Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes some small scale rural development projects targeted to women in northern Senegal: we discuss the risk of standardization of aid interventions on what concerns gender roles in food value chains and some of its consequences.

Paper long abstract:

Overcoming the gender gap in agriculture is nowadays one of the focal points of major international institutions, governments and development agencies. In this paper we discuss some effects of international aid in rural contexts on gender dynamics and women's empowerment. Through the analysis of some small-scale projects in Northern Senegal -implemented within a wide rural development aid program in West Africa- we develop some reflections on the observed women-oriented projects, namely small scale food processing activities. We stress the risk that women end up being "locked" into pre-defined roles in food value chains, and into low-revenue activities by a standardized logic of aid projects. We develop an analysis of the practices that may lead to this outcome, where possible tensions may emerge between the needs of "beneficiaries" and those of the "project", and between the way project is thought and the way it is translated into practice on the field. We more precisely discuss the possible implications of projects aiming at formalizing and "modernizing" home-based women activities. We carry on this analysis by means of a qualitative and interdisciplinary case study, at the crossroad between social anthropology, human geography and development economics.