Publications

	Table of Contents
p. 5 of 17 BACK | NEXT Purpose of the checklist Why is gender important in agriculture projects? How to use the checklist Gender analysis framework for agriculture Activity profile Access and control profile Analysis of structural and socialcultural factors Project cycle analysis and design issues Gender analysis for subsectors

Gender Checklist: Agriculture : Gender analysis framework for agriculture

---

Activity profile

The planner needs to know the tasks of men and women in the population subgroups in the project area to be able to direct project activities toward those performing particular tasks. Therefore, data must be gathered on women‘s and men’s involvement in each stage of the agricultural cycle, on their shared as well as unshared tasks, and on the degree of fixity of the gender division of labor. The objective is to ensure that women are actively included in the project and are not disadvantaged by it.

The Activity Profile usually considers all categories of activities: productive, reproductive,¹ community-related service. It identifies how much time is spent on each activity, how often this work is done (e.g., daily or seasonally), which periods are characterized by a high demand for labor, and what extra demands the program inputs will make on women, men, and children.

The Activity Profile also identifies where the activities take place, at home or elsewhere (the village, marketplace, fields, or urban centers), and how far these places are from the household. This information gives insights into female and male mobility, and allows an assessment of the impact of the program on mobility, method of travel, travel time for each activity, and potential ways of saving time.

The four categories of activities considered in the Activity Profile are addressed below:

Productive or economic activities, as distinguished from noneconomic reproductive or human resource maintenance activities. comprise all those tasks that provide economically for the household and the community, e.g., crop and livestock production, handicraft production, marketing, and wage employment. Reproductive and human resource maintenance activities are those carried out to reproduce and care for the household and community, including fuel and water collection, food preparation, child care, education, health care, and home maintenance. These activities generally carry no pecuniary remuneration and are usually excluded from the national income accounts.

Production of Goods and Services

Are women active in both subsistence and cash crop production?

What is the workload of the target group at all stages of the farming process? In what season are the tasks performed? These questions are asked separately for each component of production (seed or cutting selection, land preparation, planting or seeding, weeding, cultivation, storage, preservation, processing or food transformation, market-ing, etc.) for both cash crops and food crops, for livestock production (including poultry, dairying, fisheries, honey pro-duction and processing), and for tree crops.

• Are tasks shared between men, women, and children or carried out by only one gender?
• Are men or women culturally excluded from any tasks that might be affected by the proposed project?
• Do men or women to any extent (note the extent)take over from each other in times of hard-ship and work pressure or because certain activities have become more profitable?
• To what extent do changes in household composition (e.g., due to labor migration) change the gender division of labor? Female-headed households in particular need to be studied in this regard.
• Will the project increase the time spent by women or men on agriculture-related activities?
• Will new technologies be introduced to assist women’s agricultural roles?

Reproductive and Human Resource Maintenance Activities

• Who carries out the tasks of reproducing and caring for household members? Among these tasks are the care of children, care of the aged, food production (including the cultivation of domestic food crops and livestock, shopping, food preparation and cooking), fuel and water collection, education, health care, laundry and cleaning, house maintenance (structural), artisan and craft production, and performance of social obli-gations.
• How much time do these activities take?

Community Work

• Who organizes and carries out work for the local community (for example, care and maintenance of community facilities such as water supply equipment, meeting places, and places of worship)?
• How much time does this work take and when is it done?

Community Organization and Activities

• What types of community organizations (traditional sociocultural organizations, producer groups such as cooperatives, savings and credit groups, community-based organizations organized by nongovernment organizations) exist in the project area?
• What is the membership profile of these community organizations, what are their objectives and strategies, and how much time do their activities require?

Back Gender analysis framework for agriculture	Next Access and control profile