2 Living conditions of men and women in rural areas

Living conditions in the village

Infrastructure

Women, children and young people perform a substantial part of the work of transportation (water, firewood, bringing the harvest in, grain to the mill, harvest products to market, sick children to the doctor, etc.) While an inadequately developed infrastructure considerably increases demands on people's time and strength, a well-developed infrastructure saves both for other activities. Examples of useful alternatives include self-help activities, attending courses, or engaging in social and community affairs.

Important criteria for identifying gender-specific impacts made by the village infrastructure can be determined by asking:

• What infrastructure does the village offer in terms of streets, supply sources, and school and health systems?
• What relevance for women, men, children and youths (girls / boys) do these aspects have:
  • distance to markets, offices, savings banks, mills, etc.,
  • existence of public transportation,
  • existence of schools and training centres,
  • drinking water supply,
  • hospital, pharmacy, midwife, etc.,
  • accessibility of streets and school and health facilities during the rainy season.

Village development

In many cases, external actors have already supported approaches to village development in a particular village or its immediate vicinity / region. To coordinate various activities, to further develop existing approaches and to avoid repeating failures, it is worthwhile to analyse the experience they have gathered. A pertinent example would be the practically countless projects for introducing grain mills and the equally extensive studies of their success or lack of it. The conditions under which a mill can be profitably operated have been more or less exactly defined for years. Also well-known are the problems that arise from communal operation and the fact that use the mill gets will depend essentially on the size of the fees (Ceesay-Marenah 1992). It is only recently, on the other hand, that donor organisations can be seen to draw the corresponding conclusions from these facts.

To make an inventory of village development, these questions are relevant:

• Which organisations have intervened or are doing so at village level and what have they accomplished?
  • results of the work of government organisations, NGOs, international donors
• In which direction is the trend of the village (advance or decline)?
  • population size and age structure, literacy rate,
  • temporary / permanent migration,
  • number of women heading households,
  • agricultural operating funds available,
  • access to non-agricultural income sources .
    ((data for each item should be gender-specifically gathered).

Influence and significance of social authorities and village social structure

Social authorities are bound by the traditional conception of men's and women's roles to various extents. Therefore the influence they can have on improving women's social status (empowerment) also varies. Conflicts arising in this area should be analysed or inquired into with caution. Recourse must almost always be had to indirect questioning and methods.

Using the following criteria, an estimate can be made of the roles and social power of village authorities, as well as of their impacts on the situation of women:

• How is the influence of traditional / modern village authorities to be assessed?
  • projects for which approval of certain authorities is sought
  • projects that have failed for lack of approval,
  • bans / taboos for certain groups of people, observance of which is monitored by the authorities,
  • capacity for conflict management.
• What conflicts were successfully / unsuccessfully dealt with in the past by the inhabitants of the village?
  • number and nature of conflicts on the village level,
  • causes of success / failure of conflict management,
  • relation to neighbouring villages.

Special cultural, religious and / or ethnically determined features

Sociocultural aspects play a central role in achieving the project purpose and implementing individual activities. From a woman's viewpoint, customs and traditions can affect her situation in life, depending on which social values obtain, positively or negatively (restriction of her productivity and / or freedom of movement).

It should be clarified:

• What rules govern the way women and men live together within different cultural, religious and / or ethnic communities and how they live with other groups?
  • customs and traditions
  • precepts
  • bans, taboos

There may be very complex and complicated relationships in these areas. For this reason, researchers should attempt to begin the analysis as directly as possible with their own area of inquiry, but at the same time should not close their eyes to apparently insignificant or remote aspects.

2.2 Status within the family

Rights and duties of family members

The living conditions of women and men in rural areas are significantly influenced by variations in their family status. Here it should be taken into consideration that, particularly in Africa, a large - sometimes polygamously-structured - family, rather than a small one, must be assumed to be the central social unit. As a rule, very different rights and duties are assigned to individual family members. As regards status within the family, the structure of the family and individual freedom of movement / mobility are especially significant factors. Therefore it should be asked:

• How great is the mobility of individual family members ?
  • men and women (differentiated by head and junior wives; age and occupation),
  • activities of children and young people (boys / girls).
• How is the family structured ?
  • number and distribution of births among head and junior wives.

Material circumstances

The material circumstances of the family often decisively shape the social and economic situation of its women. This is true whether or not they have any personal control at all over the family income or share in it (cf. Chapter 4).

To identify the status of women and men in the family, the following questions should be answered and specified:

• How prosperous / poor is the family, and how does this affect women and men?
  • indicators of prosperity (cattle, housing, consumer goods, etc.),
  • savings, debts.
• How is family property and income distributed between women and men?

In this connection, an appropriate method adopted from the toolbox of participatory extension approaches is welfare ranking. By this method, using indicators set by the target group, differences between the financial circumstances of family members or village inhabitants are determined. The result, in the form of a relative social stratification, can make a valuable contribution to, among other things, target group identification¹.

Stability of the family structure

Processes of social change often cause family structures to change and, increasingly, to break up. This has impacts both on the gender and the overall social division of labour as well as on the family status of women and men.

As can be observed in many societies in developing countries, the woman's contribution to earning a family living takes on added significance precisely at the time the family finds itself in an economic crisis (unstable income, etc.)

On the one hand, this increases the burden on women; on the other, it is frequently associated with growing efforts on their part, as they face more duties, to win more rights as well.

In order to ascertain trends in family structures and their impacts on women and men, the following question may be posed:

• What mechanisms promote cohesion of the family / the break-up of formerly stable family structures?
  • economic insecurity
  • migration
  • value shifts (large or small family; proportion of arranged marriages, etc.)
  • marriage age
  • divorce rate
  • proportion of women as heads of household
  • proportion of men and women living alone