Mager, F., Fiona, R., and Walsh, M. (2017). “Cash cropping and care: How cash crop development is changing gender relations and unpaid care work in Oromia, Ethiopia.”
As part of Oxfam’s WE-Care initiative, Mager and other researchers evaluated the Coffee Value Chain (CVC) project in order to gain a deeper understanding of how Oromia’s changing gender and care relations have affected and been impacted by the CVC project. The study sought to unpack changes in gender relations and women’s economic empowerment in the household. According to Mager et al., there was a positive trend towards more women participating in household-level decision-making; most respondents indicated that attitudes towards joint decision-making and women having more control over financial spending and assets had improved. Because it was associated with a switch from less lucrative and even more time-demanding crops, the study found that increased coffee production did not generally have a negative impact on women’s unpaid care work.
One of the most significant lessons that emerge from this mixed-methods evaluation project is that the development of cash crop production and its intensification do not necessarily have the negative effects on gender and care relations that are occasionally widely reported. These findings underline the importance of understanding the wider context in which gender and care relations are both reproduced and negotiated. Project impacts in this regard cannot be simply second-guessed, and the authors recommend that in-depth analysis is essential to identifying key entry points for influencing the redistribution of care work.
The findings of this study indicate that one potentially effective strategy for improving care relationships and changing the gendered norms of care work is to provide education and training that support women’s economic empowerment and redistribute unpaid care work. This positive change in social and cultural norms, including the provision of education and training by governmental and religious authorities, was also revealed to have been influenced by the project, which contributed to the redistribution of care duties and increased sharing by men and women.