Banner photo: Epiphanie is one the longest standing members of COCUMAKI, a corn-producing cooperative in Rwanda's Rwamagana district. She is one of many women who have participated in CD4's training sessions to equip cooperative members with leadership skills. 

Although women make up 43 percent of the globe’s agricultural labor force, they consistently face discrimination in ownership, pay, leadership roles, and decision-making authority. Of course, it’s no surprise that Rwanda’s agriculture sector mirrors these global trends. A recent report by CD4  surveyed agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda to reveal, unsurprisingly, that men and women do not benefit equally from participating in cooperatives and that women’s domestic workloads are their greatest impediments to their full participation in cooperatives. But, combatting global gender norms is no easy feat — how can development implementers work to break down centuries of ingrained gender norms in the short lifespan of a time-bound project?

Ahead of International Day of Cooperatives, we're examining how a multi-national cooperative development program is accelerating gender inclusion via a case study in Rwanda. 

Bridging the Financial Literacy Gap: Carving out Space for Female Entrepreneurs

For one, the USAID Cooperative Development Activity 4 (CD4) has seen promising results from carving out dedicated spaces for female entrepreneurs. The project calls these efforts “gender action research” — a research and training program that is empowering women to move from traditional gender roles into income-earning roles. This includes a training program that CD4 has implemented in direct response to some of the findings from their research on women’s roles in agriculture cooperatives. Women are appreciative of the women’s-only learning space: they are learning budget keeping methods, customer care skills, consumer preferences, and other concrete business skills that are helping them boost their businesses.

For example, Philomene, a member of a dairy cooperative called KAMA who has participated in these training sessions, explained that the business skills she has learned have helped her build out her milk collection operation. She collects and supplies milk to the cooperative on behalf of her neighbors. With the business skills she learned, she shares that her “business is moving swiftly”: She is now collecting milk from 140 different farmers in Rwanda’s Gicumbi district, and she has nearly doubled the quantity of milk that she is supplying to the cooperative, from 400 liters to 750 liters per day.

In a world where the financial literacy gap transcends borders, and where women face higher economic insecurity than men, carving out dedicated training sessions for women is an important way to ensure that they have access to learn the business skills that they need. CD4 GAR Participants found the finance-related training sessions especially useful: they all cited how they learned skills related to budgeting, loans management, and financial literacy.

Philomene feels that she and her peers are now becoming model citizens for other female entrepreneurs in the agriculture space. “People are wondering what our secret is!” she says, referencing the fact that she and her peers are now improving their incomes at unprecedented rates. She laughed at the fact that the participants’ children are now calling their mothers instead of their fathers when they need money to pay for school fees.

Men Must Also Be Part of the Equation

Although creating dedicated spaces for women is important, the responsibility of gender inclusion, of course, should not fall squarely on the shoulders of women. CD4 has taken an active approach to making sure that men are part of the solution to persisting gender inequalities.

Beyond the entrepreneurial training sessions, CD4 is also hosting training sessions on other topics, such as gender-based violence, power dynamics, and women in leadership roles. In Rwanda’s Rwamagana district, for example, men and women from a specific cooperatives gathered in a small meeting hall to learn about gender identities and gender roles. Referencing notes posted on the wall, a Venture37 inclusion expert, Eugenie Ingabire, reminded participants of the difference between “gender” and “sex” while encouraging both men and women to contribute to the conversation about gender roles.

Eugenie has seen promising changes since she started leading these training sessions. Terms like “time poverty” are becoming part of men’s everyday vernacular, indicating a mindset shift where men are acknowledging the disadvantages that women face in labor division, including the unpaid domestic work that women are expected to do.

Clementine, another participant and KAMA member, found humor in the fact that now their husbands felt fully invested in their training sessions now that “our husbands now see us as equals because they can see how we’re improving our [family] incomes.” She and the other participants recalled how their husbands are now reminding them to go to their classes and actively trying to look over their wives’ shoulders to help them with course assignments. “Remember how [our husbands] reminded us to go to the training sessions even when we didn’t have anything scheduled that week!” She laughed.

Cooperative members Philomene, Bernadette, Clementine, and Marie Chantal stand outside KAMA’s milk collection center.

Incentivizing Youth and Women in Agriculture: “Win a Cow!”

One example of how the KAMA dairy cooperative is striving to increase participation for women is a raffle system. Jean Bernard, the cooperative president, explains how the KAMA cooperative strives for gender equality. He shares how KAMA actively incentivizes women and youth to become more active in the agriculture space through incentives like raffles: women and youth are invited to participate in a raffle giveaway for the chance to win a cow. As of 2023, KAMA cooperative has given away seven cows to women and six cows to young farmers through its raffle system. Although these financial incentives are just a small piece of the larger solution, they demonstrate the cooperative’s commitment to gender and youth inclusion.

Cooperative Solidarity: Institutionalizing Inclusion Efforts

Cooperative business models are inherently conducive to building equity. Historically, cooperative movements gained traction during the Industrial Revolution. Their democratic structure gave workers the ability to collectively organize, allowing all members equal access to decision making opportunities. For rural farmers in particular, cooperatives have created avenues for smallholders to increase their incomes, improve their livelihoods, and gain management skills.

In Rwanda, a country where cooperatives play a critical role in the agriculture sector, particularly for smallholder farmers, the importance of this model cannot be overstated. When asked about the benefits of joining a cooperative, KAMA member Marie Benjamin responded: “One is one. You can’t do anything alone.” Other KAMA members nod in agreement, sympathizing with the barriers that individual farmers faced when trying to do business on their own. In this context, cooperatives offer a powerful mechanism to advance collective interests, including those of underrepresented communities. Within this framework, CD4 is working to boost governance and representation through training sessions so that all its members can have equal access to leadership and income-generating opportunities.