IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea21/338763.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

From agency to empowerment: women farmers’ experiences of a fairtrade coffee cooperative in Guatemala

Author

Listed:
  • Bilfield, Alissa
  • Seal, David
  • Rose, Diego

Abstract

Through the feminization in agriculture over the last decades, more women have been taking on formal roles in cash crop agriculture, including as members and leaders in cooperatives. Yet minimal research has sought to understand the dynamics of women’s participation based on their own accounts. This paper explores the lived experiences of Mayan women coffee cooperative members in the Western Highlands of Guatemala through their own perspectives. Two visual participatory research methods were combined with semi-structured interviews to generate grass-roots level perspectives on complex social and behavioral phenomena within this difficult to reach population. This study finds that through women's formal participation as cooperative members, they not only gain enhanced access to critical resources and improve their food security, but also develop agency at the individual level and become empowered through the institutional structure of the cooperative and its link to a larger federation.

Suggested Citation

  • Bilfield, Alissa & Seal, David & Rose, Diego, 2020. "From agency to empowerment: women farmers’ experiences of a fairtrade coffee cooperative in Guatemala," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 338763, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea21:338763
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.338763
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/338763/files/JGAFS-512020-1-Paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.338763?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alsop, Ruth & Heinsohn, Nina, 2005. "Measuring empowerment in practice: structuring analysis and framing indicators," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3510, The World Bank.
    2. Malika Abdelali‐Martini & Jennie Dey de Pryck, 2015. "Does the Feminisation of Agricultural Labour Empower Women? Insights from Female Labour Contractors and Workers in Northwest Syria," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(7), pages 898-916, October.
    3. Solava Ibrahim & Sabina Alkire, 2007. "Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 379-403.
    4. Deepa Narayan, 2005. "Measuring Empowerment : Cross Disciplinary Perspectives," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7441.
    5. Sen, Amartya, 1999. "Commodities and Capabilities," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195650389.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    2. Claudio Araujo & Catherine Araujo-Bonjean & Victor Beguerie, 2018. "Community mills and women's empowerment in Burkina Faso," Working Papers halshs-01958755, HAL.
    3. Maria Ana Lugo & Esfandiar Maasoumi, 2008. "Multidimensional Poverty Measures from an Information Theory Perspective," Working Papers 85, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    4. Pratley, Pierre, 2016. "Associations between quantitative measures of women's empowerment and access to care and health status for mothers and their children: A systematic review of evidence from the developing world," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 119-131.
    5. Tania Burchardt & Martin Evans & Holly Holder, 2012. "Measuring Inequality: Autonomy The degree of empowerment in decisions about one’s own life," CASE Reports casereport74, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    6. Tania Burchardt & Holly Holder, 2012. "Developing Survey Measures of Inequality of Autonomy in the UK," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 106(1), pages 1-25, March.
    7. Lant Pritchett & Deepa Narayan & Soumya Kapoor, 2009. "Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 2. Success from the Bottom Up," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11838.
    8. Klein, Elise, 2014. "Psychological Agency: Evidence from the Urban Fringe of Bamako," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 642-653.
    9. Jeni Klugman & Francisco Rodríguez & Hyung-Jin Choi, 2011. "The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(2), pages 249-288, June.
    10. Ronelle Burger & Camren McAravey & Servaas van der Berg, 2017. "The Capability Threshold: Re-examining the Definition of the Middle Class in an Unequal Developing Country," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 89-106, January.
    11. Sabina Alkire, 2007. "The Missing Dimensions of Poverty Data: Introduction to the Special Issue," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 347-359.
    12. repec:cep:sticas:/174 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Tania Burchardt & Martin Evans & Holly Holder, 2013. "Public policy and inequalities of choice and autonomy," CASE Papers case174, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    14. Burchardt, Tania & Evans, Martin & Holder, Holly, 2013. "Public policy and inequalities of choice and autonomy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51267, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Md. Wakilur Rahman & A. B. M. Mahfuzul Haque & Tasnuva Zaman & Md. Salauddin Palash & Md. Nahiduzzaman & Tanzina Nazia, 2024. "Women Empowerment Status in the Coastal Fishing Communities of Bangladesh," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(2), pages 21582440241, May.
    16. Vijayamohanan, Pillai N. & Asalatha, B. P., 2012. "Measuring Women Empowerment: Dissecting the Methodological Discourse," MPRA Paper 44077, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Kelly Pike & Beth English, 2022. "And roses too: How “Better Work” facilitates gender empowerment in global supply chains," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 188-204, January.
    18. Robin A. Richardson, 2018. "Measuring Women’s Empowerment: A Critical Review of Current Practices and Recommendations for Researchers," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 539-557, June.
    19. Melinda Schmidt & Harald Strotmann & Jürgen Volkert, 2022. "Female and Male Community-Level Empowerment: Capability Approach-Based Findings for Rural India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(2), pages 754-784, April.
    20. Tony Castleman, 2011. "Human Recognition and its Role in Economic Development: A Descriptive Review," Working Papers 2011-08, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    21. Ana Vaz & Sabina Alkire & Agnes Quisumbing & Esha Sraboni, 2018. "Measuring autonomy: evidence from Bangladesh," Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 25(2), pages 21-51, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marketing;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea21:338763. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.