Abstract
In developing countries, producer organizations (POs) are important for achieving women empowerment mainly through promoting women's access to the organization's resources and services. However, by improving access to markets and technologies, household membership in POs often results in commercialization of smallholder farming, leading to women disempowerment as men take over control of the farm. We use data from dairy smallholders in Kenya to explore the impact of membership in bargaining and processing POs on women empowerment. Applying the Women Empowerment Livestock Index, we capture six domains of empowerment: production; nutrition; resources; income; opportunities; and workload. We find that when a household joins any PO, regardless of whether the man or the woman in the household is the registered member, women achieve a higher control over production decisions, buying and selling of land and cows, use of loans and receiving dairy income. Distinguishing by gender of membership, there is stronger women empowerment when the woman in the household is a member. We also find that woman membership in bargaining POs results in greater empowerment, in terms of ownership of cows, than woman membership in processing POs. The paper suggests that women empowerment is affected by the functional characteristics of POs.
Highlights
The first world conference on women, in Mexico City in 1975, formed the beginning of a journey towards the advancement of women
The variables are drawn from literature and include individual and farm characteristics such as age, gender, farm size, and education; they all may influence membership decisions or women empowerment (Miedema et al, 2018; Trommlerovaet al., 2015)
In answering the first question on the effect of household membership in producer organizations (POs) on women empowerment, overall, we find that household membership (i. e., either man or woman in the household is the member) in all POs increases women's independent decision-making on agricultural production, control over resources, buying and selling land and cows, using loans and receiving dairy income
Summary
The first world conference on women, in Mexico City in 1975, formed the beginning of a journey towards the advancement of women. Kenya has adopted both international and national policies for addressing gender equality and women empowerment. At the interna tional level, Kenya is a signatory to the Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which emphasize gender equality and women empowerment. In 2000, the government developed the National Policy on Gender and Development which provides a framework to reduce gender inequalities in different sectors (GoK, 2019a). The Ministry's overall objective is to ensure empowerment of women through mainstreaming the needs of women, men, boys and girls for them to participate and benefit in all sectors of development. To further strengthen gender equality plans, the government introduced the Agricultural Sector Gender Policy in 2013, aiming at systematically and structurally addressing gender inequalities and their causes in the agricultural sector (GoK, 2013)
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