Gender considerations in innovation platforms in the livestock sector in Mali

ABSTRACT

Innovation platforms (IPs) are spaces for coordination, mutual learning, and consultation among different actors in a value chain to diagnose and solve common problems. They were set up as part of USAID Feed the Future Mali Livestock Scaling Technology Program to address the challenges of the ruminant livestock sector in Mali, including low visibility and weak participation of women in livestock production and marketing. Our purpose in this paper is to report gender considerations in the process of supporting women farmers empowerment embedded in IPs. Qualitative data was collected from project sites over a six-month; 50 iterative interviews were conducted, including 21 in-depth individual interviews, 7 focus groups, 2 participatory workshops and 20 key informant interviews. All interviews were conducted in total with 106 individuals, including 49 men and 14 women livestock farmers. Our results show that the empowerment of women livestock farmers was not systematic with IPs, but rather depends on gender relations and dynamics in the specific social contexts in which these IPs were implemented.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment
• negotiation
• gender
• cooperation
• innovations
• relations

1. Introduction

Gender equality has been recognized for some decades as an important indicator in development projects (World Bank 2011). International and governmental agencies, feminist activists and researchers are seizing on gender equity approaches to promote and justify change towards more sustainable and equitable food systems. Furthermore, innovation platforms (IPs) have been widely used as tools for institutional change in agriculture (Van Paassen et al. 2014). They are meant to be equitable and dynamic spaces aimed at bringing together heterogeneous actors to exchange knowledge and information and co-construct solutions to common problems (ILRI 2012). More specifically, IPs are seen as fora for bringing together diverse stakeholders from various sectors with different professional backgrounds, who collaborate to identify solutions to common problems or to achieve a common goal (Homann-Kee Tui et al. 2013). When put into practice, their impacts are diverse.

The literature on IPs includes several case studies that show their role in the development of agro-pastoralists human and social capital and production (Ravichandran et al. 2020; Van Paassen et al. 2014). Thanks to the holistic multi-stakeholder approach, IPs are used as relevant tools to understand institutional constraints and opportunities for change (Teno and Cadilhon 2016). Indeed, they play a major role in networking between stakeholders (Afari-Sefa et al. 2012). While some gender research studies have addressed the factors that limit women's participation in IPs, they fail however to take into account socio-cultural gender constraints on women's ability to participate in meetings and have their voices heard in the presence of men (Annet Abenakyo Mulema, Farnworth, and Colverson 2017a; Kaaria et al. 2016; Swaans et al. 2014). Other research discusses the importance of women's participation in IPs, particularly in driving institutional and technological innovations (Ravichandran et al. 2020), and its implications for women's empowerment strategies (Bilfield, Seal, and Rose 2020; Mulema, Farnworth, and Colverson 2017b), referred to here as a multidimensional and socially contextualized process (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2019).

Gender research on IPs tends to focus on experiences with an emphasis on women’s involvement only. The few studies that consider IPs as affected by gender relations reveal the tendency of development programmes to favour men and better-off economic groups in accessing rural advisory services and to marginalize women perceived as subsistence farmers primarily interested in feeding their households (Farnworth and Colverson 2015). In studying gender through the lens of women or men alone, one particularly important and marginal aspect of the IP literature is the relationship between male and female roles. This study takes up this blind spot in the research. It proposes to analyze the relational dimension of gender in IPs. More specifically, this study investigated how IPs shape gender relations to meet livestock productivity targets. This paper is in line with approaches that explicitly aim to understand and contextualize social norms to promote more equitable gender relations (CGIAR 2013; Kabeer and Subrahmanian 1996). The evaluation of IPs from a gender relational perspective is therefore useful to account for the impact of the Feed-the-Future Mali Livestock Scaling Technology Program (FtF-MLSTP) in Mali. This study takes a critical look at the participation of men and women in IPs. It takes into account gender dynamics in production relationships at multiple levels including households, villages, communes, and cooperatives. The following questions are answered: What relations are established within IPs between men and women, and what changes do they bring to the community in relation to livestock production? How do IPs promote women's participation within the livestock production context strongly influenced gender norms? How do IPs facilitate access of women to livestock vaccination and other animal health services?

2. Literature review

2.1. Women in livestock systems: an empowerment opportunity with gender challenges

For a long time, actors in the livestock sector in Mali, as in other sub-Saharan countries, have been faced with major challenges. In fact, the livestock sector is characterized by low productivity due to recurrent seasonal feed shortages, poor fodder quality and a high disease burden linked to low livestock vaccination coverage (Dione et al. 2017). With 80% of women owning sheep and/or goats in the Mopti and Sikasso regions, livestock (especially small ruminants) is seen as particularly important in supporting the empowerment and livelihoods of women in rural areas who generally do not have access to alternative opportunities. Indeed, even healthy livestock provide meaningful opportunities to enhance women’s empowerment. However, gender-based restrictions limit women’s access to animal health services, thereby affecting the potential of livestock to enhance their empowerment (Omondi et al. 2022).

Small ruminant (and poultry) rearing remains the main source of financial savings for rural households amid mistrust of agricultural banks (Oluwatayo 2012). Gender norms which assign to men the productive functions (public and economic) and to women the reproductive functions of the domestic space, limit women’s access animal health services and, consequently, to be productive. Male-headed households (70.2%) have larger household sizes than female-headed households (46.8%). Men own three times as many cattle, horses and poultry as women, four times as many small ruminants, donkeys and camels, and have more pigs, according to the National Food Security Survey in Mali (ENSAM 2020). They are confronted with the hardship of transporting animals to the vaccination park. Lack of time and decision-making power due to the weight of gender norms are additional factors that limit their access to animal health services and inputs such as treatments, vaccinations and other preventive diseases measures. In addition, women lack opportunities for livestock training to gain knowledge and information on good herd management practices. This becomes more pronounced in the context of vaccination (Dione et al. 2017). Women have limited access to agricultural productive resources despite a significant responsibility for productive and reproductive functions (Zidouemba et al. 2019).

Women are marginalized in development interventions, which tends to obscure their presence in production systems (Farnworth and Colverson 2015). Because of their position in households, in some areas, women cannot declare ownership of their animals or register for vaccination (Dione et al. 2019). They are often excluded or poorly represented in value chains, and women's issues regularly go unnoticed. The multiplicity of these barriers is likely to reduce their participation and contribution in agricultural production (Kaaria et al. 2016). Similarly, it has been shown that women's income from informal markets is lower than that of men (Njuki et al. 2011). It is critical to examine how IPs can address these gender issues.

2.2. Roles of innovation platforms in livestock systems to empower women and improve livelihood

Research has shown the relevance of IP as a tool for inclusion that mobilize different actors to seize opportunities and promote collaboration and learning among value chain actors at different levels (Röling and Fliert 1994). IPs promote participation and contribute to the use of knowledge for practical problem solving in a value chain. However, recent studies have confirmed the low participation of women in the functioning of platforms. Among the reasons, gender and socio-cultural constraints on women in different contexts studied are often not taken into account in the implementation and operation of platforms (Swaans et al. 2014). In addition to experiencing more limited participation in immunization programmes, they face time constraints and limited access to information on immunization schedules. In most rural communities, women cannot declare ownership of their animals or register for vaccination as they are not recognized as heads of households (Dione et al. 2019). IPs can perpetuate the power imbalances that women face in their daily lives. All these ingrained values limit active discussion and debate. Similarly, home workload may constrain women from participating trainings, and their husbands may even disapprove of their participation in IP meetings.

On the other hand, IPs can be tools for women empowerment. In milk production, women have been shown to play an important role in driving institutional and technological innovations (Ravichandran et al. 2020). IPs can enable women to communicate their views to other stakeholders and find solutions to the problems they face. Similarly, IPs can be places for identifying gender-specific challenges and designing effective and relevant solutions. Three ways to overcome these challenges are proposed: firstly, analyze gender logics upstream to gain a better understanding of gender dynamics within a community, to understand the cultural norms that shape women's agricultural work, domestic tasks, social status and access to and control of resources. Secondly, to make women's voices heard, it is proposed to adopt methods such as small group discussions, games and participatory videos. Similarly, women should be represented in IP decision-making levels such as the IP management committees, who can voice their concerns. Finally, a good facilitator during IP meetings who will ensure that women are represented and have a strong voice (Mulema, Farnworth, and Colverson 2017b).

2.3. The Feed the Future Mali Livestock Scaling Technology Program (FTF- MLSTP)

FTF-MLTSP is aligned to USAID/Mali FTF programme. It was designed to boost growth of the Mali livestock sector. The overarching goal of FTF-MLTSP was to contribute to the inclusive growth in ruminant livestock value chains for increased income, food and nutrition security for cattle, sheep, and goat keepers and other value chains actors in the Mopti, Timbuktu and Sikasso regions, hence lifting them out of poverty. FTF-MLTSP sought to bridge ruminant livestock productivity gaps and to improve access to more remunerative markets through large-scale dissemination of proven livestock technologies and best practices in target regions. Major innovations that were targeted include peste des petits ruminants (PPR) thermostable vaccine production and dissemination, vaccination business models against major diseases such as PPR, ovine pasteurellosis and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), promotion of food feed and forages crops, development and dissemination of herd health integrated technological packages, support for women’s business models through feed processing units, improved market access, enhanced knowledge, skills and organizational capacities of livestock producers in general, and empowerment through their active participation in all capacity building interventions including training to develop their technical, managerial, and organizational knowledge and skills on forage and fodder production, animal health and integrated packages (ILRI 2020).

2.4. The process of implementing IPs

The 24 IPs of the FTF-MLSP were created at the commune level and were made up of representatives of main stakeholders of the animal health delivery chain such as farmers, private veterinarians, vaccine producers and public veterinary services; actors directly supporting farmers such as financial institutions and community leaders. Each IP had set up a management committee made up of both men and women whose role was to convene meetings, develop work plans, document activities, and follow up implementation of innovations. IPs supported exchange and dissemination of information about vaccination campaigns; triggered collective action (planification, evaluation of vaccination campaigns); created market opportunities for veterinarians; and supported capacity building and entrepreneurship of private veterinarians and their linkage to financial institutions (Dione et al. 2019).

2.5. Innovation platforms for equitable access to livestock services

To achieve the project’s objectives, the project implemented IPs to scale up integrated technology packages designed to improve production with a particular focus on animal health, access to livestock inputs and the market. The aim was to implement specific actions which, in the long term, were expected to bring about significant changes among the actors in the value chain.

In this perspective, the project developed an approach that emphasized the use of functional organizational structures capable of serving as an interface among stakeholders with the aim of pooling efforts in a spirit of sharing and capitalizing on knowledge and information to create synergies. The FTF-MLTSP project thus aimed to create an environment conducive to the emergence of dynamic partnerships between stakeholders to place actions within a sustainable development logic to stimulate appropriation of the interventions by the actors.

The IPs were set up to better empower stakeholders in the diagnosis of constraints and opportunities in order to provide tangible solutions to production issues, and more specifically, to animal health, along the entire domestic ruminant value chain according to the International livestock research institute (ILRI 2020). Also, IP members were encouraged to invest in the sustainability of the IPs by contributing to the financial costs of running the IPs, participating in meetings, and implementing other activities. Emphasis is placed on facilitating access to appropriate animal health inputs and services for livestock keepers to promote the adoption of livestock disease prevention and control techniques (e.g. livestock vaccination).

2.6. Innovation platforms intervention strategy: from animal health as an entry point to multifunctionality

Initially, as an entry point, the project implemented an intervention strategy based on mechanisms and tools for disseminating integrated technological packages designed to promote animal health (more specifically vaccination) (Dione 2016). Vaccination has indeed enabled IPs to engage in the control of diseases of major concerns such as PPR, sheep pasteurellosis and CBPP (Dione et al. 2019). Later, the project was expanded to introduce other technological innovations, learning innovative and profitable livestock techniques to improve production, market access and the participation of men and women in decision-making bodies. In the area of feed resources, the main constraint to livestock production in the area, through the IPs, the project supported the scaling of the integrated technological package, introduced fodder plants such as Brachiaria (Urochloa)and ‘bourgou’ (Echinochloa stagnina), preserved and used as animal feed, and on the other hand, facilitated the manufacture of nutritional blocks (nutrient concentrates in brick form) produced and sold by the women farmer group. In addition, there were aspects relating to other technologies for growing cowpeas and groundnuts, known as ‘dual-use crops’.

The project approach also included important economic, organizational and institutional dimensions. In Sikasso, for example, microfinance was considered an interesting modality for increasing production capacity, but it is used by men for sheep fattening and by women for food production and sheep fattening. In the North, on the other hand, micro-finance was seen as a potential driver for IPs and an essential condition for access to the regional livestock market.

3. Materials and methods

4. Theoretical framework

Our theoretical framework lies at the crossroads of the sociology of organizations and innovations (Alter 2000), network analysis (Granovetter 1985) and gender analysis (Harvard Analytical Framework and Moser Framework). Crossing an organizational analysis of innovation and networks with that of gender is interesting in order to grasp both the social contexts of the IPs and the logics of the actors within them caught up in a series of social relations (sex, age, institutions, communities, etc.).

Firstly, IPs are considered here as social innovations that respond to the needs in ruminant livestock sector such as access to animal health inputs and services. The IPs reflect complex processes of learning new ways of doing things and adopting new rules between different actors (veterinary services, NGOs, farmers’ organizations) concerned with removing the constraints facing the animal sector (low vaccine coverage, poor market access, technologies, etc.).

Secondly, they are expected to change practices in the livestock sector. Thirdly, thanks to their network configuration, where several organizations cohabit, they reflect contextualized processes that lead to cooperation and negotiation between actors likely to become involved in, or even appropriate, the technologies introduced. Network analysis was used to understand how actors deploy themselves through a web of diverse links (family, village, associative, institutional) to access the resources available in these IPs.

Using snowball sampling with each respondent, we were able to reconstruct the relational networks of the men and women on the IPs. This relational approach enabled us to see how these members were socially involved and to analyze the interference of these links on their positioning within the platforms. Bias or advantage, the interconnection of relational ties of a familial, friendly, professional or political nature between platform members reflects the interweaving of community dynamics (village, family, farmers’ organizations, town hall, etc.). On the basis of this purposive sampling, gender analysis was mobilized to understand, in a transversal way, the functioning dynamics of these organizations and the logics of use of the actors according to the social roles assigned to men and women. Then, the Harvard grid (who does what?) was used to identify roles according to the social division of labour in the communities studied. Secondly, female and male roles in accessing the services available in the IPs were analyzed using Moser's grid (Practical and Strategic Needs). The triple role of women was highlighted, through reproductive tasks (childcare, domestic work), productive tasks (paid activities) and community tasks (community organization and provision of products for collective consumption) (Moser 1989). Finally, gender variations in production and marketing were examined, using the FAO Gender Analysis Matrix (GAM) (March, Smyth, and Mukhopadhyay 2005), based on four levels (men, women, household and community), which makes it possible to measure four types of impacts. In particular, this work assessed the changes resulting from the use of the technologies proposed by the project on the organization of agro-pastoral work (reduction of drudgery and diversification of activities), the reduction in working hours, and the resources generated by the proposed innovations, before finally examining the socio-cultural factors of change. The articulation of these three grids made it possible to reveal the relational dimension of gender in the IPs. To better understand the impact of IPs on women farmers and capture gender dynamics and relations, this paper proposes the use of qualitative and participatory analysis methods that are complementary to the Women Empowerment Livestock Index (WELI) (Galiè et al. 2019).

4.1. Data collection

Field data collection took place between December 2020 and May 2021, specifically in the cercles of Sikasso, Koutiala and Mopti. It was based on mixed forms of data collection (direct and free observation, in-depth interviews with key informants, individual in-depth interviews, focus group interviews and participatory workshops) was carried out in four phases, which are detailed in the next sections.

4.2. Direct and free observation

Direct and free observation¹ was carried out throughout the research, covering IP actors (direct and indirect), management committees, gender relations during meetings and semi-directive and informal interviews. This qualitative tool allowed us to compare the discourse of the interview data with the practices observed within the IPs and to compare them with their organization.

4.3. In-depth individual interviews

First, exploratory surveys with eight key informants were carried out online by a sociologist with members of the ILRI team, and partners to take stock of knowledge related to the project. Then, 21 interviews (informal, semi-directive, ethnographic face-to-face) were conducted with several resource persons with different profiles. They concern the platforms’ direct stakeholder (President, secretaries, simple members, members of the steering committee, cooperatives, rural entrepreneurs, breeders, agents, the NGOs AMEDD, CRS, Care, and SNV, female and others farmers). They have been identified during the focus groups at the end of which these people have been interviewed. The search for key informants was facilitated by the purposive sampling technique in order to diversify the profiles of the IPs. For this reason, in each of the study areas (Sikasso, Koutiala), two IP platforms were chosen. In Mopti, three IPs were selected.

The functionality indicator of an IP built around the following criteria: animation and activities of the management committee, dynamism of the partnership among actors, participation of members by gender, leadership of the chairperson, and level of education of the secretariat. In total, 41 in-depth individual interviews were conducted. The individual interviews lasted on average one hour. But some with resource persons lasted up to two hours.

The exploratory interviews allowed for a better understanding of the role of MLSTP stakeholders in the implementation and monitoring and evaluation of the project. Similarly, they were very useful in formulating research hypotheses to study the place of gender in the functioning of IPs. In addition, the exploratory interviews served as a springboard for targeting respondents for the survey itself.

4.4. Focus group discussions (FGD)

Seven (7) were conducted to understand the functioning and organization of the IPs. In each IP, they brought together members of the management committee (agro-pastoralists, women's cooperatives, communes, veterinary representatives, NGOs, etc.). The focus groups questioned the organizational and associative dynamics of the IPs. Similarly, the operating tools, the participation of members according to gender, the success factors and sustainability challenges, etc., were examined. The focus groups took place in the offices of the targeted IPs. They lasted between two and three hours and were conducted by the pair (sociologist-veterinarian) in Bambara, Senoufo or Dogon before being translated into French.

First, four (4) mixed focus groups were held with members of the management committees. They allowed us to observe gender interactions and to identify the obstacles to women’s participation in the platforms’ decision-making bodies. Then, three (3) sex-disaggregated focus groups were organized with only male or female members of IPs to better understand the success factors or challenges of participation by gender.

4.5. Participatory workshops

The physical surveys were complemented by two participatory workshops that used participatory action research methods with around 40 individuals representing the stakeholders of the Ips. The workshops focused successively on the reconstitution of value chains; the challenges of governance, financing and vaccination; and the solutions and collaborations envisaged to ensure the platforms sustainability. The evaluation of impacts required the use of the comparative analysis method, which made it possible to identify and contrast control IPs and reference Ips. Three indicators made this assessment possible: functionality, failure/success factors and monitoring indicators (governance, financing and effects of innovations introduced by the project).

The participatory workshops emphasized the complementarity of the various stakeholders and of gender in particular. They were the scene of observation of the assumption of roles according to gender. For example, the composition of activities related to governance and vaccination attracted more attention from men, while women voluntarily focused on activities related to the financing of fattening and fodder production.

The combined use of a range of qualitative methods has highlighted the relational networks of IP members. Network analysis was used to understand gender dynamics and relations, including power relations between the women and men in charge of the IPs (representatives, IPs president). As can be seen in access to financing and vaccination, the overlapping of kinship and couple ties between certain members leads to a negotiation of power relationships within IPs, as an extension of households, with a tendency to promote gender relations and role complementarity.

At the end of the collection, 50 iterative interviews have been conducted, including 21 In-depth individual Interviews (IDI), 7 focus groups (FGs) and 2 participatory workshops (PW) and 20 Key Informant Interviews (KII) including 10 with ILRI team and 10 with IPs member (veterinary service managers and partners involved in setting up the IPs, agricultural banks, NGO animators and programme managers and local authorities). The all interviews have been conducted with 106 individuals, including 49 men and 14 women livestock farmers in innovative platforms (Tables 1 and 2).

Table 1. Summary of PI interviews.

Sites	Qualitative Tools	Total Interviews	Respondents	Total Respondents	Topics explored
Sikasso	FGD+		NGO	11	Vaccination
		4	President/Administrative Secretary PI		Governance
			Women's cooperative		Funding
			Farmer/breeder		Gender
			Steering committee		Sustainability
	KII IDI		Agent/veterinarian/Livestock services	6	Vaccination/Funding
		4	Mayor, mandatory, NGO contact
		8	Female and male farmers
	Participatory workshop	1	Women's cooperatives	19	Gouvernance Production aliments, Introduction technologie de transformation alimenataire
			Members (10 women and men) 5 sterring committee 5 IP
			Feeder
			Agent
			Agricultural bank
			SNV
			AMEDD
			SRV
Koutiala	FGD	2	NGO,	23	Gouvernance, Financment/Vaccination
			President/Administrative Secretary PI
			Chairperson/Administrative
			Secretary IP/Steering Committee
			Farmer/livestock farmer
			Women's cooperative
			Agent/veterinarian
	KII IDI	3 7	President/farmer	5	Gender, Funding
			female farmers
Mopti	FGD	2	Chairperson/Administrative Secretary IP/Steering Committee	10	Vaccination
			Women's cooperative		Governance
			Male farmers		Funding
			feeder
	KII IDI.	3 6	Livestock services	5	Sustainability
			AMEDD/CRS/CARE agent
	Participatory workshop	1	Women's cooperatives	17	Vaccination
			Members (10 women and men) 5 sterring committee 5 IP		Governance
			Agricultural bank		Funding
			Breeder, feeder, farmer, agent		Gender
			Catholic Relief Services (CRS)		Sustainability
Tombouctou	KII	2	NGO	2	IP implementation
Bamako	KII	8	ILRI	8	IP implementation
Total		50		106

Notes: Data was generated from 50 interviews (30 in-depth individual, 10 key informant interviews, 8 focus group and 2 participatory workshops) with 62 individuals (14 women and 49 men).

Table 2. Distribution of men and women in platform steering committees.

Innovative Platforms Composition of Steering Committees by gender	Male=	Female =	Total
Sikasso	7	4	11
Koutiala	2	7	9
	2	7	9
	1	15	16
Mopti	1	3	4
	NRP	8	7
	1	5	6
Total	14	49	63

4.6. Data processing and analysis

The interview data were recorded and transcribed in full, after being anonymized. Each interview was then summarized in the form of a qualitative portrait to identify and record the key information that informs our problem. The information was then analyzed according to the themes of our interview guides (history, organization, functioning, membership, participation, division of tasks, changes, appropriation logics and dynamics, etc.). We have favoured gender analysis throughout the research.

5. Findings

We argue firstly through the study that the unequal representation of women and men in IPs tends to mask the actual participation of women in these collaborative spaces. In the second point, we show that as individual and differential as this participation may seem, women's empowerment opportunities in IPs are embedded in gender relations. This is particularly true in terms of access to innovative services (production, health and animal services and markets). This leads us to postulate that gender interactions are an essential, but random condition for the empowerment of women.

5.1. Participation in platforms: gender-differentiated pathways

IPs reflect social innovations embedded in gender. As an interactive and contextualized process, they offer conditions for differentiated participation between men and women and contribute to improving production relations by giving women greater visibility in accessing animal health, networks (learning and training, credit) and the market.

5.2. Men and women in the operation of IPs: role distribution in steering committees

The implementation of IPs in the study areas has led to greater inclusion of women in the composition of steering committees. Women are supposed to be represented at 30%, i.e. 2 women out of 7 men in each of the platforms steering committee. In the fieldwork, we met fewer of them.

This table indicates the composition of the members of the steering committees of the 7 platforms with which the focus groups were conducted. It reflects a wide gender disparity in all the sites studied. Female farmers represent 14/63 or 22.2%. The profiles of these females farmers are quite diverse (rural entrepreneur, NGO contact, town hall secretary, cooperative president, cattle farmer, town councilor, etc.). They belonged to a certain standing in the community and were officer-bearers in the IPs. This has implications when it comes to empowerment, as often once forgets that there are strong intra-gender dynamics in place which influence the empowerment and inclusion of men and women in decision-making platforms.

As bodies for coordinating IPs governance activities and for communication between IPs members, these committees engage gender relations between men and women farmers. Often led by a cooperative or a group of cooperatives of farmers, the steering committee's composition reflects a man predominance. They monopolize this decision-making body, holding the elective positions of chairperson and secretary. The way women farmers are represented in the steering committees does not reflect their level of involvement. Nevertheless, this low visibility of women at the organizational level can be put into perspective.

From the outset, we can see in this representation a quantitative logic that aims to reduce inequalities in access to decision-making bodies. However, a qualitative analysis of this representation reveals a gender reproduction, despite the important role played by women in the governance of IPs, and particularly of financial resources. Considered as trusted members, involved in production (feed manufacturing and processing) and financial management, they hold positions in the IPs in charge of treasury and coordination of so-called women's activities (feed manufacturers’ cooperatives, seed purchases and resales). It can therefore be said that IPs give greater visibility to women farmers while reproducing gender logics in the governance of these organizations.

In fact, the participation of women farmers in the IPs reveals a great difference in situations depending on the contexts studied. Disparities remain more marked in the North (Mopti) where the context of insecurity tends to reinforce the invisibility of women in the steering committees. Several factors, including scattered housing and the weight of gender norms, make it more difficult for women to participate in meetings. While they prefer to take advantage of market days to attend IP activities in the company of their husbands, they are wary of speaking out in their presence and avoid participating in IP activities on their own. As previous research has shown, this is sometimes seen as a sign of mistrust, which does not allow them to express their specific needs in IPs. However, in the southern and south-eastern IPs, women farmers participation is quite visible, reflecting in Sikasso and Koutiala a greater use of the Ips. They are more experienced in participating in development projects aimed at empowering women in the fields of livestock breeding, livestock feed production or the processing and marketing of agricultural by-products. What's more, they can use their networks of political and associative contacts. (family, ethnic and village) and on their involvement in livestock activities to become part of strong organizational dynamics. Relying on matrimonial strategies (couple, kinship), intergenerational relationships and associative dynamics (cooperatives) allows them not only to facilitate access to information, but also to bypass gender constraints within the IPs through their participation in meetings and training, for example. The case of Awa, aged 42, is worth mentioning. Awa is a rural entrepreneur, president of the order monitoring committee of an IP in Sikasso and secretary at the town hall. She is married to a veterinarian. To meet her domestic and poultry-breeding responsibilities, she relies on her children and her two domestic helpers. For her farming and fattening activities, Awa employs farm workers, which leaves her time to devote to her duties at the municipality. This example illustrates the interlocking social arrangements (family/domestic/informal) that women combined productive, reproductive and community roles entail.

5.3. Women's invisibility in vaccination

In the classic scheme of vaccination campaign organization, men's participation is more apparent. Yet the process of vaccination is based on a real domestic economy that tends to escape the uninformed observer of intra-household arrangements. Gathering the discourse on vaccination during the interviews and participatory workshops has made it possible to show that in reality the process of vaccination is co-produced by men and women who are socially determined at the family, institutional and professional levels, etc.

It should be remembered that in the absence of a domestic economic unit, gender takes on its full meaning in the process of vaccination. While men farmers are responsible for coordinating information and raising awareness of vaccination among members of IPs, women farmers play an important but not very visible role. The latter are far from being limited to maintenance tasks (feeding, care of the herd, enclosure, etc.). Women farmers mobilize and centralize the necessary financial resources, which are then entrusted to men farmers (husbands and male children, uncles, etc.), who take care of the technical aspects of vaccination (moving the animals, payment per head to private vets). For poultry farming, which is considered a ‘female’ activity, women farmers have more leeway to participate and decide on vaccination. Yet the observational data show that men farmers control the decision-making bodies in poultry IP. However, as demonstrated, their participation in vaccination does not systemically empower them (Omondi et al. 2022).

Situations vary according to the contexts studied. It appears that women have different paths within IPs. In the north, women's participation in vaccination is more common in poultry farming, and concerns those who have professional experience in the field and community experience (cooperatives), in addition to their community roots (family and village), so that they can make the most of their interests and leadership. Younger women farmers, faced with a combination of productive and reproductive responsibilities (domestic and farmers tasks, residential mobility, marriage), tend to pool their poultry houses to reduce costs or to delegate vaccination to their spouse or children. It can thus be said that vaccination is a process negotiated between men and women.

This coproduction, which is central to the IPs, is based on communities (family, local authorities, cooperatives, etc.) and on the leadership of legitimate male and female figures who have a certain social recognition. Let us return to the example of Awa, 42, a member of an IP and secretary at the town hall. Through this latter position, she was informed of the project to set up IPs. Since her husband is a veterinarian, Awa was trained among the 20 other agro-pastoralists in vaccination. The couple looks after the family livestock; when her husband is away, she monitors the animals. Awa's situation is far from being an isolated case.

Fanta (58) is a farmer; her husband is the vice-president of an IP and a village vaccinator. He is in charge of vaccinating the cattle raised by his wife. Both are members of the IP, a position that has enabled them to sensitive other farmers to vaccinate their animals, sometimes despite the mistrust expressed by other IP members. This situation is similar to that of Aïssa, (62), president of a poultry cooperative in Mopti. She is a member of the same IP as her brother-in-law, who is its president. Because of her recognized experience in poultry farming and her position as a member of the steering committee, she has managed to convince the women of her cooperative to pool their hen houses in order to reduce the costs of animal health (vaccination, deworming, feed, etc.), which amount to 15 CFA francs per animal vaccinated. Descriptions of these different situations in the south and the north show the concerted action and gender arrangements that the practice of vaccination entails. It cannot be understood outside of family farms and the position of members at the local level.

Women farmers do not limit themselves to an empowerment strategy of associating with men farmers with power (parents, husbands, friends, acquaintances, etc.) (Galiè and Farnworth 2019). Network dynamics become an important lever for negotiating access to certain animal health information and services. Over time, they become part of socio-centric relational networks (cooperatives, neighbourhoods, ethnic groups, communes, IPs, etc.) or egocentric networks (husband, friend, uncle, father, etc.) in order to bypass gender barriers. For example, using the network of a husband or brother (president of an IP, veterinarian or banker) offers opportunities to access animal health services (training, vaccination, fattening loans, ordering fodder, etc.).

5.4. The embedding of relations of production in gender

Let us now try to analyze the relations of production in IPs. This concept does not simply refer to the activity of breeding. At the heart of gender relations, production also involves resource issues, with marketing. In the IPs, the social and spatial division of labour is perpetuated. Men farmers have at their disposal the labour power of their wives as a factor for increasing their productivity and earnings, through the relationships between husband and wife, father and children. Under these conditions, matrimonial relations become confused with production relations and are transfigured as moral values in the name of cohesion and family unity. Insofar as livestock rearing is perceived as an activity controlled by men, the woman, her children and her animals appear as the property of the latter, and therefore as a producer of wealth that is itself owned. The words of a man farmer, IP responsible in the south-east are worth quoting:

The woman and the animal are subject to the man who is the head of the family, so he can dispose of them as he wants … it is not that the project disadvantages women, but it is gender norms. We are all submissive, because even if a man wants to give a plot of land to his wife, it is the village chief who decides.

  (Personal communication with a herder, Koutiala, May 2021)

Through this power of use, the man disposes of his wife and her property through marriage. The matrimonial order that unfolds in production introduces specific statuses according to their position in the relations of production. Under these conditions, women farmers produce and participate in the market directly (poultry) or by delegation to the men farmers (small ruminants). In the livestock markets, which were then conceived as masculine spaces, the presence of women farmers was socially perceived as a threat to masculinity and inappropriate for respectable women. These gendered norms of marketing do not limit access to and use of income from small ruminant livestock. By delegating the sale of the animal to men farmers, women farmers do not always lose control over the sale. They are usually involved in setting the price for maintaining the animals. The few women farmers who manage to take part in livestock markets remain the exception. In Sikasso and Koutiala, women rely on their associative movement (cooperatives) to gain greater access to the market, particularly for the sale of nutritional blocks and to increase their fattening capacity. They seem to have greater autonomy in production and management of the income generated, which can be used for themselves and their children or reinvested in the household economy to buy new animals. However, in the Mopti IPs, security challenges reinforce the delegation of the market to men farmers for the sale of small ruminants and poultry, which is considered to be a more female market.

In short, women farmers access to the market in the IPs reflects the fact that production relationships are embedded in gender-based logics located in the family (matrimonial) and associative (cooperative) domains. If in the market, men are buyers and owners, in the domestic space, women farmers who maintain (housing and feeding) the animals, this allows them to set the selling prices on the markets and to use the income generated from production (fattening, sale of poultry and small ruminants) for themselves and for their household. This social and sexual division of labour should not obscure the interdependence of male and female farmers roles in the platforms. What impacts then can IPs have by gender?

6. Gender effects of IPs: a crucible of social innovation

One of the direct effects of IPs on gender relations is that they have consolidated the interdependence of male and female roles and reinforced pre-existing empowerment dynamics. For women farmers, the changes observed reveal greater recognition of their productive role, due to improved production conditions and greater access to animal health services (vaccination and by-products), and to expanded networks (of learning, training, marketing and credit). For men farmers, in addition to consolidating their role as leaders in the IP space, have increased their production capacity in fattening and fodder crops (Bracharia & Bourgou). These changes were specific to the contexts studied.

6.1. Access to animal health services: complementary roles

Considered the most relevant innovation of the project, access to vaccination has strengthened gender relations by enabling women farmers to raise awareness at the community (household) level among heads of household, who in turn coordinate the activity with the agents at the IP level. Men farmers have better access to animal health services and products. Through their position as heads of household, they pass on the benefits to the women and negotiate the costs with the agents. In this way, they consolidate their leadership in the vaccination campaigns, through information and awareness-raising among farmers. By extension, the improvement in animal health has encouraged some men to increase their fattening capacity.

Successful fattening required a healthy, well-fed animal to be sold and to provide something for the family and the commune.

 (Personal communication with a farmer, Mopti, December 2021)

It should be remembered that thanks to the role played by the IPs more in Sikasso and Koutiala than in Mopti, access to animal health has thus improved the living conditions of ruminants and influenced the income of male and female livestock farmers. What about the impacts of IPs on the production conditions of men and women farmers?

6.2. Access to the means of production: from alleviation to diversification of roles

As a collective learning space, the IPs have facilitated the training and information of members and of agro-pastoralists in particular. Firstly, for women, the use of grinders has made it possible to reduce the drudgery involved in the work of making livestock feed. They have improved their production conditions and their well-being (saving time for themselves and their families and their associative activities) and increased their income. This is evidenced by the testimonies gathered during the focus group interviews with women's cooperatives in the south. Secondly, training and the introduction of grinding machines facilitated the processing of livestock feed and increased the production of multi-nutrient food blocks. With the experimentation of the school fields, women and men benefited from training that enabled them to enrich their fattening techniques. They have thus increased the number of animals to be fattened and the area cultivated with fodder. As for women, who are dependent on men for land, their fattening capacities have largely remained within the framework of family farms. However, changes are perceived in the area of fodder cultivation and the production of multi-nutrient blocks. Many of the women interviewed reveal in their discourse the effects of change in the perception of their role since they have been in the IPs.

Before, women thought that breeding was a male activity; with the platform, women can do breeding. Thanks to the production of food blocks, we have access to an income and the drudgery of processing is reduced.

 (Interview with a fattening woman, Sikasso, December 2020)

This testimony was supplemented during a focus group by the account of Salima (43), a manufacturer of nutritional blocks:

We opened an account at the agricultural bank to take out revolving credit in order to finance our fattening activities. Thanks to this, we are more considered now when we go to the bank.

 (Focus group women, Sikasso, December 2020)

Other women farmers in Sikasso and Koutiala also talked about being trained by IPs, working with men and being able to do the same activities as men. They are happy to be identified as fodder producers, and they are now recognized in the IP space by other members such as banking institutions, communes, etc. As members and leaders of cooperatives, they use their membership in the IPs to obtain loans from agricultural banks. In this way, they can increase their production to meet the fodder orders of farmers from other IPs. In effect, they have access to a larger market. In addition, some women farmers also report an increase in their income, which is not significant, but which influences their living conditions (purchase of domestic animals) and their participation in the IPs.

Analysis of the discourses of the men and women farmers surveyed shows the importance of the recognition and complementarity of the roles offered by the IPs is identified as a factor of individual empowerment (income, capacities), but also collective empowerment. In fact women farmers demonstrate through individual and group interviews their ability to rely on multiple community links (family, ethnic) at the personal, professional and associative level with men and other women (girls, maids, etc.) to free up time to participate in IP activities. The interest of this participation is received through access to the various services offered in these new spaces (platforms/inter-platforms), particularly for them but also and above all to improve their production and living conditions in general. On the other hand, by accessing new roles (platform members, fodder producers) they can seize the opportunities offered at the institutional level (training, mutual learning, funding, collaboration, etc.) and position themselves in the IPs and beyond.

6.3. Gender arrangements in marketing networks

With the establishment of IPs, changes are observed in production relationships. Through inter-platform visits and interpersonal exchanges, knowledge, practices and trust between stakeholders are strengthened. The results show better access to the seed market, especially for women farmers cooperatives. Indeed, the development of the inter-platform constitutes an interesting indicator of networking that facilitates the exchange of practices. Indeed, the inter-platform approach involves the sharing of experiences between men and women farmers on production activities (e.g. fattening, food production) beyond family farms and the local community space (village and communes). The inter-platform visits benefited women who are led to sell their products to order, through the intermediary of men farmers. Group sales were thus seen as a means of profitable production to increase their income, reduce costs (grouped movements of animals and herders) and the risks of insecurity. However, while some women farmers producers manage to benefit from marketing through IPs, family arrangements may lead others to sell part of their production to their husbands after the Bourgou harvest, or to resell their surpluses to men who are involved in raising large ruminants.

Depending on the configuration of family farms, men and women use the income generated by the market differently. Nevertheless, depending on the family configuration, income from small ruminant and poultry farming, for example, can be reinvested by men farmers in the purchase of new animals or made available to women to manage the domestic economy (milk, food, cooperative contributions, etc.). However, the results on the use of resources from production are rather mixed depending on the IP. In the south and south-east, where women have been able to establish real leadership over production activities and are fairly well represented on IPs and in other decision-making bodies (management committee, town hall, cooperatives, etc.), financial resources are not beyond their control. All in all, IPs offer opportunities for individual empowerment, especially for women farmers, and for strengthening gender relations, which are then consolidated through vaccination programmes and the production and marketing of ruminant and poultry products.

7. Discussion

We analyzed the relational and institutional dimension of gender within the IPs, in a context of introducing innovative livestock health services. In the sense that interactions are socially determined, gender norms are both the constraint and the condition for women's empowerment because they are naturalized to the point of no longer being questioned (Bourdieu 1977) and because they involve interactions with other men and or between women with interdependent links (cooperatives, families, IPs, villages, etc.). Similarly, women farmers participation in IPs can benefit the men in their families or communities. This is to say that IPs are collaborative spaces of random empowerment (suffered or chosen) for women. As shown by prior research (Galiè et al. 2019) empowerment pathways often are complex and non-linear. Because understandings and dimensions of empowerment may be time, and context, specific (Kabeer 2012; Richardson 2018; Tsikata and Darkwah 2014), this finding implies that one cannot predict changes in empowerment by observing female farmers participation IPs alone. Observing gender dynamics in IPs and households by paying attention to the practices and discourses of men involved in the livestock sector makes it possible to understand empowerment as a global process, with both individual and collective dimensions.

With IPs female farmers have improved their production conditions with the introduction of small-scale mechanization for the manufacture and processing of livestock feed. The technological, organizational and social innovations have gradually led to changes in production conditions (with access to credit and the use of grinding machines) and strengthened the organizational and institutional capacities of members. IPs have strengthened gender dynamics and relations, even among women in communities (family, cooperatives, veterinary services, NGOs, etc.), particularly in access to animal health with the co-production of vaccination and to the market with the development of the inter-platform, which has favoured opening up to wider production and marketing networks. At last IPs has promoted greater financial empowerment of female farmers. However, the opportunities to establish really economic and social leadership in small ruminant farming remain limited. Although their social status has evolved with access to small-scale mechanization, vaccination and the market, the ways to role transformation are still winding. Women farmers are gaining more power in their families and communities. However, economic resources are essentially controlled by men farmers, who derive their economic resources mainly from the sale of large ruminants. Overall, the dynamics initiated by the IPs need to be consolidated for more sustainable and visible changes.

In part, these findings are consistent with previous research that have shown – the role of platforms in strengthening women's empowerment (Galiè and Farnworth 2019; Mulema et al. 2015; Omondi et al. 2022), through market relationships (Davies et al. 2018; Sparrow and Traoré 2018) and the importance of women's participation in IP, particularly in driving institutional and technological innovations (Ravichandran et al. 2020) in vaccination process (Dione et al. 2019). However, they suggest going beyond an individual and differential/dichotomous view that opposes male and female roles. Here we have multi-level (collective, institutional and individual) gender imbrications in production relationships that reflect a more relational perspective.

It should be added that the feminization of IPs, despite reinforcing pre-existing empowerment dynamics, tends structurally to reproduce power inequalities. Indeed, through the setting up of steering committees, the process of vaccination and the market, IPs produce inequalities that are interwoven with those they are supposed to transform. Women farmers connected to influential Men farmers in the IPs and well beyond engaged in new hierarchical spaces and roles, while continuing to shoulder their domestic responsibilities, between reproductive work, productive work and community work.

8. Conclusion

The objective of this work was to analyze the role of innovative platforms in women's empowerment and its gender impacts. Thus, the cross-analysis of multi-sited qualitative survey data showed the relational and institutional dimensions. As a collaborative space, IPs offer empowerment opportunities, albeit random to women, which cannot be understood solely from their position in these organizations, and their participation in vaccination. Network analysis has thus shown the gendered relational mediations (between norms and strategies of circumvention) that call for logics of cooperation and negotiation between men and women in IPs and beyond.

As a main conclusion of this study, we can say that the different gender considerations (individual, differential, relational or institutional) sometimes in competition, or even in conflict, deserve to be taken into account in the innovation processes in animal health. This involves collecting contextual data in the areas of intervention, with a view to ensuring more integrated empowerment perspectives. Conversely, IPs face the logic of actors who are heavily influenced by normative gender considerations, which they are led to reproduce while aiming to change.

All in all, these results call for reflection on gender mainstreaming in IPs. As a structuring framework for the participation of men and women in different contexts, gender needs to be taken into account along the entire value chain of IPs, from design to evaluation, implementation and operation. It requires rethinking the modalities of member participation in a gender-sensitive, rather relational and equitable way. This implies not only taking into account the constraints and opportunities related to the economic and social positions of men and women (Moser 1989), but also understanding power dynamics and how they can affect the functioning of IPs. It means seeing women's empowerment as a process that is relational and supportive of male roles.

Acknowledgements

This research was started under the CRP Livestock and continued under the CGIAR Sustainable Animal Productivity for Livelihoods, Nutrition and Gender Inclusion (SAPLING) Initiative. CGIAR is a global research partnership for a food-secure future dedicated to transforming food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

CGIAR research is supported by contributions from the CGIAR Trust Fund.

Notes

1 Direct and free observation is a method that enables us to understand the mechanisms of social interaction (Diaz 2005). It leaves a lot of room for the investigator's intuition and allows for a gradual organization of the research hypotheses and a first and provisional delimitation of the field of study, which thus makes methodical observation possible (Dantier 2008). Data are collected by observing, taking notes, or keeping a logbook (Sawadogo 2021).