Empowering Coffee Women

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Women are perhaps the greatest untapped resource available to avert challenges to the global coffee industry.

By Kelly Stein

Fear of a pending coffee shortage is leading important players in coffee to review and, in many instances, change long-standing policies and strategies. But efforts to address environmental, social, and economic issues are often made without consideration of a key element: gender equity.

Sergio Parreiras Pereira with the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) says, “There is a huge gap to be developed with women in rural and urban segments. It is important to look carefully their role from seed to sip.”

Working directly with family farm training programs and scientific research on a daily basis, Pereira noticed how empowered women change their surroundings. It is for this reason, he says, that he became a big supporter of the work of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance in Brazil.

According to the report, Rural Women and the Millennium Development Goal, women in agriculture, more often than men, work unpaid: “When they do work for wages, rural women are more likely to be employed in part-time, seasonal, and/or low-paying work. Men’s average wages are higher than women’s in both rural and urban areas.”

It remains common to hear of husbands that will not allow their wives to work, or worse, to prohibit working women from having a say in spending the money they earn. The macho tradition that prevails in most of South and Central America significantly hampers the important role women can play. There is also a lack of basic working conditions, fewer legal rights, limited training, and high levels of domestic violence. All endanger the family farming concept, affecting the coffee production.

“Rural women play a key role in supporting their households and communities in achieving food and nutrition security, generating income, and improving rural livelihoods and overall well-being. […] Yet, every day, around the world, rural women and girls face persistent structural constraints that prevent them from fully enjoying their human rights,” according to the United Nations Women Watch Program.

The United Nations Women Watch Program fact sheet is was produced by the Inter-Agency TaskForce on Rural Women, which is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), IFAD andWFP. Member organizations include ITC-ILO, SPFII, UNCTAD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNIDO, UN Women, and the WorldHealth Organization (WHO). In addition, a substantial contribution was made by UNAIDS.

The United Nations estimates 25 million smallholder farms, mainly operated by families, produce 80% of the world’s coffee.

In many instances half of that potential is underdeveloped.

In Matas de Minas (Brazil) where the National Rural Apprenticeship Service (SENAR) started a coffee quality program three years ago, coffee quality improved gradually after wives began attending training sections with their husbands. “While organizing them in smaller groups, I noticed a big quantity of women interested in getting some education,” said SENAR regional manager Silvana Novais.

According to Novais, these rural family workshops completely changed women’s lives. They now know their product and how to negotiate with confidence. Their coffees quality is awarded top scores by both the Cup of Excellence and Illy Café.

Rural restraints

The lack of services and infrastructure in some countries can severely limit women’s involvement in employment opportunities. In some regions of Africa women spend lots of energy on household tasks such as child care, and obtaining water and food.

In South and Central America, obstacles are no less formidable. In Cauca, Colombia, women face the threat of domestic violence. “We are gradually overcoming this problem with professional help. After meetings, some husbands are willing to change,” said Elizabeth Trujillo, manager of the Women Coffee Association in Cauca (AMUCC).

This is not exclusive to Colombia. According to Novais, the problem exists in many places, but not officially. Family counselors attend technical workshops “as a practical way to work out sensitive issues with the whole family,” said Novais.

Movements to recognize what women can accomplish are blossoming in many parts of the world. Organizations such as International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA), Café Feminino Foundation and Women of Coffee Microfinance Fund are all helping women on family farms in many rural areas.

In Costa Rica, the Women Care Certificate was developed to assure consumers that coffee is produced by women and that profits from sales wind up in their hands. Methods and focus differ, but they are united by one goal: to promote gender equity. The AMUCC helps women to run a family business. Of special concern are those suddenly left in charge of a business and household due to their husband’s absence.

In the six years since it was founded the group has grown to 190 members with a production of 450,000 kilos (7,500 bags) per year. Their story caught the attention of Groundwork Coffee, a roaster in Venice, Calif. Roasters there bought their first prize coffee, grown by Maria Cristina Potosi, a self-described ‘enterprising woman’ with 35 years experience produced a unique micro lot. “The half container (150 bags) I bought in 2016 from Maria sold quickly in our units,” said Jeff Chean, Groundwork’s chief coffee guy.

Auctions and competitions have showcased coffee produced by smallholders for a decade or more, but the reality is far from the ideal. Different paths are considered and the Coffee Quality Institute suggested eight recommendations to accelerate gender equity in coffee value chains. It is a practical guide to inspire people to be powerful change agents.

1. Increase women’s participation in training programs and revise training programs to be gender sensitive;

2. Develop a list of gender equity principles for coffee;

3. Improve women’s access to credit and assets;

4. Achieve greater gender balance in leadership positions;

5. Support joint decision-making and ownership of income and resources at the household level;

6. Specifically, source and market coffee from women producers and coffee produced under conditions of gender equity;

7. Invest in programs to reduce time pressures for women;

8. Continue to build understanding through research and measurement.

This is a common theme but debates don’t consider all women in the coffee industry. There is much more going on beyond farming realities.

“As a coffee sensorial analyst, I study aromas and flavors,” says Camila Arcanjo who works at the Coffee Industry Syndicate of São Paulo State (Sindicafé). “I also conduct workshops and analyze coffee samples.”

These women are setting the pace in the supply chain and they can be found in any segment. They are baristas, Q-graders, scientists, traders, coffee shops’ owners and have an important role to assure that rural women will have consumers to sell their lots. Eliana Relvas has more than 20 years of experience and worked in different areas promoting coffee.

Nowadays, the food engineer is responsible for buying large quantities of coffee monthly for a big supermarket chain in Brazil. “My job is to increase the awareness of quality coffee among regular consumers in order to promote and valorize the hard work of those on the farms. I am the link between rural and urban,” said Relvas.

Some companies promoted women to leadership roles long ago based on their skills and competence. “Race, gender, and religious diversity in our staff is so normal that we do not even talk about,” said Bourbon Specialty Coffee trader, Thiago Trovo. “This is part of our identity, our values.”

Among their rural partners, women are an inherent part of the family-run business. “Our experience shows that wives and daughters are more meticulous during very important phases to quality, like post-harvesting,” said Trovo.

These little changes can be celebrated but there is much work to do towards interpersonal relationships. The struggles faced by women in urban areas can be subtle and issues with sexism and race must be considered to benefit the coffee chain. “When I get on the phone and customers hear my voice, the conversation changes, because they realize that I’m not a man,” said Erin Meister of Café Imports. “How do you do business effectively in an environment where you wonder if people treat you differently or talk to you differently if they ‘knew who you were’.”

The situation can be even more difficult for black women. “I’ve had people ask me if  I ‘even like coffee’ in the middle of instructing a lab,” said Tymika Lawrence of Genuine Origin. “Look around this room—how many black woman instructors do you see, how many black woman managers? If I didn’t like coffee, do you think I could even be here? I’ve always had to reference my resume. People ask you to reach into your past and measure what I’ve done, and they don’t even realize it. I have to casually drop my resume into conversations as a way of saying I’m a qualified coffee professional. I’ve had to qualify myself in every new coffee space, always.”

This special agenda is not often discussed, but it is conquering spaces slowly but surely. This is the case of the recent launched BossBarista podcast that discusses problems and possible solutions related to the barista’s work behind the bar. Produced by Jasper Wilde and Ashley Rodriguez, it “highlights the ups and downs of every barista, and gives voice to those who haven’t had a platform to express themselves”. Issues like sexism and gender equity are discussed in their audio routine.

As soon as conversations started taking place in official spaces and events, issues that were invisible became visible and discussed. Solutions and alternatives start rising to encourage men and women to work together for a better coffee industry. “Ask questions,” said the founder of BD Imports, Phyllis Johnson. “And if you’re afraid of asking questions and having open discussions, go home and ask yourselves questions in the mirror. Don’t be afraid to learn someone else’s history. The pie gets bigger when you embrace diversity and inclusion, and you won’t suffer a loss. Your life will be empowered.”

In Seattle, SCA hosted a panel that highlighted women’s struggles outside rural environments. Entitled “Intersectionality, Building Influence, and Changing Power Structures,” the panel was moderated by Michelle Johnson (The Chocolate Barista) and Tracy Ging (Coffeewoman’s co-founder). For most in the crowded audience, he word ‘intersectionality’ was heard for the first time.

Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term to explain that many social justice problems such as racism and sexism often overlap, creating multiple levels of social injustice. It is important to apply this concept when describing interpersonal relations in the coffee chain.

“Brown and black hands pick beans,” according to Johnson. “White hands trade beans. Questions of intersectionality in coffee are global.”

Joining Johnson on the panel were Lawrence, Liz S. Dean (Irving Farm Coffee Roasters),  Jenn Chen (Freelance Coffee Marketer), and Meister, all of whom offered powerful insights.

Considering that this debate is pretty new, strong opinions are natural. The most important thing is keeping them respectful and productive in order to build a better industry all the way from seed to cup.

Chen pointed to solutions that will help change the power structure. She stressed the importance of putting competent and talented women in leadership positions.

Bridging rural and urban women

“Since years ago, when IWCA was founded, I’ve taken hundreds of men to origin,” said Karen Cebreros, founder of the Women of Coffee Microfinance Fund. “I could see things moved slowly. I was also with Fair Trade and I saw the good it could do, but it never trickled down to the women’s hands.”

According to Cebreros, establishing gender equity along the entire coffee chain is critical.

“We should partner a consuming country with an origin country so they can drill down and make decisions on what kind of help is the most needed,” she said. This holistic view can create other perspectives and make the link, a bridge between these two realities.

The International Women’s Coffee Alliance has an important role to globally unify    all these skilled coffee professionals.

For this reason, women and men will gather at the fifth IWCA Convention in Puebla City, Mexico, (Aug. 3-5, 2017) with the mission of developing programs to bring rural and urban women together to create the coffee industry’s best.