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Book chapter - Peer-reviewed, 2019

Intersectionality at the gender-agriculture nexus Relational life histories and additive sex-disaggregated indices

Leder, Stephanie; Sachs, Carolyn E.

Abstract

Notions of “women’s empowerment in agriculture” are common sense in developmental policy, as well as gender and development research. Connections to intersectionality, however, often remain unexplored. Feminist theory recognizes that gender intersects with class, ethnicity, caste, age, religion and other social, economic and cultural divisions which structure and produce social networks and power relations. Yet, only few theoretical and methodological approaches in gender and development research incorporate intersectionality with its theoretical and empirical intentions: (i) to deconstruct boundaries of gender and other social differences, and to draw attention on how the boundaries of particular gender categories are shifting both in time and space; (ii) to situate gender constructions in specific socio-cultural contexts, produced by power relations within households and communities, or the state.

This chapter depicts how intersectionality can contextualize the gender-agriculture nexus through shifting from an essentialising or additative to a relational perspective. We base our argument on linking life histories of eight female respondents with their responses and results of sex-disaggregated quantitative survey data, the abbreviated version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). We find contradictions in regard to group membership, labor burden, control over land and water resources, and decision-making at the household level. In particular, we reflect on four themes: (i) caste, class, and inter-household relations; (ii) age, intra-household position and household composition; (iii) migration, ‘female-headed households’ and group membership; (iv) time and seasonality. While sex-disaggregated indices prove helpful in raising awareness of women’s empowerment in international development discourses, they can also mispresent marginalized groups of women. This challenges researchers, policy makers and practitioners to specify which women and men in which context are talked about, and which intra- and inter-household relations may affect desired developmental outcomes in agrarian communities. Finally, the authors develop an intersectionality grid for critically reflecting on intersectionality in gender and agriculture research.

Published in

Title: Gender, Agriculture and Agrarian Transformations : Changing Relations in Africa, Latin America and Asia
ISBN: 978-1-138-38494-1, eISBN: 978-0-429-42738-1
Publisher: Routledge

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Gender Studies

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/109497