IT IS TIME: VALUING WOMEN'S TIME IN NUTRITION RESEARCH AND POLICY 17 TH JULY 2015 IAFFE CONFERENCE, BERLIN

CONTEXT AND OVERVIEW What are the intended and unintended nutritional consequences of agricultural practices and interventions?

RELEVANCE FOR FEMINIST ECONOMISTS? Use of time as a metric – strengths and weaknesses Conceptualisation of care – both analytical and methodological challenges View of care within wider development policy – and failure to fully recognise leading to policy limitations And a policy context where women’s empowerment sometimes ‘instrumental’

Exclusion criteria High income country Language Urban focus Reverse causality Study type No time use No agriculture or no nutrition Non human

KEY FINDINGS Women play a key role in agriculture, reflected in their time commitments whether as farmers or farmworkers Agricultural interventions tend to increase women’s, men’s and children’s time burdens Impact? Not clear-cut: Indicators of food and nutrition could worsen However, as non-maternal care givers important Purchased food substituted for home-grown or -prepared food Impact on nutritional outcomes is mediated by: Seasonality; Income and socio-economic status; Household composition Challenges for development policy? Complexity of message, and need to look at wider view of women’s empowerment

IMPLICATIONS Seasonality Socio-economic status

KEY ISSUES FOR UNDERSTANDING TIME BURDENS IN LINK BETWEEN AGRICULTURE AND NUTRITION Time matters: particularly for women, in poorer and smaller households Instrumental views - may miss impact on women Individual woman v. wider impact on other women and girls in the household Need to understand social norms (and what men do)- labour- saving technologies not sufficient Need to understand (lack of) infrastructure and services Need to understand local food environment and the creation of food aspirations - long-run nutritional impact of purchased food

USING TIME AS A METRIC FOR CARE Several critical gaps in the evidence base: bring men back into the picture; need differentiated picture What is intensity of work? What is optimal trade-off? What are the critical aspects of care for nutrition? And in what precise ways is time a factor? Is time in agriculture the key constraint? Reverse causality – co-determination of time application to agriculture and time for caring responsibilities

PRACTICAL INFORMATION Gender-nutrition Idea Exchange blog post ‘It is Time: Why time matters in agriculture-nutrition pathways’ why-time-matters-in-agriculture-nutrition-pathways- 2/ why-time-matters-in-agriculture-nutrition-pathways- 2/ Full report forthcoming as an IFPRI Discussion paper