Advocacy for equal
opportunities and benefits
Disenabling environment
Entrepreneurship, networking
business matching
Value chain system barriers
Use of gender responsive
services and active participation
in FBOs
Organizational barrier s
Gender relational
barriers Adoption of
technologies and
control of assets
Personal
barriers Personal
skills
Figure 3. Barriers and Solutions to Women’s
Participation in Agribusiness Clusters
It was also noted that because of gender-specific
constraints, women’s presence in particular ABCs remained
low and their participation in capacity-building activities
challenging. Acknowledging and understanding specific
barriers preventing women from fully participating in
ABC activities were a first step. 2SCALE teams then
developed guidelines to make sure trainers and coaches
would be gender-responsive and inclusive when delivering
their services and planning capacity-building activities,
in particular regarding content, timing, location, and
facilitation methods.
5.5 Lesson 5: Acknowledge
and Understand Constraints
Faced by Female Cluster Actors
at Different Levels Through
Gender-Sensitive Analysis
and Planning
Gender-based analysis at cluster and value chain level with
practical, hands-on tools and methodologies leads to the
identification of barriers preventing women (and youth)
from fully participating in agricultural value chains. They
can be found at different levels:
• Personal level: Challenges include low level of
literacy; low technical, managerial, financial and
entrepreneurial skills and poor self-confidence;
limited time and mobility linked to gender roles,
social norms, and stereotypes, limiting women’s
productivity and incomes.
• Relational/household level: Main barriers
are unequal access to productive resources and
assets, including improved technologies, and
poor decision-making and bargaining power of
women within their households, hampering their
productivity and their full participation as cluster
actors.
• Organizational level: Main challenges are entry
barriers to FBOs, which are non-inclusive; services
that are not often adapted to women’s specific
needs; poor opportunities of accessing executive
positions and of influencing decisions within the
organization, affecting women’s access to inputs,
gender-responsive support services, networks,
information, and markets. Firms can also be
exclusive in their management practices and
perpetuate gender inequalities.
• Systemic level: Poor organization of and linkages
among cluster actors and support service providers
affect the performance of the chain and actors’
ability to address bottlenecks. Disenabling policy,
legislative, and overall environment have an impact
on women’s ability to play their roles as farmers,
processors, traders, or other entrepreneurs.
To turn this vicious circle into a virtuous one and achieve
expected outcomes, the field team needs to implement
a combination of strategies addressing women’s specific
constraints at different levels, in a consistent and systematic
way. At the program and partnership levels, having a clear
vision of the desired change is an important driver.
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