Women in Agriculture in the Middle East

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754619208
• eBook ISBN: 9781351872027
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on a collaborative research project - an exciting fruit of the region's peace process - this book provides an in-depth examination and comparison of women's participation in agricultural production in four Middle-Eastern countries: Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Each of the country studies is set in context, providing an overview of the status of women in the national economy and society, and in education and law, before proceeding to analyze the status and roles of women in the rural sector. These up-to-date overviews are based on published and unpublished data, much of which is available for the first time in English. But the book can also be read as a fascinating story of the way gender is introduced into a complex political setting where "development work" is done. It offers a reflexive, critical examination of the very process of its own production and some general observations about the links between academic and development-centred discourses.

Chapter 1
Introducing Gender into a Regional Agricultural Development Project in the Middle East: Professional and Political Challenges

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

This book is about the place of women and gender relations of production in agriculture in the Middle East. It contains detailed explorations of the position of women in the national economies of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority. Each country-based case study follows a similar pattern of exposition, moving from a more general review of existing research about women in the national economy and society to a more focused examination of data and research results documenting the role of women in the rural sectors of these national economies and, more specifically, in the agricultural production systems within each of these economies. The main goal is to provide an updated overview of the position of women in the agricultural production systems in these four Middle Eastern settings. The Egyptian case material was rich enough to necessitate two distinct chapters. The first offers a general review of data on gender and agriculture in Egypt, while the second presents a detailed annotated bibliography that documents the wealth of research carried out in Egypt on this topic.

The fact that this volume is structured the way it is cannot be justified only in academic terms. It must be explained by outlining the story behind the production of this volume. This background is a complex and intriguing tale that links the way knowledge is produced to the critical social and political settings within which it is produced. The work presented in this book is a result of rare collaboration among Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli scholars during a brief and shifting moment of grace in the conflict-ridden history of the Middle East. It is my feeling, as the editor of this volume that the complex professional and political circumstances within which this book was produced must not be treated as a mere background relegated to the memories of those who participated in it. I believe that some of the more significant lessons that may be drawn from this volume are to be found in a critical reflexive examination of the very process that led to the production of this book. The complex political context within which this book was produced has shaped its unique nature and structured both its strength and its admitted weaknesses.

The book can thus be read on two distinct levels. For the reader who is interested in learning about the reality of gender relations of production in the Middle East, the detailed work presented in the following chapters will provide a useful and much needed overview of the issue of gender and agriculture in the Middle East. Each chapter presents an updated review of current research based on a close reading of published and unpublished data. Much of this data on gender and agricultural production is scattered in internal reports and in policy-oriented publications that often are not easily accessible. Many of these reports are available only in Arabic or Hebrew. Taken together, the four detailed “country-reports” presented in this book provide a useful synthesis of such scattered and inaccessible data basis. Each chapter points to significant gaps in the distinct data bases it reviews in order to lay the grounds for a more directed future research on the subject. Three of the chapters also offer detailed policy recommendations designed to improve the reality of gender inequality that they describe.

But the book can also be read as a fascinating story of the way gender is introduced into settings where “development work” is done. A brief outline of the settings that have led to this book is necessary before one begins to explore the questions that link politics, academic analysis, and development work.

This book is based on original reports commissioned by The Regional Agricultural Program, a six million dollar regional Middle Eastern project of agricultural cooperation initiated by the Danish Government in 1997. The Regional Agricultural Program was to be one of the early signs of peaceful cooperation in the Middle East among four specific “partners” – Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Israelis. Development, and particularly rural development, stood at the center of this vision of a new era of peace and of the new effort to initiate regional collaboration in the Middle East. The language of planning such cooperative project was technical: “The most important principle of the cooperation is to develop a transfer of technology, genetic material, and managerial experiences, all in relation to arid and semi-arid agricultural development” (The Danish International Development Assistance, Danida 1997: 1). One of the earlier documents produced by a planning workshop held in Alexandria, Egypt, in November 1997 identified a “common denominator” which could serve as a basis for such peaceful cooperation:

There was a full understanding that such activities should promote sustainable development. The trust of the discussions was mainly on arid and semi-arid zone development, recognizing this as the common denominator to the four partners.

The document speaks about the “integration of research, development, extension training and project implementation” and it begins by outlining four major fields upon which future programs should focus – soil and water management, integrated practices for rain-fed dryland crop improvement, small ruminant production, and post-harvesting techniques and marketing approaches. Although the question of gender and the role of women in agricultural production were not cited as a distinct field in this original overall program, it was introduced in the planning process from its outset. It was never clear, however, how is gender to be included in the larger agenda of the regional project. A special working group was formed in Cairo in November 1998 in order to discuss the ways in which women could be integrated into the project. In its turn, the working group called for the formation of a research team of four scholars, “experts on gender”, that should prepare an overall review of the existing database on gender issues in agriculture in the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt (Danida, 1999). This “preliminary assessment of existing data on agriculture for gender specific data” (Danida 1999: 2) was to form the first step in a three-step larger plan. It was expected that the assessment of data on gender and agriculture would point to specific “gaps in our knowledge” about the subject in the respective national settings. Based on this preliminary “stocktaking” of existing databases, the nominated research team of “gender specialists” was expected to propose “a set of criteria” for selecting future comparative regional studies, (quantitative, as well as qualitative). The third and final step in the process envisioned by the original “working group” was that the team of “gender experts” prepare a set of recommendations about the ways in which gender could be integrated into the larger regional project, or in the words of the paper produced in Cairo: [the team is expected to prepare] “an implementation strategy – how, when, and who” (Danida, 1999).

The four original reports submitted to the Steering Committee of the Regional Agricultural Program, and the comparative analysis produced by the four “gender-specialist” scholars in a joint workshop held in Amman in December 1999, form the core of this book. Yet the process that led from the production of the original consultancy reports to this book has been long and complex. As expected, a lot of work had to be done to make the structure and style of the reports comparable. Long sections were cut out from some reports, while other sections had to be expanded and revised in order to get a more uniform coverage by all chapters. Eventually, all the essays had to be updated in order to include data that was not available at the time when the original reports were written. The Palestinian report was thoroughly revised and updated by a Palestinian scholar, Dr. Rima Hammami, who was not part of the original team.

This necessary editorial work was carried out in extremely difficult circumstances that presented logistical, as well as political and deeply moral, dilemmas. As hostilities and tensions in the region mounted, it became extremely difficult to maintain on-going communication necessary for producing this joint project. Towards the end of 2000, and after the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, it was virtually impossible to get in touch with the contributors to this volume. For long months and years, it was not clear if the project will be published at all. It became the center for several heated discussions by the central Steering Committee, composed of official representatives from each participating country together with the Danish facilitators. For as it turned out, this book project became the only tangible, completed part of the larger regional cooperative project. All other project components, including our proposals for further comparative research and for the establishment of training workshops on gender awareness (see chapter 7) had never been implemented. At the time of this writing, it seems that all other applied segments of the agricultural project were postponed indefinitely.

What can we learn from these less than conventional circumstances about the difficulties of working as consultants in development programs and, more specifically, about the ways of introducing gender into research and policy? I wish to briefly reflect here on three sets of interrelated issues that shaped the production of this book. I shall begin by exploring the ways in which feminist concerns enter development discourse and practice. I will then speak about the inherent tensions between academic and applied development work, and I will end with a brief comment about the limits of an apolitical perspective common to this and many other similar settings where development, research and consultancy work are integrated.

Regional Peace, Gender, and Development Work

In her review of contemporary scholarship on women in the Middle East, Deniz Kandiyoti (1996) identifies three main phases, or waves in such scholarly work. The first wave is associated with studies that have explored the links between feminism and nationalism in the Middle East. One of the key questions that stood at the center of this body of work has been the compatibility of Islam with women’s emancipation. Western feminist discourses were challenged by local scholars who questioned the universality of such “imported” models and argued for alternative, “indigenous” feminist models based on Islamic teachings. During the second phase, the position of women in Middle Eastern societies was directly related to development concerns. Critical of earlier assumptions that considered women’s equal participation in society to be a simple outcome of national consolidation and economic modernization processes, these feminist writings (that came to be known as the WID literature, or the Women in Development school) argued that development processes are always gendered, and that research and analyses must thus assess the impact of development projects on women and attempt to get government and nongovernmental agencies to include women as recipients of development benefits. The third phase Kandiyoti outlines is characterized by an expansion of these more limited, earlier, liberal feminist and anti-orientalist discourses as Middle Eastern feminists enter into more sophisticated dialogues with Western and postcolonial feminists.

Given its stated goals and the history of its production, this book is a classical product of the WID (Women in Development) discourse, and it thus falls squarely within the second phase of research and scholarship outlined by Kandiyoti. In fact, it suggests that the WID liberal modernist model never fell by the wayside, as the more recent critical feminists might have wished (cf. Sen and Grown 1987, Kandiyoti, 1996; Marchand and Parpart 1995). It is a very powerful perspective that is stubbornly held by development practitioners who are often ignorant or uninterested in the fierce critique leveled against their modernist assumptions in the critical postmodernist academic literature. A closer look into the way gender was dealt with in this Middle Eastern Regional Agricultural Project, might suggest some of the reasons for the persistence and adaptability of the WID discourse. How relevant is the critical postmodernist discourse on gender to applied projects in the Middle East or elsewhere? What are the limits and the strengths of a modernist liberal feminist framework that has informed projects similar to the one that stands at the center of this book? In considering these questions I would like to examine the logic that shaped our work and the way in which the modernist WID model structured the actual outcome of the larger project that this publication is only a part of.

It must be made clear from the outset that the concern with gender or with what was termed “the role of women in agriculture” was introduced into the larger program of regional development by the Danes, who initiated, and contributed most of the funding for, the regional project. It did not emerge as an initiative of any of the four Middle Eastern “partners” of the project. In fact, attention to gender was an explicit guideline built into all projects initiated or supported by Danida, the Danish International Development Assistance body, a part of the Danish Foreign Ministry. A 1996 official publication of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (distributed to participants in the Cairo 1998 workshop) outlines the principles of such official policy. The book-long document titled Agriculture: Danida Sector Policies states that gender equality is one of Danida’s four major policy objectives for the year 2000, along with poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and democracy and decentralization. The document includes a brief paragraph that is worth quoting in full (1996: 4):

Danida considers that measures to alleviate the time constraints on women and improve their limited access to agricultural development resources in general and to land ownership/tenure rights and credit extension advice in particular, must have high priority. Danida will promote gender-specific analyses in agricultural research, prioritize support to education and the employment of female degree-holders and extension officers, and encourage the formation of women’s groups as focal points for extension advice and credit delivery. In Danida’s support to the development of rural financial services, efforts will be made to identify and promote credit delivery systems that facilitate women’s access to credit.

The logic for such a strong policy directive is drawn from research and insights adopted by other international aid agencies and are not unique to the Danish international development agency. It is based on the idea, established by WID researchers and practitioners since the late 1970s that members of rural households do not share the same interests and that they are often affected in diverse ways by intervention intended to increase the rural household income. For example, the Danida 1996 official document argues that “Generally, the wife controls only a small share of the household income, but tends to spend a larger part of her income on food for the family than the husband does.” Or that “the woman often spends more hours than the man on agricultural activities although she alone has responsibility for taking care of the children, collecting fuel wood and water, and feeding the family” (p. 41) Based on such classical WID analytical model assumptions, the policy paper concludes that “agricultural research and other interventions have to be based on gender-disaggregated data, and that policies and interventions have to be developed from a sound understanding of the different roles, objectives, potentials and constraints of men and women in the rural household” (p. 42).

In order to implement this specific “Danida’s policies on women in agriculture” all Danida-supported projects are instructed to enter into a “dialogue with governments” and with other donor agencies “with a view to promoting women’s access to land ownership and property rights” and, in general, work to promote “gender-specific data, analyses and approaches” (1996: 42).

This official Danida document was made available to the members of the original working group that met in 1997 to set the agenda for the “gender specialist” team. Later, the four of us consulted it when we developed our workshops and laid out the outline for our respective synthetic reports. From the outset, the model advocated by the Danida policy directives seemed very useful and convincing and it inspired our individual work of culling gender-specific data from official national disaggregated statistics and from micro-level studies. We all felt that we worked against what El-Tobshy had described in her contribution as “the general lack of awareness of gender issues at all levels of society.” Indeed, the challenge, taken up in this volume, has been to expose the specific trajectories of the ways in which women were excluded from resources in the respective settings examined and to document the systematic failure of past policies and projects to rectify this situation. Based on such synthetic analysis the essays presented in this volume make the critical argument that integrating women into mainstream society and economy is not simply a matter of good will. It should be thought through and followed by specific policies for social change. The long lists of policy recommendations that close most of the chapters in this volume attest to this reformist urge and the assumed link between research, knowledge, and directed change.

But the classical shortcomings of the modernist WID model are all too evident in these analytical works. The idea common to all the proposed policy recommendations is essentially reformist. “Mainstreaming gender” is the key term. Underlying this notion of reform is a blunt modernist model that blames the problem on timeless “traditions” but one that seeks to transform existing patterns of gender discrimination mainly in economic life. In the introduction to chapter 3 Rema Hammami phrases it in explicit WID terms: “mainstreaming women in development process is not simply a justice issue, but also one of efficiency and economic sustainability.” This binary model that poses the “non-efficient” “traditional” versus the “economic sustainability” of the “modern” aspired society is shared both by Danida officials and the contributors to this volume, although the “gender specialists” vary with respect to the way they impose this model on their findings and conclusions. A Danida official document from 1997 has this to say about traditions and the problem of gender inequality in the Middle East:

In the traditional farming communities in the Middle East inadequate participation of women in the decision making process on the farms due to tradition and custom is a major problem for accelerated and sustainable economic development. (Danida 1997: 6)

Al-Rousan echoes this perception when he places the blame for the marginalized position of Jordanian women on the traditional paternalistic system that “we in Jordan have inherited from our ancestors”. Similarly, El-Tobshy speaks about “overcoming traditional barriers” as a key factor in her analysis of the place of Egyptian women in society and economy. Hammami and Motzafi-Haller are more critical about this model and present it as a model that exist in the lives of the people themselves (e.g., the Palestinians who credit agricultural production with greater value to their lives because it reminds them of a by-gone past) or because such binary model continues to structure policy and research attention. Thus, Motzafi-Haller shows how Israeli national statistics and the attention of academic research were focused on those women who were considered more ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• 1 Introducing Gender into a Regional Agricultural Development Project in the Middle East: Professional and Political Challenges
• 2 Women in Agriculture in Jordan
• 3 Women in Agricultural Production in the Palestinian Authority
• 4 A Critical Assessment of Research on Gender in the Israeli Rural Sector
• 5 Gender and Agriculture in Egypt
• 6 An Annotated Bibliography on Women and Development in Egypt
• 7 Conclusions: The Politics of Producing Knowledge in Development – Gender in Rural Production
• Index