Female financial empowerment
Roughly a 4 minute read
In the coffee sector, over 70% of labour is provided by women.
But, compared to men, female farmers have less access to land ownership and the inputs needed for success — such as tools and training. Income from sales of the crop often tends to go to men rather than women and they have limited say in household and business decision making.
We know that developing the role of women can bring broader benefits to farming communities — prioritising the health and education of their children, and strengthening community leadership.
That’s why we’re supporting projects to establish and empower women’s groups in some of the coffee communities we source from.
Delivering gender-conscious training in Peru
In 2015 we embarked on a three-year project with partners Twin Trading, Marks and Spencer, Matthew Algie, and two smallholder cooperatives to increase the resilience of our coffee growing communities in Peru. As part of this, we also tried to bring greater gender equality to these rural communities.
Directly benefitting 1,250 farmers and their families, the project was designed to increase the participation of women in sustainable farming techniques.
A Gender Action Learning System (GALS) was introduced to support the project. GALS is a methodology focused on promoting women’s human rights, building relationships between women and men as equals, and helping to change gender inequalities. It encourages families to reflect on the set up of their households and for couples to create joint visions of how they want their lives and livelihoods to look in the future.
Thanks to the project, 40% of families are now using the tools from their training at home and noticing a positive difference in behaviours, roles and relationships.
As well as helping women to feel more empowered within their households the project has prepared them to take on leadership roles at work and in their communities.
Women’s coffee in Rwanda
In the lush Rwandan hills overlooking Lake Kivu lies a small plot of land called ‘A Beautiful Tomorrow’. It’s farmed, along with its neighbouring plot, by a group of women farmers, who are using the land to develop great quality coffee as well as building relationships, knowledge and support.
The Kopakama coffee cooperative was formed in 1998 and we’ve been buying from them since 2016. In that year we supported the cooperative to help them achieve Rainforest Alliance certification and in 2017 we partnered with Twin Trading on a project to improve the livelihood opportunities and quality of life for female coffee farmers and their families.
The Women’s Committee at Kopakama began as an informal group created in 2008 by over 100 female members; mainly women affected by the Rwandan genocide. They began working together, growing coffee on a demonstration farming plot, which they named Ejo Heza or ‘A Beautiful Tomorrow’. The plot has enabled more women to be members of the cooperative and to directly benefit from coffee farming. Coffee produced in the Ejo Heza field, and from female members’ own trees, is all processed as ‘Women’s Coffee’, with the best quality coffee being sold through Kopakama.
Thanks to the project, female farmers have been trained in good agricultural practices so that they can improve the quality of their crop. They’ve taken part in classes in financial literacy and business basics and received short term loans so they can grow their farming practices as well as diversify their income.
Sewing the seeds of change in Uganda
Simple tools like sewing machines can make a real difference to women’s lives in rural Uganda. They can use them to make and repair their families’ clothes and craft new items to sell at local markets.
Our Sipi Women Economic Empowerment Project (or SWEEP for short) has been set up in partnership with Kawacom, our coffee supplier in Uganda, to provide local female farmers the opportunity to improve their livelihoods by helping them gain access to training in basic financial and business management skills coupled with practical training in tailoring.
Many of the women involved in the project have come from particularly challenging backgrounds – they may have been widowed or divorced, be raising children alone on very little income or due to unplanned or unwanted pregnancies and marriages, had to drop out of formal education at an early age.
As well as being a useful day to day skill, tailoring can not only reduce household costs otherwise spent on buying clothes or school uniforms for children, it can also provide a potential source of additional income which will go directly to the women involved.
In addition to the practical tailoring skills, women taking part in SWEEP have also started receiving financial literacy and entrepreneurship training that aims to help them set up and make use of community saving schemes. These schemes can help give women access to micro-loans – something that traditional financial systems are often unable to provide to rural communities.
Women can then use these small loans to buy their own sewing machine or set up their own local businesses. On top of this, women participating in the programme will also benefit from having a social network they can call on for support which can often increase the impact of formal training.
“With this tailoring project 100% of the money will go the family. If we’re busy sewing clothes we can use the money at home and support our children. When you think about women you think about the whole nation.”
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Last updated 17th January 2020