Second, it makes sense from a food and nutrition
perspective. Despite the fact that women produce much
of the food in the developing world, they also remain more
malnourished than most men (FAO, 2011). As farmers
(primarily of vegetable gardens and small livestock), and
as buyers of food products for household needs, women
influence nutrition choices for the whole family.
Actively integrating women in value chains also makes
good sense from a development perspective, in line with
the Sustainable Development Goal 5, “Achieve gender
equality and empower all women and girls.” Access to equal
opportunities and benefits for all individuals is a human
right that 2SCALE promotes in the agribusiness models
it supports.
Therefore, the 2SCALE program is undertaking extra
measures to ensure women are major beneficiaries
of its support to private enterprises with an inclusive
business agenda. However, through its structure and field
interventions, the program faces specific challenges to make
this proactive gender mainstreaming process a reality; these
include the following:
• How do we get buy-in from field partners –
multinational companies, African entrepreneurs,
business service providers, cooperatives, and
farmer organizations? How can we ensure they will
implement gender-specific activities and convince
them that this will strengthen and improve the
performance of the PPP and value chain of which they
are a part?
• How do we ensure buy-in from the entire 2SCALE team
of technical specialists? In other words, how do we
make sure that every staff member feels responsible
for and committed to gender mainstreaming?
• How can we organize and build capacities of the
program’s team to stimulate gender mainstreaming?
• Which facilitation tools should be used during
the different steps of cluster formation and value
chain strengthening? And how can these tools be
demystified to make them as user friendly as possible?
• How should gender mainstreaming expand from
activities starting in just a few local communities to
a much larger number of communities in a program
that is active in 50 PPPs, reaches over half a million
smallholder farmers, and involves 2,500 small and
medium enterprises (SMEs)?
• How should the youth dimension be addressed? Can
gender-mainstreaming tools and approaches be used
to some extent to facilitate the integration of young
people in value chains? With what similarities and
what differences?
• How should achievements and lessons learned
(including challenges and shortcomings) be
reported so that they can inspire 2SCALE and other
practitioners?
These and other questions have been (progressively)
addressed by the 2SCALE program and represent the
backbone of this document. After this introduction of
the 2SCALE program and gender-related questions, key
concepts of gender mainstreaming in agricultural value
chains are reviewed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes
the approach and methodology chosen by 2SCALE
to mainstream gender in its interventions – and to
better include youth. In Chapter 4, examples of gender
mainstreaming at agribusiness cluster and value chain
level are highlighted; these cases are selected from the
portfolio of PPPs facilitated by the 2SCALE program.
Building on previous sections, Chapter 5 includes some
recommendations with an emphasis on next steps and in
particular on how to further “scale up” women and youth
inclusion in agricultural value chains.
Members of a
s oybean processor
association cut and
fry soy cheese to
make soy kebabs,
a protein-rich food
sold at schools and in
local markets. 2SCALE
helped the women
form the association
and improve
processing and
marketing practices –
Soybean Partnership,
Ghana.
2