Case study
Assessing gendered social norms: Strengthening Dairy Value Chains in Bangladesh
Identifying through relatively simple tools and methodologies how social norms influence women’s access and agency within given market systems can lead to more effective programming and greater sustainability. This CARE Bangladesh case study demonstrates the value of upfront research to identify the unique norms-based constraints to women’s opportunities for empowerment within a given market. Thanks to concerted efforts to better understand these constraints and their origins, the Strengthening Dairy Value Chains (SDVC) project was able to design interventions that both worked with in and around these social norms, and that addressed them head on. This allowed the project to broaden their perspective beyond just numbers of women participating, and to generate changes in how the system was functioning and responding to women producers’ needs, and the roles that women were ultimately able to occupy and benefit from within this market system.