No one wants to talk about gender equality in the workplace. It’s too uncomfortable and too easy to sweep under the rug as “just the way things are” or “a cultural issue.” But CARE Papua New Guinea figured out a way to get companies not only to talk about it, but the way they act. How? Frame the conversation in the business terms.

In the coffee-producing Highlands of Papua New Guinea, communities remain poor and semi-subsistence, despite the national importance of coffee as a major export commodity. Women are disproportionately affected by poverty, working longer hours than men but receiving, on average, less than a third of the income than their male counterparts. CARE International began the Coffee Industry Support Project in 2013 to target female farmers’ economic and social well-being in the Eastern Highlands. The project works with key coffee stakeholders to change the way they do business.

What have they accomplished?

• Changed the way companies think: One woman in a partner company told us, “It’s changed the way we think as professionals and as individuals. As professionals, it’s changed how we discuss and problem-solve together as a functioning team. This has brought me a lot of satisfaction because it has opened the door for other women to join the team. I am more confident that women can succeed here. As individuals, it has changed the way we interact with each other. I see the young men in my team conversing with ease with women in administration or finance, whereas before they would not speak to each other.”
• Changed companies’ behavior: One of our partners has started rearranging their extension sessions — both the setup and the timing — to make sure that women can participate. Extension agents are now focusing on working with men and women together. Many of the partners are also getting CARE’s help to conduct gender audits and adopt better HR policies to get women involved.
• Increased Women’s Participation: Women’s participation in coffee-related extension services went from less than five percent to 33-55 percent.
• Created more opportunities for women: The partner companies have agreed to implement internship programs where they specifically recruit and train female extension agents — something they have never done before.
• Improved household relationships: The data is all qualitative at this stage, but we are starting to see changes between men and women in the household. There are more discussions about how to spend money and more sharing of household labor.

How did they get there?

• Spread gender expertise: So far, CARE PNG has provided GED training for six of the major coffee-buying companies in PNG. Several of them have also adopted key modules into their own trainings and HR processes.
• Made the business case: Companies became uncomfortable when we talked about women’s empowerment.  As one person told us: “…at first, our staff minds were closed off to the training because of the word gender…” So what did CARE do? They focused on the business and called GED training Family Business Management Training to put it into the context of getting a more sustainable and reliable value chain for companies. Now, everyone is asking for more.
• Used good gender analysis: The project builds on the knowledge that women are providing 60 percent of the labor for coffee production and are getting less than one-third the cash out of it. And since women are involved in critical post-harvest processing, they won’t adopt time-intensive practices to create higher quality coffee because they don’t see benefits from it. Using this information, CARE convinced companies to start investing in women so they can get better products.

Want to learn more? Check out the project page, mid-term evaluation or project video.