Article by Laina Schneider

This month, innovATE spoke with Dr. Maria Elisa Christie, an expert on gender, to learn about her perspective and experiences in agricultural education and training and development.

“My life and work are intimately related. I have always been able to work with what interested me, which is women’s stories,” says Dr. Maria Elisa Christie, Director of Women and Gender in International Development at the Office of International Research, Education and Development.

Christie has had a diverse career working on women and gender issues globally with a variety of development, research, and non-governmental agencies, as well as governments in the U.S. and Mexico. She has conducted research in countries such as Bolivia, Kenya, Senegal, Nepal and Uganda to advocate for women around the world. Earlier this week Christie spoke with Laina Schneider, innovATE research and communications assistant, about her career, book, and future aspirations.

innovATE: You are known as a passionate advocate for women. How did your interest in women and gender emerge?

Christie: It started because I was the only daughter with two brothers in a traditional Spanish household. I noticed the discrimination when my brothers got to do fun things without me. That is when my gender awareness began.

I was exposed at a young age to how different cultures treated gender. I was born in Spain and visited Morocco several times with my family and alone. I saw girls my own age covered and serving us tea but not allowed to join the group.  That really opened my eyes to gender differences. I am also a single mom, my kids are grown up now, but the challenges I faced personally affected my interest in women’s stories.

innovATE: Could you describe a turning point in your career that shaped your specific outlook on international development?

Christie: When I worked in Tunisia at the Institut Tunisien des Technologies Appropriées, I trained horses to serve as transportation as part of their alternative energy program. I rode at 4 am to avoid the heat. I also covered myself and wore a turban, so that people would not know I was white or female which would put me at risk. In an early morning ride, I remember seeing a woman from the back, and in my journal I wrote, “What is it? Is it a donkey? No, it is a woman,” and I sketched her. She was hunched over with a huge pile of firewood on her back. I don’t know how she could have piled that massive stack up on herself, much less carry it. It was the first time in a developing world context that I saw that women, really, are carrying the weight.

innovATE: You wrote the book “Kitchenspace: Women, fiestas and everyday life in central Mexico.” Would you explain what “kitchenspace” is and how this theme emerged during your research?

Christie: I started out with an idea to do research on society’s relationship with the environment but I ended up working on food preparation spaces, where you can see this in a concrete and interesting way. The town where I lived and conducted my research in Mexico was famous for fiestas. Attention was not given to the women who were preparing all the food because they were working behind what I call the “curtain of smoke” and their work was literally invisible and taken for granted.

I had to develop the word “kitchenspace” to talk about my food preparation research because food wasn’t always made in an indoor kitchen. The food could be prepared daily or for fiestas, inside or outside and on a community level or family level. So kitchenspace is just where food is prepared, but it is socially constructed space rather than physically determined, much like gender is to sex.

innovATE: How can kitchenspace help us understand gender?

Christie: Gender norms, what is acceptable for men or women in societies in a given time and place, can be discovered by looking at what men and women do, especially in public, regarding the kitchen.  I argue that kitchenspace is a place of power for women in some cultures. Women control what happens there, they control the technology in the kitchen and the distribution of food at the table.

Kitchenspace is also an important place to see cultural change. When you glimpse through kitchenspace you see what is important to people. Do we want to opens cans so we can eat quickly? Are we concerned about genetically modified food? Do we want to eat local? Kitchenspace is important because it reflects how our culture is changing.

You can also use kitchenspace to look at nutrition. In my research in Bolivia I found that the traditional local staple, potatoes, were being replaced in the diet by Ramen noodles. People think that it is the cool thing to eat and it is tasty. They are selling the potatoes, which are much better for them and buying Ramen because people’s preferences are affected by ideas of modernity and not necessarily what is healthy. People are buying things that are more expensive but have less value.

innovATE: Nutrition is an important topic for development practitioners. What other aspects of agricultural development can kitchenspace help us understand?

Christie: You have to transform food into things that are culturally appropriate for people to eat. You can introduce new crops or new varieties of existing crops but people often won’t eat it because it isn’t part of their culture.  It is a lot harder to change culture than to introduce a new crop or crop variety. There are examples when for example beans are introduced which take longer to cook. Despite the benefits of the beans, if they are pest-resistant or have a higher nutritional value, women don’t want to have to, for example, gather and carry more firewood in order to cook them.

innovATE: How else do women impact agricultural development?

Christie: At least 50% of small farmers are women. Women impact agricultural development because they do at least half of the work. Often people say that when you introduce new technology it further marginalizes women. It can easily do so if people aren’t considering gender issues. However, when new technologies are brought in it can actually can create opportunities for women because there are not existing cultural traditions excluding women from them. If you make a point to create opportunities for women you can empower them. Also if you can keep new technologies in women’s spheres of influence, like kitchenspace, it helps to increase benefits to women from the new agricultural technology.

innovATE: What do you think is the biggest obstacle in achieving gender equity in the countries you have worked in?

Christie: There is entrenched interest where men do not want to lose their influence to women and don’t understand that empowering women contributes to the overall benefit of society.

Also there is ignorance and a lack of awareness that gender obstacles exist. For the innovATE project I interviewed students and faculty of agricultural education institutions in Cambodia, Bangladesh and South Sudan about the gender obstacles they face. Every person that I interviewed, man or woman, said there were no gender problems and then they proceeded to give me a list of problems.

People tend to think that because there are women studying at, or working in, these institutions then that means that there aren’t any gender problems. They may not recognize that things like early marriage or transportation safety issues are gender issues which can affect women’s entry into education, and, along with other gender-based constraints, keep most women out.

Development literature shows you can’t make any progress in development if you are not investing in women. Not only are women about 50% of the population, but because they are as a group marginalized, overall, more poor people are women. The single most important investment to development efforts is improving women’s access to education.

innovATE: For you personally, what is the most difficult part of working with gender in international development?

Christie: The biggest problem is that people see gender as a requirement from outside funders, for which they need to check off a box by assigning a person to be the one responsible for gender. The project managers won’t have the gender specialist integrated into the project though. Organizations realize it is important to consider gender and that it is required for economic development, equality and human rights, but it is still isolated instead of being truly integrated into programs.

I think we are fooling ourselves if we believe we don’t need women’s empowerment. When you look at gender issues you find that women have obstacles that men don’t have. Women are discriminated against and they have less access to resources like education and land. We need to show that women’s empowerment isn’t a zero-sum game. When you have an educated wife she can help make decisions about using inputs in the farm which will increase farm production. It is better for everybody if women have equal opportunities with men.

innovATE:  What do you hope to accomplish in the future with your work regarding gender in international development? What are your goals for the future?

Christie: I enjoy working with students. Having an impact on their lives through education is something that motivates me and I feel is a worthwhile investment of my time, energy and passion.

I would also love to write another book about some of what I have learned. I am interested in the recent connection the development community has made between agriculture and nutrition because there is an opportunity for developing kitchenspace as an angle and a bridge between the two, which would be exciting. There are many opportunities to study kitchenspace as a place of transformation and to look at cultural and social reproduction. That is what I want to do.