10 years of IWCA - Brazil: women's strength in coffee

The International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) is a non-profit organization created in 2003 as a result of a meeting between women in the coffee industry in the United States and coffee producers in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

It is a global network present in 32 countries with a mission to recognize and encourage female participation in all areas of the coffee operations chain, empowering women through leadership development, strategic partnerships, and market visibility.

In 2012, after about two years of intense mobilization and volunteer work by women from different producing regions, the Brazilian chapter of the IWCA was created. The first elected president, Josiane Cotrim, tells us how this moment of creating the organization was.

Through these partnerships, technical training and qualifications were encouraged, focused mainly on small producers.

These actions aimed to give these women greater autonomy and a greater knowledge about their own coffees, so that they understood basic information about sample preparation, classification, as well as the marketing procedures for the bean.

This work, which combines research conducted in different regions of the country, resulted in the book Mulheres dos Cafés no Brasil [Coffee Women in Brazil].

The influence of the Alliance can be seen in the increased awareness of the gender issue in companies, associations, cooperatives, and other institutions, with an increase in the number of initiatives and projects within this perspective.

Beyond that, it has empowered women and made possible connections that seemed impossible, as told by Miriam Aguiar, an organic coffee producer and current president of the IWCA, and Neide Peixoto, a specialty coffee producer, both from Campo das Vertentes/MG.