Gender Equity Index -Ag Extension & Advisory Services

[Greg Meenahan]

This is a soon to be published article in the "Standart," an artsy coffee magazine for industry aficionados.  It introduces a Gender Equity Index that Equal Origins has developed through a multi stakeholder group of 10 US, S. American and European based coffee roasters and raw coffee suppliers.

A New Tool for a Hidden Risk

The issues of gender equality and coffee sustainability have a lot in common. Both are extremely complex systems of interconnected domains that defy simple answers, and this complexity pushes us to the limit of our understanding—and therefore our ability to enact change. Another trait both share is that neither really exists.

The pursuit of sustainability or gender equality can seem like approaching a desert mirage, the shimmering illusion of water receding with each step forward. The more we learn, the more we understand the vast scope of the challenges at hand. Feelings of powerlessness, futility, and cynicism are professional hazards for those working in sustainable development, sustainable finance, sustainable—well, anything. Gender equality and sustainability are journeys that don’t necessarily have an end point; they are compass headings, a course we chart in which our progress is measured by the milestones we reach.

There are many ways in which the coffee industry can support economic and environmental sustainability, but we need to think more about the role of coffee in the struggle for gender equality at origin. What impact can we have, and how should gender issues be prioritized in the context of sustainability portfolios that also cover agroforestry, agricultural training, net-zero carbon strategies, regenerative agricultural investments, post-processing, and quality initiatives? What is the role of each player along the value chain, including producers, producer organizations, exporters and importers, roasters, and cafés and baristas?

 The business and profit/loss justifications for sustainability in the coffee industry are well thought out and articulated, particularly in the environmental domain, which spans everything from meeting shareholders’ and consumers’ demands for more accountability to increases in the resiliency and profitability of impoverished farmers around the world. In the early days of this trend, environmental sustainability was often initiated somewhat cynically because the evidence indicated that businesses that embraced sustainable values and practices tended to outperform those that were not. Even though that may hold true to this day, more firms are becoming motivated by our collective desire to leave behind a recognizable world to our children. We are witnessing our planet burn melt, parch, and flood, and at the very least, we in coffee can work to ensure that our business practices to ‘do no harm’. For many, sustainability is no longer about branding values or maintaining a competitive edge; it’s a non-negotiable imperative to survive.

 For the last few years that I’ve worked with the Partnership for Gender Equity (PGE), I’ve been somewhat conflicted when asked for the ‘business justification’ for supply-chain gender equality. To be sure, not much happens in business without a financial consideration, and I accept that such a justification is necessary, but financial and moral justifications often go hand in hand. For instance, what is the business justification for rooting out slavery in the cocoa supply chain? Of course, slavery is abhorrent from the moral point of view, but even when one looks at it through a business lens, a discovery of the presence of slave labour in one’s supply chain represents a risk to brand value. Brand reputations are fickle, magical, and somewhat fragile, but can generate enormous value, so in this case, the total time and money spent on eliminating slavery would largely be offset by warding off the financial catastrophe that would result from degraded brand value and, by extension, lower sales and reduced customer retention.

 Similarly, we all oppose gender inequality, but its presence on a farm or in a producer’s organization doesn’t destroy a brand with the same blunt-force trauma as slavery, and whereas a direct connection can be established between slavery and cocoa production, crimes such as intimate partner violence do not attract the same degree of interest; only the most heinous or violent examples of gender-based oppression makes the news, and even then, these atrocities often seem like private tragedies, unrelated to anything directly related to growing, selling, or buying coffee. Indeed, gender inequality in the coffee supply chain is more like death from a thousand cuts. Each infraction tends to be far more hidden, and often so pervasive and widespread as to seem normal. This is, perhaps, our greatest contemporary challenge in coffee: Gender equity is competing against other sustainability efforts for attention, and is very much losing the battle.

 But what is the business case for ensuring coffee supply chains work to increase levels of gender equity? It’s a fair question, and the answer lies embedded in the fact that women make up anywhere from 20 to 70 per cent of the labour required to grow and process beans. If the financial and technical support that firms provide to producers does not also reach and benefit women, the effective impact of such investments will be reduced by 20 to 70 per cent. It’s as simple as that. Advanced research and variety development, good agricultural practices, training, and capacity-building efforts mean next to nothing, if they don’t reach and benefit men and women equally.

 We all have our own personal definitions of the terms ‘gender equity’ and ‘gender equality’ that often relate directly to how we’ve been treated as a woman or man, and to how gender roles and biases have helped or hurt us. Businesses around the world have tended to focus on the various opportunities available to male or female employees such as the chance to advance in one’s career, to be heard, and to lead. Initiatives often take the form of enforcing equal pay for equal work, understanding inclusivity and glass ceilings, and countering the biases that undermine respect and reduce expectations. ‘Women’s coffee’, differently, emphasizes purely women’s ownership, leadership, and access to opportunities, and should perhaps be seen as a reflection or even an extension of women’s fight for equality in the Global North.

Peet’s, a San Francisco, California-based roaster and retailer, may be the first such firm to go all-in on the concept of ‘women’s coffee’, introducing their Las Hermanas blend in 2001. Soon after came Café Femenino in Peru, and the Costa Rica chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance under the brand name Woman’s Harvest. Today, women’s coffees are more widespread than ever, and if a major roaster doesn’t already have one in its product line-up, it’s likely considering it.

The idea is simple and good: Supporters commit to buy coffee at a premium from farms owned by women, or where women have equal title to the land; cooperatives run by women, or at least run inclusively; and from producers with credible gender equity development plans, or equal or fair representation in their leadership and/or membership strata. Alright, maybe it’s not simple, but it’s definitely good.

 It’s usually not difficult to assess the impact of women’s coffee on the specific producers it benefits because this phenomenon gives female entrepreneurs market access, and the premiums received are often reinvested into sustainable farming and quality-improvement initiatives that further increase profitability. Research has demonstrated that when given access to the family’s income, women tend to invest more in the family and community, and profits are funnelled to other socially beneficial recipients such as schools, libraries, and community kitchens. Neither is it hard to evaluate the broader impact beyond the female producers directly involved; one need only consider how much coffee is grown in any given region and figure out what percentage of it is ‘women’s coffee’, but unfortunately, this is invariably a very low number.

 Women’s coffee is, admittedly, a niche product, especially in comparison with other market initiatives such as Fair Trade, Rain Forest Alliance, 4C, or Organic, whose combined market share is still less than 15 per cent of total coffee sales. I remember a conversation with a representative from a cooperative in the Democratic Republic of Congo that was struggling to prioritize gender equity, given the many pressing needs that demanded their attention. Having contemplated the cost vs. the benefit of various market-access strategies, the cooperative’s leadership—which consisted of both men and women—was concerned that the market for women’s coffee was simply too small for it to be worth their spending much effort on it.

It is understandable that women’s coffee was one of the first strategies to be widely deployed across the industry to address gender at origin, but if we want to effect a measurable global impact on gender equality, focusing on female entrepreneurs alone will not get us there. For sure, women’s coffee should enjoy its place among every roaster’s offerings, and it’s imperative to give female entrepreneurs more market access, but if the goal is to bring about gender equity on a global scale—which is necessary, if we are to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 (SDG5)—it’s clear that additional strategies are of the essence. Given that female farmers and farm workers make up between 20 and 70 per cent of the labour necessary to plant, harvest, and process the entire global crop, no arabica or robusta can be ground without women. All coffee is women’s coffee.

What else can be done?

Another key element of gender equality is providing women with access to productive resources, land, training, and technical assistance. There are currently several major efforts under way in agriculture that are seeking to secure women’s equal legal right to farmland, and to overcome issues and inherent biases of customary land rights in producing countries that in many cases continue to marginalize women’s ability to use their own land as they see fit. Ultimately, if the women who work on coffee farms are to gain greater agency and empowerment, the most important step is education—a competence that lies within the scope and responsibility of global roasters and green suppliers. Given that, as the Global Coffee Platform has estimated, half a billion dollars are spent each year on sustainability projects in the coffee industry, it is vital to ask: Are women specifically targeted by these investments; are they beneficiaries of educational programmes; and if so, do such programmes actually lead to real-world empowerment outcomes, and a transformation of the gender roles that limit women’s potential in coffee?

 To this end, the gender experts at the PGE have launched the Gender Equity Index (GEI), teaming up with 11 roasters and green suppliers and a group of distinguished gender experts to develop a method of assessing and indexing the organizations that provide training and advisory services to producers. This shifts the focus from producers and farm workers to the downstream actors who perform services on the farm. The idea here is simple: Rather than specifically target female farmworkers, which would—as the Congolese cooperative lamented—compete with the many other priorities that occupy the attention of farmers, let’s instead harness the potential of sustainability across the board by working to up-skill and educate men and women all along the supply chain.

 The GEI is an assessment tool that helps service providers to build their awareness of gender equality and to embed it in their initiatives and training, with the end goal of increasing the productive value of farms and their workers. One of the most prominent firms involved is the Lavazza Group, which stated in a recent press release: ‘It’s very important to Lavazza Group that our sustainability investments are made gender equitably. We strongly believe that women’s empowerment is a key driver for sustainable development and economic growth in every country.’

 Support for this initiative has also been consistent from the green supply side. Caravela Coffee, a well-known specialty coffee export/importer, and a founding supporter for the initiative, voiced their support in a press release: ‘This is a very interesting approach because it’s not about creating a novel gender equity project, but rather seeks to weave gender equity within existing strategies and investments.’  Other large multinational traders who also provide farmer training have also embraced the tool.  are among the founding partners GEI partners and are testing the tool, and SUCAFINA has agreed to help test and validate the tool in Indonesia.

 The coffee non-profit Equal Origins (former The Partnership for Gender Equity) conducted some revealing research in early 2021 in conjunction with Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and with funding support from Women Forward International and the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR) to help establish an industry baseline for the gender development capacity of the sector. The research, which included interviews with coffee and cocoa stakeholders in the form of 22 public, private, and non-profit providers of education and advisory services to farmers, revealed a range of issues that are preventing the coffee industry from reaching its full potential:

• Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) providers lack staff who have received gender-focused training and sufficient financial resources to design and scale long-term gender-responsive initiatives;
• Inconsistent implementation of gender programming that varies greatly by region and context;
• Inconsistent understandings of gender equity and inclusion that are not mainstreamed internally, preventing staff from embracing their individual responsibility to support initiatives; and
• Gender strategies not yet being institutionalized or operationalized.

The problems are legion—but so are the opportunities.

 [Download research report: https://www.genderincoffee.org/yale-research]

The Gender Equity Index helps roasters to become gender-educated consumers of sustainability programming, and service providers to more effectively reach and benefit women.

 The GEI consists of 67 questions spanning five domains of gender equity, and once completed, users will receive annual evaluations of their progress, and have mastered a shared language and understanding of gender-equitable capacity-building at origin, making conversations between roasters and project implementors possible for the first time.

 Although it is not the case that individual people or institutions—be they national coffee institutes, ministries of agriculture, NGOs, or green suppliers—are intentionally preventing women from attending or benefiting from training, neither should we allow the present inequality to persist through acceptance, and neglect of the possibility of change. If, in order to access training, a woman needs to leave her home for an extended period, put her young children in care, travel on dangerous roads, and learn about an area of production with which she has little or no experience such as the application of pesticides, then we all need to accept a responsibility to do a lot more to promote gender equity.

 It is with this in mind that the GEI seeks to go beyond merely counting the number of women who show up for this or that training and instead judge the industry on its capacity to reach and benefit women.

 ‘Historically, producer services have been designed and delivered by men for other men,’ according to Kimberly Easson, the CEO of PGE, and although that is not necessarily bad in and of itself, to continue in that vein would be ‘harmful to women, and roasters want to “do no harm.”’ It is in this gap that the GEI finds its niche. Supply chain managers are aware of the presence of a ‘hidden’ workforce embedded in many agricultural commodities of women who perform more than half of the labour, but not everyone has realized that reaching out to women requires additional resources and concrete action plans. The GEI clarifies the ‘what, where, and why’ of sustainability initiatives, and serves to ensure that sustainability investments receive the greatest return, both for the environment and for the women and men working on the farm.

Professionally speaking, one of the strongest attractions of the coffee industry is the opportunity to enact positive change in producing countries, and one of the chief avenues for improvement lies in endeavours working to provide technical assistance to women in coffee-producing countries. Access to education is a human right, and it’s the next milestone on the journey to gender equality.