by Edward Mishaud

07 March 2003

Bonn, Germany: Social anthropologist Lesley Holst is trying to sensitize more than 100,000 farmers in Malawi on gender issues. The UN Volunteer from Denmark is now working as a gender adviser with the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM). The Association represents the voices’ of small farmers and farmers organizations throughout the country. Female farmers, however, are often left out of the decision making process. With 38 per cent of its members female, she says it is important to ensure the women are given the proper platform to voice their concerns and provided with the proper tools to bring about change.

“What we’re trying to do is sensitize the farmers, men and women alike, on gender issues,” says Lesley. “They [men and women] have to understand why it’s important to have gender balance and include women in the decision-making process.”

One concern for many female farmers is that they do not get their fare share of the value of cash crops -- crops that are produced solely to sell. Lesley says female farmers very often lose out given men in most household have control over the finances.

Another area of concern is female representation within the Association. She says despite the significant percentage of female members, they only hold a small percentage of influential positions.

For the past 18 months, one of Lesley’s main responsibilities has been conducting gender training workshops with regional representatives from the Association. The training sessions span over a four-day period covering a number of topics relating to gender issues such as women’s rights and HIV/AIDS.

After the participants are trained they return to their regional or community associations and share what they learned with their members. Hundreds of farmers have received the training with 170 participating in February 2003.

“What we’re doing is training the trainers,” says Lesley. “There’s no point in just training women in gender issues. Without the men it would be pointless, so that’s why our training sessions are normally fifty-fifty, men and women.”

Equally important is that the topics for discussion and exercises were highlighted by the female farmers allowing them to guarantee the issues of importance would be brought out into the open and discussed.

While she says it’s still to early to gauge the impact of the exercises, she has received some feedback from female farmers who are saying they notice a change, especially in attitudes.

“We’re at the early stage with this,” she says. “Ideally, we would like to get where women can be nominated and elected to the committees, but our first step is to start seeing a difference in the households where they can take an active part in decision making and allow their voices to be heard.”