Wives and mothers: female farmers in Africa
Whitehead, A.
Gender, work and population in sub Saharan Africa: 35-53
1994
Document Number: 369580
The main focus of the chapter is the smallholder sector of agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa. The implications of some of the characteristics of women's work are discussed with respect to rural economic planning. The discussion is situated in the context of three issues: first, the increasing recognition that women are a neglected human resource in development planning; second, the great historical and contemporary importance of female labour in sub-Saharan African farming; third, the 20-year-long crisis in agricultural production. The first section describes the role of women in smallholder production, adopting a broadly historical framework. The second section considers some of the problems of data collection which result in national statistics reflecting only very imperfectly the complex reality of contemporary women's work. The next section looks briefly at recent research findings on the effects of development projects on women; this section points out that many of the issues raised entail radical rethinking about planning categories and the collection of statistics. None of these problems is readily solvable, and all require high-level international cooperation and long-term planning.