17 pages, In developing countries, agriculture plays a vital role in reducing poverty and enhancing food security. In Sunamganj, Bangladesh, rural women significantly contribute to agriculture but face gender disparities and limited access to resources. Green cooperatives provide a promising model to empower these women through sustainable practices and economic support. This study explores the roles and impacts of green cooperatives on rural women entrepreneurs in Sunamganj, focusing on factors influencing their involvement, the benefits, and constraints they face, and changes in empowerment before and after joining cooperatives. This study was conducted across five upazilas in Sunamganj, the sampled 200 women entrepreneurs-100 cooperative members and 100 non-members using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Data was gathered via interviews, surveys, and focus group discussions (FGDs) and analyzed with SPSS and Microsoft Excel. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify key influencing factors and the Problems Confrontation Index (PCI) was utilized to assess the severity of challenges faced by members. The findings reveal that green cooperatives enhance women’s socio-economic status through improved production, market access, financial stability, and decision-making roles. Education, credit access, input availability, training, and experience were key drivers of the cooperative engagement of rural women entrepreneurs. However, challenges like male dominance, limited training, transportation issues, labor shortages, and market information gaps persist. Despite these, women in green cooperatives benefit from fixed pricing for organic products, increased bargaining power, and timely access to inputs and training. The study highlights the need for improved education, continuous training, extension services, high-quality inputs, and better infrastructure to support women’s participation further. The insights provided aim to guide policymakers in developing supportive policies that enhance the impact of green cooperatives, address gender-specific challenges, and promote the use of digital tools for market access. Future research should explore longitudinal studies and regional comparisons for deeper insights into rural women’s empowerment.
15 pages, Information on gender specific contribution and challenges within the beekeeping values chain is vital for shaping policies that promote gender equity and enhance productivity. This study examined gender dynamics in beekeeping, focusing on the roles of men and women in the value chain. Using cross - sectional design, 265 individuals were surveyed, and interviewed. Descriptive statistics summarized respondent’s demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, while binary logistic regression identified factors influencing involvement in beekeeping. The findings found that most respondents (81.1%) were males aged 41-60 years, and over 80% were married. A majority (87.2%) were heads of their families, and over 60% had incomes below 1,500,000TZS. Most respondents (57.7%) involved in beekeeping as a part-time activity. Men were engaged in apiary preparation, placing hives, honey harvesting and selling with women’s involvement significantly lower across most beekeeping activities. Older men, household heads from large families, and those attending seminars were more involved. Factors such as a gender, family size, household position, age, education, income, seminar attendance, technology, market access, and number of beehives influencing involvement, with a p – value of < 0.05, indicating strong associations with beekeeping activity levels. The illustrated notable gender disparities in beekeeping, with the beekeeping, with men dominating key activities compared to women.
8 pages, The study examined the impact of climate change and extension service on rice farmers' yield in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. A total of 402 rice farmers were sampled through multi-stage sampling for questionnaire administration. Primary data collected were analyzed using mean, frequency, percentage, ordinary least square multiple regression techniques, the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) model, and the probit model. Socio-economic characteristics show that a greater proportion of the farmers were male (51.7%), married (84.1%), and attended secondary education (47.8%). Sources of climate change information were farmer-to-farmer (100%), telephone/mobile phone (98.5%), radio (92.5%), workshop/seminars (73.4%), and television (46.8%). Temperature (P<-0.01), rainfall (P<-0.01), evaporation rate (P<-0.01), and severe windstorm (P<-0.01) influenced rice yield negatively, while relative humidity (P<0.05) and atmospheric pressure (P<0.01) had a positive influence on rice yield. The results from the LATE model, which measures the average effect of a treatment on the treated, show a decrease in rice yields of 84.1% and 96.5%. Production constraints felt by rice farmers include high cost of input materials (100%), inadequate capital (100%), high cost of labor (99.8%), poor extension access and service (99.5%), and Fulani-herdsmen conflict (76.9%). The study recommends rice farmers implement climate-smart agriculture to mitigate climate change and access farm information and/or services from experienced farmers.
26 pages, Commercial restrictions limit the extent of women's participation in the South African economy despite gender equality being valued. Since the implementation of The Women Empowerment Project in 1999, the agricultural sector's contribution has not yet been fully quantified. Women’s opportunities, challenges, and roles in agriculture must be explored further by evaluating resource management strategies and policies. This study aimed to quantify women's empowerment in agriculture using descriptive research methodology. Data were collected and statistically analysed using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to identify the origin and extent of female farmers' difficulties. Satisfactory outcomes in production, leadership, assets, income, and time usage were more strongly associated with empowerment than demographic variables, and time available contributed the most to women feeling disempowered. Overall, women reported feeling more empowered compared to men. Disempowerment in male respondents as the control group was attributed to time, workload, and resources. In future studies, gender policies should be further developed to incorporate gender dimension, gender budgeting and sex-disaggregated data administration.
21 pages, Women empowerment and gender equality have been found to be statistically significant and positive predictors of global agricultural development. Therefore, reducing gender disparities can encourage economic progress and growth in developing nations. As such, determining effective ways to stimulate social progress and women’s empowerment has emerged as a critical need. One strategy used to raise the public’s consciousness about gendered issues in Thailand has been through mass media. In response, this study aimed to (1) determine to what extent Thailand’s newspaper coverage focused on topics related to women and the agricultural industry; and (2) describe how women in agriculture have been portrayed in newspaper coverage since the introduction of Thailand 4.0’s policy in 2016. Using a qualitative content analysis of Thailand’s newspaper coverage of women in the agricultural sector, four themes emerged: (1) economic policy implications for Thailand’s agricultural system; (2) human rights; (3) women entrepreneurship and leadership; and (4) agricultural development. Therefore, this study concluded that newspaper coverage of women in agriculture was diverse and conflicting – a finding not previously reported. The findings also revealed that women in agriculture have been underrepresented in newspaper publications historically. Moving forward, we provided critical implications for how future research, theory, and practice can depict women in agriculture more positively in the newspaper media.
17 pages, This article draws upon research exploring a project that combines edutainment and participatory communication strategies as an approach to social change in Malawi. Throughout the research, I take a critical stance that seeks to uplift voices of an audience attending a radio listening club (RLC) and therefore utilize participatory methods to co-create the body of knowledge with study participants. In this article, I query RLC audience’s thoughts of the project’s relevance and influence in their daily lives. Oriented by Hall’s concepts of encoding and decoding, I analyse my data focusing on the dynamics between the objectives of the producers and the lived reality of the participants. Findings reveal that audience’s motivation for continued attendance of the RLC is different to that intended in the encoding process; rather audiences negotiate the relevance of messages to their own needs, those of their children and utilize the space to extend their social capital.
10 pages, This article proposes combining public relations and development communication insights so that organizations, particularly in the public sector, can engage and empower rural communities to adopt and exploit infrastructure developments for mutual benefit. Applying appreciative inquiry to explore the communication process involved in the development of micro-hydro power plants in Kulon Progo Regency, Indonesia, this article offers a view from those who are regarded as the target of communication, as the opposed to those take an organizational standpoint. The study proposes a new development project communication model which seeks to initiate, secure and sustain positive community outcomes and meet the project initiators’ requirements. This is achieved through collaboration and the gradual relinquishment of power and decision-making from the latter to the former. The model emphasizes the importance of the processes of communication as well as outcomes, and considers rural communities as having agency, rather than as objects of or for development. By embracing community assets such as local knowledge and contextual wisdom and the characteristics of collective communities in non-Western countries such as togetherness, reciprocity, a strong sense of shared destiny, locality, and fraternity, the model offers a community centric approach which encourages progressive community empowerment and ownership. The evidence points to the impacts for both communities and governments being more beneficial and sustainable than current communication practices.
9 pages, In agricultural research for development adoption of new technology tends to be cast in categories: adoption, partial adoption, dis-adoption or non-adoption. While these may serve for pragmatic classification and measures for project success or impact they fail to properly acknowledge the ongoing and independent efforts of farmers (and others) in experimentation and integration of knowledge across a range of sources. This paper explores responses to practices for cattle management introduced during a research project, at project close, and five years after the project has finished. We consider the perceptions and application of new knowledge by farmers, extension staff, and policy makers. By taking a longer-term view, we demonstrate how farming households adapt and integrate knowledge from different sources into their daily practice, influenced by local institutions and changing cultural expectations, as well as external researchers. We also consider the influence of changing government priorities and incentives in steering farm-management decisions. Results suggest that a focus on measures to build capacity and empower farmers with information to adapt and respond to change, regardless of project activities, is a much more important goal and indicator of impact than measuring adoption.
13 pages, HIV Aids has had a major impact on resource-limited African rural Sub-Saharan communities, especially upon women who typically experience greater gender inequity, have fewer assets and greater food insecurity and vulnerability. Coordinated interventions in crop productivity, nutrition, AIDS treatment, and livelihood security can have significant positive impacts on individuals and households; however their impact upon gender relations and social equity is unclear. Qualitative interviews and an integrative model of factors influencing women’s empowerment are used to examine this issue in four villages of the Miracle Project in Zambia and Malawi. Although some local agency and NGO programs existed in these villages prior to project inception, female respondents reported improvements in crop productivity and income, some initiation of new enterprises, improvement in ownership of assets and housing quality and access or re- access to kinship or community based mutual assistance networks from which they had been excluded. Consumption of the introduced quality protein maize and products from home processing of soyabeans were cited as improving household nutrition. Together with increased accessibility to retroviral drugs, women’s health has improved; levels of poverty and stigmatisation have reduced and allowed many to display an improved degree of empowerment.
