The study was conducted in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), a qualitative research technique, were used separately with women and men farmers, who totalled more than 1,500 in number. The FGDs were complemented by 52 interviews with key informants in the government, non-government, and commercial sectors. The research took place in areas of relatively poor agriculture, where women were assuming an ever-increasing role in farm work, mainly because of migration to towns and cities by men.
The lowly social and economic status of women in rural Africa impinges strongly on the production tools and implements they use. Women's direct access to cash from their work on the family holding is usually minimal because of the traditional control by men of most of the cash crop revenues, and credit is virtually unavailable to women. In fact credit is hardly available for any small farmer, man or woman, in any of the five countries, although Senegal is on the point of relaunching credit schemes. But for women farmers it is even less available than it is to men. This is because land and cultivation rights are ascribed almost exclusively to men, and so women can offer no collateral for loans. In addition, they are usually too burdened with farm and family chores to be able to travel to town and spend time in the bureaucratic process of obtaining credit. And their skills in literacy and numeracy are often lower than those of men, thus adding to their difficulties.
In present circumstances, women's only real opportunities for land and credit is through women's groups, and such groups were active in all five countries. However, land allocated to women's groups by community authorities tends to be distant from the village, of low quality, and the women are seldom allowed to use it for more than one or two years to prevent them acquiring permanent rights to it.
In some countries of the study there bad been a backlash from men resulting from what they saw as an excessive and exclusive emphasis on women in development programmes in the last decade or so; in other countries such a backlash seems to be building now. A few of the countries appeared to be avoiding or solving this problem by developing a family focus for development, rather than a solely women's focus. In some of the countries, women's groups were even inviting a few men to join them.
In the past, there were quite clear distinctions between what was considered men's work and women's work in farming, but these distinctions have now blurred, with women carrying out all of the operations when their men are away. The improved status and recognition that women might logically expect to accrue to them for their increased responsibility and workload has not yet materialized, and rural society still generally treats them as second-class citizens. For their part, most women continue to accept that it is natural for them to work ever harder with little benefit, either of a material or status nature.
There were significant differences in the levels and types of production tools being used in the different countries. The lowest level of technology was found in Burkina Faso where the few animal draft implements and all the hand tools encountered in the study area had been made by blacksmiths using low-quality scrap materials. The highest quality tools and implements were found in Zimbabwe, whether produced by industrial concerns or blacksmiths. Blacksmiths had access to high-quality scrap, mainly from old plough shares and defunct tractor-drawn implements.
The hand hoe remains the primary farm implement for primary cultivation and weeding in all of the countries. Not much can be done to improve its design, but its quality and durability are often poor.
The spread of animal traction is slow at best, and is blocked, or has actually retreated in some countries, because of animal diseases, unfavourable weather conditions that have crippled farm economies, lack of credit, and taboos on women using cattle in some areas.
Many of the groups consulted stated that the hand hoe imposed strict limitations on production, and that as long as they could not gain access to animal traction, they could never progress. Indeed, animal traction, in every area where it was known, was widely seen by people as the solution to their problems.
Nowhere are their taboos against women working with donkeys, which are low prestige animals, with low initial cost compared to bovines, and are therefore more accessible for poor women
In all of the countries, axes, slashers, and harvesting tools were much the same, but there was wider variation among implements and tools for tillage, planting, and weeding. The basic African hoe of the chop-downwards-and-pull type showed variations in length of handle and width and weight of blade, as well as in the method of fixing the blade to the handle.
Only in Senegal was an entirely different type of weeding hoe found, a very long handled push-pull hoe that allows the user to stand upright. It was being used by almost all people working the land in the central part of the country, and short-handled, more traditional hoes that require a squatting or crouched position had been almost totally abandoned
In all probability, the traditional African hoe has evolved locally over time to take into account the particular soil conditions and the tasks to be performed, but there is now a cultural conditioning almost everywhere, except in Senegal, to the effect that work can only be properly performed when bent double with a short-handled hoe. This is an obstacle to the introduction of long-handled implements that would be more comfortable to use, such jab planters and the like, since standing upright to work projects an image of laziness.
Among the groups consulted, the opinion that women needed different tools to men was widespread and so was the notion that manufacturers should differentiate between them as they do, for example, for bicycles. But manufacturers and importers of tools and implements generally do no market research, have no follow-up links with their clients, do little to ensure that a full range of their wares are available at sales points, and seem to ignore the fact that the main users of their products or imports are now women.
As a result, many implements, especially animal draft cultivators, are simply too heavy for women to use easily. And people have to buy whatever they can find, without being able to chose, say, a lighter model of hand hoe that would make weeding easier for women.
Nor are there any consultation processes between blacksmiths and their women clients that might lead to more suitable tools.
Of all the tasks carried out by women on the land, weeding with a hand hoe was said, almost unanimously, to be the most punishing and time consuming, causing exhaustion and back pains. Passing an animal drawn inter-row cultivator through a crop, thus leaving only the spaces between the plants in the row for hand weeding, can reduce the weeding time per acre from 2 - 4 weeks to 2 - 4 days. However, this obviously requires the prior use of animal-drawn planters or hand planting in rows.
Government services and institutions still concentrate their support on men. Thus the majority of participants in animal traction training courses are still men, though * is the women who now really need those skills.
In conclusion, there is no quick and simple solution to improving the production tools and implements used by women. However certain actions need to be taken by governments, development agencies, and NGOs which could start to bring change. They are:
· Start deliberate, well-planned, and sustained communication efforts to create fuller awareness about the enormous role women now play in African farming and about their special needs in production tools and implements
· Study closely, in participation with development project and programme beneficiaries, the weeding problem and examine the possibility and acceptability of promoting row planting and the use of donkeys with light-weight weeders, but taking into account the concomitant need for animal care and veterinary services.
· Continue to promote women's groups, but also involve some men in them, and adopt a family development focus rather than an exclusive focus on women.
· Work in closest cooperation with private sector producers or importers of tools and implements, induce them to do market research, and involve them constructively in meeting farmers needs, especially those of women.
· Become pro-active in ensuring that women farmers are involved in demonstration and training activities concerning for example, animal traction.
· Intensify training programmes for blacksmiths and promote forums for consultation between blacksmiths and their women and men clients.
· Have extension services add advice on farm tools and implements to their traditional message content concerning production techniques, seeds, fertilizers, etc.
· Accentuate the issue of production tools and implements in development projects, create a demand-led Environment for them, and establish the linkages necessary to deliver them.
· Encourage enabling tax and duty policies for local producers and distributors of tools and implements.
· Promote ergonomic research projects, which could be conducted by Makerere University, Uganda, into women's energy use with different types of tool, beginning with different weights of hoe, different width of hoe blades in different soils, etc.
· Working in the closest consultation with potential users at all stages, import and farm test exogenous tools, (for example jab planters, seeders that can be attached to ploughs, etc.). If they are not accepted by potential users, carry out a thorough enquiry as to why not, in order to learn for the future.
