CAN CERTIFIED-TEA VALUE CHAINS DELIVER GENDER EQUALITY IN TANZANIA?

A popular approach over the past twenty years has been to rely upon voluntary standards as a means to make claims, measure, and judge whether a number of social-equity concerns exist in private-sector practices. But can voluntary standards deliver gender equity? This contribution responds to this question by exploring how standards and gendered division of labor interact in certifiedtea value chains (for example, Ethical Tea Partnership, Fairtrade, Organic, and Rainforest Alliance) in Tanzania. The results of this mixed-method study (2008-10, 2013) contribute to the literature on gender equity and standards by building on the gendered value-chain approach to analyze these complex and contextual interactions. The study proposes that there is a need tofocus on the interactions between men and women with different skills and training that contribute to how equitably their roles are distributed in the certified-tea value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]