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 United Nations Population Division,
Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis,
in collaboration with the Population Programme Service, Sustainable
Development Department, United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization. For further information, please contact: Mr. Jacques
du Guerny, email: jacques.duguerny@fao.org
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July 1994
WOMEN, POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT IN AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL
DEVELOPMENT - POLICY CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES
Zoran Roca, FAO*
Introduction
Many developing countries are faced with the challenge of
achieving a balance between population size, structures and
distribution in relation to natural resource potentials on which
food production and food security largely depend. In most cases,
unless substantial reductions in fertility levels take place as a
response to, inter alia, the shrinking availability of land and
deteriorating environmental conditions for food production, the
realization of sustainable agriculture and rural development will
be increasingly difficult to realize.
It has been well documented that rural women's socio-economic
status and productive and reproductive roles have a decisive impact
on population dynamics, and on fertility levels in particular (FAO,
1979, 1984; McNicoll & Cain, 1990; Sadik, 1990; FAO 1991, 1991b;
Palmer 1991). The same is also true of women's status and roles in
relation to environmental conditions (FAO, 1991a,c; UNFPA, 1991,
Jacobson 1992; UNEP/IBRD, 1993). However, it should also be
recognized that rural women have become a very important "closing
link" between population dynamics and environmental change: as
important natural resource users and managers in providing food and
securing overall family welfare, and sometimes indeed as the
backbone of smallholder agricultural production, rural women
actually hold the key to changes in reproductive behaviour and
fertility levels, and, ultimately, to population growth,
structures, and distribution.
This paper illustrates the above argument by, first, focusing
on the need for gender- responsive population policies and
programmes conducive to the goals of sustainable agriculture and
rural development, and, second, by articulating a conceptual
framework for such policies and programmes. While pointing to the
determinants of high fertility levels and large family size
(especially the social and economic value of children to women) in
rural societies with prevailing smallholders' agricultural
production, the impact of specific development interventions on
women's status, as well as possible fertility-related consequences,
are highlighted. As an example from a concrete socio-economic and
geographical context, socio-demographic effects of some
agricultural and rural development policies and interventions in
South East Asia are also presented.
Labour demands, environmental stress, and the value of children to
women
The historical mainstay of many of the world's viable
agro-ecological systems have been women. The relationship between
women and the environment revolves around their concerns for
providing family food security, fuel, water, and health care.
Whether reference is made to Sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean,
where women produce 60-80 percent of the supply of basic
foodstuffs, or to the Indian subcontinent where between 70 and 80
percent of food crops grown are produced by women, or to Asia where
they perform over 50 percent of the labour involved in intensive
rice cultivation, or to Indonesia or Central and South America,
where their home gardens represent some of the most complex
agro-silvopastoral systems known, women hold a vast amount of
responsibility for, and knowledge of, sustainable agricultural
systems (FAO, 1992a).
Rural women's productive contributions tend to be undermined
and ever more difficult to carry out in the context of population
pressure - manifested through high natural increase, high
agricultural densities, high dependency ratios, low labour
productivity, etc. - on limited, marginal, and increasingly
degraded agricultural land and other natural resource base. In
particular, levels of time and human energy inputs required in
women's farm- and home-based productive and reproductive chores are
raising. Furthermore, women are normally worst hit by generally
low and sometimes worsening health and nutrition conditions,
persistent overall poverty, as well as by growing labour shortages
due to male out-migration in search of wage employment. In various
parts of the developing world women are increasingly becoming the
sole decision-makers for the household. For example, it is
estimated that in many African countries at least a third of rural
households are maintained by women. All these are but some of the
major aspects of socio-economic features that have been
contributing to the growing burden of rural women's
responsibilities in maintaining their families in virtually all
parts of the developing world (South Commission, 1990; FAO 1990,
1991b; Palmer, 1991; Spring, 1991; UNFPA, 1991; Jacobson, 1992).
Though important natural resource users and managers,
producers of food and other products, and indeed major contributors
to the family wellbeing, women have been normally "invisible" to
development policy-makers, programme planners and researchers.
Consequently, women tend to remain without adequate social and
institutional support from the family and local community level, to
that of the state. Faced with the gender- asymmetries that
disfavour them in social, economic, technological and legal
conditions for sustenance of family food supply and overall family
welfare, many rural women in the developing world consider a large
family to be essential in enabling them to cope with the situation
of continuous and often increasing social and economic insecurity
(Caldwell and Caldwell, 1987; FAO, 1984, 1992; Joekes et al.,
1994).
Having a sufficiently large number of children has indeed been
a way for women to ensure the availability of a network of people
who may assist them economically, both immediately, as well as in
the long-term (i.e., anticipated support in the old age). With
insufficient cash incomes to satisfy their family needs, and in the
absence of labour-saving technologies, the chances for stable food
production and sustenance of family welfare have often been
strengthened through having a sufficient number of children capable
of providing additional labour and who thus serve as a
"technological solution" available to women farmers (Oppong, 1988;
Youssef, 1988; Palmer, 1991; FAO, 1984, 1992; Rodda, 1991,
Jacobson, 1992; Cleaver and Schreiber, 1992).
The high economic value placed on children, and on child
labour in particular, is reinforced especially when farm activities
are affected by labour shortages coupled by adverse environmental
conditions. Increasing workload in smallholder agricultural
production is more acute in the poorest and most ecologically
fragile regions. The most affected are women agricultural producers
on overworked, degraded, shrinking and ever more distant cultivable
land. While they do not have access to modern, labour-saving or
environmentally sound farming techniques, increasingly hard and
time-consuming work is required on their plots, which are often the
most susceptible to erosion, desertification and other forms of
land degradation.
Child labour is also highly valuable in domestic chores,
especially in those most affected by the depletion of natural
resources and by environmental degradation. For example, in rural
Africa, 60 to 80 percent of all domestic fuel supplies are gathered
from forests by women and girls. Collecting and transporting
firewood and other forest products can typically take up several
hours per day, and with the contraction of forest areas, time
requirements are increasing drastically. This extra time needed is
one of the important reasons why children - especially girls - are
taken out of school to help their mothers (FAO, 1987, 1991b; Rodda,
1991).
Furthermore, to fetch water for domestic use - one of the
most time demanding and physically onerous of all women's daily
household tasks - often means that several hours a day may be
taken away from other productive and reproductive chores, including
child care. Girls are introduced to this task at a very young age
as a concrete sign and proof of their socialization (i.e.,
admission to the women's tasks). Their role increases as mothers'
time needed for other home and farm chores becomes more and more
demanded. Also, girls normally share the fate of their mothers'
lower status in the family: they tend to have access to less and
lower quality food and health care than boys, and their mortality
rate in the critical period between infancy and age five is often
higher than that for boys (FAO, 1991b; Rodda, 1991; UNFPA, 1991,
Jacobson, 1992).
Where soil fertility has been drastically reduced due to
overcropping, deforestation, overgrazing, erosion and so forth, or
where there is a lack of firewood and potable water, women are
often forced to change the dietary practices and standards of their
families. Sometimes this means reducing the number of hot meals
per day, and substantially lowering family levels of nutrition, as
some staple foods cannot be digested without prolonged cooking. In
turn, it is quite possible that the incidence of high infant and
child mortality due to poor diet quality or under-nutrition may
revive the once important "biological justification" for
maintaining high fertility levels. To that same effect may also
serve the resurgence of mortality caused by environmentally and
poverty-related diseases such as malaria, Bilharzia, or
Tuberculosis, as well as by increasing incidence of STDs,
especially AIDS (Rodda, 1991; Smyke, 1991; FAO, 1991b; UNFPA 1991;
UN Secretariat, 1992).
Women's subordinate socio-economic and legal status is often
reinforced through "gender-neutral" (but, in fact, most usually
male-biased) agricultural and rural development strategies,
especially those geared by structural adjustment policies. For
example, policy measures emphasizing the production of export crops
contribute to an increase in competition for arable land and in
land values. Where the allocation of land held under usufruct
rights is controlled by senior males in a lineage,
adjustment-induced shifts into more profitable crops often result
in men taking over land previously cultivated by women for domestic
consumption. In other cases, women only have access to much smaller
and more distant plots, whose soil tends to become less fertile
through overuse and erosion. Women's access to land becomes even
more difficult as population growth puts pressure on such scarce
and deteriorating natural resources. Again, children (male in
particular) often represent women's most reliable key to land
rights, and thus to their economic security and social recognition
(South Commission, 1990; FAO, 1991b; Spring and Wilde, 1991;
Palmer, 1991; Jacobson 1992; Agarwal, 1992).
A region-case example: socio-demographic effects of environmental
problems and rural development interventions in South East Asia
In major parts of South East Asia, the safe limits of
horizontal expansion of agriculture have already been reached,
meaning that future food and agriculture needs in the region can
only be met by intensification, an option that will not be easy due
to widespread land degradation. A major cause of degradation is
erosion due to water and wind. Only a very limited area is free
from soil-related constraints on agricultural production. These
constraints include steeply sloping land, severe fertility
limitations, and mining of soil nutrients. Successes in food and
agricultural production in some parts of the region have had some
major drawbacks: monoculture has led to deteriorating soil
fertility, high incidence of pest and diseases and mining of the
land. The widespread adoption of hybrids has given rise to genetic
erosion of the predominant crops. Pesticide use has risen sharply,
and problems of pesticide poisoning, health hazards, environmental
pollution and pest resistance are now widespread. However, the
most serious environmental threat is probably the rapid loss of
forest cover. In general, the higher the population growth and
density, the more severe the deforestation.
Generally, widespread environmental deterioration in the
region largely coincides with high population growth and densities,
combined with other factors such as: the breakdown of traditional
systems of resource management that used to be kept in balance by
social regulation of fertility, mortality, marriage and migration;
the impact of commercial demand on traditional cultural attitudes
of indigenous populations; and, unequal access to land and other
resources, as well a fragmentation of holdings. Farming systems are
increasingly becoming unsustainable, either because of commercial
over-exploitation of resources or because of mere attempts at
survival by subsistence farmers.
Women represent a significant proportion of the agricultural
labour force in most of the South East Asian countries; for
example, 35 percent in the Philippines and Malaysia, 54 percent in
Indonesia, and over 60 percent in Thailand. In addition to their
contribution to the formal agricultural labour, women are actively
involved in subsistence farming, retail trading, and in the
marketing and distribution of agricultural and non-farm products
(FAO, 1991). Women farmers are increasingly affected by male (and,
recently also by young female) outmigration from the rural areas,
by environmental degradation, by an overall decline in technical
and vocational education, and by the growth of agro-industries and
large- scale high-tech farms. Above all, however, women farmers are
affected by mainstream agriculture and rural development policies
and plans that are based on mistaken assumptions as to who "the"
farmers are - assumptions that result in programmes directing
technical training and resources to men only.
Male out-migration from rural areas in the region is both a
cause and an effect of population pressure and poverty, reaching
epidemic proportions in some countries such as Thailand. Women
left on small farms are increasingly taking over agricultural tasks
traditionally performed by men. This is especially true when
temporary migration becomes long-term or permanent. In such cases,
de facto female-heads of households are farmers in their own right,
but encounter a variety of constraints that frustrate their
capacity to produce. Aside from the direct effects on the social
and economic position of rural women, rural out- migration has been
contributing to a worsening health status not only of women but
also of the entire present and future rural population. Namely, it
has been reported in a growing number of instances that returning
rural-urban migrants are increasingly transmitting contagious
diseases, including AIDS, to rural areas. This might seriously
undermine remarkable results in reducing maternal and infant
mortality rates, and thus jeopardize considerable efforts made in
reducing fertility levels and population pressure in rural areas.
While the origins of environmental problems such as
deforestation, erosion, diminishing soil fertility, and depletion
of natural reserves of potable water are, to a certain degree,
attributable to unbalanced population growth and distribution, and
largely inter- related to rural poverty, there are also threats to
sustainability of the natural resource base that are increasingly
associated with inappropriate introduction of modern technology in
the quest for higher and more frequent yields. For instance, mining
of the soil has caused increased incidence of sulphur and zinc
deficiency to the extent that it has become a clear sign and
warning of serious, hard-to-repair loss in soil fertility in some
countries in the region. Unless environmentally sound farming
practices are introduced on a large scale, the growth of the
agriculture sector will be short-term only. The worst hit,
however, will be subsistence food producers, that is, the majority
of the population in the region. Among them, the most affected will
continue to be the women.
The complexity of linkages between environmental degradation,
rural women's status and population dynamics in the context of
specific farming systems, and the associated food agricultural and
rural development problems provoked by macro-development policies
in South East Asia, is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1
The agricultural development policies and programmes have
largely favoured monoculture agro-industries that require high-tech
farming with high inputs and high outputs, while there has been
scant regard for the environment, and for the subsistence needs of
smallholder producers. One result of high technology farming is
increased production; another result is increased inequality
between rich and poor. A striking feature of the agrarian
structure in most of the countries of the region is the skewed
distribution of production assets such as land. While small-scale
farmers constitute around 70 percent of farming households, they
account for about 25 percent or less of the cultivated land. Thus,
a pressing issue in the region is the growing gap between the large
landowners and small- scale farmers.
Policy measures for improving agricultural productivity and
raising the food security and incomes of small-scale farmers in
South-East Asian countries cannot be fully efficient unless they
include increasing rural women's labour productivity and expanding
the prospects for their own and their families overall wellbeing.
This could have a decisive positive impact on fostering the
agricultural sector as a national development priority of these
countries. To this end, however, gender-related demographic and
environment concerns should be integrated into agricultural and
rural development policy design, planning and programming.
A country-case example: effects of deforestation and environmental
degradation on households, women and population in irrigated rice
production in the Philippines
The forest cover in the Philippines has been disappearing very
fast: the country is estimated to be losing about 119,000 hectares
of forests each year. Population pressure, poverty and survival
needs, as well as various economic activities have contributed to
this rapidly decreasing forest cover. Apart from commercial
logging, the most serious cause of forest denudation is subsistence
shifting cultivation and excessive fuel harvesting.
The forest denudation causes flooding, soil erosion,
salinization, decreasing soil fertility and loss of genetic
resources. Studies have indicated that the upper watershed
degradation has negative effect on lowlands productivity,
especially in terms of sediment flow affecting irrigation
infrastructure. Evidence was also found regarding the significant
negative effects on wet season irrigated areas caused by forest
extraction. In the Philippines as a whole, upper watershed
degradation leads to an incremental loss of 4,200 hectares per year
of wet season irrigated land and 2,700 hectares per year of dry
season irrigated land. This amounts to an incremental production
loss of approximately 24,000 tons of rice per year. The effects of
forest denudation on the lowland irrigated rice farms and farmers,
especially women, are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Due to unemployment and the inability of rice farming and post
harvest processing activities to absorb the available labour force
and the higher wages/greater opportunities from non-farm
employment, men migrate to the cities, particularly during the dry
season. Unless there are technologies to increase crop
productivity and cropping intensity by growing drought tolerant
crops, male migration will continue leaving women as managers of
their animals, and minor crops, and household responsibilities.
The low family income and lack of capital leads to increased
indebtedness of the households to meet the high input requirements
of rice cultivation and the daily livelihood needs. Limited access
to formal credit forces women to borrow cash or paddy from private
money lenders at excessively high interest rates. To repay their
debt, women then seek other income opportunities, which are quite
limited in villages. They often resort to buying and selling,
selling rice delicacies (adding value to raw product), working as
hired labourers in other farms and gleaning rice from the output of
big mechanical threshers. Most of them take care of swine and
poultry in their own backyards, which are important sources of
immediate cash.
A recent study has shown that rice production is characterized
by long-term stagnation or decline of yield under intensive
irrigated rice production. The degradation of the paddy
environment can occur due to one or more causes such as: increased
pest pressure, rapid depletion of micro-nutrients and changes in
soil chemistry brought about by intensive cropping and increased
reliance on low quality of irrigation water. In another recent
study, the harmful effects of high pesticide use on the health of
rice farmers were explained. Although women may not be directly
exposed to pesticides, they are affected by the misuses and
mishandling of pesticide containers, which also affect their
children's health. The high pesticide use also affect the natural
habitat. Fish in ponds, edible frogs, weeds which are important
indigenous food of poor farmers, etc. are disappearing fast.
Families have to resort to buying food or borrowing money to buy
food.
Rural women who don't have access to alternative and
remunerative employment in the village, have to work as hired
labourers in transplanting and harvesting operations where they are
paid either in cash or in kind (share in terms of paddy). Their
wages depend on their skills, speed in performing the operation and
labour competition. In transplanting work, greater competition
results in smaller take home wages. These women suffer from low
returns for their labour and low self-esteem, while maintaining
family food security. Low incomes, lack of employment
opportunities, increased indebtedness, diminishing sources of home
produced foods lead to less available food for a family with an
average of six children. The poor quality of food and less mother's
time in food preparation lead to child malnutrition and high infant
mortality. Mothers spending more time outside their home leads to
neglect of childcare, less time for breast-feeding and poor feeding
habits. Under the circumstances of worsening status and overall
living conditions, with less time available at home, and lacking
labour-saving technologies, it is hard to expect rural women to
change their conviction that a sufficiently large family does offer
better survival chances for all.
However, introducing time and labour saving agricultural
technologies do not necessarily mean that their effects on the
socio-economic status and, ultimately, on fertility will be the
same for all rural women. As shown in Figures 3 and 4, the
introduction of wet- seeding/direct-seeding technology, using
High-Yield Varieties (HYV) in rice cultivation, which reduces the
demand for pulling/seeding & transplanting (tasks normally
performed by women), has had opposite effects on women smallholder
farmers and on the landless women, whose only source of income is
their own labour and who are the poorest members of rural
communities.
Towards gender-responsive population and rural development policies
A large body of evidence from rural subsistence economies
throughout the developing world indicates that high fertility
levels (largely related to the ignored, or heavily under-
estimated, women's role as producers and managers of family
livelihood resources) ultimately contribute to:
- the reinforcement of the vicious circle between rural poverty,
environmental degradation and unbalanced population growth and
distribution; and,
- the widening of the gap between, on the one hand, individual
and group survival strategies locally, and, on the other hand,
national goals to attain sustainable agricultural and rural
development (FAO 1984, 1992; IFAD, 1992; Joekes, 1994).
In this context, it seems that the micro-economics of
sustainable production systems, family labour availability and the
perceived needs of the rural poor in general, and of women in
particular, should become at the local level the starting point for
national strategy and policy formulation and for guiding those
components of the producer support systems that will have to be
initiated largely at the central level. In fact, understanding the
smallholder households' decision-making process regarding their
food production and survival strategies is a pre-condition for
agricultural and rural development strategy and policy formulation.
This is especially relevant in view of the linkages between rural
women's status and fertility levels.
If mounting demographic pressure, or a particular dimension of
it (e.g., unbalanced rural population growth and distribution in
relation to available productive resources, massive rural
out-migration, urban congestion, or unemployment) is considered a
problem, national population policies, programmes, as well as their
instruments (e.g., MCH/FP, IEC, etc) should become an integral part
of agricultural and rural development policies and programmes in
order to slow it down or otherwise influence it. The attention to
how specific development policies and interventions can pursue, for
example, changes in fertility levels (which, as is known, tend to
determine the course of the entire socio-demographic development)
should be in the rural development planner's own interest, rather
than just a "favour" to the population planner.
In order to be able to make appropriate policy decisions, both
population and agricultural and rural development planners must
become aware of the multitude of ways in which changes to rural
women's status and roles, resulting from various development
interventions, can have fertility consequences. This in turn
requires the formulation of a framework for linking primary
consequences of development interventions on rural women's status
and roles, with secondary consequences on their fertility and,
ultimately, on socio- demographic change generally. In this
context it is worthwhile considering the findings of FAO's
comprehensive, cross-cultural analysis of linkages between the
status and roles of women, fertility levels, and agricultural and
rural (under)development, which are summarized hereunder.
Rural fertility determinants
Fertility-related variables that can be classified as most
common, and often vital, in the context of agricultural and rural
development are the following:
- The value of children: in rural circumstances 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, i.e., it would be irrational to practice fertility
control at the individual family level. It is only in urban
situations, or when development has reached a stage where the
"costs" of children (especially the cost to educate them)
outweigh their "utility", and when "quality" of children
(educated, healthy, etc.) is substituted for "quantity" that
it becomes rational to have smaller families;
- High infant mortality is almost invariably associated with
high fertility. Declining infant mortality may not be
accompanied by declining fertility: the "lag" time may be
short, or it may be considerable. High fertility may be
considered as a "response" to high mortality, though usually
only one quarter to one half of deceased children are
"replaced" by additional births. Or, high fertility may be
seen as advance "insurance" against possible future losses.
The reverse is also observable: high infant mortality as a
means to "correct" for high, unwanted fertility (too many, too
close, of the "wrong" gender, etc.). Extreme neglect, or
outright infanticide, are apparent in widely varying settings.
Declines in infant mortality generally lead to short-term
increases in population growth, until fertility declines catch
up, eventually resulting in decreases in population growth.
- Malnutrition must be severe before it adversely affects
natural fecundity, and thus fertility, but nutrition levels
can influence fertility also through an effect on infant and
child mortality and survival. It had been widely recorded
that even minor improvements in women's status, i.e., in their
increased control over family livelihood resources, most
usually has positive effects on the quality of nutrition;
- Prolonged breastfeeding has a strong and consistent negative
impact on fertility, both through its role in postponing the
mother's return to fecund status and through its role in
promoting infant survival. (In addition, it is sometimes
accompanied by abstinence from intercourse);
- Education for women (more so than men's education) is strongly
and consistently found to be related to lower fertility.
Threshold levels of education at which fertility begins to
fall vary by culture (e.g., literacy, or completion of primary
school, or secondary school, etc.);
- Female labour force participation is related to lower
fertility only in the modern, urban sector. Agricultural
labour force participation has no impact, or a positive impact
on fertility. However, off-farm rural employment in small
scale industry has been found as a key factor in lower
fertility in the few instances in which it exists and has been
studied;
- Although richer societies, and classes within societies,
generally have lower fertility than poorer societies and
classes, there are two useful observations regarding income:
- at low levels of income, an increase in income is
initially associated with a rise in fertility, followed
later by declines, and
- income distribution, or equity in social services
(education, health) is more closely associated with
declines in fertility than is increase in per capita
income;
- Although size of land holdings has consistently been found to
be positively related to family size, research also indicates
that land owners have smaller families than tenants
(attributed to the old-age security offered by ownership,
substituting for children's support of parents);
- Delayed age at marriage for females is usually associated with
lower fertility, whether through fewer years of exposure to
conception, or through a longer pre-marital period for
education, skills training, employment broadening influences,
growth in self-esteem, etc.
Effects of development interventions
The word "farmer" tends to imply a male farmer, and
agricultural and rural development policy statements which do not
specifically include women farmers typically exclude them.
Consequently, programmes and projects often do not address the
specific needs of women farmers, and of the female rural population
generally. Development interventions that have been identified as
typically having adverse consequences for rural women's status and
productive/reproductive roles are as follows:
- changes in cropping patterns, or crop mix, emphasizing cash
crops for export, de-emphasizing subsistence crops;
- new technologies whose introduction displaces more women than
men, and whose use by men only widens the productivity gap
between women and men;
- changes in access to land, from communal ownership in which
women had secure access to land, to private property in which
only male heads of households can hold title; and
- provision of agricultural extension services, credit,
technical assistance, cooperatives formation and management to
men only, which also widens the male-female productivity gap,
marginalizing women still further.
The most usual adverse consequences of the above development
interventions, both individually and combined, are the following:
- increased labour inputs by women;
- decreased, or lack of increase in, access to income and/or to
its control;
- decreased, or lack of increase in, access to credit; and
- loss of social prestige and personal self-esteem.
All such consequences, in turn, can ultimately lead to:
- reduced labour productivity,
- worsened family nutrition,
- increased infant and child mortality, worsened women's health,
and
- decreased, increased, or unchanged (high) fertility.
The ways in which the above-mentioned four development
interventions can adversely affect women's status are shown in
Figures 5-8. It is important to note that the presented linkages
are necessarily simplifications; that is, they depict only a very
generalized summary of world-wide empirical records. Furthermore,
it should be borne in mind that this sort of "consolidated
evidence" (i.e., from numerous macro and micro data,
well-researched data, quasi-experimental data, untested but
plausible hypotheses, etc.) is concealing vastly different social,
economic, environmental and other circumstances and varying
historical experiences (e.g., colonialism, changes in development
paradigms and strategies, recent structural adjustments, etc.).
Notwithstanding important limitations, the presented linkages
could be considered as a "testing instrument" in identifying
fertility-related consequences of agricultural and rural
development interventions in concrete geographical, economic, and
cultural settings. Once the linkages between rural women's status,
development interventions and possible fertility- related outcomes
are identified, alternative policy solutions could be formulated.
Ultimately, this could prove instrumental in building up integrated
gender-responsive population and rural development country and/or
regional policies and programmes.
Whether or not fertility decline is the desired goal, the
fertility consequences of measures "beyond family planning" that
are already being undertaken for other reasons (such as gender
equity, increased agricultural productivity, improved educational
attainment, etc.) should be recognized so that they can be
maximized or minimized, according to the desired outcome. For
example, while female education and off-farm rural employment for
women can be seen as measures that can delay the age at marriage,
enhance the value of daughters (in relation to sons), make wives
less economically dependent on husbands, and raise female personal
self-esteem - all possible routes to reducing fertility - other
approaches to fertility reduction concern raising the cost of
children.
The cost of children may be raised, for instance, through
education for children (resulting in their reduced time to provide
labour as well as direct costs of the education itself), job skills
training for women and subsequent employment (resulting in
opportunity costs of childbearing), and the introduction of
technology that can substitute for child labour - thus reducing
the value of child labour and raising the net cost of children.
Long-term decreases in fertility are probable if deliberate
policy measures and instruments are put into effect to enhance
women's legal status and social recognition, to increase assistance
to women in subsistence food production, to integrate women into
cash cropping, and to provide income-generating schemes for women
in food production, processing and marketing, crafts, etc.
Programmes and projects that reduce time and labour
requirements, if executed in conjunction with measures to promote
legal incentives and skills for environmentally sound management of
natural resources in their farm and domestic tasks, could indeed
motivate women towards a greater appreciation of family size and
structure that would be more in balance with the available
productive resources, food security and rural development.
Conclusions
The women/population/environment nexus should be addressed by
policy-makers, planners and programmers in the context of
gender-asymmetries in social, economic and technological conditions
in agricultural production and rural livelihood prospects. This
calls for replacing single-sectoral approaches in development
policies with cross-sectoral ones, designed for and applied in
areas suffering from environmental degradation and diminishing
productive resources, aimed at fostering:
- a more balanced population growth and migration patterns, and
- regulation of family size as a desired socio-cultural and
economic-technological option relegated to women.
The gender-differentials characterizing the linkages between
population dynamics, natural resource management and environmental
conditions should be identified in the context of development
objectives and the various socio-cultural, economic, structural and
geographic circumstances of individual or groups of countries.
This should facilitate effective assessment of requirements for:
- agricultural and rural development programmes aimed at
socially (including gender-wise), economically and
environmentally sustainable smallholder agriculture
production, especially in areas marked by high population
growth and/or rural out-migration; and
- advancing economic, technological and legal conditions for,
and social recognition of, rural women's productive and
reproductive roles as central in adjusting child spacing and
family size and/or offsetting rural out-migration.
In national development policies, especially those involving
population- and environment-related issues, an explicit goal should
be to empower and encourage rural women to become more active and
self-determined agents of population change. This could be
enhanced, for example, through:
- integrating gender-aspects of socio-demographic concerns
(i.e., trends in population size, distribution and structures,
patterns of natural increase, migration streams, etc.) in
agricultural and rural development policies and programmes;
- focusing on gender-differentials in (i) assigning social and
economic value to children, (ii) attitudes and practice
regarding family size and reproductive behaviour, (iii)
management of family living resources, etc., in
population-messages delivered through family-life and
population education programmes and projects,
information/communication campaigns, MCH/FP services, etc.;
- linking natural resource management and environmental
protection concerns with gender-related population issues; and
- making environmental impact assessment concepts and techniques
responsive to gender-related social and economic costs and
benefits involved in food and agricultural production, and in
rural livelihood prospects generally.
Conceptual and practical country- and region-specific policy
guidelines and manuals need to be developed on the integration of
rural women's contributions and needs into national and local
efforts to reduce environmental degradation, population growth and
out-migration. These guidelines and manuals should provide the
basis for awareness and skill creation among policy-makers, and
planners, as well as programme and project formulators and
implementors aiming to develop gender-responsive population and
environmental polices, programmes and projects as an integral part
of efforts towards sustainability of agricultural and rural
development.
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