How offering choices led to Tanzanian families taking action on climate

Four years ago, when you asked families in Tanzania what they could do to respond to climate emergencies, 75% of them said "nothing."

Now, that number is 31%. What happened? CARE offered trainings to women about how to grow food, sell to more profitable markets, and diversify their income. More importantly, we took women seriously as farmers, and got their husbands to do the same.

In the words of one group of husbands, “Females deserve respect. We need to uphold this by involving them in important decisions.”

The Pathways program, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in six countries, was based on the idea that if we offer women farmers the same access to information, services, and markets as men, we could change food systems. The results in Tanzania prove that we were right.

What have we accomplished?

  • Improving income: Income from agriculture went up 34%, and now, nearly 90% of women are earning income from agriculture, a 37% increase from baseline.
  • Growing more food: Cashew yields went up 44%, and sesame by 57% using practices that allow women to grow more crops on the same amount of land.
  • Adapting to climate change: The number of families who are taking action to mitigate climate change impacts nearly tripled, from 25% at baseline to 69%.
  • More empowered women: The number of women who are empowered according to CARE’s Women’s Empowerment Index more than doubled, to nearly 43% of women. The number of empowered women in male-headed households went up more than 5 times.
  • More women leaders: The number of women in leadership positions went up 52%, which has helped women get respect at home in the community.
  • Changing Attitudes: Women are 2.6 times more likely to reject gender based violence as acceptable, and 55% more mobile—able to go to the market or the health center without permission from their husbands.
  • Women have more control: The number of women who could control income went up 21%, to 82% at baseline, and control over assets went up 26%.

How did we get there?

  • Get women involved in groups: There was a 55% increase in women involved in credit groups, and participation in civic groups nearly doubled over the life of the project.
  • Increase access to services: During Pathways, women’s access to extension services more than doubled, up to 66% at endline. Access to inputs also doubled, up to 75% at endline. Closing the gap between men and women farmers in services helped women produce more, and also be taken seriously as farmers, which gave them more power in the community.
  • Diversify incomes: Given more choices about how to make money, 64% of households diversified their income sources to protect themselves in cases of emergency.
  • Get women access to markets: Pathways helped connect women to markets so they could sell at a fair price. Women’s access to markets more than tripled, and the number of women selling in bulk to get higher prices went up by 7 times.
  • Connect to the government: Pathways worked with para-professional extension agents, but also connected to government agricultural services. This is something they recommend building in early to get the biggest impact.

Want to learn more?

Look at www.care.org/pathways.