Easing women's working day in Sub-Saharan Africa

Throughout this century, women in farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa have been subject to mounting labour demands. This note argues that the nature of their work, a vertical production process including raw material extraction, value-added production and distribution to the point of consumption, has not been adequately addressed by donor agencies' piecemeal project intervention. The author advocates the implementation of a homestead economics programme to address the problem of rural women's domestic work burden. Multidisciplinary teams of technologists and social scientists, in collaboration with women of childbearing age, would seek time and labour-saving solutions to work bottlenecks by means of the systematic study of the spatial pattern and complex multitasking activities of women's working day. Teenage girls, outside the formal education system, would be specially targeted for training and income-generating activities, with emphasis on creating new economic and social expectations. It is argued that alleviating women's daily workload through technical innovation and better organization establishes a material foundation for women to challenge gender imbalance.