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<\/div><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe company appears to be making progress toward its goals, and I’ll let its own statement below speak about that. There were, however, sub-reports which I noticed have been largely unreported. It’s a shame because they’re interesting. I’ve added them below, just before the press release, for convenience. Fortunately, they are in PDF format, so I was able to pull together some summary information easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/div><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nResilience Journey Phase 1, Key Points<\/h2>\n\n\n\nBy sharing the results of this research, we hope to inspire others to put gender equality on the agenda and contribute to a world where women are increasingly reaching their full potential.<\/p>Mars – Resilience Journey – Phase 1<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n- The Journey has three phases: 1. Discovering and generating an understanding of women’s daily lives through a gender equality lens. 2. Identifying barriers to empowerment with the help of existing and developing co-created tools. 3. Co-creating recommendations that are viable and feasible for Mars.<\/li>
- Empowerment is contingent on the interaction of three key elements: the individual, the community, and the world.<\/li>
- Institutional structures are the social arrangements of formal and informal rules and practices that govern behaviour and expressions of agency, as well as the distribution and control of resources. They comprise both formal laws and policies, as well as norms and how they are practised.<\/li>
- The article uses some unfortunately complex language that will limit how widely it can be usefully read. For example, it explains how empowering women and girls is a dynamic and transformative process of change and includes a variety of “entry points for potential interventions that challenge gender inequalities and disempowerment.” (sic)<\/li>
- The KIT Model defines multiple lenses which help to reveal the level of both egalitarianism and oppression that women and girls experience in their daily lives. In later chapters, the lenses are described and analyzed.<\/li>
- The research focused on the personal and community life of women in cocoa-growing communities, not on women in cocoa production. The local cocoa value chain was the main focus of the research.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Resilience Journey Viability – Phase 2, Key Points<\/h2>\n\n\n\nResearch has found that women engaged in activities that enhance cocoa yields and quality including early plant care and post-harvest fermentation and drying. However they face specific challenges and their role in family farm labor is unrecognized.<\/p>
Promoting a cultural shift to ensure gender equality in the cocoa chocolate value chain is central to guaranteeing future resilience of supply and ensuring generations find the occupation. Dr Stephanie Barrientos -Mapping sustainable production in Ghanaian Cocoa, 2008 Worldwide it is estimated that women only receive 5 percent of extension services and technical training, and just 15 percent of the world’s staff providing agricultural technical training are women.<\/p>Mars Reslience Journey Viability – Phase 2<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n- The difference between men and women is that women are not expected to act the same as men, but their rights, responsibilities, and opportunities are not dependent on gender. That does not mean that women and men have to become the same, but gender equality means that the different behaviours, aspirations, and needs of women and men are considered, valued, and favoured equally.<\/li>
- The project focused on three countries from the Mars cocoa supply chain – Indonesia, C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, and Ghana. In each country, the fieldwork took place in a specific region where cocoa production is significant.<\/li>
- Hard-to-reach cocoa-growing villages and feeder towns that service cocoa’s first mile are included in the study. The surrounding areas were chosen based on the Mars supply base and partner recommendations. The intention was to make a diverse representation of people in the areas. They wanted a range of people, community size and level of services. The diversity of these sites is represented on a map in the report.<\/li>
- To preserve forests, the whole community needs to be involved, sensitized and represented. Women are involved in cocoa farming and are key users of the forests. Without modern cooking methods, tasks such as collecting wood for cooking fuel are an important driver of deforestation.<\/li>
- Traditional male leaders and women are typically excluded from community outreach as part of an effort to achieve behavioural change.<\/li>
- Women are often lost in the discussion, especially less educated ones. As a result, strategy and materials should be adapted for them to be effective.<\/li>
- The impacts of women’s roles in the cocoa farming and forest protection industries are usually downplayed. Women are targeted with alternative income-generating opportunities and as participants of VSLAs.<\/li>
- These opportunities should be combined with women’s already full schedules, and opportunity costs should be considered. If a woman is financially dependent on her partner, there may be a risk that she is more sidetracked towards marginal economic opportunities.<\/li>
- There is a need for continued land tenure reform to strengthen farmers’ land and property rights. Insecure land tenure reduces the incentives of households to invest in their land. Consequently, there are initiatives to assist cocoa farmers in securing land ownership documents. However, because of women’s exclusion from land ownership, they are often excluded from such programs.<\/li>
- In deforestation-tackling programs, for example, land documentation provides for 20% of forest loss to be reduced. In communities nearby protected areas or in ‘working landscapes,’ land tenure security is a driving factor for farmer prosperity, community empowerment and forest protection and restoration.<\/li>
- ICF is working towards gender equality by giving women land and tree tenure rights, which is expected to increase with outreach due to digital tools. Digital tools like the Women Advancing Agriculture Initiative have been created with the goal of advocating for increased gender equality.<\/li>
- The old way of thinking was that sustainability and commercial teams were separate, but now they are working together more fluidly. Most CLRMS agents are male, and they were nominated from within the supply chain. In the old way of thinking, there was no questioning the term “head of household” because it was just labelled as such, although this is not true. There is a bigger intention to identify who has decision-making power.<\/li>
- The factors that determine a person’s identity are experienced differently depending on context. Women in the first mile may face significant inequality barriers due to their lack of access to external information and potentially more conservative norms.<\/li>
- The first mile is a blindspot for the UNICEF report because 99% of children in cocoa-growing regions are related to farmers. A major cause of gender inequalities in children is related to farm families becoming more vulnerable.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
By sharing the results of this research, we hope to inspire others to put gender equality on the agenda and contribute to a world where women are increasingly reaching their full potential.<\/p>Mars – Resilience Journey – Phase 1<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Research has found that women engaged in activities that enhance cocoa yields and quality including early plant care and post-harvest fermentation and drying. However they face specific challenges and their role in family farm labor is unrecognized.<\/p> Promoting a cultural shift to ensure gender equality in the cocoa chocolate value chain is central to guaranteeing future resilience of supply and ensuring generations find the occupation. Dr Stephanie Barrientos -Mapping sustainable production in Ghanaian Cocoa, 2008 Worldwide it is estimated that women only receive 5 percent of extension services and technical training, and just 15 percent of the world’s staff providing agricultural technical training are women.<\/p>Mars Reslience Journey Viability – Phase 2<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nResilience Journey Viability – Phase 2, Key Points<\/h2>\n\n\n\n