May 23 - 2021
Coffee Geography Magazine
Café Delas was created to help women farmers access the resources, knowledge, and voice they need to grow their operations to the fullest potential.
As with most of history, the history of women and coffee has
been made largely invisible relative to the contribution of men (as written by
men). Invisible is the right word, rather than “absent,” because the impact of
women in coffee has always been felt and understood if not recognized and
acknowledged.
Exceptions—again, as with
most history—are interesting but antidotal, patronizing in that they represent
such a limited and obtuse record, and are not representative of the true
contribution made by women. The popular examples extant include French Naval
officer, Gabriel de Clieu, receiving a coffee shoot from the King’s
greenhouse “through the kindly offices of a lady of quality to whom de Chirac
could give no refusal,” de Chirac being a royal physician. We know that it was
not uncommon for women to be coffeehouse proprietors in London in the 17th century, even though women were discouraged
if not forbidden from visiting these establishments. The widow Ferrari of the
Merchants coffeehouse, we are told, “was a keen business woman.” There was
Dorothy Jones who, the record seems to indicate, was the first person in the
colonies to receive a license to sell coffee, in Boston in 1670. We don’t know
if she sold green coffee or coffee roasted and “garbled” (ground). And of
course, we can apparently never be allowed to forget, though somewhat
antithetical to the point, the infamous and highly improbable, “Women’s Petition Against Coffee,” a clearly satirical pamphlet that was
probably not actually written by a woman or women; nor is there any evidence
that the pamphlet in any way represented the views of women at the time.
In the 1922 edition of All About Coffee, in what feels almost like a belated
attempt to keep up with the times, William Ukers often adds “and women” when he
writes of men drinking coffee. Ukers was several years into writing the book
when women won the right to vote in the United States and one might be forgiven
for reading into his writing a heightened awareness of social evolution in
terms of consumers. On the other hand, when Ukers writes of coffee as a
business, there is no mention of women and coffee - it is a realm reserved
exclusively for men. The phrase “coffee men” is ubiquitous throughout the book
and, indeed, remained in popular usage in the coffee industry until recent
times, and may still slip off the lip of older generations. Chapter 16 of Ukers
is titled, “Some Big Men and Notable Achievements,” and there are pages and
pages of photographs depicting these big men, and not one photograph of a
“coffee woman,” unless it be a woman involved in picking and production at
origin or brewing coffee in some exotic locale.
Even as late as 1973, when renowned specialty
coffee pioneer, Erna Knutsen, started
selling green coffee, she was barred by men in the trading company where she
worked from entering the cupping room or roasting samples. Erna, through determination
and an undeniably good palate, made it into the cupping room anyway and among
other notable achievements for a man or a woman went on to participate in the International
Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) at the very beginning, in 2003.
The IWCA has since served as inspiration for Olam’s support of women in coffee
at origin and Olam’s creation of the Café Delas program in Brazil.
Through a partnership with IWCA in 2015, Olam
managed “Coffee Flowers,” a program designed to promote equality for women in
the Brazilian coffee industry in the belief that livelihoods in agriculture
improve when women are empowered. During this time, Olam realized a greater
commitment was needed and created Café Delas.
Café Delas is based on the idea that given
better access to resources traditionally held out of their reach, and an equal
voice in leadership, women will not only produce fine specialty grade coffee,
they will create positive impacts within their families and communities as a
result. The concept of Café Delas can be summed up in one word, “empowerment;”
but empowerment is far from a simple idea, so Olam sought to include a
quantitative metric known as the Women’s
Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
within the program structure. Fundamentally, WEAI defines and measures
empowerment as the ability to not only make decisions related to agriculture,
but also an individual’s access to the “material and social resources needed to
carry out those decisions.” Developed by United States
Agency for International Development, the Oxford Poverty
and Human Development Initiative, and International
Food Policy Research Institute, the WEAI considers
five realms dedicated to women and coffee that Olam has embraced as relevant to
the success of Café Delas:
Production- Decision
making power relative to all aspects of the farm.
Income- Real
control over income and expenditures.
Resources- “Ownership, access to, and decision-making
power" over production resources, including land, equipment, durables, and
credit.
Leadership- Active
and meaningful membership in economic and/or social groups, including
opportunity for and comfort with public speaking.
Time- How
time is divided among the agricultural “business,” domestic tasks, and leisure
activity.
These elements of empowerment are measured for individuals as
well as compared between the primary male and female members of households
(i.e. the “empowerment gap”).
In Brazil specifically, imbalances in these areas were easily
identified. For example:
Less than 17% of agricultural credits are received by woman.
Fewer than 13% of farms are owned by women.
Over 87% of women in agriculture lack access to agriculture
technical services.
Wages for women in agriculture are 30% lower than those of men.
Women work an average of 8 more hours a week than men.
While the intrinsic reasons for addressing these gaps (equality
among humans) are often readily understood, more extrinsic motivations have
come to light in recent years as the impacts of empowering women have been
studied. Generally, women are:
More likely to invest their income back into their families to
improve education, nutrition and health.
More open to new technologies and best practices in agriculture.
Better learners than men.
More system / process oriented and do a better job at things
like managing traceability controlling expenses.
Are usually involved in roles that directly influences coffee
quality.