TY - JOUR

T1 - Leverage points for improving gender equality and human well-being in a smallholder farming context

AU - Manlosa, Aisa O.

AU - Schultner, Jannik

AU - Dorresteijn, Ine

AU - Fischer, Joern

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank the local residents of the three kebeles for sharing their time and thoughts. Thanks to: Feyera Senbeta for facilitating institutional arrangements for the field work; to Kristoffer Hylander for helpful conversations in the field; to Dadi Feyisa and Tolani Asirat for translating; and to Steven Michael Cole and Rebecca Freeth for reading an earlier draft and providing insightful comments. Two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments and suggestions, which further improved the manuscript. This study was made possible by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to JF. Publisher Copyright: © 2018, The Author(s).

PY - 2019/3/1

Y1 - 2019/3/1

N2 - How transformative processes could be facilitated to improve gender equality and consequently, human well-being, is a key question for moving towards a just and sustainable future. Focusing on southwestern Ethiopia where significant changes in formal institutions related to gender have occurred, we applied the concept of systemic leverage points. We show that changes in formal structures facilitated changes in perceived visible gender gaps, such as increased participation of women in public activities. These, in turn, played an enabling role for changes in community norms, and (to a lesser degree) triggered reconsideration of perceptions about women’s capacities. Both women and men perceived more equal gender relations as being associated with better well-being at the household level. Our results highlight the important role of interactions between leverage points for gender equality, suggesting important insights can be gained by studying interactions, compared to when shallow (e.g., visible gaps) or deeper leverage points (e.g., social norms) are analyzed in isolation. Our study also demonstrated the general suitability of a leverage-points perspective in gender research, including as an analytical frame to complement gender transformative approaches.

AB - How transformative processes could be facilitated to improve gender equality and consequently, human well-being, is a key question for moving towards a just and sustainable future. Focusing on southwestern Ethiopia where significant changes in formal institutions related to gender have occurred, we applied the concept of systemic leverage points. We show that changes in formal structures facilitated changes in perceived visible gender gaps, such as increased participation of women in public activities. These, in turn, played an enabling role for changes in community norms, and (to a lesser degree) triggered reconsideration of perceptions about women’s capacities. Both women and men perceived more equal gender relations as being associated with better well-being at the household level. Our results highlight the important role of interactions between leverage points for gender equality, suggesting important insights can be gained by studying interactions, compared to when shallow (e.g., visible gaps) or deeper leverage points (e.g., social norms) are analyzed in isolation. Our study also demonstrated the general suitability of a leverage-points perspective in gender research, including as an analytical frame to complement gender transformative approaches.

KW - Gender equality

KW - Institutions

KW - Leverage points

KW - Sustainability

KW - Sustainable development

KW - Transformative change

KW - Environmental planning

KW - Sustainability Science

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055337393&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11625-018-0636-4

DO - 10.1007/s11625-018-0636-4

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85055337393

VL - 14

SP - 529

EP - 541

JO - Sustainability Science

JF - Sustainability Science

SN - 1862-4065

IS - 2

ER -