The Feminization of Farming

On March 3, Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, published an op-ed in the New York Times, entitled “The Feminization of Farming”. In it, he points to longstanding gender discrimination and unremunerated domestic work as barriers to women’s rise out of poverty and hunger, and calls for the removal of legal discrimination and the improvement of public services to reduce burdens on women farmers across the developing world. He points to a handful of examples across Asia, from Bangladesh to the Phillippines, where different initiatives have sought to decrease the domestic burden on women so that they can focus on farming and income generation. This op-ed comes at the same time that De Schutter presented his full report, entitled ”Women’s Rights and the Right to Food” to the UN Human Rights Council.

The full text of the op-ed article can be found here, and the full report can be found here.

 

Call for Applications: Landesa Women’s Land Rights Visiting Professionals Program

Landesa is now accepting applications for its second Land Rights Visiting Professionals Program. The following information comes from the Landesa website, and more information,  including the application and FAQs, can be found by clicking here.

What Will the Visiting Professionals Program Entail?

This is a competitive yearlong program for experienced and strongly motivated professionals who want to enhance their ability to improve women’s land rights in their countries or communities. Visiting professionals will work closely together and with Landesa staff to enhance their skills, expertise, and commitment to support each other by:

• Participating in and contributing to substantive discussions;
•  Sharing knowledge and expertise through presentations and informal conversations;
• Working on leadership, managerial, and communication skills;
•  Providing and receiving constructive feedback;
• Benefiting from one year of dedicated mentoring;
• Fostering the trust and ties that will lay the foundation for a sustainable women’s land rights network that can be a resource for those working in this field.

For the first six weeks, visiting professionals will be based at our main office in Seattle. Upon the visiting professionals’ return to their countries, they will continue to implement their projects under the mentorship of Landesa staff. We cover travel expenses and provide housing and a small stipend for the six weeks in Seattle.

Which Professionals Are Eligible to Apply?

• Practitioners, policy advocates, community organizers, educators, and other professionals who are strongly committed to strengthening women’s land rights;
• Professionals with at least five years of development experience, two of which are either on land tenure or on women’s rights;
• Professionals who are currently working in-country for an organization (NGO, educational institution, government agency, etc.) located in India, China, or East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda);
• Professionals with advanced English proficiency skills (speaking, reading, and writing).

How Should You Apply?

 Please make sure we receive the following documents by Thursday, February 28, 2013:

1. Cover letter explaining your interest in the Visiting Professionals Program
2. Application form
3.  CV
4. One writing sample that demonstrates your understanding and involvement in development work and/or women’s land rights
5. Two references (please include name and contact information)

Applications may be submitted online at landesa.org or sent via email to inquiries@landesa.org.

Finalists will be notified for interviews in mid-March. Visiting professionals for 2013 will be notified and announced in early April. The appointment starts on September 9, 2013.

 

E-Consultation: USAID’s Gender Global Learning and Evidence Exchange (GLEE)

USAID is a hosting a two-day facilitated online discussion, beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30th. The topic of the first day is “Challenges, Successes, and Issues in Gender Integration”, while the second day’s topic is “What Do You Need and Next Steps for Effective Gender Integration”. The event will remain active 24 hours a day and will be faciliated by gender experts from USAID.

For more information on the event, and to register, click here.

 

Resource: IFPRI Releases Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) Discussion Paper

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed as a tool to reflect women’s empowerment that may result from the United States government’s Feed the Future Initiative, which commissioned the development of the WEAI. The WEAI can also be used more generally to assess the state of empowerment and gender parity in agriculture, to identify key areas in which empowerment needs to be strengthened, and to track progress over time. The WEAI is an aggregate index, reported at the country or regional level, based on individual-level data collected by interviewing men and women within the same households. The WEAI comprises two subindexes. The first assesses the degree to which women are empowered in five domains of empowerment (5DE) in agriculture. It reflects the percentage of women who are empowered and, among those who are not, the percentage of domains in which women enjoy adequate achievements. These domains are (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decisionmaking power about productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4)leadership in the community, and (5) time allocation. The second subindex (the Gender Parity Index [GPI]) measures gender parity. The GPI reflects the percentage of women who are empowered or whose achievements are at least as high as the men in their households. For those households that have not achieved gender parity, the GPI shows the empowerment gap that needs to be closed for women to reach the same level of empowerment as men. This technical paper documents the development of the WEAI and presents pilot data from Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda, so that researchers and practitioners seeking to use the index in their own work would understand how the survey questionnaires were developed and piloted, how the qualitative case studies were undertaken, how the index was constructed, how various indicators were validated, and how it can be used in other settings.

Click here for the full paper.

For more information on the WEAI, click here.

News: “Female face of farming” infographic wins 2012 European Excellence Award

The “Female face of farming” infographic produced last year in collaboration with Farming First to promote the messages of SOFA 2010-11 has won the 2012 European Excellence Award in the “Association” category.

The infographic can be viewed here:

English:               http://www.fao.org/gender/infographic/en/ 

French:                http://www.fao.org/gender/infographic/fr/

Spanish:             http://www.fao.org/gender/infographic/es/

What are the European Excellence Awards?
The European Excellence Awards are created to honour the most outstanding achievements of communications professionals in their field. The jury comprises of around 30 leading communications professionals from companies, agencies, and universities, as well as governmental spokespersons. [from the European Excellence Awards website]

Vacancy: ICRW Gender Evaluation Specialist (Land and Property Rights Research)

Job Title: Gender Evaluation Specialist

Job Location: Washington, DC

Primary Role:  The Gender Evaluation Specialist will report to the Director, Economic Development and will work as part of a team and independently to design and implement evaluation and research activities as part of a 5-year, USAID-funded project to further the evidence base on land tenure and property rights practices. The Gender Evaluation Specialist will have a demonstrated understanding of the differential rights, knowledge, abilities, and approaches that men and women apply in the use and conservation of land and other natural resources. Knowledge of gender issues in agriculture is highly desirable. He/she will also have experience in applying such knowledge in the assessment, design, and evaluation of project activities, especially interventions seeking to improve tenure security and access to land. He/she will be responsible for ensuring that gender concerns are effectively and efficiently woven into all programming activities under project, for compliance with USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy, and will have lead responsibility for research agenda issues related to women’s rights to land and other property assets and collaborate on other research questions including approaches to the most effective methods for disaggregating gender-related data and for gathering and making use of intra-household level data. Evaluations will use USAID tools and approaches as appropriate. The Gender Evaluation Specialist will also contribute content and materials based on research and evaluation findings to communicate land tenure and property rights issues, strategies, promising practices, and success stories within USAID and to external audiences. The Gender Specialist may also facilitate trainings for USG personnel related to gender and land tenure.

Travel Requirement: Approximately 25%.

The position is contingent upon ICRW receiving the award to carry out the project.

Education and Experience:

• Ph.D. in economics, agricultural economics, public health, or other relevant social science. M.A. with additional experience acceptable
• For candidates with a Ph.D., four (4) years to (6) years of experience working on gender as it relates to agriculture, natural resources and environment, food security, and broader development issues; for candidates with a M.A., at least eight (8) years of experience. Significant experience with research, analysis, and programmatic activities is essential.

Required Skills:

• Extensive knowledge in gender and land and property rights, including demonstrated expertise in conducting gender analysis, gender assessments, and/or gender-focused research of land and property rights, extra-legal dispute resolution, livelihoods, women’s economic empowerment, and agriculture.
• Ability to conceptualize, design, conduct, and communicate evaluation and research. Sound understanding of program development, management, and evaluation principles.
• Ability to work across programs and to apply research and analytical skills and knowledge in other economic area and across disciplines in health and social areas such as health and gender-based violence.
• Strong quantitative and qualitative research skills, including advanced econometrics.
• Demonstrated experience in designing and/or conducting training.
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills and demonstrated track record of producing high quality, well-written deliverables in a timely fashion.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively manage projects, including staffing, workplans, deliverables, timelines, and budgets.
• Strong skills in English and sound working knowledge of an additional language such as Spanish, French or Swahili.
• Previous experience with USAID reporting & regulations preferred

Primary Duties:

• Undertake research and analysis that involves collecting and analyzing primary and secondary data for program evaluation and larger research questions; drafting sharp and comprehensive syntheses based on data analysis; and writing high quality reports, papers, training materials, and more informal products such as blogs and success stories.
• Ensure that the project meets Gender Analysis requirements and that gender is meaningfully integrated into overall project monitoring and evaluation in accord with relevant USAID policies.
• Give practical advice to implementing partners about addressing gender in all programming activities under the project
• Provide technical assistance including practical gender guidance and input on agriculture proposals on design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; conduct gender audits of agriculture projects.
• Design educational/communications materials and conduct trainings conduct related to gender and land tenure and property rights.
• Coordinate with ICRW’s assets and property rights body of work.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates should submit by December 5, 2012, a cover letter, resume, (2) writing samples, salary requirements and 3 references with contact information as e-mail attachments to Human Resources at jobs@icrw.org. Candidates who do not submit all of the requested application materials will not be considered. Please indicate “Gender Evaluation Specialist” in the subject line of the email. Due to the volume of resumes we receive, we are not able to respond to individual inquiries regarding the status of candidacy. Therefore, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted. Employment is contingent upon receiving contract award.

 

Vacancy: Senior Research Officer/Research Officer at University of Cape Town

The Rural Women’s Action Research Project (RWAR) is based in the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit at UCT’s Faculty of Law. The project is interdisciplinary and employs qualitative action research methodologies built on partnerships with rural community-based organisations and other civil society institutions. Much of the research is done to complement strategic litigation and to support advocacy concerning traditional courts, women’s rights, land rights, citizenship and the nature of living customary law. They are looking for 3 people to join their research team. The closing date for the positions is November 30, 2012.

For appointment at Senior Researcher level you will ideally hold a PhD (or be nearing completion) and at Researcher level a postgraduate qualification in a relevant social science discipline or law. We will also consider applicants with a strong track record of directly relevant experience, in community-based research, advocacy and development, but who do not have the necessary formal qualifications.

All applicants should ideally have:

• a record of published research in a relevant area or evidence of excellent research and writing skills

• relevant experience

• excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills

• excellent research, analytical and problem-solving skills

• experience in working with community-based organisations.

For two of the positions, preference will be given to candidates who have the ability to communicate fluently in a Nguni or Sesotho language.

 

To view the full advertisement, application requirements and response details, visit http://www.uct.ac.za/ and click on “Vacancies”.