Women — who make up nearly half the agricultural workforce in low- and middle-income countries — can face a greater impact from hunger during crises. This can be due to difficulties in attaining land rights, access to credit, and agricultural inputs, alongside exclusion from decision making. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw a 10% higher prevalence of food insecurity among women than men.
“Women are very much involved in care practices at the household level, and yet are less likely to have control and access to income and resources, opportunities for education and training, and fewer roles in leadership,” said Angela Kangori, deputy team leader at Impacting Gender & Nutrition through Innovative Technical Exchange in Agriculture, or IGNITE.
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In sub-Saharan Africa, significant resources have been invested to improve agricultural productivity in recent years. However, this has not necessarily resulted in better nutrition or empowerment for all households or family members, according to nonprofit Tanager, which works to co-create economic and social opportunities that change lives.
Through IGNITE, Tanager, along with partners Laterite and 60 Decibels, is seeking to shine a spotlight on gender and its relationship to nutrition. The initiative — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — aims to strengthen the ability of African institutions to integrate nutrition and gender into business methods and agriculture interventions.
“IGNITE’s goal is to promote the consumption of safe, nutritious foods, and also livelihood opportunities in the food system, particularly for women,” Kangori said. “We work in different ways by making it easier for households to adopt certain behaviors, but also increase knowledge around gender and nutrition. We see opportunities to influence both nutrition and gender right across the food system.”
Speaking to Devex, Kangori, outlined the social norms that can exist in the nutrition space and explained how IGNITE is creating enabling environments to change social behaviors related to gender and nutrition.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are some of the most common or powerful social norms you have noticed and are seeking to influence or change?
We see common social norms around cultural practices that influence intrahousehold food distribution. These norms can ultimately translate into limited diets for certain groups within the household. For instance, some norms relate to the foods that women should eat during pregnancy and lactation, or the specific foods that are fed to adolescent girls, to young children, and infants. We also deal with powerful social norms around men and women’s decision making in the household over things like finances or food consumption.
IGNITE sees social behavior change as an entry point to address norms like these. To influence these norms, IGNITE supports African institutions as they seek to increase men and women farmers’ access to productive resources and financial services, address women’s time burdens, and promote improved production and agricultural practices.
“IGNITE also helps in creating an enabling environment where gender and nutrition can be effectively addressed, allowing certain behaviors to be easier to adopt and sustain over the long term.”
— Angela Kangori, deputy team leader, IGNITEWhat kinds of social norms have you found through your work?
We primarily find or identify social norms through the assessments that we do. I'll give an example of an assessment that was done in West Africa looking at the enablers and barriers for households to consume protein-rich foods. Basically, the assessment looked at the barriers that households were facing around the consumption of certain protein-rich foods; an IGNITE client works to promote these foods. Interestingly, there was a finding that women do have access to these particular products, and they do have permission to eat them; we had walked in with the assumption that norms would be different.
We found that social norms differ from one region to the other, but also what was interesting was that access is a major barrier to [the] consumption of these particular protein-rich foods in some households. So in some regions, IGNITE clients may have started a massive communication campaign highlighting the value of certain protein-rich foods, when, in fact, the barrier was really an issue of supply or access.
And so formative assessments do really help us understand those barriers. These assessments also debunk assumptions — in this case, assumptions we had that certain households or certain populations within the household such as pregnant women, do not eat a particular food because it's a taboo. Instead, people simply do not have access to the food. The challenge is that the supply is quite difficult. So we're now working with the client to see what ways they might be able to improve access to the protein-rich food that they promote.
Another example is a gender analysis that was done in Ethiopia, and the findings around access to digital technologies such as phones, TV, and radio. For us, just understanding gender differences in access to these resources was useful for us to recognize the approach that we could help clients use to reach women.
What types of institutions are you targeting when it comes to influencing behavior change?
We work with institutions that in turn work with farmers and highlight different ways to improve nutrition and gender through agriculture. For instance, we have some clients that work with processors and distributors, and we make recommendations to promote women‘s access to certain processing technologies to ease their time burden, which can support women’s empowerment.
Also, we have a nutrition-sensitive integration selection tool that has different recommendations that clients can pursue, based on the type of value chain and the different types of activities that our clients engage with, with processors, distributors, and retailers.
On the consumption side, we work with clients that are closer to the household and help them to increase the demand for nutrient-rich foods and promote joint household decision making along with other women’s empowerment outcomes and gender-equality outcomes. In the example I highlighted above with protein-rich foods, we have to address some of the barriers that can lead to a lack of demand.
What else do you think could help to achieve behavioral change in gender and nutrition programming?
Changes at this level relate to actual social behavior change. This happens around communication and, in the example I highlight above, creating demand for nutrient-rich foods at the household level.
IGNITE also helps in creating an enabling environment where gender and nutrition can be effectively addressed, allowing certain behaviors to be easier to adopt and sustain over the long term. So we look at behavior change not just in regard to the social norms at the household level, but in taking a step back and influencing the enabling environment as knowledge is created along with demand.
Visit the Future of Food Systems series for more coverage on food and nutrition — and importantly, how we can make food fair and healthy for all. You can join the conversation using the hashtag #FoodSystems.
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