“We call for recognition of gender-based violence in agrifood systems”

Muhogo Bora’s pledge during the 2023 International Day of Rural Women

Department of Global Development
Global Development

Agriculture makes a significant contribution to rural development by giving rural communities access to jobs, incomes, business opportunities, and food and nutrition security. Seed is the primary entry point in the agricultural work that supports smallholder farmers' resilience, productivity, nutrition, and food security.

Many obstacles prevent women from participating as seed entrepreneurs in the commercialized formal seed system delivery models, despite the fact that they are essential to informal seed exchanges, crop diversity maintenance, production, management, and storage. Due to discriminatory cultural norms and stereotypes that limit their options and choices, they have restricted access to production factors such as land, capital, credit, and information, which has resulted in a predominance of male-owned seed enterprises.

Therefore, strengthening women’s engagement in formal seed systems while creating and expanding spaces that foster empowerment and social transformation is vital.

At Muhogo Bora, we seek to develop gender-responsive and transformative cassava seed systems in Tanzania with targeted outreach in the Western Zone. Specifically, our project aims to ensure that women, youth, and marginalized rural farmers from geographically underserved regions participate and benefit as cassava seed entrepreneurs (CSEs). We do so through undertaking both integrated and strategic gender research. We recognize that although cassava is a vital crop, especially for women smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, the recent move towards commercializing the cassava seed system in Tanzania has resulted in significantly fewer women than men CSEs; there are still more men producing improved seeds for sale to fellow farmers (see Legg et al., 2022; Mwakanyamale et al., 2021).

In 2023, the primary focus of Muhogo Bora gender work has been strategic gender research that helps investigate opportunities to increase inclusiveness and equity in the CSE system, as well as unraveling the underlying causes of disparities in CSE work. This body of work expands upon earlier mixed-methods research toward understanding intersectional gender inequalities in the commercialized cassava seed system in Tanzania (see Liani et al., 2023). Guided by the principles of co-production of knowledge, we employed participatory action research methods using tools such as problem tree analysis, cause-effect flow diagrams, pairwise ranking matrices, and Venn diagrams to facilitate ten co-creation discussions with different groups of women and men CSEs and influential community leaders across two purposively selected districts in Tanzania.

Photo of workshop poster with notes — A snapshot of participants’ active engagement and outcomes of the co-creation discussions with the Muhogo Bora project in Tanzania. Photo by J.Mwajombe/TARI.

We found several overarching factors that led to constraints for women toward meaningful engagement in CSE work: lack of access to land, financial capital, and agricultural extension services; lack of decision-making powers and disproportionate involvement in unpaid care work; and experiences of gender-based violence.

The underlying root causes included social norms on masculinity; normative systems of male dominance and control resulting in gender-based violence and women’s lack of decision-making voice; cultural norms around women’s responsibility for unpaid care work; customary land inheritance system; unfavorable credit requirements; and extension system gaps. Our findings resonate with the recent global call for action to prioritize gender-based violence as part of food system conversations, research, and policy towards addressing it (see Forsythe, 2023). Gender-based violence is abuse of power, reinforcing and perpetuating gender inequalities, thus compromising women’s capacity to be productive workers, earners and caregivers (FAO, 2023).

As the Muhogo Bora project, we join the world in celebrating the 2023 International Day of Rural Women. We pledge for entities working on agricultural interventions in food and nutrition security to all pitch in towards recognizing and eliminating gender-based violence in agrifood systems, as part of a mission to protect rural women.

We acknowledge that designing and implementing gender transformative interventions requires time, budgetary commitment, and collaboration with local partnerships to actualize the work. All in all, as Forsythe (2023) puts it, let’s be sure to discuss this issue in all food system conversations, research and policy, so that the food sector can respond to global calls for action to address gender-based violence.

Muhogo Bora (Better Cassava For All) is a collaborative project led by Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and implemented by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI). This blog was written by Millicent Liani, a Post-Doctoral Gender Research Fellow at IITA working on the Muhogo Bora project in Tanzania.

Group of team members pose for photo — Muhogo Bora team members during a visit to the District Community Development Office in Kasulu TC discussing possible collaborations towards addressing the social constraints emerging from the co-creation discussions. Photo by G.Ndibalema/IITA.

“We call for recognition of gender-based violence in agrifood systems”

Muhogo Bora’s pledge during the 2023 International Day of Rural Women

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