Gender

Helping women help themselves

Photo Credit: Prasenjit De/GALVmed

Compared to other wealth and income opportunities, livestock are inflation-proof, self-perpetuating assets that women can own and benefit from. In addition to wealth accumulation, they provide income and nutritious food for their families.

While women assume much of the responsibility for raising livestock in many developing countries, they often face financial and cultural barriers to maximising this potential. By investing in women farmers, women, their families and communities can benefit.

Women’s role in livestock enterprises

Two-thirds of the world’s 600 million poor livestock keepers are rural women who do most of the day-to-day farm animal management as well as the processing, marketing and selling of animal produce. But due to social norms, women’s control over the income generated often remains substantially less than men’s.

$photo credit: ILRI\Zerihun Sewunet$

Women’s empowerment

Women who access and control livestock assets improve the health, education and food security of their households. 90% of income under the control of women is channeled back into their households or local communities, compared with only 30-40% for men.

Women and household nutrition

Women’s decisions about what they themselves eat while pregnant, and what food they provide their young in the first 1,000 days of their lives, generates lifelong health, growth and cognitive benefits or costs for those children.

Reasons to invest in livestock and gender:

Livestock and gender - impact evidence on the ways investments in livestock systems can positively impact people, communities, and the environment:

While it is generally recognized that women play important roles in feeding and caring for livestock, they often do not participate in more strategic decision making on livestock management.

Here we present evidence on the positive impacts of a range of livestock-related interventions on gender. These include:

A project among Kenya pastoralists found that increased women’s participation in decision making leads to better management of livestock for drought risk. A project that provided pigs to poor households in conflict affected Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated that livestock asset transfer programs can also improve gender equality. Directing training and development efforts specifically towards women can also lead to positive outcomes.

In an extensive area of Tajikistan, a project found that targeting livestock interventions to female-headed households can increase their income and lead to greater participation in decision making. In some parts of East Africa, where smallholder dairy systems are already well-established, it was demonstrated that new investment in capacity development and awareness can increase benefits to women. Dairy cooperatives have generally been found to improve opportunities for the rural poor.

An example from India shows that dairy cooperative membership can improve income and employment among women, and those outcomes were found to benefit entire households. Another important livestock enterprise for women has been poultry, given women’s traditional roles in managing the small stock in many cultures. In Bangladesh, it was demonstrated that small scale poultry development can be particularly important to women, and not just for likelihoods but also leading to an increase in social status.

Download a report with this and other impact evidence showing why livestock matter

Livestock and gender - impact evidence:

• Increased women’s participation in decision making leads to better management of livestock for drought risk

While it is generally recognized that women play important roles in feeding and caring for livestock, they often do not participate in more strategic decision making on livestock management. This is true in mixed crop-livestock settings, and particularly in dryland pastoral systems where households depend on livestock for livelihoods and survival.

In this study among northern Kenyan pastoralists, a quasi-experimental approach was used to evaluate an NGO-led intervention that aimed to increase drought preparedness by empowering women at household and community levels. It used a difference-in-differences design combined with matching estimation to causally isolate effects of the intervention.

The intervention itself was a set of training and community development exercises involving both women and men on leadership and communication (women only), on gender and drought preparedness (men only), and on civic education and community development. Four communities were selected for the interventions. Baseline and final surveys after 6 months provided the analytical data.

At the community level, there was an increase in women's political awareness and participation in formal decision-making processes, but that participation was not observed to translate into meaningful outcomes. At the household level, however, there was a large and positive effect on actions taken to better prepare for drought in the form of pre-emptive livestock sales. Such actions increased by only 18 percentage points in the control group compared with an increase of 46 percentage points in the treatment group. Prior to the intervention, only around 5% of women in the treatment group reported having engaged in direct action, but more than 50% of those same women reported household level actions after the intervention.

While these are based on a relatively short-term and focused intervention, the results suggest that greater investment in supporting women’s participation, including raising awareness among men, can lead to better livestock management decisions.

Impact evidence sources:

Tara Grillos, T. 2018. Women’s participation in environmental decision-making: Quasi-experimental evidence from northern Kenya. World Development 108: 15-130, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.03.017

• Livestock asset transfer programs can improve gender equality, including in conflict affected areas

A livestock transfer intervention – Pigs for Peace (PFP) - was carried out among rural households in conflict affected zones in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with the aim to improve rural livelihoods. Pigs are particularly suitable for production systems in this region, which typically do not have a strong culture of keeping ruminant livestock, with no cultural or religious taboos or gender-based responsibilities related to raising, breeding or selling of pigs. The authors assert that other types of economic empowerment programs such as microcredit, village savings and loans, etc, have had mixed results in delivering outcomes related to economic stability and women’s empowerment.

For this livestock asset transfer intervention, the aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a hybrid microcredit/livestock asset transfer program (PFP) on economic, health and intimate partner violence outcomes in 10 villages in South Kivu Province, using a randomized community trial. Half of the selected villages received the pigs 18 months after the initial group, and thus represented the control group. Individual participants (men and women of at least 16 years) were selected based on commitment and willingness to co-invest in animal housing, etc and each received a female piglet and agreed to pass on two piglets from the first litter. The majority of the household participants were women (84%), 25 years of age or older, married, had on average 3 children and had never attended school. Participants received training in animal care and some sow feed during gestation. Initial baseline and 18-month survey data were collected to measure outcomes on subjective health, PTSD, anxiety and depression, economic stability and violence/abuse. Residual change analysis was used to examine the amount of change from baseline to 18 months between the intervention and delayed control groups, controlling for baseline scores.

At 18 months post-baseline, the participants in PFP reported significantly greater increase in household livestock/animal assets than the control group, and were significantly less likely to have one or more loans, controlling for assets and loans at baseline. PFP participants had significantly greater improvement in subjective health and had greater improvement in symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

The study findings show that participants in PFP households have increased economic stability and improved subjective health and mental health compared with participants in delayed control households in rural, conflict-affected villages. The findings support scalability of a livestock productive asset transfer program in rural and conflict-affected settings where residents have extremely limited access to financial institutions or credit programs, health or social services and where social norms that sustain gender inequality are strong.

Impact evidence sources:

Glass, N. et al. 2017 Randomised controlled trial of a livestock productive asset transfer programme to improve economic and health outcomes and reduce intimate partner violence in a postconflict setting. BMJ Global Health 2(1).

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2016-000165

• Dairy cooperative membership can improve income and employment among women, and benefits their entire households

Cooperatives have long been seen as an effective mechanism to link smallholder dairy producers to milk markets and to livestock and extension services, thus contributing to improved productivity and incomes. In some settings, men in the community are typically the officially registered cooperative members and may accrue the benefits even though women may contribute most of the labour in the dairy enterprise. To ensure participation of and benefits to women, in some cases women-only dairy cooperatives have been formed.

This study in the Indian state of Bihar examined the income and employment impacts of membership in Women Dairy Cooperative Societies (WDCS) by comparing 80 member and 80 non-member households. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select villages, and then small, medium and large herd farms were selected randomly, the numbers proportional to their populations. A partial regression analysis was used to obtain results, while controlling for such factors as age and education of the household head.

The study found that membership in a WDCS led to statistically significant differences in both mean monthly net income and levels of employment in member households compared to non-members. This was true in both cattle and buffalo keeping households. The study did not examine the exact causal mechanism for this result, but the results made clear that investment in women’s dairy cooperatives increases benefits for member farms compared to non-cooperative farmers, not just for women but for their entire households.

Impact evidence sources:

Kumari, B. and Malhotra, R. 2016. Impact of women dairy co-operative societies on income and employment of women in Begusarai District of Bihar. Agricultural Economics Research Review 29(2). https://doi.org/10.5958/0974-0279.2016.00059.8

• Investment in capacity development and awareness can increase benefits to women even within established smallholder dairy systems

In Kenya’s smallholder dairy sector, the role of women in providing much of the required farm labour is well understood. This is not always matched by their control of the income from the dairy enterprise. The Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Program (SDCP) was implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Kenya between 2005 and 2015. It provided training to dairy farmers to build their enterprise, managerial and organisational skills, including among women, and to enhance dairy farming productivity and reduce production costs. The program identified three main areas where barriers to improving dairy income potentially occur: dairy group activities, household production and market intermediaries.

A rigorous impact evaluation found that farm households that participated in the project were 9% points more likely to have women managing cash from the sale of milk, relative to those that never participated. This was also found to be true for decisions relating to the use of services such as artificial insemination, anthelmintic drugs, tick control, vaccination and curative treatments with households that had participated in the project being 7-11% points more likely to have a woman involved in the decision making. This result confirms that roles for women, even in established smallholder livestock enterprises, can be upgraded through a program of capacity development and awareness raising.

Impact evidence sources:

Bonilla, J. et al. 2018. Impact evaluation of the Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Programme in Kenya, 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 73. New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie). https://doi.org/10.23846/tw4IE73

• Small scale poultry development can be particularly important to women, including increasing social status

Small stock such as poultry, sheep and goats are recognized to be more easily amenable to management by women in developing countries. A set of semi-scavenging poultry programs in Bangladesh was implemented to reduce poverty and improve nutrition mainly among poor landless women, replicating a model of smallholder poultry production that had been developed and piloted in by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the department of livestock (DLS). This replication of the model was implemented under three Smallholder Livestock Development Project between 1992 and 2003. The projects established village groups, trained beneficiaries, supported income generating activities with value chain actors, provided loans and assisted individual beneficiaries to establish income generating activities, offered technical support to these activities, and established a saving program in the groups.

A 2005 meta-analysis of several impact reviews concluded that participants had benefited positively in numerous ways. Because all the project beneficiaries were women, the SLDP ensured employment and income for them and thereby enhanced their status in the family. Their participation in decision making was also found to have increased. The magnitude of female participation in deciding the use of income was observed to have increased from 21.1% to 37.7% after they became members of SLDP. Similarly, their participation in deciding whether children should go to school was also found to have increased from 18.3% to 27.6%. Thus, the evaluation concluded that with the interventions made by the project, the social status of women within households had increased in the project areas, and the effects ranged beyond the poultry enterprises themselves.

Impact evidence sources:

Fakhrul, I. and Jabbar, M. 2005. Smallholder poultry model for poverty alleviation in Bangladesh: a review of evidence on impact. Livestock Research for Rural Development 17(10) https://lrrd.cipav.org.co/lrrd17/10/fakh17112.htm

• Targeting livestock interventions to female-headed households can increase their income and lead to greater participation in decision making

The Tajikistan Livestock and Pasture Development Project (LPDP) was implemented between 2011 and 2017 in the Khatlon region where 78 per cent of the population lives under the national poverty line (US$1.37/day). It aimed to reduce poverty and improve the nutritional status and incomes of rural poor households through enhanced productive capacity of pastures and increased livestock productivity. The project had three components including: a) institutional development through the establishment of pasture user unions (PUUs) to guarantee land rights and to facilitate common pasture management and rehabilitation, b) livestock and pasture development to improve livestock husbandry practices and increase fodder production, and c) empowering women.

This 2018 impact assessment study collected data from direct beneficiaries of the project as well as non-participants as a control. The computed values of Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATET) for gender related indicators in the impact study demonstrated remarkable positive impacts by the project on women’s empowerment. As a result of the project, Annual Gross Livestock Income and Annual Net Livestock Income increased by US$270 and US$209 in female-headed households involved in the project compared to those that were not involved. There was also a higher tendency for women to be involved in decision making on cattle breeding (53% of project households compared to only 26% in the control group), goat feeding (32% of project households compared to only 17% in the control group), sheep feeding (30% of project households compared to only 13% in the control group) and use of income from agricultural activities (5% of project households compared to less than 2% in the control group).

Impact evidence sources:

Cavatassi, R. and Mallia, P. 2018. Impact assessment report: Livestock and Pasture Development Project (LPDP), Tajikistan. IFAD, Rome, Italy. https://www.ifad.org/documents/38714170/41114919/TJ_LPDP_IA+report.pdf

Download: "Making the Case for Livestock: Gender" (PDF)

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