5.3 Lesson 3: Customized
and Practical Tools Are Key to
Foster Gender Mainstreaming
Methodologies and tools to promote gender equality
are many; even methodologies and tools for gender
mainstreaming in agricultural value chains exist. But
when they are not tailor-made to the program or clearly
connected to its specific approach and intervention areas,
they are most often not used by the field team.
One key factor that helped 2SCALE move from general
intentions regarding gender mainstreaming to actual field-
level activities was the customization of a limited set of tools
to the 2SCALE approach and the training and coaching of
all field staff on the use of these tools. These tools need even
to be translated into the language used by the team in each
country to avoid the language “excuse.”
While 2SCALE opted for no gender specialist position
(see Lesson 2), contracting a gender consultant for the
customization of tools was a very good investment. The
consultant needs to be given a chance to first understand
very well the program approach and steps, and then develop
and continuously refine the tools to make them as user-
friendly as possible.
2SCALE even learned that it should go a step further by
developing a practical toolkit with pre-designed cards
(adapted to an illiterate audience) to make the gender
analysis of clusters and value chains by partnership
facilitators as easy and practical as possible.
Women working
in Pinora’s citrus
processing
factory – Citrus
Partnership, led
by Fair Trade
Original, Ghana.
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5.4 Lesson 4: Work With
and Build Capacities of
Women in Selected ABCs
and Value Chains or Specific
Segments Through Gender-
Responsive Services
Through gender-based analysis at the cluster level, 2SCALE
observed that some commodities and value chains are
traditionally dominated by men (especially cash crops such
as maize) and offer less potential for either empowering
female actors or integration of a significant number of new
women actors in the chain. Moreover, some value chains
may be dominated by men in certain segments or functions,
such as production or input provision, while others are
taken over by women, such as small-scale processing or
marketing. In 2SCALE’s partnership portfolio, women
are predominant in particular ABCs, either because it
is traditionally a commodity produced by women (e.g.,
vegetables, milk, sesame) or in certain segments of the value
chain in activities that either require small investments such
as marketing or retailing and/or can be carried out close
to the home, such as small-scale processing (e.g., soy-based
milk and kebabs, parboiled rice, attieké).
2SCALE made a deliberate effort to empower women and
build their capacities in female-dominated ABCs or in
specific functions in mixed ABCs. It is an efficient strategy
to invest in and support clusters and functions that offer
the strongest potential to increase women’s economic
empowerment and gender equality.