Addressing gender & gender-based violence issues in the Kenyan tea industry

Gender Empowerment Platform

The Gender Empowerment Platform (GEP) is a sector-wide platform where tea companies and civil society players collaborate to address the complex and sensitive social sustainability issue of gender discrimination and violence.

The GEP was launched in 2017 with the following members, representing the majority of the companies in the Kenyan tea industry: Unilever Tea Kenya, James Finlays Kenya, Eastern Produce Kenya, Kenya Tea Development Agency, Sotik Tea, IDH, Ethical Tea Partnership and Gender Violence Recovery Centre. UN Women has provided technical support to the GEP throughout the entire period.

The GEP partners have worked towards an ambitious goal: reducing the occurrence of GBV, as well as increasing women’s empowerment in the Kenyan tea industry by 2020.

Achievements

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A LEADING & AGENDA-SETTING PLATFORM ON GENDER EQUALITY AND GBV

The GEP has emerged as a functional multi-stakeholder partnership that has provided leadership and a common agenda to promote gender equality and address GBV in the Kenyan tea sector. The Platform has facilitated collaboration and has fostered a peer-to-peer learning environment amongst companies, including the publication of learning materials. IDH’s ability to make connections between the private sector, CSOs and expert organisations to create this common agenda and cooperation has been instrumental in setting up this collaborative environment.

Watch the video for insights from the IDH4Gender learning event in Kenya

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INCENTIVE TO STRENGTHEN CORPORATE GENDER POLICIES & MECHANISMS

The cooperation under the GEP has supported and incentivised tea companies to strengthen prevention and reporting mechanisms for GBV and sexual harassment. This has resulted in companies revising their policies (e.g. gender policy, sexual harassment policy, child protection policy) and formulating new complaint mechanisms for reporting GBV and sexual harassment cases.

A COMMON TRAINING MANUAL AND PLANTATION ROADMAP TO ADDRESS GBV IN KENYA

Following collaboration with partners, the Plantation RoadmapPlantation RoadmapVisit linkwas created to provide information to tea companies on how to recognise issues around GBV and sexual harassment, and to develop sustainable interventions to prevent and respond accordingly. The training manualCommon Training ManualVisit link aligns training and awareness raising material around GBV issues.

REPORTED DECREASE OF GBV INCIDENCES

Based on data on GBV cases reported to GEP member companies, the work under GEP has contributed significantly to the reduction of GBV occurrences in the Kenyan tea industry. This data shows a 28.7% decrease in GBV incidents between 2016 and 2019.

NOTICEABLE IMPROVEMENTS ON GBV PREVENTION AND GENDER RIGHTS AWARENESS OF WORKERS, FEMALE LEADERSHIP AND FINANCIAL INCLUSION

IDH and its partner companies have implemented four field-level projects that have reached over 17,500 plantation workers and over 50,000 smallholders. The GEP has contributed to:

Significant improvements in the knowledge of GBV prevention and response, through sensitization campaigns and awareness creation on GBV and gender rights. Workers and farmers were reached through long-term training programs, awareness-raising meetings, and school programs (among others).

Substantive progress in promoting female leadership. For example, IDH and Finlays has increased women leadership through various activitiesFinlays women in leadership program resultsVisit link such as peer-to-peer mentoring activities on management levels; this has assisted 60 young managers to grow into their new positions.

Watch the video to learn more about gender empowerment in Kenya with Finlays:

The empowerment of plantation workers and smallholder farmers through financial inclusion training. In total, over 3,000 workers and 20,000 farmers were reached through financial inclusion projectsMore about the project with UTKVisit link. These included training on household dynamics around financial management.

In the IDH and KTDA projectMore about the IDH & KTDA projectVisit link, an external evaluation suggested significant improvements in decision-making about money: the proportion of respondents that involved other family members in decision-making went up from 67.83% to 83.86%. Both projects were praised by beneficiaries for its wide-range implications; in one beneficiary’s words:

I am now knowledgeable about loans and interests, and I can hold meaningful conversations with the bank officers. I no longer go to loan sharks, instead, I save for the future, like buying a cow, and for emergencies. I have also started to make joint decisions with my wife, and we started making a contributory pay for health insurance on a monthly basis.

Download the infographic with Achievements

Sharing learnings, good practices and experiences around addressing GBV and gender issues in the supply chains is critical to the success of any such initiative. This is the exact peer-to-peer learning that has been facilitated within the GEP. Now, GEP members want to share their learnings to contribute to other programs.

Find out more about our reflections

The GEP has been a functional multi-stakeholder platform that could have benefited from a broader variety of stakeholders bringing additional technical knowledge and experiences

The GEP has been built on collaboration, trust and pursuit of a common agenda through a participative process involving the tea companies. These elements are critical when tackling such a sensitive and complex issue as GBV that promotes gender mainstreaming. The GEP has incentivised tea companies to implement a sector-wide common agenda and has elevated the conversation on mainstreaming gender among leading tea-producing companies in Kenya.

GEP has proved its effectiveness as it was set up by IDH, but it could be beneficial to include more stakeholders in future sector-convening efforts. For example, including tea buyers and additional CSOs and/or government agencies could have leveraged additional technical expertise and resources towards the implementation of activities in the Kenyan tea industry GBV reduction initiative. This decision should be made on a case-by-case basis; bringing in additional stakeholders could elevate the conversation on mainstreaming gender in the sector, but it could also reduce the efficacy and trust of a platform.

While field-level projects can be considered successful, GBV remains a complex issue to address within the scope of a 5-year collaboration in a platform

GEP partners have made noticeable improvements on GBV prevention, gender-rights awareness, female leadership and financial inclusion. This is reflected in the reported reduction of GBV cases and the testimonies from beneficiaries.

Patriarchal, cultural and societal norms underlying GBV and gender inequality are deeply rooted in our society. While field-level activities have proven largely successful, GBV and gender inequality require a longer timeframe to be fully addressed. GEP partners will continue working towards this pursuit through their own company structures. It is important to recognize that there will be issues beyond the scope of actions of partner companies (both individually and together as in the GEP) that must be accounted for when measuring progress.

The necessity for a safe space has been clear and the safe space strategy well-formulated, but unresolved issues related to the feasibility and long-term sustainability of the delivery mechanism has resulted in limited progress

Establishing a safe space in Kericho has not succeeded as it has been initially envisioned in the GEP priorities. The safe space strategy has been well-formulated. Furthermore, it has benefited from the meaningful participation of all GEP members and from initial commitments made by the Kericho county government. However, the design has lacked mechanisms for assuring its feasibility and long-term sustainability. Amidst challenging market conditions in the global tea market, it has been decided to discontinue this platform activity. Several GEP companies have advanced the safe space agenda within their respective organizations; this has led to the establishment of safe spaces across multiple tea communities.

The impact research has offered insight into actions that should be considered when establishing future safe space structures. First, there is a need for more clarity around the roles & responsibilities of the various stakeholders involved in the governance structure, particularly that of the private sector players and the local government. Second, the overall engagement of the government could have been explored in a more deliberate manner and incorporated into the safe space structure. The research does acknowledge that the cooperative design of a safe space is a complicated process. It is therefore pleasing to see the success of the establishment of safe spaces across tea communities by multiple GEP partners.