Abstract
Within the last two decades, women’s empowerment has been the central theme of international development policy and practice. This article seeks to elucidate the challenges of integrating gender in a development project to empower women. Drawing on the wider literature on women’s empowerment, it constructs a framework to analyze the meaning of empowerment. The article then draws on the framework and empirical data gathered to illuminate the challenges of integrating gender in a pulse innovation project, implemented in Southern Ethiopia. The article elucidates gender hierarchies that limit the extent of women’s involvement in crop production processes. It demonstrates social and cultural factors that restrict women from fully participating in high value pulse markets and their involvement in production and exchange decision-making. It also illustrates how existing social networks, relations, and links disadvantage women. The article then recommends solutions to help facilitate the integration of gender in the project toward the empowerment of women.
Highlights
Introduction to the ProjectPulse innovation for food and nutrition security is a project that has been implemented in Southern Ethiopia with the aim of contributing to the challenging task of bringing about food and nutrition security
More than 70% of men argued that they take large quantities of crops to the markets because women do not know about weighing scales and can be cheated
As clearly illustrated in the previous sections, Pulse Innovation Project is located in an environment in which gender inequality is deeply entrenched and pervasive
Summary
Pulse innovation for food and nutrition security is a project that has been implemented in Southern Ethiopia with the aim of contributing to the challenging task of bringing about food and nutrition security. The project was initiated to catalyze largescale positive change in food and nutrition security in Southern Ethiopia by scaling up pulse-crop innovations to reach 70,000 farm households. The article starts with a brief description of the research methods used, and constructs a critical framework on the concept of empowerment drawing on the wider literature It maps out the existing gender structures, drawing on empirical data gathered in Southern Ethiopia. It illustrates the challenges of integrating gender in the project through the analysis of the existing gender structures with a focus on the nature of household property ownership, division of labor, decision-making structures, income expenditure, and the issue of differential access to markets. It outlines some of the major challenges that the project has faced in achieving its gender objectives and concludes with recommendations
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