Adverse Gender Relations in Agriculture (Research Proposal Sample)

ADVERSE GENDER RELATIONS IN AGRICULTURE AND WOMEN SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: A CASE STUDY OF MPATA AREA SINCE 1995 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Historical background The feminisation of agriculture have historically differed from one society and culture to another, and within each society external conditions influence the level of differences. The Sub-Saharan Africa is a diverse continent whose gender relations can hardly be generalised. A number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa have been engaged in agriculture as their main livelihood strategy. While Gordon (2007) highlighted the historical role of women, Doss and Quisumbing (2024) confirm that women now drive over 80 percent of staple food production in emerging food systems. Estimates are that 70 – 80 percent of agricultural labour is carried out by women and these women produce up to 80 percent of the staple foodb. Women therefore account for more than half of the work force that participates in different farming activities, either directly or indirectly. They have constituted an integral part of farming household. However, Sub-Saharan African women have, in various ways and times, led and continue to lead difficult lives. Compared with men, women work more hours and yet the division of labour as well as activities they take part have been to a larger extent inequitable. For instance, it has been very common for women in Africa to work while men sit and tell them what to do. There are times when women carry heavy loads from a farm field while men walk carrying nothing despite the fact that women upon reaching home women have to engage in reproductive labour such as cooking for the household and caring the children. The result has been that the work of women in Agriculture has failed to match the socio-economic rank of women because of the prevailing social relations. The gender relations have relegated women to substance sector and women have lost income status and power relative to men, and their control in agriculture has not been realised. Though it is difficult to discern the situation of women in Africa in the pre-colonial times including the gender relations that prevailed that time, scholars argue that the adverse gender relations became worse, and put women at a disadvantaged position during the colonial rule whatever their prior status had been. For instance, women workload increased tremendously as men were compelled in cash crop farming leaving women the task of ensuring the rest-growing food stuffs, even more than before. Furthermore, while women and men collectively work on farms, there has been a division in terms of crops cultivated by men and those done by women in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. The way proceeds realised from this gendered farming systems have tended to stretch the socio-economic gap between women and men. For example, In regard to gender differences in terms of crops cultivated , Shoo (2012) , in most accounts found out that men worked more in crops which were used for obtaining cash (sunflower and wheat) than in subsistence crops, such as millet, groundnuts, and beans . An explanation for this was that “women are responsible for feeding the family while men tend to favour cash.” Thus revealing the extent to which societal constructions of what men and women should do in agriculture marginalise women’s rights to productive participation. Nonetheless, caution should always be taken to avoid generalizing such gender relations. Gender relations are context-specific and the socio-economic factors of a particular place that may determine the level of the participation of women and men in different crop cultivation. It has also been the case that in most parts of the Sub-Saharan Africa, women’s outputs have often been viewed as a source of accumulation as well as a buffer for fluctuations in men’s incomes. In the event that revenues from men’s cash crops have dropped, women have had to intensify their productive activities such as by engaging beer brewing and commerce to assume many of men’s traditional responsibilities. Conversely, women’s superior earning capacity implies that women end up making a more important contribution to household budgeting since men’s contributions are re-directed to other uses such as personal consumption and productive investment. In other words, while the management of responsibilities has tended to be gender-specific such as men paying for children’s school fees while women buying foodstuffs, the division of responsibilities tends to oscillate according to each sex’s ability to cope with its own sphere, and its ability to either tap into the other. Malawi is one of the developing states in Sub-Saharan Africa whose economy greatly depends on agriculture which provides greatest contribution to its Gross Domestic Product. The country is famous for its agricultural, forestry and fisheries activities though farming constitutes the largest source of the people’s livelihood activities supplemented by fishing and trade which is largely based on farm produce. According to the Malawi Economic Growth Strategy (2004) it is stated that agriculture accounts for over 39% of the GDP, 85% of the labour force and 83% of foreign exchange earnings. This clearly suggests that it is the mainstay of the country’s economy however data from Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO) indicate that one of the reasons Malawi agriculture is underperforming is that women have not been empowered to effectively participate in agriculture. For instance, only 32 percent of individual holders of agricultural land in Malawi are women. In spite of a considerable number of matrilineal communities, gender inequalities in land access and ownership are very overwhelming. Households headed by female also have less land compared to male headed households – nearly half of female-headed households, compared to one quarter of male-headed households; have holdings of less than 0.5 hectare. In Mpata area of Karonga district of the country both women and men depend on farming as their major livelihood strategy. Kalinga (1983) reports that in this area the main staple crops were bananas, sorghum and eleusine (finger millet). However, due to changes over time ad space, the dominant crops that are cultivated have been maize, cassava, groundnuts, legumes especially peas, and cotton. Rice, Sorghum and Millet on a smaller scale. Apart from crops, cattle and pigs are main live stocks that have constituted their livelihood security. As much as it is a fact that agriculture is practised by both women and men in Africa including Malawi, it has been established that the gender relations and roles that prevail in Sub Saharan Africa are hostile towards optimal participation of women in agriculture. Women segregation in access to resources such as land, kinds of crops cultivated including labour division in the process of farming are all unfavourable. It has to be noted that land and labour are not only interlinked elements in the livelihoods of people but also greatly integrated in the livelihoods and outcomes of women and men. The inability of women to have control over land and their labour therefore unjustly impinges on their socio-economic progress and status in society. Women lag behind both in the benefits and in their contribution to agriculture is not a signal that they are not able but that hostile gender relations have pinned them to such a position. The result has been stalled livelihoods of women in most areas in Sub Saharan Africa. The Modernisation paradigm has to a larger extent failed in as a far as the improvement of women in agriculture is concerned. It has not been able to wipe out gender distinctions. In her revolutionary work of 1970 Boserup dismissed the modernisation proposition that is cannot improve lives of women and hence argued for redistribution of productive resources to women. In addition, since the dawn of Gender and Development dispensation, attention has been drawn toward the empowerment of women in order to off-set the adverse gender relations in agriculture and other related sectors. According to the Commission on Women Development (2007), allusion to the concept of empowerment dates back to the 1960s particularly in the Afro-American movements. In relation to development, it was in 1995 at the fourth World Conference on women in Beijing when it was adopted. Since then, there is an urge among scholars, gender activists and governments to ensure that women be empowered to make choices and decisions and to use their rights, resources and opportunities. In addition, the United Nations decade for women (1976-1985) led to changes in development planning and spread of women-oriented projects. This was an era of Women in Development (WID) in which agricultural projects were often framed and dealt with women in isolation and only aimed at increasing their productive efficiency. By the late 1970s and through 1980s there was increasing criticism against WID approach which did not raise the role of social relations in restricting women’s access in the first place. This led to a shift in development focus to Gender and development (GAD) that resulted in its adoption internationally in 1995. It stresses that relations, processes and structures that make women to be at a disadvantage have to be focused on and changed; resources redistributed so that women can be empowered. This has been seen as a radical process of ‘gender mainstreaming’. It is GAD’s approach that shifted to empowerment of women and gender justice as ways of addressing women’s subordination. So far, stakeholders are trying to implement some of the empowerment programs through various gender frame works to the end of wiping out adverse gender relations that impinge women productivity in various sectors of development, agriculture inclusive. The gender relations in communities have to be understood in order...