Abstract
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has a significant role to play in reducing the gender gap in labor burden for women in agriculture. A targeted approach to address this gap can be useful in developing a women-responsive climatic risk management plan focused on reducing their labor burden in agriculture, especially in areas with high climate risks. The paper therefore presents a top–down approach to identify potential labor-saving CSA technologies for women farmers in areas facing high climate risks. It involves mapping women in agriculture, climate risks, and poverty hotspots and entails understanding the role of women in agricultural activities to identify the suitable CSA options for reducing the levels of labor drudgery. The study is illustrated for Nepal where feminization of agriculture is rapidly increasing, a high level of climatic risks persists, and adaptive capacity to climate change is very low, especially among women in agriculture. Results are presented for two hotspot districts, Rupandehi and Chitwan. Household socioeconomic characteristics were found to play a major role in women’s labor contribution in different crop production activities. Discussions with farmers provided a list of more than 15 CSA interventions with labor reduction as well as yield-improving potential. Accordingly, considering the local crop, agro-climate, and social conditions, and women’s participation in different agricultural activities, CSA technologies and practices such as direct seeded rice (zero tillage and low tillage using machine), green manuring (GM), laser land leveling (LLL), and system of rice intensification (SRI) were found to potentially reduce women’s drudgery in agriculture along with improvement in productivity and farm income.
Highlights
Women’s involvement in agriculture and their contributions to food security has been widely recognized in the developing countries
Many studies claim that differences in men and women’s responsibilities, priorities, and access to resources and services at the community and household levels are responsible for the gender gap in agriculture in many developing countries (Quisumbing et al 2014; FAO 2011)
For the objective of this paper, we have mainly focused on the gender indicator which highlights the change in women’s involvement in agricultural activities due to the introduction of Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies and practices
Summary
Women’s involvement in agriculture and their contributions to food security has been widely recognized in the developing countries. Several studies highlight that women are likely to be affected more than men by climate impacts, especially in the developing countries where their involvement in agriculture is high (Goldsmith et al 2013; MacGregor 2010; UNDP 2013; Goh 2012; Nellemann et al 2011). Most of this gender gap analysis in agriculture in the context of climate change have been limited to access to resources and decision making (Kristjanson et al 2017). There is a need to understand climate change impacts on women based not just on their social, cultural, and economic characteristics and their role and responsibilities in specific agricultural activities (Nightingale 2011; Morton 2007)
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