UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
|
| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
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This document is being made available by the Population Information
Network (POPIN) Gopher of the U.N. Population Division, Dept. for
Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, in
collaboration with the Population Programme Service, Food and
Agriculture Organization. For further information contact
jacques.duguerny@fao.org
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From: Modules on Gender, Population & Rural Development with a
Focus on Land Tenure & Farming Systems. Rome: FAO, Population
Programme Service, November 1995.
MODULE III: GENDER, RURAL FERTILITY/MORTALITY & FARMING SYSTEMS
(Topouzis/du Guerny, SDWP, November 1995)
What have Gender and Rural Fertility/Mortality to do with Farming
Systems?a/
Fertility and, to some extent, mortality, levels and trends in
rural populations have traditionally been analyzed in terms of
socio-cultural and economic variables, including the value
of children, age at marriage, malnutrition, prolonged
breastfeeding, education, employment, and the status of women. In
the past decade, however, institutional factors and gender
relations have also been recognized to influence fertility and
mortality patterns. This module focuses on the gender dimension of
the linkages between fertility, mortality and farming systems, with
emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, the following
questions are addressed: What are the implications of fertility
and mortality on the dynamics of farming systems? What are the
demographic implications of changes in farming systems? How can
policy interventions create a desirable synergy between evolving
farming systems and population variables?
The objective of this module is to stimulate discussion among
farming systems, gender and population specialists in order to: a)
identify the main policy issues emerging from the interface between
gender, rural fertility/mortality and farming systems; b) indicate
what research is needed to address these issues; and c) define
possible areas and/or points of intervention for rural development
and population programmes and policies, given existing knowledge.
"What is not Counted is Usually not Noticed" J. K. Galbraith
No statistically observable relationship has been found
between different types of agricultural work and fertility to date
in sub-Saharan Africa.1/ This has been attributed in part to
difficulties in defining and measuring women's economic activity,
as a substantial part of women's farming remains officially
undocumented. Women's contributions that have most suffered from
neglect and bias include `informal sector activities,' `home-based
production,' and work on `family farms.' Another problem is that
different countries define and measure women's work in diverse
ways.2/ Therefore, it is not surprising that demographic data linked
to information on female or male economic activities are lacking or
based on estimates.b/
The Agricultural Gender Division of Labour
Although gender-disaggregated data on production is essential
to making women's contribution visible and to identifying gender-
specific needs and constraints, it is not the "panacea for
improving the visibility of women; it only uncovers the tip of the
iceberg."3/ Below that lie conceptual and methodological problems
that are often reflected in gender stereotypes which have a marked
impact on agricultural and rural development policies and
programmes. Such stereotypes are themselves a manifestation of
gender bias and of the absence of gender analysis. For example, it
is commonly assumed that men cultivate cash crops while women grow
food crops; and that women are subsistence farmers while men are
commercial farmers. Official statistics from a number of
countries, however, reveal a different picture: in Ghana, for
instance, one-third of farmers producing cash crops like cocoa,
rice and sugar cane, and one-quarter of farmers producing tobacco,
coconut and oil palm are women.4/
Gender-disaggregated data alone do not reveal the complexity
of gender dynamics, inter-relationships, interests,
responsibilities and decision-making processes within the farm
household. As many development projects are designed without the
participation of women beneficiaries, their planned role therein is
often not one they are able or willing to undertake. This raises
the question of whether gender roles, needs, constraints and
economic decision-making within the household have been adequately
understood.5/
Gender-disaggregated data and gender analysis of the farm
household system need to be bolstered by a corresponding allocation
of resources and by participatory methodologies to ensure female
involvement in policies and programmes. A review of agricultural
projects funded by USAID showed that projects that delivered
resources to women according to their role in the farming system
were more likely to succeed than projects in which women did not
receive resources. Even if a mainstream project was concerned with
activities that were primarily women's responsibility, women's
participation was low unless delivery systems explicitly earmarked
resources or services to women.6/ Gender analysis in baseline
situations did not automatically guarantee that female farmers
would participate, even when there was no formal barrier to their
participation. Socio-cultural norms, traditions and stereotypes,
often related to female fertility and reproduction can be
formidable obstacles to women's involvement in programmes and
projects.
Linkages Between Fertility, Mortality and Farming Systems and their
Implications
a) The Interface between Gender, Farming Systems and Demographic
Change
Farming systems to a large extent depend on complex inter-
relationships between men's and women's labour. At the center of
these inter-relationships, however, lies an asymmetry of male and
female interests, duties, obligations and contributions within the
farm-household. More specifically, the extent to which activities,
rights and decision-making are undertaken jointly or separately is
relevant to almost all aspects of family life, including property
ownership and management, production and management of produce,
domestic tasks, etc.7/
Five main gender patterns of farm management have been
identified: separate enterprises, separate tasks, shared tasks,
separate fields, and women-owned or women-managed farms. While
men, women and children work to the same degree during the peak or
harvest period, women and children's work is predominant in the
off-season. In addition, men's labour input is most critical for
a more narrow range of farming activities (especially land clearing
and herding livestock), or else it is performed once yearly
(construction of dwelling units, thatching huts and granaries). In
contrast, women's labour input is constant throughout the year,
encompassing a wide range of labour- intensive, often tedious,
tasks. Women's labour is also characterized by high fragmentation
in terms of time.
When farm and domestic tasks are combined, women's working days
are considerably longer than men's. In Asia, the Pacific and in
Africa, women average 12 to 13 hours more work a week than men. In
the Philippines, one study found that when housework and childcare
were taken into account, the average hours worked per week by women
reached 70, compared to 57 for men. In Latin America and the
Caribbean, women work 5.6 more hours a week than men.8/
Farming systems cannot be understood without taking into account
the evolving and complex family roles and relationships which
underpin them and the competing demands made upon women's time and
energy resulting from their productive and reproductive roles.9/ In
sub-Saharan Africa, and in other developing regions, a large
proportion of economic activity takes place in familial contexts
(family-based enterprises) and most productive resources are in the
control of kin. This is especially the case for women who are
primarily involved in family or home-based economic activities,
like food production, processing and distribution.10/
Working with accurate labour/production profiles at the farm-
household level and understanding intra-household dynamics is
critical to identifying and addressing male and female roles and
constraints as well as to assessing intra-household dynamics.
This, in turn, is critical for effective policy-making and
programme planning.
Key concepts underlying the collection and analysis of data for
economic and demographic surveys, like `household,' `parenthood'
and `marriage,' have often been poorly conceived and
operationalised, thereby perpetuating stereotypes. For instance,
as marriage in parts of Africa is potentially polygamous, female-
headed households (not resulting from male out-migration) are
common (see Module I).11/ This may considerably complicate the
definition of the farm household as an analytical unit. According
to Adepoju and Oppong, "women's work has frequently been so
inadequately recorded that it is virtually impossible to make
satisfactory correlations between variations in women's economic
activities and demographic evidence regarding differences and
changes in birth and death rates."12/
At the micro level, assumptions about the nature of family
systems, particularly in the case of Africa, are based on the
stereotype of the nuclear family unit (husband, wife and children).
According to this stereotype, the nuclear or conjugal family is
synonymous with the domestic group and simultaneously forms the
unit for economic and demographic decision-making and related
activities. For example, erroneous assumptions have been made that
women's work is incompatible with high fertility and that women as
wives are primarily unpaid family workers whose economic interests
coincide with those of their husbands.13/
The following working conceptual framework outlines some linkages
between division of labour by gender and age, farming systems and
household demographic characteristics and strategies. The
framework assumes that families optimize the mix of these variables
and that there is a rationale for existing patterns between them.
Changes in farming systems tend to be more rapid than changes in
the division of labour and the household demographic
characteristics and strategies. This can cause dysfunctions in the
last two that can be systemic, triggering, in turn, changes in the
farming system itself.
In short, the farming system, farm household labour and
demographic profiles are linked in such a way that changes in one
set of variables has direct or indirect consequences on the other
two. To ensure that changes in farming systems are synergistic
with changes in the labour profile and that they do not result in
undesirable changes in demographic variables, it is important to
look at the three sets of factors as forming an inter-dependent
system. In case of dysfunction, what needs to be considered is the
new optimal mix between farming system, labour profile and
household demographic factors and which of these factors need to be
changed through appropriate policies.
FIGURE 1: Household Labour Profile, Farming System and Demographic
Profile
Farming System
crop & livestock enterprises
off-farm activities
household activities
Household Labour Profile Family Demographic
characteristics & Strategies
Elderly Men Elderly Women
management childcare Fertility
decision- cooking Mortality
making ...etc... Migration
Men Women
land clearing weeding
planting harvesting
harvesting food processing
...etc... ...etc...
Boys Girls
herding water fetching
threshing fuel collection
hoeing childcare
..etc... ...etc...
Development interventions have often had adverse consequences on
rural women's socio-economic status and productive/reproductive
roles largely because the linkages between farming systems, labour
profiles, and population over time have not been systematically
taken into account. Such interventions include:
o Changes in cropping patterns or crop mix, emphasizing cash
crops for export at the expense of subsistence crops.
o New technologies whose introduction displaces more women than
men farmers, and whose use by men only widens the productivity gap
between women and men. Some production technologies increase the
labour burden on women farmers without increasing their share of or
control over farm revenue.
o Changes in land access, from communal ownership in which women
had secure access to land to private property in which only male
heads of household can hold title.
o Agricultural extension services, credit, inputs, technical
assistance, etc. which tend to be targetted to men only, thereby
widening the male/female productivity gap, marginalizing women even
further.
By overlooking the demographic implications of changing cropping
patterns and new technologies and by not ensuring women's access to
services, many development interventions have either resulted in
unchanging high fertility (and mortality) levels, or may even have
contributed to increased fertility, as women try to compensate for
their increase in workload, displacement or marginalization by
having more children.
b) Labour Bottlenecks and Fertility/Mortality
It has been shown that seasonality of labour demands on time and
energy can have an adverse effect on women's ability to cope with
the demands of farm work, pregnancy or lactation.14/ In Eastern
Uganda, women's farming work peaks during the rainy season (June-
July and January).
"It is in this period that a family must acquire most of its food
requirements until the next rainy season. Agricultural
activities are therefore at their peak... Yet the rainy season is
a period when most women are pregnant, having conceived in the
slack period when there are many festivities. But they cannot
sit and rest as any medical personnel would advise. They must
perform all other duties as usual, that is household duties, food
production and processing plus providing all these services
essential for the family. The demand made on women's time and
energy is too high to match their energy intake. This is because
at that hectic time, particularly just before the harvest, food is
always scarce in rural areas."15/
A 1994 study on the influence of reproductive status on rural
central Kenyan women's time use has shown that the demands of
reproduction require Embu women to decrease the amount of time
spent on subsistence agriculture, tending animals, commercial
activities and housework. Agricultural and economic work
activities were found to be particularly curtailed in the third
trimester of pregnancy and the first period of breastfeeding. Over
the two-year cycle of pregnancy and breast feeding, women allocated
approximately 53 eleven-hour work days less to subsistence
agriculture and other work activities than women who were not
pregnant or breast feeding. This labour loss can place
considerable stress on Embu household food production and income-
generation, it is argued, particularly among poor households.16/
One insight generated by this data is that agricultural
development programmes need to ensure that they do not increase
household labour demands to levels that cannot be met by women.
The authors argue that "excessive direct demands on women's labour,
or indirect demands due to changes in labour patterns of other
household members may force women to work beyond what is physically
good for them and their infants. This could force women to
decrease the amount of time spent in agricultural programme
activities to the extent that it could put those programmes at
serious risk for failure."17/
Periods of strenuous farm labour, such as planting and weeding,
have also been associated with low birth-weights, early weaning,
and thus short birth intervals and pressures toward higher levels
of both infant mortality and fertility. Weeding, done in the rainy
season when diarrhoeal illness peaks is also the period when food
stocks are lowest. Pregnant women have been known to lose weight and
seasonality of birth weights has been recorded.18/ It has also been
shown that women without a co-resident man to share tasks with,
have shorter periods of breast feeding duration, indicating their
increased economic constraint to work outside the home. Thus,
breast feeding and weaning to some extent may affect family size by
impacting on fertility and mortality.19/
Table 2: Comparison of the Number of Hours Devoted to
to Activities by Non-Pregnant Non-Lactating (NPNL)
Women and Pregnant/Lactating Women over a Two-Year Period
__________________________________________________________________________
Hours per two-year period
____________________________________________________
Non-pregnant Pregnant (9 months)
Activity Category Non-Lactating Lactating 15 months Difference
24 months
__________________________________________________________________________
Child Care 403 1020 +617
Other work:
Animal Care 329 248 - 81
Commercial 1062 814 -248
Food preparation 1049 1008 - 41
Housework 1136 1048 - 88
Manufacture 194 204 + 10
Subsistance agriculture 1630 1495 -135
Wild foods 0 4 + 4
_________________________________________________________________________
Source: Derived from "The influence of Reproductive Status on Rural
Kenyan Women's Time Use." op.cit., 1994, p. 352.
c) Fertility, Agricultural Production and the Socio-Economic Value
of Children
High fertility rates reflect the socio-economic value of
children, particularly in rural areas20/ as well as high infant
mortality rates. Children in developing countries contribute
significantly to household labour: they assist in gathering and
processing foods and in selling them in the market; they take care
of animals; the girls help their mothers care for younger children
and also carry water and fuelwood and help with the cooking; the
boys help in irrigating, fishing and harvesting. Once they grow
up, children are also expected to take care of their parents in old
age.
As water and soil resources are depleted due to environmental
degradation and women's agricultural responsibilities increase, the
need for additional children becomes more important to compensate
for the increased labour demands of the household.
"(Children) provide desperately needed labour to assist in farm,
home and market. They provide the links of kinship without which
wives have no enduring rights in their marital homes or husband's
assets, including land and thus security as well as economic
status in old age. Without them conjugal links are tenuous and
fragile. Without them daily laborious tasks cannot be completed.
Without them a woman in virilocal marriage remains an outsider,
marginal."21/
Table 3: Labour Profile by Age and Sex in Rajasthan, India
(not available in this electronic version)
Source: Jain and Chand in Saradamoni (ed.), Women, Work and
Society, 1985, cited in Most Farmers in India are Women, FAO, 1991,
p. 6.
In Rajasthan, India, girls of 5-9 years contribute more than
twice as much as boys in terms of agricultural activities,
household chores and childcare and continue to contribute
significantly more than men throughout their lives (see Table 3).
In Africa, children under 13 years contribute around 1/3 of their
father's labour input, less of their mothers.22/ Girls of 7 years of
age contribute several hours of work each day pounding millet and
spinning cotton. This increases to 4 1/2 hours at 9 years
(including fetching water and washing the laundry), 6 1/2 hours at
11 years (including firewood porterage) and 7 1/2 hours at 13
years. At 15 years of age, a girl spends almost 10 hours a day in
productive tasks. Against this, boys of 7 years average 1 1/2
hours, reach a peak of 6 hours at 13 years, and fall to 4 1/2 at 15
years.23/
In rural areas, the "net" value of children (children's present
economic value plus anticipated support in old age, minus the cost
to raise them) to their parents, and especially to women, is most
often positive. This means that high fertility is a rational
strategy. The larger the number of children, the greater the
chances of a more efficient and timely execution of farm and
domestic tasks.
The persistence of large families can be, in part, explained by
the division of labour, labour force needs and access to land
(which is discussed at length in Module II). This is especially
true of subsistence agriculture, where no major changes are being
introduced (e.g. in technology, commercialisation, etc.) that would
reduce labour-intensive production systems.24/ New technologies,
including mechanisation, fertilisers, etc. can induce changes in
farming systems, but may end up increasing further the need for
women's and children's labour, especially in the off-season. There
is no clear evidence yet of differentials in high fertility and
large family sizes between areas with rural development projects
and those without.25/
Children's contributions in farming systems and the farm-
household economy are not usually quantitatively defined and the
implications of their contributions are not built-in related
programme interventions. For instance, when children are in school
during peak labour season, the women are left with an increased
labour burden. Poor rural households may have to take children out
of school in order to have enough labour on the farm and at home.
The implications of children being taken out of school are far-
reaching: it has been found that education can increase
agricultural productivity by augmenting the productivity of
measured inputs and enabling farmers to respond more quickly to
disequilibria. The social rates of return to education have been
calculated at 25-40% for Malaysia, 14-25% for Thailand and 7-11%
for South Korea.26/ It has also been found that girls are more likely
to be taken out of school than boys. Research has demonstrated
that young women who have had some education are more likely to
have a fewer number of children. For instance, in Namibia, women
with no education have a total fertility rate (TFR) of 6.6
children, those with less than 7 years of primary education have a
TFR of 6.1, those with 7-8 years of primary education have a TFR of
5.2 and those with some secondary education have a TFR of 4.1.27/
At present, the division of labour is analyzed in terms men's and
women's contributions. This method, however, does not take into
account the entire farm-household, which also comprises children,
who, as shown above, contribute substantially to the household
economy and the elderly. A more accurate picture of the farm
household's labour profile and a better understanding of intra-
household dynamics would emerge if the contributions of boys and
girls were also included on the basis of person days for each on-
and off-farm activity and household task.
d) Mortality and HIV/AIDS
Maternal and infant mortality are closely linked to childbirth
and to women's productive role. In recent years, economic
recession and structural adjustment and stabilization programmes
have contributed to a decline in the health and nutritional status
of women and infants. More urgently, however, the spread of
HIV/AIDS is also contributing to a dramatic rise in adult, infant
and child mortality in some sub-Saharan African and Asian
countries. In Uganda, life expectancy is projected to decline, in
part as a result of HIV/AIDS: in 1975-1980, life expectancy stood
at 47 years; by 2,000-2,005 it would have risen to over 54 years,
but is now projected to fall to under 44 years -- 10 years less
than originally projected. In Zambia and Zimbabwe, the decline in
life expectancy could even be more dramatic: while in 1975-1980 it
stood at about 49 and 54 years respectively, by 2,000-2,005 it is
expected to drop to 46.5 and 51 years instead of 60 and 66 years
(in the absence of AIDS).28/
In the next three years, AIDS will cause more deaths in African
children than either malaria or measles, according to UNICEF.29/
Similar effects are being evidenced in other countries in Africa:
It has been estimated that three-quarters of the 11 million people
infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa have yet to develop AIDS.30/
Parts of Asia are similarly expected to be significantly affected
by the spread of the epidemic in the next decade.
Recent work by FAO in East Africa has shown that AIDS mortality
is not only a medical and demographic concern but also an
agricultural and more specifically, a farming systems concern,
particularly in terms of the effects of AIDS-related mortality and
morbidity on farming systems and rural livelihoods, the coping
mechanisms adopted by rural communities and the types of
intervention that can mitigate the adverse impact of the epidemic.
Given the particularly important gender dimension of the disease,
special attention needs to be placed on the impact of HIV/AIDS on
farm women and on female-headed households. A brief summary of the
findings of these studies and their implications is presented
below.
Case Study on the Impact of HIV/AIDS-related Mortality on Farming
Systems and Rural Families in East Africa:
The primary impact of HIV/AIDS-related mortality on agricultural
production systems is loss of labour. Two of three farming systems
examined in one FAO study on "The Effects of HIV/AIDS on
Agricultural Production Systems and Rural Livelihoods in East
Africa" were found to suffer from serious labour shortage, which in
one of the villages was primarily caused by AIDS-related mortality.
Some of the effects of labour shortage on agricultural production
observed in a community that had suffered over a prolonged time
from AIDS-related mortality in Uganda included:
o Reduction in the acreage of land under cultivation
o Delay in farming operations such as tillage, planting and
weeding
o Reduction in the ability to control crop pests
o Decline in crop yields
o Loss of soil fertility
o Shift from labour intensive crops (e. g. banana) to less labour
intensive crops (such as cassava and sweet potato)
o Shift from cash oriented production to subsistence production
o Reduction in the range of crops per household
o Decline in livestock production
o Decreased food security
o Loss of agricultural knowledge and management skills 31/
The decline in agricultural production and the loss of household
income adversely affects other household functions such as the
provision of education and health, according to an FAO study in
Uganda on the "Socio-Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Rural Families"
(see Box on next page). It also profoundly changes the division of
labour by gender as well as by age. AIDS mortality increases the
need for child labour. Girls tend to suffer most as they are the
first to be taken out of school and care for younger siblings and
the sick, tend the family farm and assume household tasks.
The burden of the impact of AIDS-related mortality
disproportionately affects women and girl children. The FAO study
on "The Socio-Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Rural Families" found
more households headed by AIDS widows than by AIDS widowers.
Widows with dependent children tend to become entrenched in
poverty. They may lose access to land, labour, inputs,
agricultural extension, credit, and other support services.
HIV/AIDS stigmatization compounds their situation further,
eventually severing assistance from the extended family, which is
often their only safety net, and the community.32/
Box 2 illustrates how AIDS mortality affects a farm household
and how it impacts on food security, on the standard of living of
a family (and particularly on its nutritional and health status).
The working conceptual framework presented in Figure 2 and the
other tables on the division of labour by gender and age show how
the loss of one or more family members can have multiple
repercussions on the farming system through quantity of work, type
of work and skills mix, an end to remittances and a reallocation of
resources. The loss of both parents to AIDS can also lead to
children- and grandparent- headed households.
The FAO studies also found that it is becoming difficult to
implement agricultural programmes as a result of AIDS mortality.
Agricultural extension services have been hard hit by the disease.
In Uganda's Rakai district, 20-50% of all working time of extension
services is lost due to HIV/AIDS. Extension staff are frequently
absent from work attending burials and caring for sick relatives.
At the same time, a number of extensionists are falling sick and
dying. In fact, agricultural extension workers are in themselves
a "high risk" group in terms of susceptibility to HIV/AIDS, given
the fact that they are mobile, come to contact with a large number
of people and have not been targetted by HIV/AIDS awareness
campaigns. The epidemic has also made it more difficult for
extension staff to meet with farmers. If a meeting coincides with
a funeral, it is rescheduled. In some communities in Rakai
district in Uganda where there have been as many as 10-15 deaths in
one month, extensionists are finding it increasingly difficult to
operate.33/
Some AIDS widows in Uganda pointed out that as soon as their
husbands died, they had lost access to agricultural extension
advice which they considered invaluable (and to which few women
have access to). The death of their husbands, they explained, did
not only amount to the loss of their labour and income, but also to
the loss of their access to credit, extension and information,
access to cooperatives or other farmers' organizations, and the
loss of knowledge of certain cash crops and of specific farming
practices. Given the added burden of AIDS stigmatization that
these widows face, losing access to extension at a time when they
needed was of paramount importance to them.
It is important to underscore that even though to date HIV/AIDS
appears to have hit Africa more severely than other developing
regions, and certainly more is known about the nature of HIV/AIDS
impact in Africa, comparable findings are likely to be relevant for
a number of Asian and Caribbean countries affected by the epidemic.
In fact, AIDS-related mortality is not only an African concern. To
give but one example from Asia, high HIV infection rates in the
Northern Thai provinces necessitate an investigation of what the
impact of mortality is likely to be on rice-based farming systems.
In particular, insights into the impact of HIV/AIDS on the division
of labour by gender and age and the repercussions on demographic
patterns could provide the foundation for policies designed to
mitigate the adverse effects of the epidemic on agricultural
production, farming systems and small farmers.
Main Issues and Research Needs
i) Need for gender-dissagregated data and gender-responsive
methodologies in farming systems research, including data
linking agriculture and population
It has been argued that farming systems research has not
successfully integrated gender issues and has not provided gender-
disaggregated data.34/ This is only partly true, however, given the
fact that no country systematically collects farming systems data
as such: farming systems research usually takes place in light of
specific interventions and contexts. However, the collection of
dissagregated data by age and by sex on a project or programme
basis, revealing intra-household gender roles, needs and
constraints, could go a long way towards establishing more accurate
labour profiles and throwing some light on linkages with population
issues.
The conceptualization of the farm household as a production unit
can be problematic and the fact that households can comprise two or
more productive sub-systems has not yet been fully acknowledged by
policy-makers and development planners alike. This may be the
result of socio-economic factors as well as gender blindness. For
instance, in much of Africa, depending on the number of wives
within a household, only one productive system is controlled by the
man; the others are usually controlled by the wife or co-wives. In
other instances, as a result of migration (male or female), the
remittances many families rely upon represent another productive
sub-system.
Furthermore, gender roles have not been sufficiently understood
when it comes to technology generation and transfer and the need to
link demographic data to information on female or male economic
activities in the context of farming systems has yet to be
addressed. The section on labour bottlenecks and
fertility/mortality has shown that there is a need to explore how
changes in farming techniques may affect women's farm work both in
terms of increasing or decreasing their workload as well as in
terms of their ability to breast-feed.
ii) Differentiate between different groups of subsistence farmers
by gender and by socio-economic status, ensuring that de facto
and de jure female-headed households are included among policy,
programme and project target groups.
There is a general tendency to assume that subsistence farmers
are a homogeneous group with uniform interests, needs and
constraints. However, upon closer look, subsistence farmers
comprise a wide spectrum of sub-groups according to gender, farm
size, annual income, etc. Thus, one can distinguish, for instance,
female-headed households, which have less access to land,
productive resources and support services, landless labourers, etc.
It is also commonly assumed that rural women are a homogeneous
group. Yet, research has shown that new technologies can affect
different strata of rural women in very different ways. In the
Philippines, for instance, the introduction of wet-seeding/direct-
seeding technology, using High-Yield Varieties (HYV) in rice
cultivation, which reduces the demand for pulling/seeding and
transplanting (tasks normally performed by women) has had opposite
effects on women subsistence farmers and on landless women. The
effect of HYV on women subsistence farmers has been to lower
fertility rates and maternal and infant mortality while the effect
on poor landless women has been increased fertility (with
preference for sons because of the greater demand for male
labourers) and infant mortality.35/
iii) Address the Interface Between Labour Bottlenecks and
Fertility/Mortality
Findings on the role of reproduction on rural Kenyan women's
time use provides valuable insights into the interface between
heavy labour and pregnancy on the one hand, and the agricultural
calender on the other. These need to be taken into account when
designing interventions, to ensure that women's workload is not
increased and that their energy intake is adequate. Little is
known, however, on how the pressures on women's time at certain
points of the agricultural cycle may lead to curtailment of breast-
feeding and the consequent demographic effects different types of
agricultural innovation may have on these.
There is a need to further explore how changes in farming
techniques may affect fertility as well as women's farm work in
terms of their ability to breast-feed. More specifically, the
following questions need to be addressed: To what degree does this
occur? What farm tasks are the most strenuous and potentially
dangerous to pregnant women? How can they be compensated for by
new technologies? How can such new technologies be made acceptable
and attractive to farmers?
One way to begin addressing some of these questions would be to
categorize farming systems not only by physical characteristic
(i.e. rain-fed small farms, swidden farming in uplands, irrigated
fields, etc.), but to distinguish them on the basis of intra-
household dynamics. This will necessitate supporting data on the
type of technologies that would accompany each type of farming
system as well as a prioritization of other sub-groups of farming
systems.
iv) Assess the Gender-Differential Impact of the Introduction of
New Technologies, in view of its Potential Effect on
Fertility/Mortality, including the benefits of different
types of technical change in agriculture on the two sexes
The introduction of new technologies has tended to benefit men
at the expense of women, by marginalizing women, by increasing
their workload or by being inappropriate for their use. By
identifying and understanding the role of women in farming systems,
and by consulting them prior to the introduction of new
technologies, it will be possible to facilitate the generation of
technologies that women farmers can use. It would also be
important to empirically assess how the introduction of new
technologies at certain points of the agricultural cycle affect the
labour inputs of women, particularly during pregnancy and
lactation, and to determine whether it is likely to contribute to
high fertility and mortality.
v) Quantify, Document and Take into Account the Economic
Contributions of Children by Gender
Even though it is logistically and practically difficult to
measure and document the economic contribution of children, there
is a need to investigate whether and to what degree new
technologies can indirectly affect fertility patterns and
neutralize gains in fertility reduction by increasing girls' labour
inputs, leading them to drop out of school. The quantification of
children's labour contribution would be most effective if
undertaken on the basis of person days per activity and season.
This will allow policy-makers and planners to make demographic- and
gender-responsive decisions about the introduction of new
technologies, the introduction of new crops, etc.
Key questions that need to be addressed include the following:
could changes in farming systems (cropping patterns, new
technologies, etc.) better balance the gender and age division of
labour and therefore offset the growing need for child labour and
the growing responsibilities of women and girl children in
agricultural production? What are the implications of children's
labour contributions to farming systems and the farm-household
economy? What are some of the policy adjustments that can be made
to avoid children being taken out of school to make up for labour
needs? What are the implications of women's increasing labour
burdens on fertility, and more particularly, on decision-making
concerning family size?
Finally, given the significant but invisible contribution of
children and youth to agricultural and rural development, efforts
could be made to:
o investigate how gender-disaggregated data on children's
contributions can be incorporated in censuses, surveys, etc.;
o analyze the interface between children's and youth's farm
labour and demographic factors (especially fertility and
migration); and
o identify appropriate methodological tools to facilitate the
development of a more holistic perspective on the socio-economic
contribution of children and youth in the farm household and in the
community in order to enable them to benefit from their
contributions.
vi) Address the Socio-Economic and Demographic Effects of HIV/AIDS
Mortality in Policies and Programmes
The systemic effects of the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS at
the household level, including rural livelihood systems and rural
men and women themselves, need to be factored in population as well
as in agriculture/rural development programmes, taking into account
the gender dimension of the epidemic. Thus, development projects
in countries most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic (i.e. oilseed
project in Uganda, agricultural extension project in Zambia, cash
crop project in Zimbabwe, etc.) need to consider the demographic
and gender dimensions of the project, and in particular the
potential effect of HIV/AIDS (on mortality and morbidity) on men
and women farmers' livelihood systems. Responses to the epidemic
also need to consider the linkages between gender, household food
security and social support functions and should be people-centred.
As little is known about the impact of HIV/AIDS on agricultural
production systems in Asia and related linkages with population
issues, research needs to be conducted on a pilot basis. For
example, in Thailand, research on the impact of AIDS-related
mortality on rice-based farming systems, and in particular, on the
division of labour by gender and age and the repercussions on of
HIV/AIDS on demographic patterns could help guide policies designed
to mitigate the adverse effects of the epidemic on agricultural
production, farming systems and small farmers.
ENDNOTES
1. Christine Oppong, Introduction to Aderanti Adepoju and C. Oppong,
Gender, Work and Population, Geneva: ILO, 1994, p. 10.
2. ibid, pp. 10-11.
3. A. Evans, "Statistics," in Ostergaard, L. (ed). Gender and
Development: A Practical Guide, London: Routledge, 1992, p. 12,
cited in Caroline Moser, "Evaluating Gender impacts," Conference Paper
on Evaluation and Development, World Bank, December 5 and 6, 1994,
p. 14.
4. K. Ewusi, "Women in Occupation in Ghana," paper presented
at the Seminar on Women and Development held by the Council on
Women, Legon, Ghana, 1978, cited in Constantina Safilios-Rothchild,
"Agricultural Policies and Women Producers," in Gender, Work and
Population in Sub-Saharan Africa, op. cit., p. 57.
5. Oppong, Introduction to Gender, Work and Popultion, op. cit.,
p. 5.
6. A. S. Carloni, "Women in Development: AID's Experience
1973-1985," vol. 1, Synthesis Paper, Programme Evaluation Report
No. 18, cited in Women, Food Systems and Agriculture, Women in
Agricultural Development Paper, FAO, 1990.
7. Christine Oppong, Introduction to Gender, Work and
Population in Sub-Saharan Africa, op. cit., p. 3.
8. The World's Women: Trends and Statistics 1970-1990,
United Nations, New York, 1991.
9. Oppong, Introduction to Gender, Work and Popultion,
in Sub-Saharan Africa, op. cit., p. 2.
10. Ibid.
11. Oppong, Introduction to Gender, Work and Popultion,
in Sub-Saharan Africa, op. cit., p. 3.
12. Cited in Introduction, Gender, Work and Population
op. cit., p. 3
13. Ibid., p. 3
14. Ingrid Palmer, "Seasonal Dimension of Women's Roles,"
in R. Chambers, R. Longhurst and A. Pacey (eds.), Seasonal
Dimensions to Rural Poverty, London: Frances Pinter Ltd,
1981, cited in Oppong, Introduction, op. cit., p. 14.
15. FAO, Manual on Project Planning and Formulation of
Integrated Population, Women in Rural/Agricultural
Development Projects, draft mimeo, 1990, cited in Zoran
Roca, "Women and Population in Agricultural and Rural
Development in sub-Saharan Africa," Women in Agricultural
Development paper, No. 5, p. 19
16. Michael Baksh, Charlotte Neumann, Michael Paolisso,
Richard Trostle and A. Jansen, "The Influence of Reproductive
Status on Rural Kenyan Women's Time Use," Social Science
Medicine, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1994, pp. 354.
17. ibid.
18. Ingrid Palmer, Gender and Population in the Adjustment
of African Economies: Planning for Change, Geneva: ILO, 1991,
p. 33.
19. Christine Oppong, "Population, Development and Gender
Issues in Namibia," ILO, 1994, p. 120.
20. Aderanti Adepoju, The Demographic Profile: Sustained
high Mortality and Fertility and Migration for Employment,"
in Gender, Work and Population in Sub-Saharan Africa,
op.cit., p. 24.
21. Christine Oppong, "African Mothers, Workers and
Wives: Inequality and Segregation," Working Paper No. 2,
Population, Human Resources and Development Planning in
Sub-Saharan Africa, Geneva, ILO, cited in Gender, Work
and Population, op. cit., p. 24.
22. Palmer, Gender and Population in the Adjustment
of African Economies, op. cit., p. 32.
23. Brenda McSweeney, "The Negative Impact of Development
on Women Reconsidered: A Case study of the Women's Education
Project in Upper Volta," unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Maryland,
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, cited in Palmer,
op.cit., p. 32.
24. Zoran Roca, "Women and Population in Agricultural
and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa," FAO Women
in Agricultural Development Paper, No. 5, 1991, p. 12.
25. FAO/UNFPA Case study on Population, Status of Women
in Rural Development in Lesotho, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe,
1989, in ibid, p. 19.
26. D. T. Jamison and L. J. Lau, Farmer Education and
Farmer Efficiency, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1982, cited in Hans P. Binswanger and Klaus Deininger,
"Towards a Political Economy of Agriculture and Agrarian
Relations," Draft paper, World Bank, March 1995, p. 19
27. Christine Oppong, "Population, Development and
Gender Issues in Namibia," ILO, 1994, p. 36.
28. See Selected Pages from "World Population Prospects:
the 1994 Revision, forthcoming in 1995 from the Population
Division, Department for Economic and Social Information
and Policy Analysis, UN Secretariat, P. 137.
29. Cited in World Bank, AIDS Prevention and Mitigation
in sub-Saharan Africa: An Updated World Bank Strategy,
June 1995, p. xv.
30. World Bank, 1995, ibid, p. iii.
31. Tony Barnett, "The Effects of HIV/AIDS on Farming
Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Uganda, Tanzania and
Zambia, "FAO, 1994 and The Effects of HIV/AIDS on Farming
Systems in Eastern Africa, 1995, Chapter 3.
32. Daphne Topouzis, The Socio-Economic Impact of
HIV/AIDS on Rural Families with an Emphasis on Youth,
FAO, 1994, pp. 17-20.
33. FAO, The Effect of HIV/AIDS on Farming Systems in
Eastern Africa, AGSP, 1995, pp. 73-74.
34. Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, "Agricultural
Policies and Women Farmers," in Gender, Work and
Population in Sub-Saharan Africa, op. cit. p. 55
35. Zoran Roca, "Women, Population and Environment
in Agricultural and Rural Development: Policy
Challenges and Responses," FAO, 1994, p. 10.
FOOTNOTES
a/ A farming system is a group of farm households operating
in a more or less homogeneous agro-ecological setting that
have similar socio-economic characteristics and comparable
resource endowments as well as similar constraints and
opportunities for development.
b/ No country in Africa has complete vital statistics and a
published national census within ten years of a continuous
population register, according to Oppong. The sources of
demographic data available include censuses, survey and
administrative records. Demographic surveys include the
World Fertility Surveys (which is weak on women's economic
activity rates), the Westinghouse Demographic and Health Surveys
(in which only Ghana had a module on women's economic
activity); surveys undertaken in the context of the
African Household Survey Capability Programme; and socio-
economic surveys with demographic components, such as the
Living Standards Measurement Study of the World Bank.
c/ The term "subsistence", as used here, does not
indicate a minimum of food and shelter necessary to
support life; and "subsistence production" is not used
to signify "subsistence living". Small subsistence farms
range from those which produce only just enough to meet
the needs of domestic family consumption to those that
sell about 50 per cent of their products (La-Anyane, S.,
The Agricultural Industry of Western Africa. Accra:
Ghana Universities Press, 1988, p. 20).
d/ The case studies are drawn from two FAO studies:
(a) "The Effects of HIV/AIDS on Agricultural Production
Systems and Rural Livelihoods in East Africa". In this
study, multidisciplinary national research teams carried
out HIV/AIDS impact studies in different farming systems
of Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, with emphasis on
qualitative data gathering methods derived from rapid and
participatory rural appraisal (RRA, PRA); and (b) "The
Socio-Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Rural Families in
Uganda, with an Emphasis on Youth": This study, conducted
in six villages of Kabarole, Gulu and Tororo districts,
used PRA/RRA to: assess the socio-economic impact of
the disease on the rural household (household economy,
health, education, etc.); identify risk factors
contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS among youth;
and conduct a Knowledge-Attitude and Practice survey
on HIV/AIDS among the youth. The field work was
carried out as part of an ongoing agricultural
extension project.