The importance of gender in agro

Women make up 50 per cent of the workforce in agriculture. Barbra Tomi, technical editor at National Agriculture Research Institute (Nari), writes about how gender is important in the agriculture sector.

GENDER is a widely misunderstood concept in Papua New Guinea where traditional Melanesian customs and belief systems are still actively practicing, even in this day and age.
So when gender is promoted in any professional, institutional or social setting, it is mistaken as something that has to do only with the womenfolk and girls.
Because of that, there continues to be serious differences in opportunities to benefit from investments in basic goods and services.
Many of our country’s development problems may be a result of our underlying misunderstandings of gender and its significance.
Macquarie dictionary defines gender as socially conditioned characteristics or typical behaviours.
The United Nations defines it as socially constructed norms that determine the expected roles, values and relationships between women and men, which vary from society to society.
We can generally say that gender is about relationships between men and women and how it can have a positive or negative impact on their livelihoods and wellbeing.

Recognising gender equality
PNG’s Development Strategic Plan 2010-2030 states that: “Every person, irrespective of gender, needs to be given opportunities to reach their potential because in this way, the whole country will benefit.”
The Government recognises that gender equality is important in nation-building as both men and women have a role to play.
Therefore, the country has taken a gender inclusive approach in its development programmes to ensure that both women and men have a fair chance of contributing to the production of basic goods and services, as well as to access and benefit from them.
The gender inclusive approach is being used to drive the implementation of gender-oriented policies and programmes, in agriculture and all other sectors.

Gender equality in agriculture
Agriculture is the mainstay of PNG’s economy and is the major social safety net of our society.
It employs about 50 per cent of the working-aged population and provides income earning opportunities and livelihoods for up to 90 per cent of the population, in rural areas.
Women make up half of the workforce in the agricultural sector and do 80-90 per cent of the work.
Income that women earn from the sale of fresh produces is usually spent on household needs.
However, their labour and contributions remain largely undervalued and unaccounted for.
Furthermore, even though women provide greater input in the up-keep of family cash crops and livestock, men are the main decision makers who control the operations these activities and incomes generated from them.
Farming communities are less knowledgeable about the importance of gender equality for effective mobilisation of labour, livelihood activities, family well being and community development.
When it is better understood and applied, gender equality would see women and men enjoying fairer levels of access to basic goods and services, and opportunities to improve their socio-economic status.
This would help us embrace equal participation as a basic human right that is needed to realise sustainable, people-centered development initiatives in our country.
Then our gender equality efforts would become more inclusive; allowing us to be fairly reasonable in the way we recognise and value differences between men and women.

Inclusive participation in awareness raising
Equal participation is crucial in efforts to address prevailing misunderstandings about gender.
An essential means for achieving this is through gender awareness activities.
Ideally, such efforts should focus on participatory and inclusive approaches that breakdown underlying barriers such as gender, social status, cultural affiliations and physical disabilities.
This would ensure that all sectors of our communities are well represented in sharing knowledge and information in the agriculture sector.
At the National Agricultural Research Institute (Nari), we are continuously mindful of the socio-economic challenges of farming communities, especially where food production is concerned.
Farming is a family affair involving parents and their children.
We do acknowledge that while women are gifted in most household management chores, the mandate of decision making rests with the male members of their families.
In light of this, we take every opportunity to engage members of families in programmes that promote new or improved agricultural practices.
In this way, selected adults and children are given the opportunity to learn new farming ideas that they would later share with others in their families and communities.
Nari initiatives try to instill better understanding of gender equality among different classes of people in the community in order to contribute to improved agricultural practices and production.
This is being done in many of our projects.
Our experience has helped us appreciate the importance of using gender friendly approaches build people with skills to impact their communities through in order to achieve sustainable success in our development projects.
We have made a start in applying this concept as part of mainstreaming gender into our agricultural research for development programmes.
We have received very encouraging responses from both men and women in communities that we work with.
The key lesson we have learnt from community feedback is that more people are now coming to better understand that gender is about men and women working together to equally share opportunities to access agricultural interventions and benefits derived from them.
We will continue to champion this worthy cause, with the support of key partners and stakeholders, in farming communities across the country.