Abstract
Evidence from climate-smart village (CSV) approach to mainstream climate-smart agriculture (CSA) demonstrates improved productivity, income, and reduced climatic risks. However, its contribution to gender empowerment in diverse farming households is not documented. This study creates a Gender Empowerment Index for climate-smart villages (GEI-CSV) based on four major measurable indicators—political, economic, agricultural, and social. The gender gap was derived by mapping difference in empowerment levels across selected CSVs and non-CSVs. These indicators can be used as a vital tool to understand the process of gender empowerment that can trigger the entry points to achieve gender equality, which is also an important aspect in the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSAPs). The study measures empowerment at the inter-household and intra-household level across CSVs and non-CSVs from the individual household survey with both female and male members of the same household. This paper provides evidence demonstrating how gender empowerment differs in CSVs and non-CSVs from selected climate-smart villages (community-based approach) in two contrasting ecologies and socio-economic settings of India. The study documents the existing gender gap in CSVs and non-CSVs across India’s western (Haryana) and eastern (Bihar) Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP). Irrespective of CSVs and non-CSVs, considerable differences in outlook and gender gap were observed between Bihar and Haryana. Both women and men in Bihar are less empowered than they are in Haryana. High empowerment level in CSVs than non-CSVs shows that the concept of CSVs has brought a change towards knowledge and capacity enhancement of both women and men farmers promoting gender equality in farming households with a varying scope of interventions made and required for scaling CSAPs across the diversity of farming households.
Highlights
South Asia is a densely populated and extremely vulnerable region to climate change, which faces multiple challenges for food security and stability for the livelihoods of millions of people (IPCC 2007)
In the non-climate-smart village (CSV) of Haryana and in both CSVs and non-CSVs of Bihar, the average age of men was more than 45 years and the average age of women was more than 40 years
India’s caste system, which divides people into different social stratifications, placing them in a hierarchy, plays a significant role in gender equality. The households in both CSVs and non-CSVs in Haryana were mainly from the general category, whereas in Bihar most households belong to Other Backward Caste (OBC) and some households from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Muslim communities
Summary
South Asia is a densely populated and extremely vulnerable region to climate change, which faces multiple challenges for food security and stability for the livelihoods of millions of people (IPCC 2007). A largescale adoption of technologies and practices to adapt to climate risks will require social inclusiveness accompanied by technological development, refinement, and dissemination. Rural women have less access and control over resources in comparison to men, who have more access to credit, extension, farm inputs (e.g., seed supply), market services, etc., a result of gender inequalities in agricultural production and socioeconomic development in India. Addressing the constraints faced by women and accentuating their empowerment is required to achieve sustainable agricultural production and inclusive economic growth (ICAR 2011). The studies by several researchers across different crops, agriculture commodities, and farming systems in India (Das et al 2015; Chayal et al 2013; Waris and Viraktamath 2013) have identified the importance of gender empowerment in agriculture and found that a large gender gap in agriculture exists in India
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