This grant develops model partnership agreements with selected international agribusiness firms to explore women's employment issues in agribusiness in developing countries. It documents best practices that are responsive to gender-based constraints and contribute to improvements in women's economic status. The agribusiness sector is dominated by large multinational corporations responsive to global economic trends. Decisions about operations in any particular country or market are contingent on activities around the world. At the same time, in many countries, rural-based national firms successfully respond to national and international markets.
Many international firms operate through contracts with national companies.
The complexity of these arrangements affects work force composition and income as well as productivity. These factors, in turn, affect the lives of rural women. The activity will set up and document two or more partnerships between the university and agribusinesses to identify constraints to female employment, healthy working conditions and fair returns to labor in selected countries, and to document best practices which address these constraints. The partnerships will be designed to serve as replicable models to be tested for extension to other firms. A third research study is planned in Brazil with a Quaker Oats firm.