JOURNAL | Gender equality in the coffee industry

Today is the international women day. Lykkes mission is to create coffee with no harm done, by sustainable farming, but also sustainable business practices, and that includes gender equality.
The coffee industry is male dominated and it’s often the men that own and control the agriculture, while the women are often the ones who actively work and take care of the farms. At the same time, women often take care of the household and the children, which gives them fewer opportunities to take part in knowledge-building activities. Knowledge-building activities aimed at agriculture are important for economic and environmental sustainability, but also very important for social sustainability - where increased equality between men and women is included.

It can also be very difficult for a female coffee grower to compete with men in the business sphere and many times they are not taken seriously by, for example, coffee buyers.

Lykke strives for an equal coffee production with the ambition to transfer financial power to women.

Families where women take care of and control the economy, often eat better and give the children the opportunity to go to school, and when women own and control land, the chance of agriculture being adapted to climate change increases. Women who take care of the economy simply have more solidarity and are more prone to charing financial gains - which is good for both the individual family and society as a whole!

One of our original projects is located in Rwenzori, Uganda, where we work closely with small family-owned farms and through an educational program, our agronomists teach sustainable agricultural techniques to young women and men from the area. These young people are then given the title coffee scout, whose main task is to spread their agronomic knowledge to local producers. The ambition of the project is that more than half of the scouts will be women.

In this way, we can transfer knowledge and help increase the position of women in the local community. We believe that it is an important tool for achieving many positive changes, both for people and the environment!

Foot notes:

Women and climate change

Women and equality in agriculture

Coffee - A male dominated industry

Lykke in Uganda