CARE International, a women’s advocacy group and non-governmental organisation (NGO), has commenced efforts to ensure that gender concerns relating to Agriculture and Food security in Ghana are addressed.
This, according to the NGO, is to ensure that women and the youth, who are noted to be more vulnerable to food insecurity, environmental hazards and climate change, achieve social and economic resilience and food security.
In line with this objective, the organisation has drafted a gender analysis strategy document which will be incorporated into the implementation of its Agriculture and Food Security Programme (AFSP), which was launched this year.
The draft strategy is founded on four key components, namely capital, inclusiveness, effective civil society and governance and responsive policy making and implementation.
At a workshop in Tamale to validate the strategy, officials of CARE explained the various components and how the organisation would tackle them.
The first component, they noted, focused on how the social and economic capital of women and the youth, who are particularly exposed to food insecurity and climate change, could be enhanced to sustainable levels.
It considers issues of land, property and natural resources in relation to their ownership, usage and impact on the well-being of women and the youth.
The strategy, they said, would therefore, aim at promoting women's access to land and natural resources so as to facilitate their use of the land for agricultural purposes and the resources for income generation.
“By this move, the project will attempt to defy the age-old traditional belief that women's acquisition of wealth is unacceptable as it tends to threaten men's dominance,” Ms Ayishetu Mikey, the Gender and Diversity Advisor for AFSP, noted.
The second component, they explained, dealt mainly with improving the participation and representation of women and the youth in decision-making processes from the grass roots to the national level.
This was to ensure that these groups of society had a say in matters that affected their welfare, such as the distribution of resources and agricultural inputs, they noted.
“The strategy will, thus, attempt overturning traditional beliefs and taboos that prevent women from participating in decision-making at the community level,” Ms Catherine Hill, a consultant to the programme, explained.
The third component of the strategy will seek to build and increase civil society roles at all levels, in advocating and representing the interests of the poor and vulnerable people.
It will equally attempt to empower civil society organisations to hold people accountable for poor food security programmes to ensure that they reach the intended beneficiaries.
“It will also involve raising awareness at the community level on women's rights and strengthen women solidarity groups,” Ms Hill added.
The last and equally critical component of the strategy places emphasis on influencing policy making in the country to ensure that it favours gender interests, particularly in relation to food security and mitigating climate change.
Apart from ensuring that the country implements national laws and international treaties and conventions that relate to women and children's rights, the strategy, according to the organisation, will ensure that national agricultural programmes take gender concerns into consideration.
To ensure that CARE International successfully implements its gender strategy, the officials hinted that the organisation would commit more resources to that direction.
“We will also move beyond merely including women in activities to scaling up on ways to work with both women and men on intra-household basis and at the community decision-making level,” Ms Mikey further hinted.
She also noted that CARE had decided to draft the gender strategy because “based on experience, we have realised that gender inequalities exist within our programmes and we are determined to address these”.
Ms Mikey said the Agriculture and Food security project would achieve minimal results if these concerns were not addressed, because some important components of society would be left out.
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