Assessing and advancing gender equality in agrifood value chains: A toolkit for firms and voluntary sustainability systems

Abstract

this toolkit aims to improve gender equality and women’s livelihoods through agrifood value chain development and programming but proposing a methodology to firms and VSS to:
1. Identify the different groups of actors involved in the upstream (producer, processor, trader) nodes of agrifood value chains - with emphasis on hidden or marginalized groups - and the specific roles, contributions, and benefits of these groups in/from the value chain;
2. Identify the specific barriers these differentiated actors experience in the value chain;
3. Find entry points to create a more enabling environment for these groups and/or for tailored programming to support them.

The tools included in this toolkit address the following questions:
1. How does the value chain work, and who are the small-scale value chain actors who manage and/or provide the knowledge, skills and labor to produce, process, and trade in the selected commodities (roles and contributions)?
2. Where in the value chain are different groups of women (by gender, marital status, age, ethnicity, residence status, socio-economic status, etc.) involved, and how do they each contribute to the chain?
3. What benefits (tangible and intangible) and costs/opportunity costs do different groups of women derive or experience in the value chain?
4. How can firms create enabling conditions to enhance those benefits for different groups of women, and particularly marginalized value chain actors?

This document represents a preliminary version of the toolkit that will continue to be developed and piloted in the years to come.