Okay so um hello everybody! I'm Dr. Maria Elisa Christie. I'm Director of Women and
Gender in International Development at CIRED. it's the Center for international
research, education, and development at Virginia Tech. Welcome to our virtual women and gender
in international development discussion series. um we're so happy that you could all join us.
Please uh well as of today as of this morning there were 46 people registered from 11 different
countries, so we'll see how many come in um as we as we move along but uh we're excited to have
people register and take note of Afrina's great work and hopefully more of them will join us as
we move along. So note that our event will be recorded and it will become available
usually takes a couple weeks before we get it into our Virginia Tech VTworks library. So it
will be on our website. So if you don't want uh your image recorded just keep your camera off.
um the full calendar and updates for well next year's discussion series which we don't
have up yet is on our website but it will be up soon. Before introducing our speaker
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So now um just some brief housekeeping notes, so this discussion will last approximately 45 minutes.
Our speaker's presentation will be approximately 25 minutes followed by about 20 minutes of
discussion and Q&A question and answer. All the dial-in participants will be muted to enable the
speaker to present without interruption and you're welcome to post questions in the chat at any time
throughout the conversation, because we keep track of them, we put them in a google doc, and then
I'll be reading from them at the end. So as you think of your questions feel free to put them in
and then if there's more questions after we finish going through those that came in the chat
um we can also ask you to unmute yourself and you can ask the speaker directly or make a comment
on um and give your input also on the topic that is being discussed. So in order for our discussion
to be as rich as it can be we need everyone to be respectful and treat all participants
with kindness and consideration and uh without discriminatory behavior. So again the webinar is
being recorded and you'll have access to it via our website and also we'll send a link uh both
through the chat and then also through email uh for a survey that we really really need you to
fill out because it helps us keep this program going. You can tweet us by tagging us
at wgd_vt which um I will put that in after we get started here but now to introduce our
speaker and first I have to thank Afrina Chaudhuri for joining us so it is now almost midnight in
Bangladesh so um aside from the fact that she's both a Ph.D. student at Wageningen university
in the Netherlands and has got a full-time job at WorldFish in the Netherlands she's
um she's very busy doing field work and studies and now we're keeping her up but
thank you. She's a research fellow and a senior gender specialist at WorldFish Bangladesh.
At WorldFish, she's responsible for the design and implementation of pro-poor, gender-responsive
strategies working in the field of aquatic agriculture. Her research has revolved around the
integration of gender into technical interventions in ways that are sustainable and transformative in
particular. She has been focusing on building the evidence for gender transformative approaches as a
way to break systematic inequalities in enhancing equitable development efforts. She also co-created
and chairs the Bangladesh national gender working group, so we might have some questions on that as
well as a separate topic which currently brings together gender and equity work in Bangladesh
and as I said she's doing her Ph.D. She's doing a sandwich Ph.D. between WorldFish and Wageningen
with a focus on inclusive business and women's entrepreneurship development and agriculture. The
title of her presentation today is experiences in merging gender transformative approaches with
development efforts in aquatic food systems in Bangladesh. So thank you and it's all yours Afrina!
Thank you thank you so much um so today um I will talk about our learning journey in Bangladesh
as we transition to using uh gender transformative approaches. I'm Afrina
Choudhury uh and I thank you all for being here today um Lumbini could just share the slides? thanks.
so um as this as the slide is uploaded I'll just continue um so could you go to
the next slide, please? Thank you so before um we started with gender-transformative approaches
uh we were looking for ways to enhance women's participation in aquaculture through technologies
as a way to fill the gap in women's access and benefits from aquaculture. The idea was
that through women's enhanced participation we can alleviate poverty, improve nutrition and
consumption and even empower women. Back then we did not have a strict definition for empowerment
it's nuanced to multi-dimensional aspects were not clearly understood and we mainly attained up
empowerment at the access and welfare levels for women. So we targeted women at the homestead area
around the homestead pond because that was a convenient area for women's involvement
because it's close to home it caters to their mobility constraints and their time and labor
burdens. Furthermore, the homestead pond is an underutilized resource whose productivity
can diversify food and income options provide nutritional food and thereby build resilience.
Next slide, please. As are different projects targeted women at the household level what
technical training trainings and demonstrations we conducted both diagnostic and impact studies
and these studies pointed towards a need from for changing our approach from an
accommodative one to a transformative one. These studies are listed over here
in this slide, most of these studies look at the implications of gender relations and dimensions
on aquaculture technologies and innovations um Gennovate which I have put in two more
publications from Gennovate it was a multi-country CGIAR qualitative study on norms
which produced multiple papers that emphasized the need to tackle norms.
Next slide, please. These studies findings showed that our gap killing approaches
can actually reinforce inequity by not changing women's status and position and
accommodating to existing norms that already constrain them because without social change
sustainability of impact will also be limited. We try to involve our target women but women
do not women who use these technologies do not exist in a vacuum without influence from
other actors and institutions power relations and especially gender power relations at every level
affect the extent to which women can actually use and benefit from these innovations. So we realized
that while we were reaching women and benefiting them to a certain extent we were not empowering
them in all domains nor were we transforming norms or addressing the root causes next slide, please.
So uh so we moved so if you look at this continuum here sorry previous slide previous slide, please
uh the continuum generated yeah thank you. So um the continuum of this continuum provides
a spectrum to understand and design gender approaches uh from exploitative
to accommodative to transformative for practitioners and researchers alike
the ultimate goal is equality and better development outcomes. The pathway for that
is to be gender aware and for the very and at the very least to be gender accommodative uh gender
blind approaches ignore the different rights, responsibility, roles, risks, etc associated with
being a man or woman including the power dynamics between them. Gender aware approaches examine and
address these considerations however, in doing so may exploit
the differences in stereotypes and hence it's called exploitative approach.
The competitive approach understands norms and works with them works with and around them to
enable women's participation and benefits. This may reinforce any inequalities by leaving women
within their gendered niche and may not address the systemic and structural inequalities that
create and perpetuate inequalities. This is where gender transformative approaches are important as
drawing on feminist theories and ideologies they work to address systemic and structural challenges
by fostering critical reflection and dialogue on harmful norms gender roles and power dynamics
while promoting equitable norms. uh gender transformative approaches differ from the
current undertakings of empowerment in that gender transformative approaches focus also on
the relational and structural angles of inequality along with women's agency. Next slide, please.
So I'm going to share with you an example today of how we incorporated gender-transformative
approaches within a fish harvesting technology in Bangladesh. Next slide please. So this fish
harvesting technology was introduced in the aquaculture for income and nutrition project
which was a USAID funded project in southwest Bangladesh. So we designed a fish harvesting
technology with women's needs in mind. This new net would help women catch nutrient-rich mola fish
the frequent consumption of which we encouraged and created a demand for
without much time or physical exertion and without the need to get in the water and get wet. This
technology was pilot tested with 155 women, however the technology solution did not solve the social
stigma associated with women catching fish which is considered a man's job. So we combine gender
transformative approaches within the technology dissemination process. We worked at the household
level with 86 households at the community level with 251 households to spark critical reflection
and dialogue around the nomadic barriers that hinder women's ability to use and benefit from
this technology. Next slide, please. So these are the rest research questions that I had for the study
our paper called walking the line balancing general accommodative and gender transformative
approaches tales from mixed methods assessment of women's empowerment aquaculture in Bangladesh
is planned for this year and it's going to be coming out this year we're almost finished with
that paper. Next slide, please. So we followed a mixed-methods approach with the control who
did not have gill net and two types of treatment which was GTA plus gill net and only gill net. We
also did attitude surveys with community members um one year after the project we did a qualitative
assessment uh most and least empowered women and men across the three groups. Next slide, please.
We mainly used two tools to intervene at these multiple levels of the individual household and
community uh nurturing connections which is shown here which is a manual developed
by Helen Keller international and then the second manual shown here which is a manual
developed by promundo and WorldFish on engaging men and boys, so we use mainly these two manuals
the theory of change behind nurturing connections is that gender transformative change can be
achieved by learning through questioning and critical reflection on gender norms to develop
new attitudes and skills. The theory of change for the second manual shortening shown here
is that behavior change is a process that requires internalizing of new concepts by men and women
and that adults learn best through action and experience next slide please so in doing so we
also tackle the four dimensions of power around agency resources and structure uh this whole GTA
plus technology process helped women gain power over the mola harvest. The power to act on the
training knowledge and utilize the technology the power within which is the belief in oneself
and one's abilities and the power with to attain support and cooperation from family and community.
Next slide please. So this shows our research design. We conducted a preliminary qualitative
assessment to understand the social barriers that may arise as a result of introducing this net
uh then we did a quantitative baseline before the technology plus GTA was introduced
and an end line after the end of the process then we did another qualitative year under after the
project was over. The reason was because we found unanticipated changes uh with the qualitative
that helped explain some of the puzzling results from the quantitative results like for example
from the quant it seemed men were taking over the net whereas there was actually more collaboration,
men were actually helping women more also some of the exercises seem to have a lasting impact
on men and women participants. Some of the lessons from the gender transformative approach spilled
beyond just the net. Men were more positive about women's involvement in aquaculture in general.
Now in this slide I'm going to talk about our evaluation tools uh we used mixed
methods longitudinal designs we adapted the women's empowerment and agricultural index
which was developed by IFR and our customized women's empowerment and fisheries index
empowerment surveys. We also looked at self-efficacy power within using
psychometric measures. Gender attitude surveys were conducted at the household and community level
and for the qualitative we adapt it from the generate tools. Next slide please.
So our emerging some of our results show some positive results from the gender
transformative approach usage so GTA softened the backlash from women around technology uptake
and new roles for women because the net created a new role for women. It promoted
collaboration by bringing men on board at the family and community level. There were changes
in self-efficacy amongst women, there was also enhanced consumption of mola by our target group
and there was overall changes in attitudes of men which was really encouraging. Next slide please.
So GTA actually helped in technology diffusion by building acceptance towards women's new role.
We saw we see a value in a combination of a technology plus gender transformative approach.
Gender transformative approaches also help tackle different dimensions of empowerment at the
individual hustle and community level the tools are beneficial in tackling those different levels
and addressing power relations by involving those in power for example, mother-in-laws and husbands
involving the community and nutrition education also built wider acceptance.
Next slide please. um so we want to reinforce the importance of being cautious around how we measure
impact of gender transformative approach and make conclusions the quant side may not always tell
the whole story we were actually able to unpack our quantitative findings with the qualitative.
This points towards the importance of mixed methods to impact the nuance
of what is happening at different levels. We also conducted the qualitative study one year after the
quant and this helped understand the impact over time. It is important to understand intricacies
of implant implementing gender transformative approaches and the importance of measuring the
impact over time using mixed methods approaches and actually the value of giving sufficient
time for the effects to be visible that's because social change does take time to unfold.
Next slide please. Now I'm going to talk about how we are trying to connect gender-transformative
approaches to women's entrepreneurship efforts and this is also a part of my PhD.
Next slide please. Before I begin I want to give a little background
about entrepreneurship. There are various contesting definitions of entrepreneurship
and women's or female entrepreneurship especially coming from the fields of business management
and economics. For this presentation I've chosen a simple definition of women's entrepreneurship
which is that can be defined as women or group of women who initiate or innovate operate
organize or adopt a business enterprise. Rural women's entrepreneurship emerges in rural areas.
Early women's entrepreneurship literature focused on women's shortcomings and compared
women's performance to that event. This was because from the economic growth perspective
entrepreneurship was important and therefore the growth and performance of women's businesses had
to be studied with the results that women's businesses were found to be underperforming
with little or no growth and this was attributed to women's individual traits
contrary to the beliefs and hypotheses. Then the results showed very few differences between men
and women if you look at studies by de roots and Henriksen and Watson, but the authors
try to explain it away based on individual characteristics rather than structural factors.
The very few studies that did look at structural factors like bank loans did not find
discrimination to be a factor but that woman's lack of collateral led them to have difficulties
in getting roles. Women's entrepreneurship participation and performance still lags that
of behind of men and that has been the focus of a lot of literature. Women also face constraints to
participation and performance with personality factors motivations and resource constraints
being noted as key factors and being analyzed in comparison to them. Recently there have been shifts
towards understanding constraints in terms of the social climate in which women operate
indicating a movement from the individual to the social perspective. Next slide, please.
So women's ag entrepreneurship it's quite different from non-agricultural entrepreneurship
and though it is it is thought to be a part of rural entrepreneurship. It can be linked to urban
entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. So most ag entrepreneurship has been studied
and developed developed countries very few and developing um in ag discourse women farmers are
increasingly being termed um are increasingly being termed as women entrepreneurs. Women and
women in agricultural entrepreneurship face unique challenges due to climate
change, scarcity of resources, infrastructural challenges, access and control of site resources,
mobility, and family burdens, and enactment of existing policies
that may not favor non-stereotype rules and businesses for women in practice. The predominant
focus in entrepreneurship is on economic growth most women ag entrepreneurs have been pushed
into entrepreneurship because of poverty and it's part of their livelihood diversification strategy.
However the profit the this poverty-driven women's entrepreneurship in ag is seen as
problematic to economic growth. This type of entrepreneurship is not seen as true profit-driven
um in economics that are dependent on agriculture lack of such true entrepreneurial ventures
may not encourage innovation innovative youth and women to start profitable businesses in the sector
which has implications for food security and growth. uh women's uh entrepreneurial participation
and constraints have been popular study areas in women's ag entrepreneurship but women's roles in
business are still in invisible and unrecognized. Women also face resource access constraints um
and women's ag entrepreneurship literature and developing nations have focused on training and
business capacity development a woman which is a repetitive policy strategy which is important
but it has not really brought change for women without addressing the structural and general
relational constraints which are an emerging topic and means ag entrepreneurship. Next slide please.
um I want so for my PhD I wanted to merge gender within the field of innovations and
the social-technical transitions framework all the multi-level perspectives. So the MLP
is a theoretical framework that predicates the transitions come come about through interactive
processes within and among three analytical levels which are the niche social technical regimes and
social technical landscapes. This framework has been widely used in innovations research
but gender has not been explicitly applied to understand how the social works with the technical
to bring about transitions and furthermore the role women entrepreneurs play in this.
So I want to understand how and what and what how and to what extent can experiences and success
drivers for women entrepreneurs be connected to business-related interventions especially
overcome landscape and regime level constraints and advanced gender transformative change.
I also bought in brought in Gomez and Wolsenberg's theory about institutional ripple
effects which they explained as unintended or spontaneous dissemination of change
of rules in one institutional field upon rule than another institutional field
with consequences that can be either positive or negative because they are not susceptible to
control planning. I think this theory also adds value to understanding how and when
gender transformative changes can occur as women manufacture within the larger social technical
regime. So in this multi-dimensional framework social norms and institutions encompass all
levels was entrepreneurial niche happens at the individual or household level where she innovates
for whatever reason be it push or pull factors. She works within the social-technical regime
within which she maneuvers and may even shape. Next slide, please. So my study is titled
revisiting women's entrepreneurship from a gender transformative perspective understanding positive
deviance in the aquaculture and fisheries sector in Bangladesh, and my larger research
questions are in what ways do the literature and documentation around women's entrepreneurship and
inclusive business models and food systems of low income income economies represent and connect to
aspects of gender transformative change and social institutional barriers and opportunities for women.
And my second quite large question is how and to what extent can the experiences and success
drivers for women entrepreneurs be connected to business related interventions especially
overcome landscape and regime level constraints and advanced gender transformative change.
Next slide. So I am studying some of the entrepreneurial efforts made by the
project called increasing income diversifying diets and empowering women in balance and Nigeria
project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In this project they're
exploring different models to build women's entrepreneurship and agriculture aquaculture.
These include a couple's business development model business accelerator program to empower
women with small businesses with partner named Lightcastle, building women as local service
providers, a group based women's agriculture business by landless women on government ponds,
and the usage of government's extension network of local extension agents for fisheries.
The the project has also worked at the community level to build acceptance of women
as fish entrepreneurs to bring about normative change through forum theater and video shows.
Next slide please. uh one exam one study one example of a study of a business model
I'm studying is provided here the aim is to help build a gender transformative approach in women's
entrepreneurial business models these are the key elements of the business development model.
Sorry next slide please.
so these are the key elements of the business development model these include training knowledge,
the couple format, engaging them as local service providers, training the community, the business plan,
making a business plan, making a bank account, TIN and trade license aunderwomen's names. Next
slide please. uh this business this business model also has certain gender-transformative elements
uh these include engaging men and women as couples emerging social consciousness-raising
within the business development training uh for example around women's work burden
changing men's attitudes towards women's capacity and roles through theater and videos and changing
men's behavior through creation of trade licenses and and and TINs underwomen's names.
So um this is uh this is how we're I'm trying to bring in gender-transformative approaches um
uh research into the field of entrepreneurship. I'm still in the process of exploring all this
but I just wanted to share a bit of the research that I'm doing around it that's all for today.
Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to me. If you have any questions please go ahead.
Thank you so much Afrina. um well since I didn't see another another question I went
ahead and put in one of my big questions that I have um often in this work, especially as gender
transformative approaches have become um more common in discussion and among
gender the people who work and gender in development um so and I took part of this
from the title of your of your upcoming paper but how do you balance the gender accommodative
and gender transformative approaches and then especially how does a community how does the
community and especially men respond differently to these different approaches to women's
empowerment and I guess accommodative is not women's empowerment. Actually it's just accommodating.
to social norms yeah um so so when we work with uh gender we found that we can't actually skip a step
and go into gender transformative approach without actually doing some gender accommodative
approaches because it's um in a country especially like Bangladesh social norms are very important so
we actually work with the norms and we actually do design gender accommodative approaches but then
we try to build gender transformative approaches within that. So it's it's actually um
one with the other and we don't actually skip that step but it is important to go to that
next step beyond just reach benefit empower and then and then transform so um so so that that
is the next step that we're trying to go towards but we don't want to do away with accommodative
approaches and um for us for men we found that when we when we did other other organizations like
when Helen Keller international did uh gender a general transformative approach without any
technology incentive men did not respond well to that but the technology incentive actually
helped build better acceptance of actually coming to these video shows or foreign theater
or coming to these gender transformative social consciousness raising exercise meetings because
you know they knew that there was a technology incentive so so that worked well for um helping
come bring men on board as well. So there was also always that incentive of the net or the technology
for the training that really helped. So you're actually starting to get into but I'd like to be
sure to state I don't know if you're seeing Sarah Harper's question. I'm curious in these projects
how men are drawn in initially so um I don't know if you saw that and that's what you were
talking about but that's and then and what is the selling point for them to engage? I imagine this is
voluntary so how to get them through the door in the first place? Speak a little bit more to that.
So um so so in the beginning it's always important um when because a lot of these
technologies that we are designing a lot of them we're doing gender transformative approaches with
are these technologies are designed for women um initially or um because it's a it's it's
because we want to build a woman's acceptance acceptance of women towards in working in these
technologies. So when we do that um it's important to bring men on board from the very beginning by
um you know by consulting with them by bringing them in you know working on hopes and fears um to
understand you know you know what we're trying to do with the with the woman but and then you know
building that trust in the very beginning and that rapport in the very beginning really helps
to later later get these men to come to some of the sessions or come to try to understand what's
going on with the women what we're trying to do and then and then in the process also get involved
in the gender transformative social consciousness raising exercises that we do, so that and and
they they take it as part of the technology dissemination process because it's not separated
it's it's so when we're doing a technology training we also have a session on
on these kind of um normative issues then then they don't see it as something separate they don't
see it as a gender training because if you say gender there's always some opposition to that. So
so that works well for us to actually merge it in. Great! thank you um so I have a question
something that I've been working on for a while and actually is in is with a research project
in Bangladesh um also working in the what I call the house lot garden but I'm curious because
you mentioned psychosocial measures or something I mean how do you deal with qual how do you measure
specifically the qualitative indicators of empowerment like confidence and self-esteem
and what is the attitude within development? so since you're both in academia and in WorldFish
in a CGIAR center, what is the attitude in this real econometrics world where numbers
are what people want to count and you know economic impact through numbers, what is um
what is attitude towards the legitimacy of these? but also like how did you measure things like
self-confidence and self-esteem? Yeah we used uh we used psychometric measures to uh measure
it like um um I forgot which psychometric measure we used but I have it somewhere
um let's follow up with you um to learn more yeah so we did uh we did use them and we did use
attitude surveys like the gem skill and different skills um and but we didn't we didn't use economic
economic measures to actually assess the results um we just did a simple analysis
difference in difference analysis of the changes from going after but we didn't go into all those
um different um we didn't do economic econometric measures of these uh indicators that we used.
So did you find that um both in your where you're in your foot in academia and in you
know the practice practitioner world that those measures are accepted as a measure of empowerment
and impact? Yeah so um especially for because if you if you look at um because the self-efficacy
and um attitudes have been it initially wasn't included in the women's empowerment agriculture
index that was designed by IFPRI but later on they did include attitude survey uh you know looking at
different attitudes and looking at self-efficacy they did add it into the uh later on and um
and they they do do it differently because they're they're looking at it like looking at it as an
index but when I did my analysis uh of the of the I did use components of the Wii and the Wefi
but I didn't look it as it as look at it as an index I looked at separate indicators
separately look at how how they improved so I looked at it more from an M&E side looking at
different indicators and how they've improved using difference and difference analysis.
So i'm gonna put in I don't have enough there's not another question I'm gonna put in one more
question and then I'm gonna ask people to maybe raise their hand maybe they'll feel
more comfortable raising their hand but I'm gonna put it in so you can see it so um since you are in
the Bangladesh national working group I wonder what the priorities are and who are the chief
allies? So um in the Bangladesh national gender working group um it's mainly a sharing network so
we basically share research, our experiences uh our frustrations our um
uh you know experiences what we've been doing. So usually we have a team, it's based on a theme every
uh we have a meeting every two months and it's usually thematic um so so last last month we had
it on child marriage so um suddenly everyone comes and shares what they've been doing on
child marriage or what issues they've faced and challenges they face or tools they've developed.
So it's very basically a knowledge-sharing network, a lot of the members all the members that we have
all the allies that we have in this group are all gender specialists in different organizations. Some
some of them are not gender specialists some of them are um are people that their organizations
send to represent their organization but they are interested in gender as well
um but most of us are gender specialists and um and a lot of a lot a lot of the members do
want us to go into advocacy uh but for now we're just a knowledge sharing uh a learning platform.
Thank you appreciate that um so we have some people on here still who had nobody's um no
additional questions but if anybody would like to raise their hand you have the little
I think the little reactions thing down here let's see how do you raise your hand this looks like a
clap that's not it there's a thumbs up um emojis anyway you can uh put any emoji and I will assume
that it means that you're raising your hand. There it is there now I found it there's raise your hand.
Does anybody have a question for Afrina before we let her go to sleep?
okay I'm gonna give just a few seconds for the shy people
okay well then I want to thank everybody for attending and of course, I want to thank
you Afrina for your wonderful presentation for sharing uh what you're doing both in your work
and your research which you're able to merge which is wonderful. I look forward to seeing that article
we have shared a survey on the chat just before my thing and especially since we have not so
many people really would be helpful if you would click on that but we will send it to you also if
you don't do it now, take you just two minutes. This was our last event for the academic year
um which was all on zoom. We do have some excellent speakers lined up for the fall already and uh
talking about a diverse range of issues including gender in academia, climate change research, and
other contemporary issues related to gender and international development and in the survey I
think we have a place for you to recommend topics if you're if you would like to do that and you can
always do that anyway regardless of whether we asked in the survey. um so check our website for
information and have a wonderful day and I hope that you can join us again in the future.
Thank you so much! Good night! thank you!
Bye everyone! Jess is clapping, Okay yes we have some clapping, virtual clapping.