Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain. Creating an enabling environment for women to be successful in the private sector – including in their roles along the agricultural value chain – is essential to sustainable development in Afghanistan. The ability to design and implement social science research, such as gender- responsive value chain mapping, will enable universities and MAIL researchers to better target research and extension efforts to audiences in each community, based on current gender roles. Throughout Q1 of PY3, GRAIN continued implementation of the Central Region Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain Study, initiated in PY2 as a collaborative research program between GRAIN, MAIL, and the KU Faculty of Agriculture. This activity aims to: • Map gender roles along the full wheat value chain in Central Afghanistan, including identification of actors, links between actors, and each actor’s control in decision making. • Identify constraints and opportunities for women to participate in the value chain as well as an analysis of differences in power (positions) in value chain governance. • Identify barriers to technology adaptation and improved practices that may exist and how these barriers differ and are compounded by gender-specific factors. The collaborative study is also intended as a capacity-building opportunity, with GRAIN social scientists working alongside ARIA researchers and university faculty members in designing the study, and training 37 university students (20 women) in note-taking, data collection, and basic descriptive data analysis. The study commenced in PY2, with three data collection activities taking the form of Gender Mapping Focus Groups conducted by the KU students. These were completed last program year, with GRAIN teams gathering Focus Group Discussions (FGD) data for the purpose of report compilation and analyzing information collected from 120 male and female respondents (12 groups of ten participants), from four wheat-producing districts of Kabul province: Surobi, Bagrami, Charasiab, and Dehsabz. During this reporting period, RSI technical teams worked jointly with four KU professors to analyze data output from eight FGD’s, while RSI analyzed the remaining four. There were regular meetings this quarter between the GRAIN/RSI team and KU Research Team to coordinate the gender mapping activity to ensure data analysis methodology alignment and procedural consistency. GRAIN will support KU in the publishing and disseminating results, through international peer-...
Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain. The contributions of women in agriculture are often invisible or otherwise poorly recognized, especially in settings such as that of rural Afghanistan, where women’s work is largely home- based. This Kabul Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain Study, a mixed-methods study, is intended to map gender roles in the wheat value chain through key informant interviews and focus groups with respondents from small and medium-size wheat farms in four key wheat producing districts of Kabul Province, Afghanistan. Constant comparative analysis was used to draw results from qualitative data. The field research was completed in PY2 through 12 focus groups, eight with women and four with men, nine to ten participants each (totaling 117 participants). In order to review and validate the results of the study field research conducted in PY2, a validation workshop was convened on 05 February in Kabul. The workshop brought together 22 individuals (five women), including Kabul university professors, district agriculture extension officers, and focus group discussion facilitators. The participants, all key contributors to the study, reviewed the analyzed results of the study (theme derived from qualitative data analysis), validated the results, and discussed recommendations to include in the report drawing from the results. Formal study results, now validated by the research team and participants, will be developed into a full written report by the end of Q3. Results indicate that both men and women view women’s roles as integral to adding value to wheat at various stages, including storage, washing and seed selection, cultivation, and harvest. Still, women are often overlooked by research and extension programming. Recommendations for practitioners and policymakers are further presented in the full paper. The participation of women proportional to that of men in the wheat value chain is shown in Figure 1, resulting from the first phase of stakeholder meetings on the wheat value chain in Kabul.
Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain. GRAIN finalized a scope of work with the project’s M&E partner Rahman Safi International Consulting (RSI), to facilitate the Central Region Gender Mapping in the Wheat Value Chain Study, which commenced this quarter and will continue into the Q4. This activity aims to identify roles and power-dynamics in wheat production, processing, marketing, and consumption among men and women, to better target future research and outreach activities. Through a mixed method, exploratory approach, this study aims to map gender roles along the full wheat value chain in Central Afghanistan and to identify constraints and opportunities for women to participate in the value chain. Importantly, this study is being implemented as a capacity building activity by GRAIN, for researchers and students from KU’s Faculty of Agriculture. As such, GRAIN is providing training to faculty members and students, to prepare them to actively participate in study design, focus group facilitation, data collection, and qualitative data analysis. Roles and responsibilities of each party were developed early in the quarter, with the study implemented in three stages: literature review, workshop, and focus groups/interview sessions. The workshop was completed in the quarter. Fundamental to the study, an initial workshop was held 18 June, where 26 attendees (12 women; 14 men) from DAIL/MAIL and partner organizations (including NGOs, private sector providers, DAIL District extension representatives and vocational educational institutions) participated. The goal was to provide an updated gender map of the wheat value chain, with the output being utilized to inform primary research in the areas identified as those filled by women, as well as areas offering potential to be filled by women. For the workshop session, the facilitator divided participants into three main groups. Each group mapped women’s roles on flip charts, then presented findings to the broader group. Observations were exchanged, along with Q&A related discussions during the various presentations. The second phase of the study planned for Q4, involves implementation of more formal dialogue and focus groups in the field.
