PUR x Empow’Her

In East Africa, coffee is one of the main sources of income for farming communities. It is also a sector in which women’s unpaid work is a major source of inequality. It is also a sector in which women’s unpaid work is a strong vector of inequality  

The coffee-producing sector is mainly run by men, while women play a key role on the farms without benefiting from the profits. Women are heavily involved in agricultural activities, but are excluded from sales activities, which are centralised around predominantly male cooperatives which has a considerable impact on their access to the income generated by the sector. Given this situation, Empow’Her and PUR have developed a programme to  help these cooperatives become  more inclusive and promote gender equality.

The aim of this project is to support PUR’s partner coffee cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda. To support them  in promoting an inclusive coffee value chain. To achieve this, a two-pronged approach was deployed. Cooperatives have been able to develop and implement gender strategies with the aim of becoming sources of economic opportunities for women. Gender champions  have been trained within the cooperatives to raise community awareness of gender inequalities.

Here are a few examples of actions taken by the cooperatives following the support :

• Deployment of an awareness campaign among coffee producers.
• Reduction in membership fees for women.
• Revision of the rules governing candidacy for governance positions  to encourage female candidates.
• Creation of a gender task force within the cooperative to raise awareness of gender issues.
• Implementation of support programmes for women members with   specialised training.

Empow’Her’s action is organised over a one-year period and consists of providing the keys to developing a gender strategy independently within the organisation. By increasing the number of women members in cooperatives and integrating them into decision-making structures.

The two areas of research :

• People: which consists of training and raising awareness among cooperative teams about gender equality issues in coffee value chains. Before launching an organisational transformation, cooperative members need to understand what is at stake. We support gender champions to be responsible for implementing the strategy.
• Strategy : which consists of setting up workshops for reflection and co-construction with the members to help them identify the gender issues within their cooperative and find the levers for action together.