Republic of Mozambique WFP – World Food Programme Maputo, Mozambique Gender Assessment of the Purchase for Progress (P4P) Programme RFP # WFP/MOZ/ADM/PROC/028/2011 Final Report July2012 In assoc iation with: 1 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 5 1. CONTEXT .................................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Purchase for Progress (P4) ................................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Gender and Agriculture Sector in Mozambique ................................................................................... 7 2. METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Objective ............................................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 Territorial Coverage............................................................................................................................. 9 2.3 Sellected Groups ............................................................................................................................... 11 2.4 Information Collection Methodology ................................................................................................ 15 2.5 Limitations ........................................................................................................................................ 17 3. THE PARTICIPATION OF AND BENEFITS FOR FEMALE FARMERS WITHIN THE P4P PROGRAM .................... 18 3.1 The Participation of Female Farmers in the P4P Program .................................................................. 18 3.2 Women benefits in the FOs ............................................................................................................... 20 4. GENDER RELATIONS AND PRODUCTION IN P4P GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS AND ACTIVITIES .......................... 23 4.1 P4P commodities value chain components........................................................................................ 24 4.2 Entry Points ....................................................................................................................................... 25 4.2.1 Farming ............................................................................................................................................... 25 4.2.2 Trade .................................................................................................................................................. 30 4.2.3 Manufacturing .................................................................................................................................... 32 5. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR INCREASED WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN THE P4P PROGRAM. LINKAGES WITH THE P4P GENDER STRATEGY ............................................................................... 34 6. ACTION PLAN ............................................................................................................................................ 38 6.1 General and Strategic Objectives ....................................................................................................... 38 6.2 Proposed Indicators .......................................................................................................................... 43 ANNEXES ........................................................................................................................................................ 44 Annex 1. Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 45 Annex 2. Field Work Plan........................................................................................................................... 48 Annex 3. Questionnaires ........................................................................................................................... 51 Annex 3.1 Questionnaire 1: Leadership ........................................................................................................ 52 Annex 3.2 Questionnaire 2: Traders ............................................................................................................. 55 Annex 3.3 Questionnaire3: Partners & other organizations ......................................................................... 60 Annex 3.4 Discussion Groups: ....................................................................................................................... 63 Annex 5. Interviews List ............................................................................................................................ 65 Annex 5. Gender Assessment Summary of findings and potential for action ............................................. 68 Annex 6. Logical Framework Matrix .......................................................................................................... 76 Purchase for Progress (P4P) Gender Audit Final Report| 4 INTRODUCTION The World Food Program (WFP) initiated a revolutionary purchase program that expanded its focus from large suppliers to small producers of food items. By its characteristics, the pilot program had the strong potential of promoting small scale production by guaranteeing access to faire markets through better prices, provision of basic trading means such as packing bags, trade information, collaborative management, and transportation. In some cases farmers associations were also provided with warehouses and equipment such as threshing machineries. One of the limitations of the project was, however, the difficulty of meeting the initial gender related objective where 1: Smallholder groups benefiting under the project should have at least 50 per cent female Membership, and; Half of the smallholder groups with developed capacity to participate in competitive tender processes with WFP should be female-led. In order to overcome this difficulty the 2011 P4P Global Gender Strategy aimed at increasing women smallholder farmers, (unpaid) family workers and/or wage labourers’ well-being, by promoting and facilitating opportunities for their access to agricultural markets, in an economically and socially sustainable way. Focusing on both gender aware and gender transformative approaches the Strategy considered the four general objectives of: a. Increasing the understanding of the importance of gender relations based on equity, within beneficiaries’ households, Farmer Organisations (FOs) and supply side partners. This objective should addresse one of the main structural problems identified across countries/world regions where P4P works: the widespread acceptance of women’s unequal position at community and household level and their accepted social and cultural subjugation. This widespread acceptance ‘naturalises’ women’s non-participation and seriously hampers WFP’s efforts to increase women’s participation in P4P. b. Increasing and creating opportunities for women to participate in groups and decision making. Group participation could provide women with more opportunities to access resources and services. Groups, particularly women-only groups of producers/ traders, would facilitate the creation of economies of scale and can more efficiently tackle these women’s disadvantaged position in relation to male producers/ traders. c. Facilitating and increasing the ability of rural women to access, control and manage resources and agricultural services. This objective responded to one of the major hindrances to women’s full empowerment: women’s lack of ownership of and control over resources. Access, particularly to agricultural inputs, affects both women and men but it is much more pronounced in the case of women. Ownership of, and control over, resources in the overwhelming majority of cases is an exclusive prerogative of men. d. Diversifying opportunities for women in income-generating agro-activities. This objective responds to what women in the ALINe/ WFP’s research raised as one of their major needs: the need to diversify their livelihood strategies. Women, perhaps because they tend to be more risk-averse, showed greater concern with their household’s possible reliance on just one economic activity. Whilst women did support their husbands in the production of 1 Please see: WFP’s grant proposal to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ‘Purchase for Progress. Innovations to Connect African Low-Income Farmers to Markets’, submitted in 2008. Purchase for Progress (P4P) Gender Audit Final Report| 5 particular cash crops, their ambition was to diversify their agricultural production and access better markets for the crops/ food products whose production they are responsible for. Women equate the diversification of household livelihoods to their family’s greater resilience to market price fluctuations and shocks. The present report aims at identifying how gender issues are being addressed at all levels of the P4P interventions in Mozambique, the existing challenges and ways to enhance the potential contribution of the program to promote gender equity and equality targeting both the practical and strategic needs of women and men. The report has the following structure: The context of the intervention