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Skill training crucial to empower women in agriculture-CSD Study - Synopsis by K.Ramasubba Reddy

In a survey conducted by London based City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development, it was found that organised and high level training eludes the women, who shoulder most of the burden of India's agricultural sector. The CSD's survey report on ‘training for rural development: agricultural and enterprise skills for women smallholders' stated that even though nearly 70 per cent of agricultural activities in India are carried out by women, it's the men folk who receive more and better training.

The survey also makes key recommendations on how to fill the existing ‘training gaps' for women which included an integrated, decentralised structure to help women articulate their needs with confidence, establishment of supportive peer groups to help women overcome financial as emotional hardships.

Key Findings :

6 key findings by City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development

1. The value of enterprise training for rural women

Enterprise training can help farmers take – and manage – the risks involved in introducing new technologies. It can also help women diversify their productive activities by branching out into small business, which can address the risk of crop failure and help develop more stable year-round incomes. Successful enterprise training requires an approach which addresses the many challenges of rural business development.

2. Barriers to accessing training

Improving women smallholders’ access to relevant training is an important step in increasing agricultural productivity. Women smallholders often can’t access training as well as men so the training needs to take into account their particular situations – including their level of literacy and domestic chores.

3. Systematic approaches to training for women

Extension officers and trainers need the right skills and information to systematically address the challenges faced by women smallholders. By engaging with the whole community (men included), development projects can help women access training without taking the ownership from women. Projects should provide channels for women to articulate their needs, and should work with the community to improve women’s positions.

4. Learning within groups

Smallholder groups are very helpful in delivering training and sharing and retaining information from that training. For women, groups are particularly important in facilitating access to training.

5. Participation in technology development

Increasing technology use helps increase agricultural yields and reduce the amount of time that women spend on tasks, thus freeing up time for other productive activities. Women have different technology needs to those of men and training needs to take this into account. Participation in technology development can have significant benefits but needs to be carefully managed. It is important for women to be connected with technology developers and empowered to invest in technologies which will suit them.

6. Reducing the risks of applying training

Decreasing the risk of investing in new processes is necessary if smallholders are to apply training. Initiating new businesses or acquiring new technologies requires access to capital. Likewise, the ability to sell products and attend training depends on adequate rural infrastructure. In order to support training, projects need to address the connections between skills and these factors. CSD Dec 09 Report

Summary of the Findings

Women now make up the majority of the agricultural sector in developing countries, but recent evidence suggests that not only is their productivity constrained by a lack of appropriate skills training (Danida, 2004), but also that they are particularly vulnerable to a range of changes including economic and environmental changes (e.g. Aguilar, 2009). Equipping

women on small farms with the skills to improve production and manage change is therefore an important step towards securing livelihoods and reducing poverty.

Understanding the barriers women face in accessing and utilising training

is essential to improve the productive situation for women smallholders. This report reviews the literature on the challenges women face, and draws out lessons from a crosssection of international project reviews and an in-depth study of four successful projects. It shows that there is much to be

learned from successful projects with regard to:

• The importance of enterprise skills in rural contexts,
• Facilitating access to training and ensuring training meets
women’s needs,
• The use of self-help groups to support training,
• The development of appropriate technology,
• Methods of mitigating the effects of risk in rural environments.

1. The value of enterprise training for rural women

Integrating agricultural training with enterprise training can help women smallholders to manage and market their farm production more effectively, to take advantage of new agricultural opportunities. Enterprise training can help farmers take – and manage – the risks involved in introducing

progressive production technologies. It can also help women diversify their productive activities by branching out into non-farm enterprises, an important mechanism in reducing susceptibility to crisis and developing a more stable year-round income. Successfully integrating enterprise

development into the women’s lives involved an array of integrated approaches:

• Group membership can reduce the perceived risks to individual women of starting up an enterprise, as the required capital and knowledge are shared within the group.
• Training that helps women to engage successfully with larger markets is particularly valuable to help women profit from new enterprises.
• Marketing training cannot be separated from training to support quality control, capital management and price awareness, as all these factors are required to achieve a fair price.
• Direct linkages to markets are needed, and women need to be empowered to interact with middlemen or market intermediaries on fair terms.
• Ensuring that training in both financial management and marketing is directly relevant to the women’s enterprises helps them make good use of it.

2. Access to training

Women face significant barriers in accessing training, including low literacy levels, domestic obligations and training that is targeted primarily at men. Addressing these challenges to improve women smallholders’ access to advanced and more relevant training is an important step in increasing agricultural productivity. These barriers can be overcome using a variety

of approaches:

• Initial capacity building training is important to assist women in identifying their own challenges, initiating change and understanding of how training could impact on their lives and activities. The presence of a person in the village whom the women trust and can discuss their needs with ensures that a project can gain the information required to understand the needs and day to day pressures of the women.

• Training must fit with women’s existing skill levels.
Groups need to be able to realise benefits from training before they are willing to invest in ‘capacity building’, like literacy training. Practical literacy training is, however, valuable. It builds confidence, and reduces the perception among illiterate women that they are excluded from the
training process.

• Providing women with the opportunity to select a combination of training programmes can enable them to accumulate a portfolio of skills that is targeted at their personal interests and meets the needs of both the immediate future and the longer term.
• The evidence suggests that women need to see short term improvements to ensure that they understand the value of training, for projects to survive in the long-term.

3. Systematic approaches to training for women

There is growing awareness that designing appropriate projects requires systematic efforts to engage with women and assess their circumstances. Whether projects use women only projects (i.e. focused solely on women), female extension agents, or a programme of gender sensitisation to

improve the responsiveness of training to women’s needs, the approach should provide channels for women to articulate their needs, and should work with the community to improve women’s positions.

• Projects need to be able to identify the needs of women smallholders and translate them into an effective training programme. Project staff/extension officers need to be equipped to collect accurate information
about women’s productive practices, constraints and preferences.
• Decentralised structures which allow women to articulate their needs are required, in contrast to the centralised, top-down planning approach of many projects. This contributes to increasing buy-in from the women and groups, key to ensuring the effectiveness of programmes.
• Systematically removing or lowering barriers to women’s participation in development initiatives requires a shift in their position in their communities, and therefore it requires communities to work together. Careful involvement of men in women’s projects can create a supportive attitude towards changes in the productivework of women. Gaining the commitment of the entire village is important for the sustainability of projects, and helps to gain the respect and understanding of male members of the community. Engaging with high-level community members adds legitimacy to the goals of the project during early engagement. Projects play an important role as an intermediary, helping communities to deal with change.

4. Learning within groups

Groups play a key role in the delivery of effective training: they provide a structure that enables smallholders to share training information, collectively press for better training, save, and support each other in applying new techniques and technologies. For women, groups are particularly important
in facilitating access to training.

• Delivering training through groups can increase the number of women who are able to benefit from training. Projects that train in peer learning techniques improve women’s ability to share information, enhancing the take-up of information and the sustainability of training.
• Targeting groups can increase women’s ability to access appropriate extension by improving their ability to influence the services that reach them. Strong group organisation at the grassroots level helps ensure that women’s needs are considered in planning processes at all levels.
• Performance with respect to targeting the poor may be better in bottom-up group-based credit and savings programmes than in credit programmes for individuals.
Poor women, being risk-averse, are more likely to join in training once they saw it working effectively for others.
• Training specifically designed to support group organisation is necessary to strengthen groups. New organisations need specific group management training and sustained support to survive in the long term.

5. Participation in technology development Increasing technology usage is important in enhancing agricultural yields, reducing the amount of time that women spend on tasks and thus freeing up time for other productive
activities. Women do however, have different technology needs to those of men and training needs to take into account these different needs and production preferences.

• Participation in technology development can positively affect the adoption and economic impact of technology by improving its relevance and appropriateness to the potential beneficiaries, and thereby enlarging the pool of potential adopters. The earlier in project development that participation is incorporated, the greater the changes to the project, and the more likely it is that technology will be useful to the project beneficiaries.
• Supporting participation in terms of technology development requires the establishment of formal structures for farmers to feed into the process. Providing some level of ownership for the women in identifying new technology and feeding into the development process, ultimately results in greater take-up of technology.

• Where women already have financial and business management skills, access to and experience in working with credit, and sound cooperative relationships, they are able to choose and use training and new technologies effectively. Groups, saving, management and enterprise skills are therefore necessary complements to participation in technology development

6. Reducing the risks of applying training Lack of credit and capital, insecure land tenure and inadequate rural infrastructure make the application of new agricultural and enterprise strategies risky for women
smallholders. Training organisations can play an important role in mitigating these risks by facilitating access to credit, helping women manage capital, working towards more secure land tenure, and helping women lobby local
government for the provision of better infrastructure.
• Lack of access to credit is often more severe for women as they lack collateral. A group approach ensures that there is a collective responsibility for loans and reduces the individual risks. Projects can play a valuable role in facilitating credit access for groups. It is important, however, that the initiative and responsibility for ensuring repayment remains with the group, as this is a key factor in ensuring the sustainability of credit access beyond the lifetime of a project. Projects can help groups to become more credit worthy by supporting proper group formation, and providing bookkeeping and literacy support.
• Helping women to access physical capital such as machinery is not sufficient to ensure effective take-up and sustainable use. Initiatives must take into account long-term questions, such as whether smallholders
are able to repair the machinery, if they are to improve sustainability.
• Lack of land ownership is a well-known constraint to women’s empowerment globally, and has a direct impact on women’s ability to utilise skills learned through training.
Projects can help women to apply training by mediating on their behalf with community authorities and local government for more secure land tenure

Synopsis by K. Ramasubba Reddy KRSR/100510