Integrating Gender in the Use of Conservation Agriculture for Crop and Livestock System (CLCA)

Abstract

In Tunisia, ICARDA’s work including the IFAD funded CLCA project are highly sensitive to gender problems. The CLCA project for example aims at developing contextually specific solutions to promote the large-scale adoption of conservation agriculture within integrated crop-livestock systems in semi-arid conditions, across a spectrum of age and gender. However, gender gaps do exist and still need to be addressed. The ICARDA-Led CLCA aims at highlighting those gaps and their causes, and to offer transformative solutions to bridge them.

Three main fields of empowerment were carried out by the ICARDA-led CLCA Project and conducted as part of the New Directions for Equitable Results (GENDER) Platform:

1. Empowerment in decision making about agricultural production and use of productive assets through enhancing women access to information and technology. 2. Enhancing women leadership in communities through i) improving the inclusiveness of the existing community-based organization by involving women farmers in the different trainings and other knowledge investment operations, and ii) supporting women farmers associations and leveraging their management and technical knowledge capacities. In some cases, the project even stimulates the creation of some of these WF associations, in a way they can be considered as knowledge hubs, inclusive of women problems and opportunities. 3. Acting on enhancing time allocation through enhancing women access to machinery, reduce workloads, and Encourage entrepreneurship for youth and women.

“Integrating Gender in the Use of Conservation Agriculture for Crop and Livestock System (CLCA)” is a short movie documenting a series of testimonies on (i) the challenges women farmers are facing, (ii) the solutions brought by the CLCA project to face these challenges and (iii) the impact of these solutions on the livelihood of Tunisian women famers in the crop-livestock farming system.