What does empowerment mean to women in northern Ghana? Insights from research around a small-scale irrigation intervention

What does empowerment mean to women in northern Ghana? Insights from research around a small-scale irrigation intervention PDF Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 51

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Book Description
Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.

What does empowerment mean to women in northern Ghana? Insights from research around a small-scale irrigation intervention

What does empowerment mean to women in northern Ghana? Insights from research around a small-scale irrigation intervention PDF Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 51

Get Book

Book Description
Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.

What Does Empowerment Mean to Women in Northern Ghana?

What Does Empowerment Mean to Women in Northern Ghana? PDF Author: Elizabeth Bryan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Women and small-scale irrigation: A review of the factors influencing gendered patterns of participation and benefits

Women and small-scale irrigation: A review of the factors influencing gendered patterns of participation and benefits PDF Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Small-scale irrigation is expanding rapidly in parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, offering smallholder farmers an opportunity to improve their livelihoods, diets, and resilience to climate change among other benefits. Growing research focuses on the potential for small-scale irrigation to offer a pathway for women’s empowerment, yet the factors conditioning the relationship between small-scale irrigation and women’s empowerment are not well understood. The evidence tends to be scattered across context-specific case studies that focus on targeted outcomes, without distinguishing between technology types, scales, or approaches to irrigation systems or technologies. This paper synthesizes the issues related to gender and small-scale irrigation using a conceptual framework that highlights the linkages between elements of women’s empowerment and small-scale irrigation. Because gendered dynamics with small-scale irrigation play out differently depending on the scale of irrigation and the technologies used, this paper applies the framework to examine case studies across a typology of small-scale irrigation systems. The case studies cover a range of farming and livelihood systems in which women’s roles and gender relations vary, highlighting the importance of the opportunity structure or context in which irrigation takes place. This paper then draws lessons on the various ways in which small-scale irrigation, gender relations, and women’s empowerment interact and highlights areas where research gaps remain.

The diffusion of small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia: Stakeholder analysis using Net-Map

The diffusion of small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia: Stakeholder analysis using Net-Map PDF Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Small-scale irrigation (SSI) provides great benefits to farmers in terms of increased yields and profits, better food and nutrition security and greater resilience to climate shocks. Ethiopia has high potential for expanding SSI and has invested considerably in this area in recent years. Despite these investments, several challenges to further expansion of irrigation technologies remain. Different stakeholders in the country play important roles in overcoming these barriers to further scale technologies for SSI. This paper explores institutional arrangements for the diffusion of small-scale irrigation technologies by mapping the landscape of key actors involved, their interconnections, and their influence. This paper draws on an analysis of stakeholder data collected through two participatory workshops in Ethiopia, one at the national level and one at the Oromia regional level, using the Net-Map approach. Results show the dominance of government actors in the diffusion of SSI at both the national and regional levels, while most private sector and NGO actors remain in the periphery. Participants in both workshops highlighted the need for increased financing services to support the adoption of SSI and measures aimed at increasing the supply of high-quality irrigation equipment, such as modern water lifting technologies. One notable difference between the national and regional results was that at the regional level, farmers, and to some extent traders and input suppliers, were considered to be more influential in the diffusion of irrigation technologies, while they were considered marginal actors at the national level.

Women's Empowerment for a Sustainable Future

Women's Empowerment for a Sustainable Future PDF Author: Claude-Hélène Mayer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031259246
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 754

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Book Description
This edited volume focuses on women’s empowerment for a sustainable future. It takes cultural and transcultural and positive psychology perspectives into consideration and explores the topic of women’s empowerment from diverse stances, across social strata, cultural divides as well as economic and political divisions. It addresses the critique of the overly Western focus of positive psychology on this topic by adopting a transnational and transcultural lens, and by taking non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples into in-depth consideration. The chapters therefore focus on women from diverse socio-cultural, political, socio-economic backgrounds and discuss their ways of empowering others and being empowered. They also discuss related positive psychology constructs, such as: coping, resilience, transformation, growth, leadership, creativity, identity development, sustainable action, as well as positive socio-economic, political and eco-sustainable thought and action. The volume as a whole looks at women's leadership as a factor of empowerment. A further fundamental assumption is that women’s empowerment is needed to create a sustainable future at micro-, meso- and macro levels, which presumes safety, peace, ecological considerations, and compassionate leadership.

A review of evidence on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems

A review of evidence on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems PDF Author: Njuki, Jemimah
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems can result in greater food security and better nutrition, and in more just, resilient, and sustainable food systems for all. This paper uses a scoping review to assess the current evidence on pathways between gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems. The paper uses an adaptation of the food systems framework to organize the evidence and identify where evidence is strong, and where gaps remain. Results show strong evidence on women’s differing access to resources, shaped and reinforced by contextual social gender norms, and on links between women’s empowerment and maternal education and important outcomes, such as nutrition and dietary diversity. However, evidence is limited on issues such as gender considerations in food systems for women in urban areas and in aquaculture value chains, best practices and effective pathways for engaging men in the process of women’s empowerment in food systems, and for addressing issues related to migration, crises, and indigenous food systems. And while there are gender informed evaluation studies that examine the effectiveness of gender- and nutrition- sensitive agricultural programs, evidence to indicate the long-term sustainability of such impacts remains limited. The paper recommends keys areas for investment: improving women’s leadership and decision-making in food systems, promoting equal and positive gender norms, improving access to resources, and building cross-contextual research evidence on gender and food systems.

Exploring women’s empowerment using a mixed methods approach

Exploring women’s empowerment using a mixed methods approach PDF Author: Doss, Cheryl
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Interest in the meaning and measurement of women’s empowerment has become a stated goal of many programs in international development. This paper explores a collaborative process of studying women’s empowerment in agricultural research for development using both quantitative and qualitative methods. It draws on three bodies of research around empowerment, growing interest in qualitative methods, and measurement research, especially the conceptualization and adaptations of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Employing mixed methods over more than a decade of cooperation among researchers from the Global South and the Global North has challenged the methods and findings of each approach. The work has led to new insights about gender differences in what empowerment means to women and to men, the importance of context, interrelationships among dimensions of empowerment, and the need for greater precision in terms and measures, particularly around decision-making, asset ownership, and time use. Such collaborative research benefits from a long timeframe to build trust and shared understandings across disciplines. The paper concludes with suggestions for the next phase of research.

Science and Innovations for Food Systems Transformation

Science and Innovations for Food Systems Transformation PDF Author: Joachim von Braun
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031157036
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 931

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Book Description
This Open Access book compiles the findings of the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 and its research partners. The Scientific Group was an independent group of 28 food systems scientists from all over the world with a mandate from the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. The chapters provide science- and research-based, state-of-the-art, solution-oriented knowledge and evidence to inform the transformation of contemporary food systems in order to achieve more sustainable, equitable and resilient systems.

Women’s empowerment for sustainable rural livelihoods:

Women’s empowerment for sustainable rural livelihoods: PDF Author: Akua Opokua Britwum
Publisher: kassel university press GmbH
ISBN: 3737606307
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Agricultural interventions are designed on certain assumptions of empowerment that do not necessarily address the livelihood constraints of the rural women they set out to support. This is a failing that might be due to the omission of women’s voices expressing their understanding of empowerment and its relation to existing gender orders. Using primary data from the Upper East and Northern Regions in Ghana, we explored women and men’s notions of the processes and outcomes of empowerment. We began by understanding the basis of women’s disempowerment and confirmed its location within agricultural production relations that granted women limited access to resources. Respondents recognised all the main dimensions of power: within, with, to and over. The restrictions of women’s empowerment to the provisioning role on condition that it did not usurp male power over women limited intervention’s ability to provide true empowerment for women. But signs of increasing transfer of women’s power within into group action and male acceptance of women’s expanding spheres of influence indicate that some grounds for true transformation in the future exists.

Smallholder Irrigation Technology Diffusion in Ghana

Smallholder Irrigation Technology Diffusion in Ghana PDF Author: Afua Atuobi-Yeboah
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description