Transporting processed coffee to storage in the Kiambu growing region of Kenya. Photo courtesy of Caesar Tu.
A just-released study by Fairtrade examines the ways in which women have benefited from certification. Conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research, the study analyzed the outcomes of the Fairtrade Gender Strategy 2016-2020, which was undertaken with the intention of revisiting Fairtrade’s direction on work specifically related to gender.
The study centers around the results of Fairtrade’s work with six coffee cooperatives in Kenya, Guatemala, and Indonesia and assesses the organization’s gender strategy with regard to access and inclusion; empowerment and equity; and gender-transformative change.
Of the six cooperatives that participated in the study, women’s membership ranges from 12-40%. The study suggests that Fairtrade-certified co-ops perform better than non-certified organizations in terms of recruitment for and representation of women in leadership roles. In addition, in contexts where women form internal committees, outcomes are even more positive.
The study observes that work remains to be done, as the overall number of women in leadership positions is still low (across all six co-ops). Barriers to equity include lack of land ownership (and access to capital, in general); lack of technical knowledge and access to training and services; and disproportionate responsibility for childcare (due to cultural norms regarding gender), which results in less time for participation in co-op affairs.
While the study concludes that wide-scale change was not achieved during the five-year period, it cites best practices in every evaluative category to build on the positive outcomes that have been documented. These include an overarching recommendation to offer guidance to producer organizations for crafting approaches to gender policy and the suggestion that producer networks extrapolate from and scale programs that have already demonstrated to be successful.