Introduction
Tour Itinerary
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Small Farm 1
Small Scale Agr
Rural Lifestyles
Rural Migration
Role of Women
Drought
Small Farm 2
Commercial Farm
Non Trad' Farm
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Home Field Trips Rural Life and Agriculture Tour The Role of Women in Rural Areas

Small Farm 1 - Monze

The Role of Women in Rural Areas

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In most of the world's poorest areas it is often women that experience the worst deprivation. In both urban and rural areas women are more likely to be poorly nourished and lack access to health and education services, paid employment and social security. In the mining and commercial farming sectors of the economy that constitute much of the wage earning employment women are very poorly represented. In small scale farming economic equity between men and women is better. However, subtle organisational constraints again ensure women experience worse poverty than men.

Role of Women

When considering the life expectancy of Zambians two disturbing features can be observed:

1. That the life expectancy for both men and women is falling
2. The gap between the life expectancy of men and women has virtually disappeared

In many societies land, on the death of the male farmer, is divided up amongst his male children. The two effects of this is that firstly the land is broken down into smaller and smaller plots until there comes a point where it can no longer sustain the livelihood of the family forcing some or all of the family to migrate to towns. Secondly women are dis-empowered as the inheritance of the land and its economic benefits follows the male line.

The Role of Women

In Zambia most of the ethnic groups are matrilineal, with land passing down the female line. Hence women occupy a relatively high status both socially and economically in their communities. Nevertheless the head of the household is usually male and ultimately it is they who make decisions about the use of the land. Typically a married women receives a field separate from her husband that she cultivates, producing firstly food for her family and then for sale in the case of surplus. This surplus can be substantial and can generate income and some economic independence for the women. Unlike many low income countries women would appear to be at an advantage.

However there are two problems. Firstly women are less familiar with the bureaucratic requirements for obtaining access to communal land and obtaining leases for leasehold land and secondly husbands traditionally make decisions about the marketing of cash crops such as maize and the disposal of incomes earned.

The Aids-related death of people in productive age groups has led to many households fostering orphans; mainly poor female, and increasingly grandmother-headed households, who have few safety nets and coping strategies to re-establish self-sustaining livelihoods. The death of a husband can mean heavy medical bills and often repossession of assets by his family. The responses adopted, such as the sale of land and farm equipment and the removal of children from school, increase household poverty in the long term and thus further the 'feminisation' of poverty in Zambia.

Next issue - The Impact of Drought on Poverty >>

Related Glossary Items:
Leasehold land
Cash crops
Life expectancy
Matrilineal