Principal Investigators: Leland Glenna, Leif Jensen, Janelle Larson, Paige Castellanos
Funder: USAID-University of Georgia Peanut Innovation Lab
Project description: Penn State and the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) propose to partner on a 3.5-year project in Ghana to study women's time poverty (defined as insufficient time to take on new tasks and responsibilities) and its influence on women's participation in the peanut value chain, and to develop and evaluate strategies to enhance that participation. Specifically, the project pursues four objectives: 1) We will measure women's and men's time use (focusing on women) and expand the understanding of time poverty in relation to peanut production; 2) We will inventory time-saving and time-enhancing technologies and, using focus groups to evaluate the technologies and gender-integrated farmer field schools as the key outreach mechanism, we will disseminate those technologies with the greatest promise of enhancing women's participation in peanut production; 3) We will measure whether the interventions enhance women's capacity to participate in the peanut value chain and, thereby, household wellbeing; and 4) To build capacity at SARI, we will (a) provide information and training to SARI staff on gender integrated research (b) train practitioners on gender-integrated outreach, emphasizing the selection and distribution of technologies that alleviate women's time poverty, and (c) fully support a SARI employee's Ph.D. education at Penn State University. The goal of the project is to empower women and enhance their families' economic wellbeing.
