Rural women's work in sub-Saharan Africa and the implications for nutrition
Trenchard, E.
Geography of gender in the Third World: 153-172
1987
Document Number: 204200
The paper examines the role of women in 5 dissimilar ethnic groups: Luo and Kikuyu from Kenya, the Kasasi in northeastern Ghana, the Mandinka in the Gambia and Ewe from southeastern Ghana. In all these groups the woman's mothering role in providing food for her family has been retained, but her previously adequate access to the means of production on the land has been reduced; cash cropping does not support subsistence, but competes with it for land, labour and resources. The case studies include labour reserve, direct production and transitional areas. In all these, women's role in food production both provides cheap labour and is central to nutrition. The relative and absolute losses in women's production and incomes bear immediately on the food crisis of many African countries. It emerges that current policies and recommendations for the African food crisis are likely to fail, because women's work is largely ignored and the situation therefore wholly misunderstood. The evidence is that capitalist penetration has simultaneously both depended on women's food-providing role and undermined it, until the whole system is now in danger of collapse.