Gender-blind Organizations Deliver Gender-biased Services: The Case of Awasa Bureau of Agriculture in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Despite gender trainings and gender mainstreaming, the Bureau of Agriculture in Ethiopia fails to involve women farmers in its extension activities. Based on interviews with staff members in the Awasa Bureau of Agriculture (ABA) in the Sidama zone of southern Ethiopia, this article shows that ABA, being a gender-blind organization itself, is ill-equipped to motivate its staff to make specific efforts to reach out to women farmers. The systematic absence of gender considerations at all levels of the organization results in its incapacity to address the gendered entrenched position in the field, thus isolating women even further.

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“…Despite the focus on women in agriculture over the past 25 years, they continue to be comprehensively neglected by extension services (Buchy and Basaznew 2005). This 'neglect' of women farmers' requirements by extension services is not only due to lack of awareness of gender issues, but also due to a limited understanding of the needs, desires and aspirations of women working in this sector.…”

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“…The Ethiopia National Action Plan for Gender points to the challenge inherent in the way in which traditional social norms filter into bureaucracies, leading to a resistance within these bureaucracies to consider gender experts in agencies as on par with other officials (Government of Ethiopia 2000). Buchy and Basaznew (2005) identify the major push toward gender awareness as coming from donors. Despite donor efforts, the Awasa Bureau of Agriculture in the Sidama Zone of SNNP region had no gender policy and Delivered by The World Bank e-library to:…”

“…In their analysis of the agriculture bureaucracy in southern Ethiopia, Buchy and Basaznew (2005) find critical shortcomings in both the gender sensitivity of extension provision and in the way gender and women's affairs are situated within the agriculture bureaucracy. For example, in the Awasa Bureau of Agriculture in the Sidama Zone of SNNP region, where farmers in general are underserved by extension agents, women farmers make up only a small fraction of farmers receiving extension services.…”