eprintid: 10281 rev_number: 15 eprint_status: archive userid: 1305 dir: disk0/00/01/02/81 datestamp: 2017-11-16 10:17:46 lastmod: 2017-11-16 10:17:46 status_changed: 2017-11-16 10:17:46 type: article metadata_visibility: show contact_email: Library-ICRISAT@CGIAR.ORG creators_name: Galiè, A creators_name: Jiggins, J creators_name: Struik, P C creators_name: Grando, S creators_name: Ceccarelli, S icrisatcreators_name: Grando, S affiliation: International Livestock Research Institute (Nairobi) affiliation: Communication and Innovation Studies Group, Wageningen University (Wageningen) affiliation: Centre for Crop Systems Analysis, Wageningen University (Wageningen) affiliation: ICRISAT (Patancheru) affiliation: Via delle Begonie (Piceno) country: Kenya country: The Netherlands country: India country: Italy title: Women’s empowerment through seed improvement and seed governance: Evidence from participatory barley breeding in pre-war Syria ispublished: pub subjects: GL1 subjects: S1 subjects: S21 subjects: s11 subjects: s333 subjects: sed1 full_text_status: restricted keywords: Seed governance, Empowerment, Gender analysis, Participatory plant breeding, Syria, Empowerment of women farmers, Seed improvement, Food security, Women farmers, Smallholder agriculture, Gender equity, Rural livelihoods note: This work was supported by the CGIAR Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) Programme and by Wageningen University. We would like to thank the ICARDA team for their support and Micheal Micheal and Kasem Al-Ahmad in particular. We are especially grateful to the respondent women farmers, men farmers and extension agents for their time and commitment to collaborating with this research and with the PPB programme. abstract: Approaches to food security primarily focus on technological solutions, seeking to produce more food, preferably with fewer resources. It has been argued that access to food involves issues of resource distribution and social marginalization. Governance is seen as one of the keys to redressing the institutional inequity that affects resource distribution. Rural women’s empowerment is seen as a means to reduce social marginalization and to hasten progress towards hunger eradication and gender equitable institutions. Building on the empirical findings of a six-year study (2006–2011) undertaken in the context of a participatory barley breeding (PBB) programme in pre-war Syria, this paper establishes the links between women’s empowerment, seed improvement through PPB and seed governance vis-à-vis household food security. The study shows how the programme enhanced the empowerment of the respondent women and how gender-blind seed governance regimes at national and international levels restricted the empowerment of these women ultimately affecting the pillars of food security. We discuss some of the challenges encountered by the study in conceptualizing and operationalizing gender analysis to enhance women’s empowerment. The article further discusses the interplay of processes to both discipline gender norms and provides transformational opportunities towards gender equity created by public spaces such as the PBB programme. The article contributes to current discussions on the effective pathways to develop smallholder agriculture, enhance gender equity and enhance food security and rural livelihoods in the dry areas of the temperate world. date: 2017-06 date_type: published publication: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences volume: 81 publisher: Elsevier pagerange: 1-8 id_number: 10.1016/j.njas.2017.01.002 refereed: TRUE issn: 15735214 official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2017.01.002 related_url_url: https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Women%27s+empowerment+through+seed+improvement+and+seed+governance%3A+Evidence+from+participatory+barley+breeding+in+pre-war+Syria&btnG= related_url_type: pub citation: Galiè, A and Jiggins, J and Struik, P C and Grando, S and Ceccarelli, S (2017) Women’s empowerment through seed improvement and seed governance: Evidence from participatory barley breeding in pre-war Syria. NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 81. pp. 1-8. ISSN 15735214 document_url: http://oar.icrisat.org/10281/1/1-s2.0-S1573521417300027-main.pdf