About Us
In discussions held amongst women professionals in FAO, IFAD, the UN Forum on Forests, IUFRO, the CGIAR and NGOs and other organizations throughout the world, there has been a general agreement of the gaps in policies, awareness and actions related to gender and agriculture and natural resource management, as well as to the paucity of groups or organizations working to redress these gaps.
The objective of this global network is to address three major gaps that emerge from the knowledge and experiences of sustainable and rural development processes. These are:
- policies regarding gender within the agriculture and natural resource management sectors;
- roles of professional women in implementing policy objectives for rural women’s empowerment and gender equality within these sectors, and
- organizational barriers that obstruct women from realizing positions of leadership and influence to take on such roles.
WOCAN was established in 2004 to address these gaps through active, constructive collaboration with governments, NGOs, universities, international organizations and civil society groups.
The WOCAN Approach: Gender Mainstreaming to Build Institutional Accountability to Women Farmers
Methodology
WOCAN uses participatory adult learning methodologies to encourage participants to deeply reflect on and analyse societal and organizational norms and conditions. These methods ensure that participants learn through a process of active participation and discussion. Sharing of personal and organizational experiences are used to bring to fore some of the realities of the gender inequality problems that exist in society and in organizations and to come up with suggestions on how to address these.
Accountability -by senior management to both gender equality, and to women farmers - is key to the success of this program. To upscale the experiences of gender mainstreaming, WOCAN's training includes learning how to influence policy change at organizational, national and international levels to increase accountability at different levels of responsibility, and ultimately, to women farmers. For this purpose, research evidence is used to inform dialogue about organizational changes needed for gender equality.
Two Part Course on Gender and Organizational Change
The training objectives are to build individual capabilities in gender and organizational development to contribute to the integration of gender concerns into institutional policies and strategies; to facilitate incorporation of gender dimensions within partner organizations; and to establish a framework for interaction amongst members of the organization for gender mainstreaming.
Part I:
The workshop assists participants to better understand gender concepts and tools, organizational development and processes, and organizational strategies for integrating gender. Participants gain skills to formulate gender sensitive goals, policies and strategies as well as to identify gender issues in their own organizations. The first week of the course culminates in the development of a gender and organizational assessment plan for each partner organization.
Part II:
Participants return to their own organizations to carry out the assessment exercise, then return for Part II of the course. The specific objective of Part II is to enable participants to gain knowledge and skills on concepts and processes of gender mainstreaming, to prepare individual action plans for mainstreaming within their organizations, and to learn skills of change agents on ways to build support and deal with resistance.
Follow up and Coaching:
Participatory learning, coaching and mentoring combined with practical implementation - a "learning by doing" approach - is provided through the guidance of the WOCAN Training and Support Team to support the change agents at the site of their organisations.
Background and Rationale
Gender mainstreaming has emerged as a critical component of efforts to improve the performance of agencies that provide agriculture and natural resource management (NRM) research and extension services. This is because increasing rural women's access to and control over key productive resources, including technologies, information and farmer organizations, is proving essential for progress in countries where women contribute significantly to agriculture and NRM production and marketing. However, successful gender mainstreaming beyond the pilot scale normally requires organizations to change key aspects of their own internal policies and culture (World Bank Gender Action Plan, 2006).
A review of lessons learned from experience highlights a number of challenges that have emerged to mainstreaming:
1) Gender mainstreaming programs in agriculture and NRM organizations have prioritized developing staff members' technical capacity for gender analysis. This technical capability is necessary but not sufficient because failure of agencies to confront the need for change in key aspects of their own internal policies and culture;
2) Gender mainstreaming through organizational change requires a type of leadership and expertise seldom found among scientific or extension professionals, and rarely included in gender training courses;
3) Gender mainstreaming must be inclusive, involving both service providers and their clients/beneficiaries. The absence of accountability mechanisms to women farmers or other key stakeholders (which would provide the impetus for change) is an obstacle;
4) Efforts are fragmented and impact is dissipated when capacities of women leaders are built without a corresponding investment in organizational systems to support them, and when building organizational accountability of leaders to women's groups at the community level is neglected;
5) The external policy environment rarely includes policies that specifically promote gender mainstreaming at institutional/organizational levels.
Women's pivotal role in agricultural and NRM production and marketing in developing countries is still not reflected adequately in national agriculture and NRM development policies, programs and projects because of the marginalized status of gender as a field of expertise within technical institutions, and the limit of its approach to one of integration rather than transformation.
Weaknesses of Past and Existing Efforts
There are several critical weaknesses in past and existing efforts to mainstream gender in the agriculture and NRM development community:
a. Gender mainstreaming efforts have not often conceived of change in organizational roles, procedures, culture and policies as fundamental to their success; this change is seldom achieved when the focus is exclusively on awareness training and raising the visibility of gender issues.
b. On its own, training to develop technical capacity for gender analysis has failed to produce a desirable and predictable behavioral outcome, in terms of clear benefits to women farmers. This is particularly evident in the proliferation of gender tool kits, checklists and training manuals that do not help users to conceive or manage the type of organizational change needed for gender mainstreaming to succeed.
c. Over reliance on tools and methods has obscured the importance of leadership from influential, committed individuals to bring about organizational transformation, when they know how to act strategically within bureaucratic organizations and are linked to influential outsiders.
d. Gender mainstreaming seldom changes inequitable gender relations when sector bureaucracies are not held accountable to their clients, particularly women and the poor.
e. Gender champions are typically excluded from decision-making venues. When gender issues and those charged with gender mainstreaming have marginal status within organizations, many women are reluctant to engage with gender issues. As a result gender mainstreaming is left to individuals with low status and influence and few opportunities for leadership.
Built from Experience and Lessons Learned
WOCAN's approach builds on experience of over 15 years and is based on results of an IFAD/FAO-sponsored project in Nepal linking rural women to professional women to build synergistic partnerships that support the goal of organizational transformation for gender equality, while providing direct skill building and development resources to rural women's groups. An analysis of this project, plus WOCAN's experience in action research and assistance to over 25 agriculture and NRM organizations in South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, convinced WOCAN of the need for a comprehensive approach that includes:
• building skills and commitment of female and male change agents (champions) through training, practice, leadership development and mentoring
• getting the buy-in of senior management to develop their capacity to support women leaders at all levels of their organization
• encouraging innovation, supported with independent gender funds for Action Plans
• creating mechanisms for accountability for gender equality inside organizations and with community members
• developing political alliances and networks inside and outside the organization , conducting advocacy
• and most importantly, linking gender mainstreaming within agriculture and NRM research and extension agencies closely to efforts to address the needs of women farmers.
This approach is unique in the following respects:
1. WOCAN's approach emphasizes the development of champions for organizational change who combine capacity for gender analysis and planning with leadership and technical expertise in agricultural research and extension.
2. WOCAN's approach to leadership capacity development for gender mainstreaming involves a sustained mentoring process that ensures that theory is converted into practice and that trainees can engage in continuous learning with support from more experienced women leaders, drawn from WOCAN's global network.
3. WOCAN trainees are equipped to promote organizational change for gender mainstreaming beyond the boundaries of their own organization because the training equips them with an innovation systems perspective, including participatory facilitation and advocacy skills, that encourage the development of higher levels of accountability in relationships between service providers and their clients, in particular rural women's organizations.
4. WOCAN is a global network, built over many years, with over 700 professional women and men in agriculture and natural resource management (60% of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa and S. Asia) who share a commitment to gender equality. Forming a chain of horizontal and vertical linkages of women experienced in the practice of gender mainstreaming in conditions ranging from community-based to global, international organizations l, the network represents a unique resource of expertise for mentoring the development of leadership for gender mainstreaming.
5. WOCAN's approach is to include senior managers, both men and women, in capacity development so that they can develop roles as change agents and leaders. Particular attention is paid to working with male senior managers to articulate a new role for men who need to be able to support women's leadership and gender equality in ways that are suited to their cultural contexts. WOCAN Asian and African male team members are very effective role models and gender trainers for this purpose.
WOCAN complements existing efforts in the following ways:
1. by combining the focus on women's leadership with over a decade of practical experience of building enabling organizational environments for women leaders, through bringing about changes in the traditional agriculture bureaucracies of African and South Asian countries;
2. by building the leadership of women farmers- as well as professionals - to demand services and accountability through policies, programs and organizations to meet their needs and potential;
3. by linking women professionals within agriculture organizations to the larger networks of women advocates, government officials/ministers), leaders of farmer groups and entrepreneurs, and professionals of related sectors (water, forestry, and other natural resources) to lessen their isolation, build bonds that encourage confidence, understanding and accountability, and amplify their advocacy through collective action to affect decisions related to the ownership and use of key assets of land, water, agricultural inputs, credit, extension and market linkages. WOCAN's network of over 700 members in 83 countries form a rich resource for tapping into both research-based and experiential knowledge for influencing policy and advocacy. As a network led by women who are themselves professionals in these sectors, WOCAN understands the special constraints faced by women farmers and professionals that limit the effectiveness of these organizations to mainstream gender and be accountable to the needs of women farmers.
Learn More About Us
The following 20 minute video describes WOCAN's approach to organizational transformation for gender equality by linking rural women to professional women to build synergistic partnerships for empowerment, food security and poverty alleviation through its project in Nepal.
