Women's Work in Third World Agriculture: Concepts and Indicators

155 Pages·1985·2.162 MB·English

by  Ruth Dixon-Mueller

Women, Work and Development, 9
Women's work
in Third World
agriculture
Concepts and indicators
Ruth Dixon-Mueller
Prepared with the financial support of
the United Nations Fund for Population
Activities (TJNFPA)
International Labour Office Geneva
50841
Copyright © International Labour Organization 1994
First published 1985
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Dixon-Mueller, R.
Women's work in Third World agriculture. Concepts and indicators
Geneva, International Labour Office, 1985 (Women, Work and Development, No.9)
/Literature survey/ on the /Sexual division of labour/ and / Data collecting/ /Methodology/ for the
/Measurement/ of/Rural women/'s /Economic role/ in /Developing country/s. 07.01.3
ISBN 92-2-105107-2 ISSN 0253-2042
Third impression 1994
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Preface
Women are active producers in agriculture throughout the Third
World. Yet, labour force statistics and development programmes
often ignore their key role. As a result, development plans,
population plans, rural development and agricultural output
suffer and the status of women remains unacceptably low.
The ILO has been very active in these areas of
concern. Its recommendations on equality of opportunity, for
example, are well-known. The ILO has also been very active in
research on women's issues. It has had a large research project
on Women's Roles and Demographic Change funded by the United
Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), as well as
research projects funded by the ILO itself, Denmark, Finland,
Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden
on topics such as rural women, technological change and women,
energy and women, success stories for women and improving
statistics on women's labour force participation.
This book by Ruth Dixon-Mueller makes a valuable
contribution to all of those interested in women's issues and in
agricultural development. It brings together a wealth of
information from a myriad of studies carried out in the Third
World. In addition to summarising these findings, the author
succinctly presents and cogently argues the value to
policy-makers and researchers of the various concepts and
indicators she discusses. In short this book should be a very
useful touchstone for those working on this subject.
Acknowledgements
This study has been funded in part by grants from the Ford
Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the
University of California, Davis, as well as the United Nations
Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the International
Labour Office (ILO) which assisted in its publication. I am
very grateful for their support, and for the critical advice and
encouragement of Richard Anker of the ILO.
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Table of Contents
Page
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter 1: THE DIVISION OF LABOUR BY TASK 5
Indicators of Sex Specialisation in Farm Activities 5
The community portrait 6
The household portrait 12
Social Norms and Individual Preferences 16
Attitudes about sexually appropriate roles 16
Preferences and prestige values 17
Agricultural Decision-making 21
Agricultural information and services 26
Production assets 27
Summary 31
Chapter 2: THE USE OF TIME 35
Asking About Time Use 36
Direct observation 37
Recalling time use in interviews 38
Record keeping by informants 42
Analyzing Time-Use Data 42
Data presentation 43
Indicators of change in time use 51
Summary 57
Chapter 3: PRODUCTIVITY AND RETURNS TO LABOUR 61
Sex Differences in Productivity 61
Factors affecting productivity 63
Measures of sex differences in total
productivity 65
Net Productivity: The Value of Labour 67
Returns to Labour 73
Wages 73
The value of farm production 77
Women's contribution to household incomes 79
Control Over Returns to Labour 80
Summary 86
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Chapter 4: AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT 91
Labour Force Participation 91
Why are women underenumerated? 92
Discrepancies among data sources 95
New categories of labour force participation 96
Employment Status 99
Unemployment and Underemployment 103
Types of unemployment 105
Types of underemployment 109
Summary 113
Chapter 5: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY 119
APPENDICES A. FAO statement on uses of baseline studies
on women in rural households 125
B. Questionnaire on the responsibility of
household members for agricultural and
household tasks: Module A 128
C. Questionnaire on the responsibility of
household members for agricultural and
household tasks: Module B 130
D. Questionnaire on the responsibility of
household members for decision-making 132
E. Time allocation inventory for activities
performed last week, last month, and
during the previous cropping season 133
F. Simplified time/activity questionnaire
for past year 135
BIBLIOGRAPHY 136
INDEX 149
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List of Tables
Female and male labour contributions to staple crops
among the Tiv, central Nigeria 8
Sex allocation of agricultural tasks in Murdock's
standard cross-cultural sample of 185 societies 10
Economic activity of unmarried children aged four
and older residing in parents' household in a
Bangladeshi village, 1976 14
Attitudes to men's and women's work, south-eastern
Botswana 18
Male and female decision making and participation in
agriculture: seven countries 20
Ideal and actual patterns of agricultural decision
making in a Kikuyu village, Kenya 24
Access to agricultural extension services among
female-managed and jointly-managed farms, western
Kenya, 1974-75 26
Ownership and sale of livestock among women in
Koukoundi, Burkina Faso, by ethnic group, 1978-79 28
Mean value of assets (in rands) by household
composition, rural Botswana, 1974-75 30
Percentage distribution of approximate time per day
and approximate days per year women spend in eight
activities, Baroda, India, 1981 40
Average minutes per person per day in work and
non-work activities for women and men in Zimtenga,
Burkina Faso 44
Average hours per person per day in work activities by
sex and age, in a Nepalese village, 1972-73 46
Average number of hours worked per day by sex, age,
and household's landowning status in a Bangladeshi
village, 1976 48
Average labour hours per month by sex and household's
landowning status for peak and slack agricultural
month in a Javanese village, 1972-73 49
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15. Average annual hours and percentages of total time
worked by men, women, and children in agricultural
and non-agricultural activities by household type,
rural Egypt, 1964-65 52
16. Labour contribution of male and female adults and
children to farm and non-farm activities among
households participating and not participating
in an agricultural project, Sierra Leone, 1974-75 56
17. Labour efficiency of men, women, and boys aged 12-18
in farm tasks, Korea, 1930: farm area completed per
hour 62
18. Yields of maize per acre for male-managed and
female-managed farms in western Kenya, 1971, with
differences in inputs, natural factors, and access
to information 66
19. Comparison of tuber production for male-headed versus
female-headed households by garden type among the
Ilakia Awa, Papua New Guinea, 1972 68
20. Consumption unit scales from various sources by age
and sex 70
21. Ratio of female to male wages, minimum and maximum
agricultural rates, selected settings in India,
1970-71 72
22. Average hours spent working and returns to labour per
hour in wage labour and searching activities by sex,
landholding status, and peak vs. slack season in
a Javanese village, 1975-76 76
23. Contributions (in rupees) to total income of sample
households by male and female adults and children
ages 10-14, eight villages in Nepal, mid-1970s 78
24. Projected changes in labour inputs and net returns
to labour among Tiv farmers of central Nigeria as
a result of agricultural project interventions,
by sex and crop 82
25. Comparisons of counts of the total agricultural
labour force, percentage female, and male and
female activity rates from population censuses,
ILO estimates, and FAO censuses of agriculture,
selected countries 94
Percentage of married women aged 25-50 participating
in various labour force activities by caste,
Baroda, India, 1981 98
Sex composition of the agricultural labour force by
employment status: regional averages, around 1970.
population censuses and surveys 100
Number of agricultural workers and percentage female
by employment status and size of agricultural
holding, Brazil, 1970 102
Seasonal fluctuations in employment, unemployment,
and wages among female and male casual agricultural
labourers in rural West Bengal, 1972-73 104
Average participation rates, employment probabilities,
opportunity costs and wage rates (in rupees) for
women and men in rural daily labour markets six
villages of peninsular India, 1975-76 106
Number of months employed in the labour market
during past year by men and women in Garcia
Rovira and El Espinal, Colombia, 1978, and
Cajamarca, Peru, 1976 108
List of Figures
Average labour hours per month for females aged 16
and over by household's landowning status and
month, rural Java, 1975-76 50
Pre-project and post-project estimates of person-
days of labour contributed to hypothetical 2.5
hectare farm by women and men, by month and
activity, Nigeria 54
Seasonal fluctuation of wages and working time for
men, women, and children, Egypt 1964-65 (adjusted
for upward trend in wages) 74
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INTRODUCTION
Women as agricultural producers: how can their
contribution be measured? This study addresses a number of
methodological issues relating to the conceptualisation,
collection, and interpretation of indicators of the sexual
division of labour in Third World agriculture. Intended as a
guide to researchers and planners interested in questions of
food policy and rural employment, the review has four purposes:
(1) to identify several distinct dimensions of the
division of labour in agricultural production, with differing
methodological and policy implications;
(2) to illustrate, with examples from the literature, a
variety of measurement techniques and indicators of gender
differences in task specialisation, access to farm resources,
time-use, productivity, returns to labour, and labour force
participation;
(3) to comment critically on the usefulness and
reliability of information obtained by different methods of data
collection and presentation; and
(4) to suggest some possible interpretations of the
various indicators for agricultural and employment planning.
This study can be viewed as one component of a larger
effort to construct meaningful social indicators for monitoring
changes in the position of women in both industrialised and
developing societies. Earlier efforts concentrated largely on
compiling indicators of women's economic, social, and political
status (measured in absolute terms and relative to men's) from
national accounts and international sources, with a critical eye
to the inadequacies and gaps in the data (e.g. Boulding, Nuss,
Carson and Greenstein, 1976). More recent efforts have proposed
a broad new agenda for creating indicators and improving
concepts and methods in the areas of women's position in the
family and household (with special attention to women-headed
households and the effects of male labour migration), education
and training, economic production and labour force
participation, access to (and control over) material resources,
physical and mental well-being, social and geographical
mobility, and legal rights and participation in decision-making
in the household and community (e.g., Oppong, 1980; Palmer and
von Buchwald, 1980; United Nations, Department of International
Economic and Social Affairs, 1984a, 1984b, among others).
The topic of female economic activity has attracted
particular attention because of its importance in contributing
to an understanding of the distribution of income and wealth at
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