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January 3, 2011 - Posted by Susan
MacMillan
A Maasai woman from northern
A new discussion paper on Livestock
and Women’s Livelihoods: A Review of the Recent Evidence has
just been published by a group at the International Livestock Research
Institute (ILRI) led by agricultural economist Patti Kristjanson.
This paper synthesizes evidence of the contributions that livestock make to the livelihoods of poor women in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and identifies factors that enhance or constrain livestock-related opportunities for women.
The scientists apply a gender lens to three
livestock-related pathways out of poverty—securing livestock assets;
increasing livestock productivity; and enhancing participation in livestock
markets. For each pathway, the authors summarize what is known and what this
knowledge implies for programmatic and policy interventions.
Assembling this information, say the authors, 'is a first step
towards identifying some of the large gaps in our evidence base as well as some
indications of the kinds of research and development interventions, made in
relation to which species and value chains, that appear most likely to benefit
poor women and their families.'
The following is the introduction to this paper.
'After several years of relative neglect, livestock in
livelihood studies are in the limelight, as the realization dawns—once
again—that livestock are important for livelihoods and have significant
potential for poverty alleviation, often in areas where few other options exist
of the 2010. However, there is also an increasing awareness that certain types
of livestock systems are associated with important downsides such as
environmental degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, zoonotic and emerging
infectious diseases, or food-borne illnesses. There is a need to balance these
positive and negative aspects as is made clear by the title of the recent State
of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report ‘Livestock in the balance’ (FAO 2009).
Gender will be central to achieving this balance.
'Livestock are important in women’s livelihoods and asset
portfolios. The fact that past livestock interventions appeared to not benefit
women led to the inception of considerable research on gender and livestock
systems in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, subsequent livestock development
projects became better targeted, focusing on species (poultry, small ruminants,
dairy cows) and using approaches (participatory, group-based) that make them,
at least in theory, more appropriate for and accessible to women.
'This is now an appropriate time to review past and current
research on gender and livestock in order to identify pertinent issues and
knowledge gaps for the livestock R4D agenda in coming decades.
'Although two-thirds of the world’s 600 million poor livestock
keepers are rural women . . ., little research has been conducted in recent
years on rural women’s roles in livestock keeping and the opportunities
livestock-related interventions could offer them. This is in contrast to
considerable research on the roles of women in small-scale crop farming, where
their importance is widely recognized and lessons are emerging about how best
to reach and support women through interventions and policies . . . . In the
past decade, some researchers provided some evidence on causal relations
between gender and livestock production . . . but, as this review demonstrates,
there remains a dearth of quantitative information on this subject,
especially for the mixed crop-livestock systems where most livestock and
livestock keepers are found and where the major increases in production will
have to occur if the global demand for meat, milk and other animal products in
coming decades is to be met . . . . Furthermore, the multiple roles livestock
play in livelihoods of the poor make generalizing about women’s roles in, and
economic contributions to, livestock development problematic, and prioritizing
livestock research and interventions for women’s development both challenging
and necessary . . . . By applying a conceptual framework that allows us to
organize and better understand existing knowledge about this complex subject,
we aim to help identify research for development gaps and opportunities, made
in relation to which species and value chains, that appear most likely to
benefit poor women and their families.'
Read the whole paper: Livestock and
Women’s Livelihoods: A Review of the Recent Evidence, ILRI
Discussion Paper No. 20 by Patti Kristjanson, Ann Waters-Bayer, Nancy Johnson,
Anna Tipilda, Jemimah Njuki, Isabelle Baltenweck, Delia Grace and Susan
MacMillan.