Why do we work with women in coffee? - Part I
bean voyage works with smallholder women coffee producers in Latin America to create thriving coffee businesses. Over a period of time, we have been asked for our thoughts on areas of impact in the field — especially on the socioenvironmental dynamic that exists in coffee and rural communities that we work with.
In this article series, our volunteer intern, Sunaina Sunda, explains the rationale behind our work. The first of its kind, Sunaina answers the question of why we work with women in coffee, based on her extensive desk research and interviews with smallholder women producers in our network in Costa Rica, and the team.
This is the first part of the article on Gender. To read the second part, click here. We welcome your thoughts in comments, and via our email: hello@beanvoyage.org.
Credit: Fernanda Carrillo Chacon
In Central America and Mexico, machismo, in large part, shapes gender norms. At the societal level, men have more access to political and economic roles, while women are expected to remain confined to domestic duties. Within the household, men tend to be the heads of the household, a position that grants men dominance within their families as well.
According to the Costa Rica Coffee Institute (ICAFE), values associated with machismo also exist in the coffee sector and have led to the widespread belief that the coffee sector is a masculine domain, resulting in the disempowerment of women involved in coffee production. In fact, women coffee producers interviewed in ICAFE’s gender policy stated that the biggest challenge they face is overcoming the misconception of differences between men and women and confronting machismo. For example, coffee production is often family-run, and even though men and women share responsibilities in managing their farms, women generally aren’t recognized for their contributions. However, to understand how women face disempowerment in the coffee industry, it’s important to first understand what power means and what the process of empowerment looks like.
As a side note, this article will focus almost entirely on gender inequality within the coffee sector, but we recognize that women of different sexual, racial, and ethnic identities, as well as abilities and ages, will experience these inequalities to varying degrees. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is little research on how gender inequalities affect women, and coffee producers of various backgrounds differently. However, we have tried to include whatever information we could find regarding the intersectional nature of gender inequality. Additionally, we want to clarify that we use the term “women” to include every self-identifying woman, meaning we use the term “women” with respect to the definition of gender, not sex.
Defining Power and the Process of Empowerment
Power is “the ability to make choices,” according to Naila Kabeer, a professor of gender and development at the London School of Economics. Empowerment refers to the process of gaining power and depends on three factors: resources, agency, and achievement, according to Kabeer.
Resources are the materials, social positions, or services a person has access to and, according to the World Bank, fall into one of four categories: political (i.e. leadership and representation), economic (i.e. land), social (i.e. education and childcare), and time.
The second factor, agency, refers to the ability to make and follow through on choices; for agency to be considered empowering, exercising it must challenge oppressive practices and reflect a strong sense of self-worth. Combined, resources and agency determine the scope of a person’s potential, or in other words, the range of possibilities of what a person can achieve.
Achievement, the third factor in Kabeer’s empowerment framework, refers to the degree to which a person realizes their potential.
All of these factors form the process of empowerment. A person uses their agency to act on resources available to them; the effect of acting on those resources can lead to achievements, or outcomes, which should ideally leave the person with more power than they began with.
Three Areas of Impact:
As mentioned above, three areas of impact often discussed in the literature are “lesser access to resources”, "reduced agency" and "lowered potential for achievements.” Below, we unpack the factors within the first area of impact: Resources, and how they unfold within the coffee industry, and we will continue unpacking the rest in the second article.
#1: Lesser Access to Coffee Sector-specific Resources
Some resources in the coffee sector include land, income, education, and credit. Combined with the World Bank’s resource categorization mentioned above, time, labor, coffee organizations, and leadership positions available in those organizations, can also be considered resources in the coffee sector. Below, we expand on how, for the most part, women coffee producers in Central America and Mexico have reduced access to these key resources.
Land
Lesser access to land among coffee-producing women can be partly attributed to machismo. Throughout Latin America, families prefer to pass down land to male family members, so oftentimes, only men gain land through inheritance; if women do inherit land, their parcels tend to be smaller and lower quality than the parcels given to men. Widows who gain land ownership after their husband’s death often either sell the land to quickly gain income or pass the land onto their children.
Although up-to-date statistics about gender disparities in land ownership in the Central American and Mexican coffee industries remain limited, some older studies share key insight into these disparities. A 2010 study noted that 35 percent of land-owning Central American and Mexican coffee producers are women. Yet, the women who participated in this study were members of fair-trade coffee organizations, and women involved in these organizations are generally more empowered than women who are not; therefore, overall women’s land ownership in Central America and Mexico is likely lower than 35 percent. In fact, in Costa Rica, although there is no specific statistic, a 2017 study noted that land-ownership is still dominated by men.
In 2018, the International Labor Organization (ILO) conducted a case study on women coffee producers in Mexico, a majority of whom work on smallholder farms. Only about 39 percent of women in the study have either shared or sole land ownership; as for sole ownership in specific, that percentage drops to 21 percent. Interestingly, the ILO noted that land ownership among women coffee producers is higher than Mexico’s national average level of women land ownership, which is about 25 percent, meaning that land ownership in Mexico’s coffee sector is more gender equal than other sectors; regardless, there is still work to be done to achieve gender equal levels of land ownership in Mexico’s coffee sector.
In Central America, some researchers have also noted an increasing trend in the migration of men to cities in search of better economic opportunities, leading to what some call the “feminization” of agriculture. Within the coffee sector, the outmigration of men leaves women in charge of managing household coffee production. The word “feminization” suggests that these women are more empowered, but with regard to land ownership, this is not the case; the male family member’s departure, generally, does not lead to a transfer in land ownership to women. The departure of men also gives women a greater workload, but these added responsibilities don’t fundamentally change women’s rights and access to resources.
Time
Women coffee producers often face what researchers call the “double burden,” which requires women to dedicate time to both productive labor, such as their role in coffee production, and reproductive labor, which refers to domestic duties like childcare. Some women face a “triple burden,” meaning they have to balance productive and reproductive labor with organizational labor, which refers to women’s participation in community-based organizations.
A double or triple burden can lead women coffee producers to experience time poverty, a situation wherein someone may have too many tasks and not enough time to complete those tasks. For reference, during peak harvest season in Nicaragua, women coffee producers’ workdays can begin as early as 3 a.m. and last until 11 p.m. Time poverty can have a dire effect on quality of life since it limits women’s time to rest, and can lead to worsened health, lower overall wellbeing, and reduced productivity.
Labor
There is little data regarding women coffee producers’ access to labor. However, both the ILO, in the Mexico-based study, and Root Capital, in a Guatemala-based study, noticed that women heads of household generally have smaller family sizes, and therefore less labor available for coffee production. The ILO report also mentioned that family members in women-headed households may have to work more hours per day, so they can’t dedicate as much labor power to coffee production-related tasks.
Income
Root Capital reported that women who participated in their Guatemala study earned lower incomes than men because many of them don’t own land. In relation to the point about outmigration of men to urban areas, one study based in Costa Rica discovered that even if men aren’t physically present in the household, they still exhibit some, though less, control over household income.
Root Capital also found that male-headed households in Guatemala, on average, earned higher incomes and revenues from coffee production than female-headed households. This is in part because female-headed households generally have smaller plot sizes and less family members to work the land. Women family members also aren’t justly compensated for their labor, meaning they earn fewer benefits, like cash, relative to the amount of work they do.
In the coffee sector, it’s also difficult for workers to access social security. In the ILO study on women farmers in Mexico, 56 percent of participants stated that they didn’t have access to social security, while the remaining 44 percent of women indicated that they do. The report reinforces the idea that the coffee sector is not a reliable industry to gain social security benefits, and suggests that women coffee producers who have access to social security likely participate in income-generating activities outside of coffee production. Yet, time poverty can prevent women from taking advantage of these opportunities, so participating in income-generating opportunities outside of coffee production is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Education
In Central America and Mexico, some reports highlight that women involved in coffee production often have lower educational levels than men, findings which indicate that women likely have lesser access to educational opportunities. Although this statistic is a bit outdated, a 2008 study reported that 83 percent of women coffee producers or workers in Mexico either did not finish primary school or received no schooling at all. More current data shows that lower educational levels among women producers still persists. For example, ICAFE’s gender policy, which was released in 2022, confirmed that rural women tend to have lower education levels than women who live in urban areas. Root Capital’s 2014 report stated that women coffee producers in Guatemala have lower literacy rates than men and indigenous women coffee producers were less likely to know Spanish than their male counterparts.
On a more hopeful note, ICAFE discovered that younger women involved in coffee production in Costa Rica, specifically women under the age of 35, have higher educational levels than older women. This information indicates a generational advancement in education levels among women coffee producers, meaning that access to educational opportunities among coffee producers has become more gender equal over time.
Credit
The issue of accessing credit highlights the interdependent nature of access to resources; oftentimes, women must show they have other resources to gain credit. ICAFE also reported that lower educational levels among women producers in Costa Rica hinders their access to financial resources in general. With regard to credit in specific, some women stated that they don’t qualify for credit, and two reasons mentioned were a lack of land ownership and a lack of fixed income.
Coffee Cooperatives and Leadership Positions
Like credit, access to coffee cooperatives is dependent on women’s access to other resources. Some cooperatives, though not all, may require participants to be land owners, and, as explained above, women often aren’t. A double, or triple, burden can reduce the amount of time women have available to successfully participate in and take advantage of membership benefits in cooperatives, let alone gain leadership positions.
With regard to leadership positions, smallholder women only hold about 10 percent of leadership positions in local cooperatives in Costa Rica. At the organizational level, all-women cooperatives can face more difficulty in accessing resources compared to mixed-gender cooperatives.
Written by: Sunaina Sunda
Using Kabeer’s framework of empowerment, we analyze our impact through three areas of impact: resources, agency, and achievements. In this article, we reviewed factors within the first area of impact -resources-. To continue reading on agency and achievements, click the button below.
This article was initially published in October 2022, then updated in March 2024.
About Bean Voyage
Bean Voyage is a feminist nonprofit with the mission to build thriving agri-businesses with smallholder women farmers in Latin America. Through a bundle of services called Care Trade, Bean Voyage provides training, financing, market access, and mentorship to smallholder women farmers. To date, we have generated over $600k in revenue for nearly 1,000 smallholder women in Costa Rica and Mexico. An average Bean Voyage partner earns 212% more income than the current commodity market prices as a result of the Care Trade program.