5.1 Gender roles in smallholder ruminant livestock production systems
5.2 Impact of ruminant livestock and ruminant livestock technologies on child nutrition
5.3 Gender analysis in livestock technology research: A possible framework
Work on gender and ruminant livestock production is limited, especially gender disaggregated data on work sharing and access to resources and benefits. Most of the studies did not use any conceptual or theoretical constructs for analysing gender roles, though one can relate narratives and descriptions to either resemble the tenets of unitary or collective household model. Some of these studies are more rhetorical than empirical.
Available information on gender roles in the smallholder ruminant livestock production systems of developing countries indicates that all household members play significant roles in animal husbandry. The review shows variation in the extent and nature of involvement of women, men and children in ruminant livestock production according to culture, religion, stage of economic development, species of predominant animals, farming systems and population pressure. In spite of the variation noted, some tentative, general conclusions can be reached. Aspects of animal husbandry such as care of the young, pregnant and sick animals, processing of milk, sale of dairy products and milk in pastoral systems are mainly undertaken by women. The gender responsible for milking, cleaning cattle sheds, collecting and transporting feed; feeding animals and selling milk varies between regions. Men are generally involved in herd management, sale of animals, purchase of feed and sale of milk in intensified systems. Children, principally boys, herd animals. Girls assist in herding, especially of small ruminants.
Men and women, both have varying access to resources and products from animal husbandry. Obstacles such as the lack of capital and access to institutional credit, competing use of time, and lack of technical skills and access to extension services may affect women more than men and further limit women’s participation and efficiency in ruminant livestock production. The issues surrounding ownership of livestock, access to resources and benefits, allocation of livestock, its products and incomes and their implications for gender roles, equity and household welfare are not well understood and require further research using appropriate conceptual and theoretical frameworks.
From the literature reviewed, a few implications can be drawn about the relationship between livestock and the nutritional status of children. Livestock ownership directly and indirectly affects the nutritional status of children in developing countries. The significant correlation of the quantity of milk consumed by children and the nutritional anthropometrics variables corroborates the importance of protein food sources from animal origin to child growth. Child growth depends on the quality of their diet; a better quality diet is important in fostering growth in toddlers. Nutritional status of children with low consumption of dairy products can be improved with ruminant animal product intake. However, consumption of non-human milk before the age of 6 months, and the presence of ruminant animals in the living area without proper veterinary care and good hygiene pose serious risks of disease to children.
Nutritional status of children may be easily improved from dairy animals if all the milk produced is not sold. Even families with limited land resources can raise dairy animals such as goats that require fewer resources than cattle. As Grosse (1998b) suggests, promotion of dairy animals can be an effective tool in preventing stunting in developing countries.
There is a common misconception that dietary treatments of growth-retarded children are a waste, since the damage has already been done and cannot be improved upon (Seireg et al. 1992). Although height is not as responsive as weight to nutritional interventions, Waterlow and Golden (cited in Seireg et al. 1992) provide evidence of rapid responsiveness of linear growth during a relatively short period of treatment of malnourished children. Restoration of normal height is possible, up to the age of about 10, in the absence of continuing deprivation (Garrow and Pyke 1967). In his review of the growth effects of supplementary feeding programmes, Golden (1988) notes that the majority of the cases that have reported gains in height have been based on the use of milk or soya-based supplements. Malcolm (1970, cited in Seireg et al. 1992) documented growth responses of children in boarding schools in Papua New Guinea to be proportional to the amount of milk in the supplement. The use of milk to improve growth is a realistic approach for low-income preschoolers.
The fact that individual indicators (such as milk consumption, ownership of cows) are associated negatively with malnutrition when the influence of the other factors is accounted for in some of the reviewed studies, suggests that specific focused interventions would be of value. The majority of children from the rural areas of developing countries with ruminant livestock in the farming system would be less malnourished if their mothers (parents) are given nutrition education that would encourage them to make optimum use of available food, particularly those of animal origin and other resources.
Gender division of labour and issues of access to resources and benefits in smallholder livestock production systems in developing countries can be better understood if studies are done using an appropriate analytical framework or household models that are consistent with the goals and the socio-economic context in which the producers operate. A note on a possible framework for gender analysis in livestock technology research is given below.
The literature on gender indicates that in analysing gender roles most researchers used two broad household models, though others did not explicitly use any model. The characteristics of the two household models are briefly described below. The theoretical underpinnings of the household models are based on the new household economics pioneered by Becker (1965) and synthesised by Singh et al. (1986) and Haddad et al. (1997). The essential feature of Becker’s (1965) approach is that, with a set of preferences, the household combines its resources (principally labour/time) and marketable goods to generate household utility. The household models—unitary and collective—both treat the farm household as a unit of production and consumption.
This model takes Becker’s (1965) view, treating the household as a single entity with one set of preferences, represented by a household utility function. Given a set of prices, the household pools its resources and allocates them among its members according to their competence in converting the resources into goods from which the household derives utility.
An attractive feature of the unitary approach is that the arguments in the utility function can extend to cover the demand for any type of good and its distribution among household members (Pitt 1997). Although the unitary approach allows for intra-household analysis, i.e. analysis of differential outcomes across household members as the product of a single decision maker, it does not attribute diverse outcomes to variations in preferences of household members. This implies that preferences of household members are aggregated, whether or not they vary. The conclusions resulting from the application of the unitary model have been questioned on this basis. Samuelson (1956), Sen (1966) and Becker (1974, 1981) outlined possible solutions to the problem, though some of these have been questioned in the development context.
Folbre (1986), Bruce (1989) and Alderman et al. (1995) suggest that the identity of the family member controlling income affects how it is used. It is particularly maintained that incremental income effects on household food expenditure and nutritional status are larger from income controlled by women rather than by men (Katz 1995; Quisumbing et al. 1995; Thomas 1997). This suggests that the unitary view of the household can have serious limitations for design of food security policy, implementation and evaluation, if household members do not have a common goal but rather act as individuals.
Alternative models, ‘collective household models’, that allow heterogeneity in preferences among household decision makers have been developed recently (Ulph 1988; McElroy 1990; Kanbur 1991; Carter and Katz 1992; Chiappori 1992; Lundberg and Pollak 1993). These models explicitly consider the household as a collective entity, but with more than one decision-making unit. They allow the household welfare index to be dependent on prices and income, as well as tastes, thereby not requiring any unique index to be interpreted as a utility function (Chiappori 1992; Haddad 1994; Haddad et al. 1997). Collective models are categorised as co-operative and non-co-operative depending on the allocation mechanism.
The co-operative models are grouped into two classes. The first one assumes that household decisions are always efficient in the Pareto sense (Chiappori 1992; Browning et al. 1994). The rules of distribution regulating intra-household allocation are estimated from the data. The second model, in addition to assuming Pareto optimality, applies more structure on the household, by depicting household decisions as resulting from some bargaining process and applying the tools of co-operative game theory (Manser and Brown 1980; McElroy 1990). The division of gains from household formation is modelled as a function of each member’s threat position.
The non-co-operative approach (Ulph 1988; Kanbur 1991; Lundberg and Pollak 1993) does not assume that members necessarily enter binding and enforceable contracts with each other. It assumes that household members have different preferences, do not pool resources and act as autonomous subeconomies. The only link between individuals is the net transfer of income between them (Haddad et al. 1997). The tenets of collective models may not be applicable in many developing countries, where men and women may not always own different resources. Division of responsibilities and tasks, and ownership of livestock and collection of revenues from sale of different farm products by different family members (husbands, wives and children) do not, in most cases reflect control of resources, income or other outcomes. Also there may be flows of resources and incomes between members of different sexes in the household, but such flows do not generally denote control and exchange (e.g. intra-household labour market) relationships, but rather sharing of responsibilities and incomes to assist individuals meet their socially assigned responsibilities, which contribute towards the attainment of family goals and welfare.
The norm in most developing countries is that couples marry with common objectives—to share their lives together happily to the extent possible, have children and raise them together. Other reasons to form families include religion, culture and the history of human societal evolution. This necessitates division of responsibilities and tasks by gender, a phenomenon that has existed culturally since the beginning of humankind. Gender division of responsibilities and tasks was defined for different household members, given the resource base, population pressure and economic conditions. Though the economic, demographic and resource endowments have been changing, gender division of labour—a cultural norm—has changed more slowly. It is a structural problem that cannot be always changed by law or regulation. However, technological change, based on research and market opportunities, can alter division of labour by gender. The unitary model may thus be a more appropriate framework in the context of most developing countries. Within this framework, there may still exist gender inequities in terms of work burden and benefits, which need to be understood and addressed to make development more equitable. Questions arise when there is a major imbalance or when a new intervention creates imbalances in the volume of work between men, women and children. Examples of these questions are why there is an imbalance and whether it is ‘fair’ (according to what criteria) and permanent, whether it is subject to change over time, and how imbalances in workload influence current and future welfare of the households.
Changes resulting from the introduction of new agricultural technologies may create temporary imbalances in roles and in access to resources and benefits. These impacts of change have to be measured in terms of net benefits to the family rather than to specific individuals; these impacts should also be evaluated in terms of temporary or permanent imbalances in the family. Some technological changes, such as the green revolution, initially seemed to increase the labour burden of women and reduce their access to traditional cash generating activities as in rice processing, for example. However, adjustments in labour allocation by gender have taken place both at the household and higher social/economic organisational levels through the extension of markets and other institutional changes. Structural change in employment is an essential feature in the process of development, and may negatively affect some family members in the short run, but not necessarily in the long run.
Summary: Conceptual models for gender analysis |
Research on gender and agricultural production needs to be undertaken using appropriate conceptual and theoretical constructs that fit the varying socio-cultural situations in the developing world. The theoretical underpinnings of such a framework can be based on the new household economics. The tenets of the collective models may not be applicable in many developing countries, where men and women do not always own different resources, thus the simpler unitary model may be appropriate. |
