Challenging disempowering gender norms is central to inclusive restoration. Gender-transformative workshops are a critical first step.

Picture Jacinta, a 43-year-old mother of five. She farms three acres or about 1.2 hectares but the title deed bears only her husband’s name. Jacinta and her children do most of the home- and farm-related duties, such as cooking, fetching water and firewood, tilling, and harvesting. Yet her husband decides what to grow and how the farm income is to be spent. He also decides on what restoration practices are to be carried out, including which tree species to plant and where.

Despite carrying much of the labour burden of on-farm restoration activities, women are often excluded from equitable participation in decision-making, jeopardizing the realization of restoration goals.

This sombre story reflects the reality of many smallholding households in Makueni County, Kenya, as demonstrated in February 2022 during two gender and land restoration training workshops held by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) in Mbooni and Kibwezi East sub-counties.

The two-day workshops were part of a project funded by UK PACT, Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya.

The workshops aimed not only to raise awareness of the importance of gender and social inclusion in restoration but also to strengthen people’s capacity in the use of gender-transformative approaches, which are activities designed to challenge the attitudes and disempowering cultural norms that underlie gender inequalities.

The workshops brought together over 70 participants, both male and female, from the county government, non-governmental organizations and representatives from various community-based organizations and farmers’ groups.

‘Everyone in a household has their unique strengths,’ said Mary Mbenge, the chief officer of Environment and Climate Change, Government of Makueni County, during her opening remarks. ‘Therefore, both men and women should work together for restoration to bear maximum results.’

The participants were introduced to activities adapted from existing toolkits to encourage critical reflection and awareness of how gender roles, relations and stereotypes impact households’ capacities to engage in land restoration.

The first activity aimed to explore socially constructed gender roles and stimulate discussion on how gender norms have changed in the past and can change in the future. Participants were asked to think of the first words that come to mind when they hear the words ‘woman’ and ‘man’ and to differentiate between words that relate only to men or women and those which can apply to both. For example, breastfeeding is a sex-oriented task performed by only women while cooking can be carried out by both men and women despite being commonly associated with the word ‘woman’.

The remaining activities focused on creative ways of identifying imbalances in workloads and decision-making power within households and reflecting on how such inequalities present potential challenges for land restoration and the changes that men and women would like to see.

One activity that proved to be popular with participants was the bargaining role-play. Designed to give men and women a chance to see what it is like to negotiate as the other gender in a farming or household situation, participants performed short skits where the men dressed up as the female characters and vice versa.

‘I felt very powerful,’ said one woman reflecting on her experience as the male head of the household in one of the plays.

‘It was painful that my husband didn’t allow me to sell my cow,’ lamented another participant, a man who had played the wife. ‘Yet, I bought the cow with money from my small vegetable business!’

All the activities triggered energetic discussions on priority gender issues and desired changes. Several themes emerged, including the importance of joint ownership of land and joint decision-making. When people have a sense of ownership and agency over land restoration it increases the chance that they will support activities and ensure success and sustainability. Over the course of the two-day workshops, it was clear that several male participants had softened their stance on men having the final say over farm decisions in favour of more collaborative decision-making.

Just like in Jacinta’s story, gender power imbalances contribute heavily to the outcome of restoration. It is, therefore, crucial that restoration projects not only look to address the interests and needs of all those who will be affected by restoration initiatives but actively seek to address the underlying causes of inequities.

Building capacity in the use of gender-transformative approaches, such as those taught during the workshops, is a crucial first step. Initiating open dialogue and raising critical awareness of gender inequality is key to changing narratives and identifying opportunities for achieving both equitable and sustainable restoration outcomes.

‘The activities help create space for discussing sensitive topics and for people to react and reflect on their views and the perspectives of others,’ explained Mary Crossland, an associate scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF and workshop facilitator. ‘Through simulating scenarios and asking, “How would you like things to be?”, the activities allow participants to develop collective visions for the future and map the actions need to achieve more inclusive and equitable restoration outcomes.’

On the final day of the workshops, participants formed seven support groups and made plans to hold their own one-day training events on the activities they found most fruitful. Over the coming months, the groups will be supported by the project team to scale up the use of these gender-transformative approaches and train over 200 community members across Mbooni and Kibwezi East. A final reflection workshop will be held later in 2022, bringing together workshop participants to share their perspectives and lessons learned with the hope of scaling their successes across Makueni County and beyond.

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