Project

Discipline

Export-led agriculture; Rural employment; Feminisation of agriculture; Feminisation of labour; Gender; Agricultural transition; Non-traditional agricultural exports NTAE; High-value crops; Asset building

Lead
Landwirtschaft bleibt die wichtigste Beschäftigungsquelle für Männer und Frauen im globalen Süden. 86 % der ländlichen Bevölkerung hängen davon ab. Kleinbauernbetriebe sichern die Existenz unzähliger Familien und tragen entscheidend zur Überwindung der Armut bei. Neue landwirtschaftliche Exportprodukte wecken diesbezüglich hohe Erwartungen, zumal diese Arbeitsplätze oft von Frauen besetzt werden. FATE vergleicht die Auswirkungen dieser Prozesse in Bolivien, Ruanda, Laos und Nepal.
Lay summary
Feminisierung und Wandel im ländlichen Arbeitsmarkt: Soziale und wirtschaftliche Bedingungen für Armutsüberwindung in der exportorientierten Landwirtschaft (FATE) Zielsetzung Im Zentrum der Studie stehen die Auswirkungen der Einbindung von Frauen und Männern in die exportorientierte Landwirtschaft. In vier Schwerpunktländern untersucht FATE das Potential neuer Einkommensquellen für eine längerfristige Absicherung der Haushalte gegen Armut. Gleichzeitig rückt das Projekt die Risiken der erhöhten Lohnabhängigkeit in den Blick und arbeitet die sozialen und politischen Bedingungen heraus, die die Verwundbarkeit der ländlichen Bevölkerung entscheidend senken können. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht die Studie Ausmass, Merkmale und Bedeutung der exportorientierten Landwirtschaft, vergleicht das Ermächtigungspotential für Frauen mit der Entstehung neuer Abhängigkeiten, beleuchtet die Rolle des Staats und analysiert Zielkonflikte in Bezug auf eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. Forschungslücke Die Forschung zu ländlichen Arbeitsmärkten im Süden ist  durch einen Mangel an überregional vergleichbaren Daten gekennzeichnet, und in der Debatte herrschen verzerrte und statische Vorstellungen des Sektors vor. Während die Rolle von Frauen in der Landwirtschaft stark beforscht ist, fehlen Einsichten zur Verschiebung der Geschlechterverhältnisse ebenso wie die Frage nach der Aushandlung von Gewinnen und Risiken. Die geschlechterdifferenzierende Perspektive unterstützt diese Fragestellungen, wobei Geschlecht durch weitere Strukturierungsprinzipien vermittelt ist – darunter  Klasse, Kaste, Ethnizität und Generation. Ergebnisse Die Analyse trägt dazu bei, die Auswirkungen der Produktion hochwertiger Agrargüter auf den ländlichen Arbeitsmarkt und auf die Chancen von Frauen zu untersuchen. Die Resultate werden in die Debatte um wirtschaftliches Wachstum, die Herausbildung von Ungleichheiten und neue Armut einfliessen und leisten einen konkreten Beitrag für wissensgestützte Interventionen zur Armutsbekämpfung.

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Last update: 19.06.2014

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Feminisation, agricultural transition and rural employment: Social and political conditions of asset building in the context of export-led agriculture (FATE)SummaryAgriculture is by far the most important source of employment for men and women in the poorer re-gions of the globe. 86% of the world’s rural population depend on farming, 450 million are agricultural wage workers (FAO et al. 2010b, IAASTD 2009). Small-scale, subsistence-oriented agriculture is a vital source of resilience and livelihoods (Doss 2011), and it is widely recognised that agriculture re-mains a primary engine of rural development and growth, providing a critical route out of poverty (IFAD 2011, WDR 2013). However, agriculture in the global South is also viewed as underperforming, and demands for more capital-intensive commercial agriculture have been issued promoting forms of employment that can generate higher returns (WDR 2008, 2013). Non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAE) have been a response to these demands, creating wage labour and, notably, stimulating high levels of female employment in rural areas. The developmental impacts and gendered implications of these dynamics are the subject of the research proposed here. FATE will analyse the effects of the increasing integration of women and men into export-led agriculture, and the conditions under which these effects contribute to asset-building of rural households, enhance individual well-being and capa-bilities, or, by contrast, increase dependencies and vulnerability.While rural employment and women’s work in the agricultural sector have received some atten-tion, little evidence exists with regard to the implications of changing employment conditions in the context of this new wave of agricultural commercialisation and how it relates to the alleged feminisa-tion processes in the labour market, in agriculture, and within households. Research on the shifting patterns of agricultural employment and their gendered implications is limited by a lack of data, par-ticularly on rural women’s employment. This lack is partly due to the fact that these issues lie at the intersection of agriculture and labour concerns, and are not adequately addressed across these two sectors. Indeed, a number of ill-founded and oversimple assumptions about the rural labour market have shaped the discourse on rural employment and rural workers. In-depth, comparative and longitu-dinal research is thus needed to inform the debate. The FATE project aims to connect these separate strands and thus contribute to informed policy making.The gender perspective (Chant et al. 2009) provides an important analytical lens for assessing how potential risks associated with transitions are spread and negotiated between different social groups, as well as for understanding how such changes affect gender relations and women’s status in a given society. In the proposed study, gender is viewed as a category mediated through other social structures, namely class/caste, generation, and ethnicity (intersectionality). A cross-case comparison adopting a mixed-methods framework will serve to highlight outcomes of NTAE employment for different groups of men and women (in terms of age, class, caste, and ethnici-ty) and compare them with alternative income-generating opportunities on individual and aggregate levels. Four study sites on three continents with different, but highly dynamic trajectories of export-based agriculture were selected from the UN priority category of least developed, landlocked coun-tries: Bolivia, Lao PDR, Nepal, and Rwanda. The findings will feed into debates on the transformative power of economic change induced by glob-alisation, and particularly of the current shifts in rural employment and their effects on multiple forms of disparities, which have been seen as hindering development. Responding to a demand of a number of countries which have found themselves locked in low-value-adding production, this research will contrib-ute to policy frameworks which not only aim at creating jobs but also rewards. By generating original data, the study aims at identifying social and political conditions which encourage asset-building and thus help transfer high-value crops into high-value jobs for rural workers. Transdisciplinary in nature, this project will provide evidence-based knowledge for governance - knowledge that can inform negotiations of gender equality in the context of agricultural transition and rural employment, opening up pathways to sustainable development in rural areas.Project team:International partners-Eliud Abucheli Birachi, PhD, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Kigali, Rwanda-Elizabeth Jimenez Zamora, PhD, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés-Postgrado en Ciencias del Desarrollo (CIDES-UMSA), La Paz, Bolivia-Saithong Phommavong, PhD, National University of Laos (NUOL), Faculty of Social Sciences, Vientiane, Lao PDR-Bishnu Raj Upreti, PhD, Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research (NCCR-Nepal), Kathmandu, NepalSwiss Partners-Prof. Brigitte Schnegg, Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (ICFG), University of Bern, Swit-zerland-Sabin Bieri, PhD, Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland-Sarah Cook, PhD, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva, SwitzerlandInternational Advisory Board-Prof. Stephanie Seguino, University of Vermont, Burlington-Ass. Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata, Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research ISSER, University of Ghana, Accra-Dr. Peter Wobst, Senior Economist, FAO, Rome-Michèle Amacker, Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of BernThis research project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC. It has been submitted to the thematic call “employment” within the “Research for Development”-Initiative (r4d: http://www.r4d.ch/E/employment/Pages/default.aspx).Project start and duration:Phase I: 1 May 2014 - 30 April 2017Phase II:1 May 2017 - 30 April 2020Contact and information:Sabin.bieri@cde.unibe.ch