Preliminary assessment of the impact of CLCA alternatives in women’s involvement and empowerment in Bolivia and Mexico

Abstract

Ensuring the inclusion and empowerment of women in agricultural research and development projects require the assessment of the different alternatives generated in terms of facilitating or hampering such involvement as well as suggestions for specific activities to allow local implementing organizations to adapt their activities to strengthen women and youth participation for more equitable development. This assessment takes place after one year that the project started in Bolivia and a few months in Mexico and that is why it takes a historical approach. It first documents previous efforts and experience that local collaborators have on gender and social inclusion. It also considers the history of the different innovations for the crop-livestock systems that have been promoted in communities in previous decades. Results indicate that there is a long history of technological innovations around the quinoa-llama and maize-sheep systems and that some of them have been around soil and water conservation practices. They also show how access to innovation has been unequal due to the way interventions take place but also to different challenges that young and adult women and men face for participating. It is from this perspective that not only women but also youth involvement in innovation processes are assessed as a way to move forward for the inclusion of the most marginalized groups.