Future With a Focus on Women
investment or infrastructure to strengthen either the sector, or women’s roles in that sector. Where they are still intact, home plots continue to supplement year-round food needs for the community, are an important risk mitigation approach at the household level and continue to remain the remit of women farmers. These farms, unlike commercial crop plantations, are likely to contain a wide range of traditional varieties, planted in a diverse ecological farming system, which together are often less susceptible to changing climate conditions. In addition to their hardiness, many of the traditional varieties meet
“Do these ‘solutions’ enable women to be actors in their own decisions, or do they further compromise women, placing them in greater debt, at deeper risk, and in positions of further weakness and silence?”
the nutrition needs of local populations better than many imported foods.
• Notable increases in the number of female-headed households (FHH) in regions like the Caribbean, mean that more policies especially need to target this constituency of farmers. FHHs have a higher dependency ratio; have fewer assets and less access to resources; and tend to have a greater history of disruption. These have broad systemic economic, ethical and ecological implications for rural women, for their families and by extension, for their communities.
• Women farmers grow a wide range of fresh vegetables, greens and herbs, tubers and pulses to supplement food that they buy. They care for small livestock and poultry. They also have a prominent economic stake in the inland and coastal fisheries sector which is often underplayed;
• Fishers are most commonly portrayed as men going out on boats to catch the fish while women work as fish sellers and processors on land. This generalization of the professional roles of men and women is largely correct, but a closer examination of gender in fisheries reveals a more complex inter-related situation depending on the cultural context.
At the household consumption and allocation level:
• Women, more so than men, have an immediate day- to-day role in allocating resources within the household, including food and water;
• The responsibility of providing and planning the household meals generally falls more on women than on men – they have a direct influence not only on income allocation but on family diets and nutrition;
• Women have a direct vested interest in ensuring that safe and clean water is used at household level.
iAM March 2013 19
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