Women's responsibilities in rural Africa go far beyond their household duties. Most women in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) bear heavy responsibilities for food crop production, weeding and harvesting on men's fields, post harvest processing, provisioning for wood and water, in addition to their household responsibilities. This worked well in traditional set up where each gender had a clearly defined complementary role to sustain the family.

The structure of rural African household has since undergone a process of change in response to the social and economic circumstances, particularly growing population pressure on an increasingly degraded land and out- migration of men to off farm activities. This has added burden on women's workload and also strengthened their role as major contributors to agriculture.