The Programme d’Appui à la Rentabilisation de l’Elevage (PARE) project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aims to enhance household and community resilience in Haiti’s Northern and Southern Resilience Focus Zones (RFZs) by bolstering the livestock market system. The project focuses on the cattle, goat/sheep, and poultry value chains.
A Gender and Youth Inclusion (GYI) Analysis was conducted by the PARE Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) team in partnership with AGIRED, a Haitian evaluation and data collection firm. The analysis utilized data from the PARE Baseline Assessment, a mixed-method approach that collected sex-disaggregated quantitative data from a representative sample of livestock producer households in the Northern and Southern RFZs.
The GYI Analysis found that women are less likely to manage cattle and are most involved in the management of poultry. Women are also involved in goat/sheep management, but do not necessarily view the gendered distribution of livestock as inequality, despite the higher value that cattle bring compared to poultry and goats/sheep. Instead, women view this distribution as traditional.
Youth are less likely to be involved in livestock production than adults, across all value chains. However, goat/sheep and poultry are more feasible for youth in the short term due to finance constraints. Most ownership seems to come from managing others’ animals and receiving an offspring.
Households with male-only management tend to have substantially larger herd sizes than those with female-only management within the cattle and goat/sheep value chains. For poultry, however, flock sizes were relatively equal between male and female-only management. Differences in herd/flock size between households with youth-only producers and adult-only managers are less pronounced than with gender.
Male managers generally apply more improved practices than female managers due to mobility constraints, reduced access to training, and reduced access to credit by women. In poultry management, women producers have equal or higher rates of application of improved practices in most areas. The application of management practices is deeply intertwined with social norms dictating traditional gendered roles and responsibilities for women and men.
Men have higher yield than either women or youth due to more offtake as well as their higher rate of keeping improved breeds, as larger animals influence yield. In addition, men sell more quantity of their herds/flock than women. For this reason, men have higher yield than women and adults.
The GYI Analysis will inform a Gender and Youth Action Plan that will ensure equal participation and outcomes in PARE for women and youth. The plan will address the constraints and opportunities for male, female, and youth livestock producers and their communities in the Northern and Southern RFZs.