Abate Dessie, N. (2017) ‘The Roles of Rural Women on Agricultural Labor Conscriptions in Ethiopia: The Case of Delanta District, South Wello Zone’, EC Nutrition, 6(4), pp. 144–155
The author commenced by explaining the role of women in food and nutritional security. Food security is to be ensured through sustainable food production in which women take the primary role in various states. Women may engage as farmers in their own farming, unpaid workers on family farms, and paid/unpaid laborers on the farms of other individual and agricultural enterprises. Women’s engagement in agricultural activity is mixed of crop production and livestock ranching for livelihood maintenance and commercial purposes. Women in general engage in agricultural processes starting from soil preparation to post-harvesting activities. They also shoulder extra burdens in relation to food processing and preparation, fetching water, collecting fuel wood, and caring for family members. Thus, women’s roles can be identified as triple roles such as productive role, reproductive role and community participation role in their everyday life. However, this is not get recognised in policy and resource allocation and their voices are little heard at the national and global levels.
With the primary objective of assessing the gender division of labor in agriculture and household activities as well as comprehending the major constraints to their empowerment, the author used a mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods. Data were collected through household surveys, and Focus Group Discussions.
According to the finding, women’s engagement in a farming activity is classified into three: independently performed by women alone, performed jointly with men, and with the assistance/support of men. Women alone perform activities in relation to seed-bed preparation, crop harvesting, seeding, transporting, storage preparation…etc. Whereas, men engaged in sowing, transporting yields to home, carrying farm tools, ploughing, and land preparation. During this time women assist/support men by covering the seed with soil, pulling horses when ploughing is done, clearing waste from the field, and preparing threshing fields. The joint work of men and women is related to threshing ground preparation, weeding, harvesting (crop-cutting like wheat, barley, faba bean, etc., and pulling like linseeds, lentils, grass pea, etc), collecting and transporting grains (crops) to threshing fields. The second farming activity is livestock ranching. women’s engagement in livestock production includes milk processing, barn cleaning, and care of newborn animals. Whereas men assist in animal feeding, and rarely milking cows. Regarding household activity, women are assigned to the reproductive task, which is unpaid, cooking, cleaning, elder care, childcare, and community-based volunteering, which is still unpaid. The worst news is; however, they are performing all these activities with a backward technology whereby devices and tools are the most primitive. Regarding the decision-making role of women in agricultural-related activities, the study indicated that men are the major decision-makers, whereas women are excluded from decisions regarding crops to plant, purchase and sale of livestock, farm inputs, land plot to plough, and similar activities.
Finally, in recognition of women’s irreplaceable role in agricultural sector growth and food security, the author recommended that women shall be given more enforceable rights, and empowered in agriculture and that the existing social norms/taboos that overburden them with unpaid triple roles shall be addressed.