"In Burkina Faso, women were traditionally not allowed to speak in the presence of men, as men were considered responsible for answering questions and providing solutions to the problems in their family lives."

One sentence from the report of a workshop organized by IPGRI and supported by its global partners sets out clearly the challenge facing work with genetic resources today. But to ignore the role of women is to ignore more than half the population. Around the world women do almost half the agricultural work. In sub-Saharan Africa they provide four-fifths of the staple food.

IPGRI and its partners have been working for more than a decade to ensure that the knowledge women have is heeded and that women’s interests and demands are given the attention they deserve. Very often, this has involved training researchers and extension workers to be sensitive to the differences in the responsibilities, interests and knowledge of men and women.

In Burkina Faso, by talking to women on their own — in the ansence of men — researchers discovered that women have their own fields where they grow their own crops, such as okra, groundnut and voandzou, a local bean sometimes called Bambara groundnut. The women farm to feed their families, but also to earn some money. They work their own fields only after helping in the larger, family fields. Men also have their own fields, where they harvest crops for market.

Right across Sub-Saharan Africa, men and women play different parts in farming and feeding their families, although the details vary from zone to zone and throughout the region. By treating men and women independently, and indeed by looking at young and old separately, their distinct contributions become clear.

Across the region, a similar pattern emerges. Women become more useful to their family and neighbours as they gain experience. Young girls first learn from their mothers how to grow and gather the crops. The women prepare dishes from the harvest brought by their daughters, who thus learn to cook. And older women are a repository of special knowledge about important medicinal plants.

There is widespread recognition that some special knowledge traditionally acquired by women is being lost. In Kenya, young people may reject traditional leafy vegetables because, they say, they taste bitter. Older women point out that this is probably because the food has not been prepared properly.

IPGRI and its partners have been working with the National Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Zimbabwe to encourage farmers, especially in semi-arid areas, to save and use genetic resources. In one project, farmers grew traditional sorghum varieties from the genebank to assess their qualities. Women farmers, who harvest the crop, do not like short varieties because they must stoop to cut the seed heads. NGOs organized seed fairs, at which women earned prizes for the diversity of their displays. Seed fairs promote good farming and the conservation and use of diversity; in 2000 there were more exhibitors, with more diverse exhibits, than in 1999, and an even bigger turnout is expected in 2001.

The key concept is not that women are more or less important than men in the conservation and use of genetic resources. It is that the two genders differ in what they can contribute and how they can benefit. By bearing this human diversity in mind IPGRI and its partners in Sub-Saharan Africa will do a better job of harnessing agricultural diversity.

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