Afghan ministries and agencies in terms of gender-related mandate, political will, capacity, resources, and processes. MAIL was one of only five ministries which have internal gender policies. 11

Practices and Participation - Afghan women generally are involved in small-scale, subsistence (not commercially-oriented), unpaid activities that take place within their residential compounds, such as kitchen gardens, some post-harvest processing, and the raising of livestock and poultry production. Their broader labor contribution to the household’s efforts in agriculture is generally non-monetized and undervalued. Also, the ability to reach women with in-person extension messages is severely constrained by the limitations on their mobility (including in the formation of women’s groups), the prohibition to reach them through male extension staff, and the difficulties of recruiting and fielding female extension staff (who themselves face mobility constraints). In the MAIL, its Home Economics Directorate (HED) implements most of MAIL’s field outreach to rural women, with its key role “to improve the food security, livelihoods and well-being of farm households.” The 57 HED staff in MAIL headquarters and 24 provinces work with rural women and have run a number of effective female-specific projects including crop

8 Crawford, The Role of Women in Afghan Agriculture: A Literature Review, p. 14 9 ibid.

10 ibid., p.15 11 Crawford, The Role of Women in Afghan Agriculture: A Literature Review, p. 17 diversification, animal husbandry, kitchen gardening, food processing, and nutrition training.

However, the MAIL Gender Unit is focused on building internal gender equality (with MAIL staff and its operations), but it has no staff at the regional or provincial levels, does not implement agricultural projects for women, and is not heavily involved in planning, monitoring or collaborating with other departments nor systematically engaged with externally funded projects.

Recommended Actions The existence of long-embedded cultural dimensions as well as logistical, governmental, and security barriers to reaching women in the agricultural sector means that overall, efforts to expand women’s participation in the sector should be creative enough to overcome such barriers. Also, the expectations in terms of impact will have to be calibrated to reflect the more limited scale;

subsistence and localized (rather than commercial and regional), and incremental, long-term in the development timeline. Accounting for the myriad constraints to reaching women in Afghanistan, the following actions are required:

Changes in staffing, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation approaches, as well as budgets of USAID projects. For agriculture projects in Afghanistan to effectively reach women, the cost per beneficiary will likely be greater, and it will take longer and require more intensive coaching to achieve results.

USAID agriculture projects need to focus on cropping systems in which women are involved, and under the conditions in which they grow them. Projects should encompass types of activities the women are presently involved in: subsistence production of livestock and horticultural crops, and household-level, post-harvest processing. Programs focused on crop production systems in which women have not been involved as decision makers, such as wheat production and commercial-scale horticulture production, will not automatically reach women.

USAID’s implementing partners will need to work with local communities in the planning process and must be responsive to needs that the communities themselves identify. Specific efforts should be made to identify female-headed and poorer households where women, by necessity, play a greater role in agriculture, and to design projects or project components to address their needs.

Agriculture programming should reflect the fact that women’s roles and responsibilities in agriculture vary significantly across the country, with women in northern, western and central Afghanistan participating more fully in agriculture than those in southern Afghanistan.

Women in poorer households with very limited or no other livelihood options will more likely be permitted to participate in income-generating activities—even those outside the home—if it means supporting the family. Generating increased income for the family can earn a woman higher “value” and respect in the family and can improve family dynamics and relationships.

Women-specific agriculture education programs should be explored and advocated, which possibly include “women agriculture high schools”, a “women associate degree program in agriculture, and the acceptance of more female students to faculties of agriculture through the national university entrance exam (kankoor). These interventions could increase the “supply” of educated women in the agriculture sector, and can be directly addressed through OAG's activities or in coordination with USAID education activities.

The “demand” side can be enhanced through the recruitment and training of more female extension staff, provision of extension internship opportunities for those in agriculture-related studies, and provision of resources that would allow greater mobility. At the same time, access to information through radio, TV and cell phones is growing quickly in Afghanistan, and should be supported if not integrated in project interventions

Improvements in nutrition and dietary diversity will require a central role for women in implementation. Nutrition and hygiene interventions, which clearly fall within the realm of female responsibility in the household, could serve as an entry point for and be integrated in agricultural interventions like horticulture and livestock production.

Within MAIL: Development of a new MAIL organizational structure that would facilitate the recruitment of more female civil servants; encouragement of more women to study and work in the agriculture sector (e.g., formal partnership between MAIL and Afghan universities), provision of more training opportunities through a transparent trainee selection and conduct of more trainings in local areas; and improvement of women’s capacity to reach leadership positions (identifying bright Afghan women, training them in-country and abroad, and deploying them in the leadership positions in MAIL and the DAILs).