The importance of going beyond

Over the past few years, the coffee sector has increasingly recognised the importance of gender sensitisation of field staff. However, it remains common to work on gender as a standalone project rather than deeply embed it within the sectors fundamental ways of managing supply chains. As a consequence, gender training is often only delivered as a single session, without any mentoring on how to apply the newly acquired knowledge in daily work. This leaves the participants alone in driving a deep change over the long term: an impossible task without continuous mentoring.

Aside from training field staff, gender programming in coffee tends to focus on women as producers. Many projects are relatively small in scale and target particular cooperatives or women's collectives. Other initiatives include household or community-led approaches that intentionally work with both men and women, such as the Gender Action and Learning System (GALS). Sometimes a training-of-trainers approach is applied, expecting participants to train others on this highly sensitive and complex topic after only two or three days of learning.

Working to advance gender equality requires a thorough understanding of local contexts and a strong capacity to facilitate positive gender dynamics. Genuine transformative learning demands a participatory approach that generates and internalises knowledge based on participant’s reflections, rather than transferring a fixed body of knowledge. It must take men´s gendered experiences into account and address the negative effects of harmful masculinities on themselves and others. It also comes with a strong obligation to consider the risks of doing unintended harm, potentially resulting in grave consequences for women and girls in already vulnerable positions, ranging from reinforcing existing gender inequalities to retaliation and gender-based violence. The work on gender relations in smallholder farmer communities is, therefore, best implemented by social development organisations with an established local presence and robust experience in dealing with sensitive norms and values.

Tackling root causes and reshaping unequal power relations

Gender transformative approaches offer a way to address the root causes of gender inequality and unequal power relations. They help to move beyond a focus on women’s individual agency toward transforming gender relations to be more equitable. Gender transformative approaches aspire for more ambitious social change, bearing in mind that such change is context-specific, typically takes a long time and rarely is straightforward.

Catalysts for Gender Transformative Change is a focused learning trajectory for AAA agronomists that spans at least six months and is implemented by a team of experts on gender in agricultural value chains and participatory adult learning. It is not a standalone project but deeply integrated into the holistic framework of the AAA Program, building on five-years of gender work within Nespresso´s coffee supply chain.

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