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GENDER ISSUES IN FARMING SYSTEMS
RESEARCH AND EXTENSION
GENDER RELATIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE:
THE NEED FOR AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS
Alison Evans, January 1986
Over the past decade agricultural research has turned its
attention to the plight of the rural poor and the need for
strengthening the production systems of small, low-income
farming units. In sub-Saharan Africa particularly, the
imperative of improving the region's food producing
capabilities has convinced many researchers to focus on the
identification of means to raise the agricultural
performance and welfare of self-provisioning farming
households (World Food Council 1982). Despite the fact that
production units in sub-Saharan Africa are constantly
evolving and that landlessness, in particular, is a growing
phenomenon throughout the region, a substantial proportion
of agricultural activity and food production continues to be
organised at the household farm level (Dey 1984b, World Food
Farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa are extremely diverse.
However, there are a number of shared conditions and
characteristics which lend themselves to some
generalisations. One is that household labour supply
typically constitutes the main source of farm labour but
that households also have essential demands for labour other
than for on-farm use. Another is the substantial
contribution made by rural women, and especially poor rural
women, to agricultural activity, and women's almost
universal responsibility for managing the time consuming
operations of household food production, preparation and
distribution, and the basic maintenance of the domestic
economy (FAO 1984). That this is unlikely to alter greatly
in the foreseeable future means that agricultural research
must link technology generation more directly to the needs
and priorities of smallholder producers.
The record of technological intervention in the region is
however variable and marked by contradictory outcomes, if
not the outright failure, of input-intensive technological
packages. From the literature it appears that the poorest
and smallest farming households suffer most severely from
the contradictory effects of 'modernising' interventions,
and that many of the unintended outcomes seriously affect
the effectiveness and wellbeing of women producers in
particular (Agarwal 1981, Ahmed 1983, Chambers 1983, Kisseka
1984, Whitehead 1981).
The fact that technological changes have complex, diffuse,
even perverse effects on the operation of these systems
raises a number of crucial questions about the continued
effectiveness of many women in their subsistence/
-reproductive role, with ramifications for the economic
wellbeing of their dependents, farming households and
themselves. The challenging task for agricultural research
therefore lies mainly in identifying the possibilities for
solutions to on-farm problems but also in devising
technological options that are reliable and predictable
within the whole farm system and above all consistent with
the needs and interests of both women and men in family farm
households (CGIAR 1985, Hahn 1985, Fresco 1985, Maxwell
Agricultural Research and Development
The driving force behind recent research and development in
small farm agriculture has been Farming Systems Research and
Extension (FSR/E). Although FSR/E does not follow one model
it does tend to pursue a single aim: to develop
technological alternatives for small farmers to improve
their performance and increase aggregate food supplies while
protecting the natural environment (FSSP 1984). A major
advantage that FSR/E has, and one that distinguishes it from
other R&D approaches, is the potential for integrating
within a single conceptual framework, comprehensive,
interdisciplinary knowledge not only about the technical
needs of small farmers as individuals or as a group, but
also about the wider systemic implications of technological
change. For example, systemic changes in the natural
resource base, the local farming economy or the organisation
of human activity (W.W. Shaner et al 1982, D.W. Norman
At the conceptual level the FSR/E approach aims to identify
the distinctive components and parameters of the 'total'
farm system in which a small farm household functions. In
general the farming system is defined as:
'a unique and reasonably stable
arrangement of farming enterprises that
the household manages according to well
defined practices in response to the
physical, biological and social
environments and in accordance with the
household's goals, preferences and
resources' (W.W. Shaner et al 1982).
In what is essentially a functionalist view of the total
farm system researchers .aim to identify the interdependence
between components under the control of household members
e.g. crop and livestock production, and how these components
interact with physical, biological and socio-economic
factors beyond household control e.g. climate, prices for
commodities in local markets, to affect the agricultural
welfare of the farm household. By combining this knowledge
with extensive on-farm research and experimentation, systems
researchers should be in a position to recommend
technological alternatives that meet the dominant needs and
preferences of particular groups of farmers as well as
develop greater understanding into which technologies fit
where and why, and who benefits? For this purpose, FSR/E
has at the centre of its conceptual framework the family
farm household. The objective is to draw to the attention
of field researchers and scientists the interaction between
household resources and on-farm enterprises and the many
different characteristics and therefore needs and
constraints of small farming households.
At the empirical level within the limits of the current
climate of agricultural policy making in developing
countries the FSR/E approach is used primarily to reduce
the degree of error in-finding the appropriate technical
'fix' for market based problems of agricultural production.
Consequently most applied FSR/E to date has concentrated on
market oriented cropping systems research or commodity-based
research. This focus, along with time considerations and
resource constraints, has meant that practical systems
research has tended to bypass many of the interpersonal or
qualitative stages in the diagnostic process to concentrate
on the quantitative, technical relations of market-oriented
production i.e. production economists have tended to
dominate the collection of 'social-science' data while
scientists emphasise the need for more detailed technical
So despite its claims to have a very broad understanding of
the needs and preferences of small farm households and the
systemic effects of technological change on the farm
household, in practice FSR/E has been restricted to finding
technological solutions to a limited range of production
- problems using essentially market criteria to measure the
costs and benefits of changes within commodity based
cropping systems for overall household welfare.
In making very limited use of the potential it has for
farmer-based research current FSR/E has implicit within it a
restricted set of methodological choices for identifying
diverse needs of farming households and recommending
solutions that do not prejudice certain household members or
particular groups within society (Butler-Flora 1984). This
is particularly relevant when considering gender issues in
agricultural development and on a number of counts FSR/E is
ill equipped for:
(a) understanding the distribution of costs and
benefits between women and men in the same farm
household of alternative technological choices and
extension projects. Also finding out under what
conditions technological changes benefit men but
disbenefit women as household members or as a
larger group in society.
(b) identifying and meeting the technical needs of
women as farmers particularly as producers and
consumers of food.
The fact that technological dominance has taken over FSR/E
in recent years and belied what it set out to achieve at the
interpersonal level explains to some extent the failure of
researchers to consider how farming systems are constituted
in gender terms and what influence gender has in shaping
economic outcomes in agricultural development. Within the
methodology itself there are a number of procedures and
assumptions which have tended to reinforce gender blindness:
(1) -By using market or monetary criteria to identify
productive components in the farm system and measure
their contributions to household income and welfare
many of the value-adding or maintenance activities that
are not directly comparable in monetary terms are left
out or considered costless in the economic equation.
For example non-monetised household-based activities
such as food production (secondary foods, upland
intercropped crops etc.); processing and preparation
for direct consumption; fuel and water collection;
house repair. From micro-level research we can see
that this has important gender implications because
while men, women and children do perform such
activities it is almost universally female household
members who contribute most of their own labour time,
energy and resources, as well as exchanging labour and
resources with others, to perform these activities.
This tends to be true at intra household and
inter-household levels. By treating these activities
as complementary to the farm unit rather than
components of it (Fernandez 1985, Lele 1985),
production economists have neglected many important
interdependencies between monetised and non-monetised
activities and the importance of gender in shaping
interactions between sub-systems and household resource
(2) Production, economists and technicians are primarily
concerned with aggregate output levels and
recommendations for improving agricultural performance
and household welfare have generally focused on
particular sub-systems e.g. the cropping system, and
finding agronomic explanations for production
constraints and bottlenecks. This has often been
without careful consideration for the possibility that
the basis for production constraints or particular
farmer decisions lies not in the sub-system itself but
in other parts of the farming system.
This has two implications:
(a) that planned changes within, for example, the
cropping system which appear to offer visible
benefits in terms of aggregate household output
and income, may have unanticipated .differential
productive impact on individual household members.
Whether this impact is likely to be beneficial or
detrimental is not entirely clear until we know
the multiple fit of activities household members
are responsible for household based, on-farm,
off-farm etc. and the nature of their
Relationship with the cropping system itself i.e.
where do they fit into the cropping cycle, are
they unpaid, do they control any of the products
or revenue, how does this vary by gender?
(b) Systems researchers have very often neglected the
possibility that a more appropriate and effective
solution to overcoming farm based constraints lies
in indirect measures or non-farm activities. That
is, improving the productivity of household based
activities, many of which are women's
responsibility, may have a positive impact on
amounts or quality of labour, resources,
management available for farm production, e.g.
raising the productivity of household water
collection could increase the amount of time and
energy women have available for direct farm
production or, alternatively, improving the
conditions for secondary food crop production and
processing could have positive health and
nutrition effects for the whole household which
would improve the efficiency of labour inputs into
farm or off-farm activities especially during low
energy or 'hungry' seasons. This neglect has
tended to obfuscate the specific needs that women
might have as direct producers, processors,
traders or as the vital human elements in
household food, water and fuel linkages.
(3) Because of stereotyped models of household units and
static assumptions about intra-household labour
relations and resource allocation, the FSR/E approach
has assumed that the effect of technological change on
farm household members can be simply read off from
visible changes in the technical division of labour.
The assumptions are that:
(a) household units follow a Eurocentric model with a
male household head and a dependent wife and
children (Allison 1985) and that relations between
household members are concretised within the
prevailing division of labour which responds in
predictable and systematic ways to changes within
the physical and economic environment.
(b) the division of. labour and resources reflects a
complementarity of household needs and interests
which ensures the equitable distribution of
benefits of overcoming production constraints
within the household.
However the current state of knowledge about rural
production systems and the experience of technological
change suggests that the organisation of human activity and
the nature of households is much more complex and that
technical change does not effect the technical division of
labour.and resources in any systematic way (Whitehead 1981).
It also suggests that relations between women and men in
farming households are not solidified within the technical
division of labour nor are their interests and needs
necessarily complementary. In fact the gender division of
labour is only the outcome of very much more fundamental
processes of negotiation and exchange between the genders
which are in a constant state of flux. The Eurocentric view
of the household is particularly misleading in West African
countries where women and men tend to occupy structurally
different positions within the farm economy, not only in
terms of task allocation and combining different types of
enterprises, but also in terms of different access to
factors of production inputs, credit, others' labour time,
off-farm employment opportunities, markets, incentives, etc.
S Whilst there are many examples of farm-household enterprises
in which both men and women have a conjoint interest, there
are numerous others for which women and men have separate or
conflicting interests and for which their economic and
technical needs are likely to differ, e.g. in Sierra Leone
women's interests in improving swamp rice farming or
intercropping to produce a marketable surplus have seen to
be in conflict with men's interests in upland farming and
their use of work gangs and household labour in the
production of market crops. Polygyny also compels wives to
have independent access to cash income which involves
managing a number of non-farm income-generating enterprises
-palm oil processing, soap and pottery making, dyeing cloth-
that are quite separate from men's and involve managing very
separate budgets and resources even when living with men in
the same extended household (Richards and Karimu 1981).
The search for a new framework
The problem with most popular farming systems models is that
they take a selective and comparative static view of the
workings of the farming system. What is needed are more
searching concepts and methods for looking at the gendered
farm-household system and understanding the basis for the
gender distribution of costs and benefits of technological
choices and identifying some of the specific technical needs
that women have. Unfortunately due to lack of empirical
evidence -this paper can only offer some initial thoughts on
how this might be achieved.
(1) Develop a conceptual model that treats the small
farming unit as an interlocking system of market
production, subsistence economic and reproductive
enterprises articulated at farm and household levels.
Reproductive activities include primarily domestic
services necessary for family survival. A central
defining feature of this interrelated system is the
multi-activity household, the sets of conditions -
enterprise mix, resource and labour allocation, market
interaction, budget constraints and reproductive
considerations that shape the economic participation
and welfare of female and male household members. It
is important to see that these sets of conditions are
not immutable and that depending on the total matrix of
productive, and reproductive activities that comprise
any one farm system they are likely to alter, for
example, with seasonal changes, changing life-cycle
positions of household members, changing opportunities
in the local economy, etc.
(2) By using a conceptual framework along these lines it
should be possible to generate data on the key sets of
conditions that shape the differential participation of
household members and give explicit attention to the
most important interactions between enterprises that
vary by gender.
From the wealth of anthropological literature at our
disposal it appears that vital information is needed on
intra-household resource allocation and on the relative
weight of market and non-market, social and economic forces,
in shaping the differential distribution of women's and
men's labour time, resources, management and control within
the total farm system. Information of this type would be
invaluable for investigating the possibility for
productivity gains in non-monetised enterprises which have
either a direct or indirect productive impact on household
members. It is also crucial for increasing the
understanding amongst agricultural researchers and
extensionists about why planned changes in the technological
and economic balance of, for example, cropping systems, have
unanticipated, sometimes detrimental, effects on other
enterprises, often outside of the production arena. In
Africa this is a commonly cited problem for women farmers,
particularly in the poorest households (Dey 1981, 1984a,
Guyer 1980, Whitehead 1981) where women's workloads have
either tended to intensify at the hands of technological
changes or their lands and income sources have diminished.
Yet without understanding exactly how women's multiple
activities lock together and interlock with other
enterprises in the system, it is very difficult to clearly
establish at the margin the aggregate net effect of
technological change upon the total workload or economic
welfare of individual household members and particularly the
differential effects on women and men.
A conceptual model such as this raises a number of important
methodological considerations for farming systems research.
(1) At the stage of selecting recommendation domains
agronomic, topographic and general socio-economic data
continue to be crucial, however there is increasing
recognition for the need to take into account different
household forms, family structures and composition. In
Africa this most probably entails taking account of
polygynous household forms, extended family structures,
female-headed households and the complex variation in
authority and power structures that determine the
location of decision making, access to resources etc.
in household units (Allison 1985). At this stage it is
important that researchers be aware of the different
'structural' positions that women and men often occupy
in African households and how these are related to
different decision-making processes, separate budget
constraints, different access to inputs and markets
incentives and opportunities.
(2) Problem identification: at this stage it is
particularly important that information about the
differential structural positions of women and men in
the farming household be linked to precise data about
household resource allocation, labour utilisation and
the multiple fit of activities which women and men are
responsible for. This is because identifying dominant
constraints and bottlenecks, for example'in labour or
resource allocation, must take into account the degree
of flexibility and substitutability that exists within
the organisation of farm-household activity and where
potential trade-offs or conflicts might emerge between
the genders when releasing a constraint within one
sub-system involves creating another elsewhere in the
system important research points are:
(a) the degree of flexibility and substitutability
between the role of women's labour in farm
production and household-based production relative
*(b) the substitutability between women's labour and
capital i.e. productivity enhancing technologies,
relative to other household members;
(c) the flexibility and substitutability between
women's labour and that of other family or
household members i.e. husbands, children,
neighbours or hired-in labour (Lele 1985).
Much of the information that can be gathered about
these points will be qualitative rather than
quantitative, which should be recognized by researchers
and extensionists who have tended to devalue the
importance of such data in planning on-farm research
and evaluating responses by farm-households.
(3) Finally, during the on-farm research, extension and
evaluation stages gender- should become an integral
criterion for the analysis of dominant constraints and
the recommendation of solutions that are reliable and
predictable for both women and men within target
groups. For example:
(a) It is important to recognize the mixed strategies
'that women employ to meet basic household needs
and the potential impact that trade-offs or
curtailments within these strategies have for
individual and household welfare.
(b) There is increasing evidence to show that women's
technological and economic needs are different
from men's and must be researched and evaluated in
their own right, e.g. in their vital role as human
elements in food production and processing, water,
fuel and nutrition linkages, intra and inter
(c) It is important to trace the distribution of male
and female labour time and resources within total
production cycles, e.g. crop production from
cultivation to processing, consumption or sale, to
understand the net welfare effects of changes
within the cycle, i.e. labour and resource or
income effects at the margin. It may be that
changes in cropping patterns intensify women's
unpaid labour effort during weeding, harvesting
and processing stages which conflicts with their
labour needs elsewhere in the farming system, or,
it may be that a new crop variety, despite greater
workload, offers women potential income gains
through the processing and sale of crop
by-products, over which they have marketing
control which effect is dominant cannot be
established a priori.
(d) Account must be taken of the economic role that
household service activities play in maintaining
the productive function of the farming system and
what are the non-pecuniary costs borne by
individual household members (usually women) in
providing such services under low.productivity,
time-consuming and arduous conditions.
It has been suggested in this paper that if gender issues
are to be given explicit attention within agricultural
research and technology development then an alternative
analytical framework is required. Such a framework should
give explicit attention to the different sets of conditions
that characterise the economic participation of women and
men and this involves looking at the integrated farming
system as a gendered system of production and reproduction.
The purpose of such a framework is not only to examine
existing evidence with greater rigour but also to generate
specific hypotheses, tests, data and methods that break down
gender biases within agricultural research and extension.
There are however a number of general problems which must be
addressed if attempts to build an alternative framework are
to be considered feasible:
(1) The problem of overcoming the methodological divide
between technocratic and social science research; that
is, integrating effectively quantitative and
qualitative methods and data.
(2) 'The problem of time. For instance, the time scale that
ARIs' or donors' demand for FSR/E does not seem to
concur with the time scale that sociological or
socio-economic research requires.
(3) The current climate of national and international
agricultural policy making is not conducive to
channelling research resources into more extensive data
collection or funding programmes for scientific/genetic
research into secondary food crops, non-farm
technological needs etc.
(4) There is the question of whether male-female economic
relations within rural production systems are so
culturally specific that the possibilities for a
generalisable analytical model are slim.
Despite these problems, if in the future there is to be any
clear understanding of the relationship between gender
relations and the economics of farming systems and
technological choice, there is a real need to question the
conceptual basis of popular methodological approaches to
agricultural research and development and construct
Alternative frameworks for gathering empirical data and
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