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THESIGNIFICANCE
OFGENDEREQUITY
INENSURING
TOMORROW’S
CUPOFCOFFEE!!!
ByMs. FortunatePaska, Gender Expert, HannsR. Neumann
Stiftung
I
t is no news that coffee farming requires lots of time and
energy. It is a labor-intensive and time-consuming activity,
where every step involved accounts for the quantity and
the quality of the product, and eventually for the benefits
farmers derive from it. Yet, youmight wonder what gender
has to do with it and what role it plays in sustaining
tomorrow’s cup of coffee.
In rural Uganda, coffee is often considered to be a man’s
crop, despite women providing between 60-80% of the
labor put into coffee farming. This means that it is usually
the husbands that receive the earnings when selling the
coffee and determine how to spend the proceeds. At the
same time, in many households, women are also solely
responsible for takingcareof thechildrenand the rest of the
family; they grow the food to eat and prepare familymeals.
This leaves themwith little time to participate in agricultural
or business skills trainings.
Women’s lackof decision-makingpower over theutilisation
of income from coffee, and their heavy workloads both in
the fields and at home leave them demotivated towork on
the coffee fields. They are oftentimes tempted to “steal”
unripecoffeecherries from thecoffeegardensandsell them
at a lowprice to local middlemen inorder topay for urgent
household needs and supplies. This not only negatively
affects thequality of thecoffee, but also results in reduction
of the income from coffee.
Toaddress thesecritical issues, theHannsR.NeumannStiftung
(HRNS) has developed an approach that promotes coffee
farming as a family business, where all household members
benefit equally from coffee production. HRNS employs a
voluntary and participatory approach: Under thismodel couple
seminars form the building block, married couples discover
existing inequalities within their homes, such as workloads,
access to asset, or decision-making processes, and devise
means of addressing them. Couples that commit to these
