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 to focus 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.