Collection of Socio-economic Data on Rural Households: Intra-household Gender Relations of Production and Consumption
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There is a need to collect general information on women's and men's roles and responsibilities within the various target groups: on-farm, off-farm and in the homestead. Both women and men need to be consulted on their respective water related tasks. Access and control, and gender relations of production (productive resources) and consumption, need to be looked into and used as a basis for planning interventions. Some of the key questions to ask (which need adjustment for specific farming systems and livelihood styles), adapted from an FAO document, could include the following:
Do women and men grow separate crops on separate fields, simultaneously or in rotation, or do they have complementary roles for the same crops?
Who traditionally owns or has use rights of the land? What are the inheritance laws and customs with respect to land ownership and use right?
Who is responsible for the provision of the production inputs (seeds, fertilizers, etc.) and who has control over the income obtained from the various crops? What are the norms and practices in establishing priorities for expenditure? How are a decisions made about expenditure and/or savings?
Who has major responsibility for the following tasks per crop: land clearing, land preparation, choice of seeds, sowing and transplanting, choice of fertilizers and their application, weeding, choice of herbicides and their application, harvesting, threshing, transporting, storing, processing and marketing?
Who is responsible for the various tasks in and around the homestead, such as carrying water and fuelwood, caring for domestic animals, feeding and caring for the family, house construction and maintenance, construction of latrines, etc.?
Who is responsible for the provision of basic household requirements: food, clothing, housing, school expenses, medical expenses, ceremonial expenses (marriage, funerals, etc.)?
Who contributes to the family income, including off-farm employment, family farm labour, agricultural wage labour?
What percentage of households are de jure and de facto headed by women?
DRYLAND HUSBANDRY PROJECT (DHP)
ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, KENYA, SUDAN and UGANDA
The Dryland Husbandry Project (DHP) is an effort to bring together a variety of stakeholders in pastoral development to identify and develop strategies for addressing the crisis of African drylands in the nineties and beyond. A network approach will be used to raise issues of mutual concern to researchers, practitioners and, above all, pastoralists, with particular emphasis on sustainable service provision and water management.
On the International level, four networks are involved: The Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), based in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia; The Pastoral Information Network (PINEP), based in Nairobi, Kenya; The research programme on Environmental Policy and Society (EPOS), based at Linköping University in Sweden; and The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), based in Djibouti.
On the national level, a variety of research institutions, governmental departments and non-governmental organisations will co-operate in training and action research. The activities come together at the local level through the involvement of the pastoralists' own institutions, extensionists and researchers in joint exploration of issues of how they can co-operate in service provision and field trials.
The countries that participate in the Dryland Husbandry Project are: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. The national focal institutions in these countries are: The Faculty of Agriculture and Aquatic Sciences, University of Asmara, Eritrea; Mekele University College of Dryland Agriculture, Mekele, Ethiopia; The Department of Range Management, University of Nairobi, Kenya; The Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Khartoum, Sudan; and The Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, Makerere University, Uganda. The DHP has been operating since 1995.
