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The division of labour between men and women in crop production varies considerably from region to region and community to community. However, it is usually men who plough the fields and drive draught animals whereas women do the major share of sowing, weeding, applying fertilizer and pesticides, harvesting and threshing. Similarly, men tend to do the work of large-scale cash cropping, especially when it is highly mechanized, while women take care of household food production and small-scale cultivation of cash crops, requiring low levels of technology. This pattern is particularly pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa, where men and women customarily farm separate plots. Men tend to grow cash crops and keep the income, while women use their land primarily for subsistence crops to feed their families.
Women make an essential contribution to producing staple crops. In Southeast Asia, for example, it is women who provide up to 90 percent of the labour for rice cultivation. They do almost all the work of planting and transplanting, fertilizing, weeding, irrigating and harvesting. After the rice has been harvested, they also carry out the post-harvest tasks before the rice can be stored, marketed, cooked or eaten. Women also play a big role in growing secondary crops, such as legumes and vegetables. In addition to providing essential nutrients, these crops are often the only food available during the lean season between harvests or when the main harvest fails. Home gardens, often tended almost exclusively by women, also claim precious labour-intensive time. Despite their often complementary roles in agriculture, studies have shown that in almost all societies, women tend to work longer hours than men. The difference in workloads is particularly marked for rural women, the world's principal food producers. Women are involved in every stage of food production and, although there is a gender-based division of labour, women do tend to shoulder the larger share. In addition to food production activities, women have the responsibility of preparing and processing the food while fulfilling their fundamental role of nurturing and caring for children and tending to elderly members of the household.
The problems facing these female-headed households vary according to their degree of access to production resources. The absence of male labour, however, may force women with an expanded workload to grow less labour intensive - and often less nutritious - crops with a reliance on child labour. This has serious implications both for the family and the human capital of the country. Technological innovations can provide important opportunities to free women's time, boost women's production potential as well as improve their quality of life and that of their families.
The division of labour between genders still remains poorly understood. This is because much of women's work in crop production consists of unpaid labour in fields that produce for the household rather than the market. As a result, women's work goes unrecorded in statistics. Because of this scarcity or - in most cases - sheer lack of available information, there has been little effective recognition of women's labour in agriculture. But gender-disaggregated data is needed to help technicians, planners and policy makers identify the role differences in food and cash crop production as well as men's and women's different managerial and financial control over the production, storage and marketing of agricultural products. Only by the collection and analysis of such gender disaggregated data will development strategies target women as active and equal partners in agricultural development. |
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