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abstract
This focus piece comes out of a recognition that higher institutions can and must play a key role in transforming the gendered landscape of food security. Close to 70% of labour related to post-harvest in Ethiopia is carried out by women. However, this does not mean that decision-making in a family (about what to grow or how to market it) is determined by women, and it also does not mean that women have equal access (compared to men) to resources and to status more broadly. Alongside this analysis is a recognition that women are often left out of the development of new technologies that could change the nature of their labour.
While clearly there is a need to mainstream gender in the curriculum of post-harvest in higher education institutions, the unique challenges facing universities (especially in Agriculture) remains an area that is under-studied, even though within the development literature more generally the idea of mainstreaming and integrating gender has had prominence at least for several decades in Ethiopia. The article focuses on two key aspects of engendering the curriculum: (1) what is taught, and (2) who is teaching and who is being taught. Drawing first on the idea of mapping the roles and responsibilities of men and women in various crop areas, the idea of a systematic approach to understanding the gender issues is highlighted. The focus goes on to look at the ways in which women are often absent from the curriculum, both in relation to female faculty members and female students. It ends with discussion of the way forward that includes some of the lessons learnt and some of the challenges required to ‘unleash’ the power of the farmer and her husband.