The first day starts with comparing ideas on the roles and capacities on men and women in the past and present. The answers are an illustration of the statement that gender roles are socially determined and change over time, in their case luckily in a positive direction. Subsequently the participants draw their own cooperatives showing where the women are. All pictures show that there is room for improvement, In some cooperatives there are women in the leadership at all, in others they are under-represented. In the afternoon Trienke presents the situation in the Netherlands where only 10% of the board of agricultural cooperatives are women, but this percentage is growing, especially in the dairy sector. Trienke stresses that diversity in the leadership of a cooperative is good for its competitiveness; numerous studies have shown that companies with a board composed of both men and women take better decisions and have better business results. The situation is comparable with the Kenyan situation where only 9 % of the leaders of agricultural cooperatives are women. As in the Netherlands it’s a challenge to sensitize more women for board and management functions. Other figures for Kenya are relatively positive: 26% of the members and 40% of the employees of agricultural cooperative are female. A good development is that the Kenyan government considers approving a law that at least 1/3 of the leadership of a cooperative has to be formed by women. The first workshop day concludes with an analysis of constraints faced by women to become leaders of a cooperative and possible solutions.
The second day deals with the important role of women in agriculture. Illustrated by dairy and coffee cases it becomes clear that recognizing the important role of women in the agriculture, and addressing their needs to develop technical skills an access required resources, leads to better performance in the sector. This is in the interest of both farmer families and cooperatives. To analyze the importance of the role of women in their sectors (dairy and rice) the participants apply a tool from the ‘Gender in Value Chain Toolkit’ of Agri-ProFocus. They complete a format showing the role of men and women to produce a high quality product, the benefits for each of them, and how the two are balanced. The results from the dairy sector analysis shows how women are doing most of the work, but that they are also benefiting a lot. This might be an upwards trend as women work at home and men increasingly work elsewhere, for example in towns. Also in the rice sector the work – benefit balance is quite positive according to the participants. They mention that the work is equally shared, though women do mostly handwork and men do more machinery. The facilitators are surprised by the relatively positive trends in both dairy and rice. This does not mean that there is no room for improvement. There is especially a need for more equal participation of women in decision making at cooperative and family level. If this is achieved this will also contribute to the motivation of women to become more actively involved as members of the cooperative.
Being active member of the cooperative would also create access to services for women. In the current situation women are often not registered as member, as their husbands represent the family in the cooperative. The business arguments for making services, as training, accessible to women is that women are more likely than men to apply what they have learned in training and adopt new farming techniques, this is supported by research.
The second workshop day ends with an analysis of constraints for women to become members of cooperatives and to benefit of its services. The last day is used to discuss the outcomes of day 2, and the results of the questionnaire they have completed on their own situation, the achievements and the challenges . Each of the 10 cooperatives makes an action plan with a time schedule for improving women’s participation in their cooperative. The participants express they have all learned a lot on the importance of integrating women in their cooperative and are very motivated to take action. The participants surprised the facilitators with beautiful dance and song as a say goodbye.
Why are women important for agricultural cooperatives?
1. Having men ànd women in the board and management of the cooperative contributes to better leadership and increased competitiveness of the cooperative
2. Women are important for the production, involving them as members contributes to increased production and higher profitability of both cooperative and the farm as a family enterprise
3. Increasing the access of women to the services (training and other resources) of the cooperative contributes to the introduction of new farming techniques and innovation
4. Inclusion of women on an equal footing in the cooperative, and joint decision making on the family income will contribute to the motivation of women to become active members of the cooperative and contribute to the production of more and better produce.
