Review of PPC/WID documents : lessons learned in agriculture

Results are presented under six headings: agricultural extension, agricultural credit, income-generating activities, government policy impacts, and women"s role in agriculture. (1) Agricultural extension services might be made more effective by working with contact groups rather than individual women farmers, arranging for training to be village-based and organized in short sessions, recruiting more mature women as leader- farmers, utilizing radio and TV, and taking care not to alienate the men. Women are more likely to follow extension advice than are men, especially if technologies are simple, cheap, and timesaving. (2) In responding to women"s agricultural credit needs, it is important to build on individual and group strengths and on roles and organizations that are already in place. It is suggested that the concept of collateral be broadened to include guarantees by reference of community members. Female credit cooperatives tend to repay promptly. Flexible payments have also been proven effective. (3) Of the many constraints on women"s ability to take advantage of income-generating projects, lack of time may be the greatest, especially for rural women. One study in Nepal found that women begin work about 4 am and finish at about 9 pm. Thus, any new activities may overburden them. Children"s welfare may suffer too when women"s workload increases. Some income-generating activities for rural women fail for other reasons, e.g.: initial market studies are not conducted; projects focus on stereotypical Western tasks, such as embroidery, which are wrongly believed to be familiar and appropriate to poor rural Third World women; group income-generation projects are often conducted in a participatory mode, which is more conducive to social programs than to economic programs, which require centralized decisionmaking; projects are often staffed by female volunteers with limited technical qualifications. (4) Structural adjustment programs have produced a number of unforeseen problems because the role of women in various economic activities has not been taken into account. Other government policy reforms sometimes help women, sometimes not. For example, women are among the primary beneficiaries of trade liberalization, but mechanization subsidies generally harm women by lowering demand for women"s labor. (5) Female-managed farms earn less than half the income of male- managed farms, yet women"s labor accounts for more than half the food produced in the developing world. Agricultural provides on average about two-thirds of women"s paid jobs. The lack of political power limits women"s access to essential resources such as land, water, and market information. Summaries of the 22 reports are included, along with suggestions for further research.