Agroecology and Sustainable Livelihoods as a Framework to Empower Rural Ni Vanuatu Women^☆

Applying an intersectional lens to addressing gender disparities and disadvantage in rural Melanesian agriculture

“…This gender livelihoods analysis was conducted with 45 participating households and revealed a significant disparity between men and women in agricultural practices with regard to the roles, privileges and powers they embodied at both a personal and a systemic level (Addinsall et al, 2019). Current agricultural research and development approaches in Vanuatu tend to focus on sector-specific or crop-based projects that are universally applied rather than engaging with the politics of place (Harcourt, 2017) and designing context-specific research objectives (Addinsall et al, 2019). The gender livelihoods analysis demonstrated that this sectorial, systemic focus inherently excludes women from engaging with cash crops and the formal commercial sector-activities that are dominated by male smallholder farmers.…”

“…The gender livelihoods analysis demonstrated that this sectorial, systemic focus inherently excludes women from engaging with cash crops and the formal commercial sector-activities that are dominated by male smallholder farmers. Consequently, men had limited involvement in household livelihood activities, such as maintaining food crops for sustenance and local markets and therefore played a comparatively smaller role in the informal (traditional) economy (Addinsall et al, 2019). The analysis demonstrated the consequences of this disparity, showing that women's daily activities almost doubled those of men.…”

“…Men were predominantly seen to be the decision-makers on the farm and within the household; although, a small number of female participants suggested they were able to make decisions about how income was spent that was directly earnt by them through their market gardens, and so forth. This gender livelihoods analysis provided an understanding of the risk and vulnerability context that impacts rural households in Santo, influencing structures and processes (such as societal norms, gender roles and relations, organisations and traditional policies), access to and control of resources, choice and success of livelihood activities, priorities for livelihood outcomes and the incentives that people respond to (Addinsall et al, 2019).…”

“…The place‐based, gender‐sensitive strategy to agricultural research and development that this case study presents is informed by the findings of the gender livelihoods analysis conducted on the East Coast of Santo in 2019 (Addinsall et al, 2019). This gender livelihoods analysis was conducted with 45 participating households and revealed a significant disparity between men and women in agricultural practices with regard to the roles, privileges and powers they embodied at both a personal and a systemic level (Addinsall et al, 2019).…”

Corporate Citizenship Behaviour and Rural Livelihoods: A Study on Multinational Corporations in Sri Lanka

“…Livelihood perspective has proved to be interesting for scholars from different disciplines and this leads to conducting the studies dealing with a diversity of themes and focusing on diverse categories of people all over the globe (Addinsall et al, 2019;Naithani and Saha, 2020). While the roots of the livelihood approach thus lie in the 1980s and early 1990s, the basic ideas have been further developed through contributions made by scholars from different disciplines over the years.…”