Women in northern Ghana use a dehusking machine to process shea nuts. Photo Credit: Bedru Balana/IFPRI By Futoshi Yamauchi, Bedru Balana, Hazel Malapit, Eduardo Maruyama, Doreen Kufoalor, Sena Amewu, Seth Asante, and Samson Dejene Key takeaways In northern Ghana, shea trees—locally known as “women’s gold”—have anchored rural livelihoods for generations. The tree’s oil-rich nuts are an […]
Earth Day 2021: Understanding the role of gender in building healthier soils
by Wei Zhang and Jessica Wallach Maintaining healthy soils is crucial to long-term agricultural sustainability and food security—yet soils face major stresses worldwide. In 2015, the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils rated one third of land worldwide as moderately to highly degraded. The impacts are especially serious in Africa south of the Sahara and South […]
The road to women’s economic empowerment: Do women (and men) prefer on or off the farm?
November 1, 2019 by Berber Kramer and Isabel Lambrecht Improving women’s economic empowerment continues to be the focus of a wide range of development projects, ranging from vocational trainings to microcredit to cash and asset transfers. In rural farming areas, such programs face the question of which approach is most effective—improving women’s access to agricultural […]