Deprecated function: The each() function is deprecated. This message will be suppressed on further calls in _menu_load_objects() (line 579 of /home3/afdbnetc/public_html/gip/includes/menu.inc).
This is indeed an extremely important and interesting discussion, bringing together diverse perspectives and solutions.
All the considerations mentioned in this thread shed the light on the wide range of issues. Let’s add yet another dimension to examine the challenges women face in engaging in value chains and agribusiness:
Women have a triple burden: whatever income-generating activity rural women engage in, they still need to bear the burden of reproductive and community work. Moreover, the tasks that rural women usually perform are tedious, not leading to productivity and not allowing them to secure a sufficient income. On top of that, women are time-poor: it perpetuates their difficulties in accessing skills development opportunities, finance products (they do not have time to gather information about loans, bureaucracy and to get finance literacy trainings), business development services and in actively participating in cooperatives or other form of rural organizations.
This has led to a feminization of rural poverty.
Beyond the fact that women encounter strong obstacle to contribute to Africa’s positive rural transformation, there is another negative side effect: it makes rural women more reliant on their children to supplement family income, and to assist in the too many duties they are responsible for. This is especially the case for girls, who often assist their mothers, and may be therefore be involved in household chores and caring for younger siblings to an extent which risks to turn into child labour. Girls in such situations tend to be also the first ones to be withdrawn from school.
Gender inequality interplays with the division of labour inside the household, as well as outside, determining patterns of children’s time allocation in both areas. Rural women’s constraints compromises therefore not only their own lives, but also future opportunities for today’s children, especially girls.
All these limitations take an even more acute form for rural young women, who, in additional to gender-based discrimination, often face age-related constraints such as turbulent school-to-work transition, lack of self-confidence and experience, distrust of banks, employers and cooperatives, legal barriers and even more difficult access to land and productive resources.
Frequent pregnancies (and early pregnancies) in addition to small children to care for are yet another obstacle to accessing training, gaining experience and fully engaging in productive work.
That is why increasing women’s participation in higher-value added activities and their access to finance and resources, is extremely important, but might not be enough.
A poorly designed initiative may inadvertently worsen the situation by increasing women’s work burden, not compensated by rapid higher income, and drawing more children in to work. Hence, that interventions oriented towards value chain development need to be designed based upon a solid gender and age analysis, which assesses gender and age-based constraints and go beyond the household as a homogenous unit – therefore taking into account intra-household labour division, power relations, as well as specific risks and vulnerabilities.
In general,
Development interventions should pay a greater attention to social protection and social security, such as safety nets to absorb shocks, school feeding to incentivize children’s (and girls’ in particular) school attendance, maternity protection etc. Women’s and mixed cooperatives and producers’ organizations should also encourage creating care facilities at work place, or subsidized kinder gardens.
Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) should promote women’s access to labour-saving technologies.
ENABLE Youth and other similar programmes should ensure that such gender-sensitive measures are in place to allow young rural women to fully benefit from the programme.
Social norms lying at the basis of unequal rural labour distribution between adult men and women need to be taken into account and challenged in order to truly release women’s potential as agents of rural development.
Gender equality and links to child labour
Submitted by Zofia Mroczek on Fri, 07/07/2017 - 13:58 Permalink
This is indeed an extremely important and interesting discussion, bringing together diverse perspectives and solutions.
All the considerations mentioned in this thread shed the light on the wide range of issues. Let’s add yet another dimension to examine the challenges women face in engaging in value chains and agribusiness:
Women have a triple burden: whatever income-generating activity rural women engage in, they still need to bear the burden of reproductive and community work. Moreover, the tasks that rural women usually perform are tedious, not leading to productivity and not allowing them to secure a sufficient income. On top of that, women are time-poor: it perpetuates their difficulties in accessing skills development opportunities, finance products (they do not have time to gather information about loans, bureaucracy and to get finance literacy trainings), business development services and in actively participating in cooperatives or other form of rural organizations.
This has led to a feminization of rural poverty.
Beyond the fact that women encounter strong obstacle to contribute to Africa’s positive rural transformation, there is another negative side effect: it makes rural women more reliant on their children to supplement family income, and to assist in the too many duties they are responsible for. This is especially the case for girls, who often assist their mothers, and may be therefore be involved in household chores and caring for younger siblings to an extent which risks to turn into child labour. Girls in such situations tend to be also the first ones to be withdrawn from school.
Gender inequality interplays with the division of labour inside the household, as well as outside, determining patterns of children’s time allocation in both areas. Rural women’s constraints compromises therefore not only their own lives, but also future opportunities for today’s children, especially girls.
All these limitations take an even more acute form for rural young women, who, in additional to gender-based discrimination, often face age-related constraints such as turbulent school-to-work transition, lack of self-confidence and experience, distrust of banks, employers and cooperatives, legal barriers and even more difficult access to land and productive resources.
Frequent pregnancies (and early pregnancies) in addition to small children to care for are yet another obstacle to accessing training, gaining experience and fully engaging in productive work.
That is why increasing women’s participation in higher-value added activities and their access to finance and resources, is extremely important, but might not be enough.
A poorly designed initiative may inadvertently worsen the situation by increasing women’s work burden, not compensated by rapid higher income, and drawing more children in to work. Hence, that interventions oriented towards value chain development need to be designed based upon a solid gender and age analysis, which assesses gender and age-based constraints and go beyond the household as a homogenous unit – therefore taking into account intra-household labour division, power relations, as well as specific risks and vulnerabilities.
In general,