Beyond “Women's Traits”: Exploring How Gender, Social Difference, and Household Characteristics Influence Trait Preferences

Béla Teeken,Afolabi Agbona,Peter Kulakow,Abolore Bello,Ireti Balogun,Elisabeth Garner,Hale Ann Tufan,Benjamin Okoye,Chiedozie Egesi,Tessy Madu,Olamide Olaosebikan

doi:10.3389/fsufs.2021.740926

Abstract

Demand-led breeding strategies are gaining importance in public sector breeding globally. While borrowing approaches from the private sector, public sector programs remain mainly focused on food security and social impact related outcomes. This necessitates information on specific user groups and their preferences to build targeted customer and product profiles for informed breeding decisions. A variety of studies have identified gendered trait preferences, but do not systematically analyze differences related to or interactions of gender with other social dimensions, household characteristics, and geographic factors. This study integrates 1000minds survey trait trade-off analysis with the Rural Household Multi-Indicator Survey to study cassava trait preferences in Nigeria related to a major food product, gari. Results build on earlier research demonstrating that women prioritize food product quality traits while men prioritize agronomic traits. We show that food product quality traits are more important for members from food insecure households and gender differences between men and women increase among the food insecure. Furthermore, respondents from poorer households prioritize traits similar to respondents in non-poor households but there are notable trait differences between men and women in poor households. Women in female headed household prioritized quality traits more than women living with a spouse. Important regional differences in trait preferences were also observed. In the South East region, where household use of cassava is important, and connection to larger markets is less developed, quality traits and in ground storability were prioritized more than in other states. These results reinforce the importance of recognizing social difference and the heterogeneity among men and women, and how individual and household characteristics interact to reveal trait preference variability. This information can inform trait prioritization and guide development of breeding products that have higher social impact, which may ultimately serve the more vulnerable and align with development goals.

Highlights

Public sector plant breeding programs are changing rapidly
We argue that this layered approach to analysis improves opportunities to triangulate results and capture richer trait preference data to inform inclusive product profile development
A heatmap supports these observations by visualizing the how gender, food security, poverty, and geography can be brought together to identify trait preferences, synthesizing the lessons established through this layered approach and facilitating their integration into breeders’ product profiles

Summary

Introduction

Public sector plant breeding programs are changing rapidly. Adopting approaches from the private sector, the push toward demand-led breeding has seeded shifts in public sector breeding programs oriented toward food security and social impact. Mobilizing “market intelligence,” in addition to agroecology and value chain information, breeding programs are expected to develop market segments and associated breeding product profiles [CGIAR Excellence in Breeding platform (EiB), 2020]. While ideologically breeding programs are rapidly evolving to become more demand-led, practically this shift has revealed gaps in evidence and data needed to effectively set market-informed breeding priorities. In the private sector, dedicated and well-resourced marketing units conduct marketing research that is directly used to guide breeding priorities. These are absent in the public sector

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Results

Conclusion