Okiror , J. J. (author), Twanza, B. (author), Orum, B. (author), Ebanyat, P. (author), Kule, E. B. (author), Tegbaru, A. (author), and Ayesiga, C. (author)
Format:
journal articles
Publication Date:
2021-10
Published:
Academic Journals
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D12402
12 pages, There is growing interest in gender analysis and value chain analysis as tools for ensuring equitable participation in agricultural commodity markets. This study examined the gender factors that influence the patterns and levels of participation by women and men in grain value chains in Uganda. Data were collected from six districts in three regions of Uganda using qualitative gender tools. Findings show that marked division of labour along gender-lines happens at postharvest handling stages where threshing and winnowing is mostly done by women while men supervise storage and also control marketing and incomes. Division of labour is due to socio-cultural ascriptions to the sexes at community level with women having to work for longer hours than their male counterparts. Groundnuts were regarded as women’s crop while soya beans were for men. Regional variations were not significant but there were marked behavioral differences between the poorer and richer households across entire value chains from production to marketing with the poor exercising more caution during marketing to spread risks to the next harvest while the rich preferred one-time bulk sales. Specific interventions are needed to upgrade women participation in grain-legume businesses and scale-up labour saving post-harvest technologies especially draught animals, threshers, tarpaulins and hullers to ease drudgery on women and increase men’s participation.
13 pages, HIV Aids has had a major impact on resource-limited African rural Sub-Saharan communities, especially upon women who typically experience greater gender inequity, have fewer assets and greater food insecurity and vulnerability. Coordinated interventions in crop productivity, nutrition, AIDS treatment, and livelihood security can have significant positive impacts on individuals and households; however their impact upon gender relations and social equity is unclear. Qualitative interviews and an integrative model of factors influencing women’s empowerment are used to examine this issue in four villages of the Miracle Project in Zambia and Malawi. Although some local agency and NGO programs existed in these villages prior to project inception, female respondents reported improvements in crop productivity and income, some initiation of new enterprises, improvement in ownership of assets and housing quality and access or re- access to kinship or community based mutual assistance networks from which they had been excluded. Consumption of the introduced quality protein maize and products from home processing of soyabeans were cited as improving household nutrition. Together with increased accessibility to retroviral drugs, women’s health has improved; levels of poverty and stigmatisation have reduced and allowed many to display an improved degree of empowerment.