Susan Kaaria - "You Can Have a Really Rich Discussion"

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Susan Kaaria - "You Can Have a Really Rich Discussion"

UN FAO officer calls for targeted interventions to strengthen capacity of women

Dr Kaaria received a Ph.D in forest economics from the University of Minnesota

The Senior Gender Officer from the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has praised Salzburg Global for its diverse range of session participants.

Susan Kaaria, who works in the gender, equity and rural employment division, was speaking at Salzburg Global during a session on rural enterprise development in Africa.

The session, co-organized with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), brought together a number of practitioners from the public and private sectors.

Dr Kaaria said: “This is one of the few workshops I’ve been to where there is enough private sector [representation] in the midst of people.

“I’ve been to many workshops that talk about the private sector and there’s three, two, or one [representatives], but this has enough private sector [representation] that you can have a really rich discussion.”

As part of the discussions taking place, participants looked at how the demonstrated benefit of working with women producers could become integrated in business strategies.

“The big challenge we have at the moment is that in terms of addressing poverty, women get limited [opportunities] because of these huge gaps.

“It’s called the gender asset gap where compared to men, women have less access to productive resources, to learn, to capital, [and] to resources. You want to make sure women can access these so that you can improve their lives.”

Dr Kaaria believes we have to pay special attention to issues of gender equality in terms of trying to address poverty and in terms of enterprise development.

“One of the most interesting takeaways for me here is that this is one of the times when I don’t have to tell people gender equality is important. They’ve said it. They’ve talked about it. There are some very good, very tangible examples of what we can do.”

Prior to her working at the UN, Dr Kaaria served as a program officer for Environment and Economic Development at the Ford Foundation. She believes practices and good lessons need to be documented and highlighted to be better supported.

“In FAO, one of the things that we are very concerned about now is providing good accurate data on what are the gaps, what are the inputs and interventions on gender equality.

“How do you make sure when the national statistics capture information they’re looking at both men and women so we can actually have a picture of what’s going on?”

Dr Kaaria suggested very targeted interventions were required to strengthen the capacity of women as entrepreneurs, traders, and as business people to come together and influence policy processes and improve their bargaining power.

“If you’re talking about access to inputs for example and we know that there are much fewer women than men using fertilizer, then the intervention you have must have very specific mechanisms to ensure that women can access it.

“If the intervention is broad and says poor people can have fertilizer and you don’t make very specific interventions, then you are going to lose out on women.”

Interventions can have different impacts on men and women, according to Dr Kaaria, depending on what mechanisms are in place.

“We have to think about what we are calling this gender transformative approach, to challenge the status quo, to say we can challenge cultural norms and deal with social norms that are undermining women’s productivity.”

Dr Kaaria has previously attended a number of Salzburg Global sessions, including ‘A “Green Revolution” in Africa: What Framework for Success?’ in 2008. She suggested this session’s work would build upon what’s already been discussed.

“By talking to the people who have been here you can see that many of them have been here around different sessions but everybody always comes here with experience they have.

“You can see now how that experience is adding to make this one that much more innovative. There is a lot more interest in having very tangible [and] very concrete actions.”