Rural women in development
Blumberg, R.L.
Women and world change Equity issues in development: 32-56
1981
Document Number: 426151
During the 1970s, two issues aroused increasing concern in the "mainline" international development community: (a) "development with equity", and (b) food. This chapter suggests that it is poor rural women who constitute the hitherto largely invisible but crucial common element -- perhaps the ultimate determinant of success or failure -- in guaranteeing both development with equity and food in the Third World. To make this argument, it examines the present conditions and contributions of rural women in comparison with their menfolk. This comparison includes the relative position of women as: (1) producers, (2) property controllers, and (3) people. The first involves the sex division of labour in the group's main economic pursuits. The second involved the sex division of resources, i.e., each sex's relative control over the means and fruits of production. The third involves the sex division of noneconomic life opportunities and well-being. It concludes that no policy prescription for achieving either "development with equity" or an equitable supply of food for the people of the Third World can be written until female contributions to farming and food systems are recognized, preserved where threatened, and enhanced in an equity-promoting manner. This synthesis of extant data and hypotheses focuses more on the problem than the solution.