Agriculture, Food, and Food Security - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 131

women and girls play an important, largely unpaid, role
in generating family income by providing labor for plant-
ing, weeding, harvesting and threshing crops, and pro-
cessing produce for sale. Women might also earn a small
income for themselves by selling vegetables from home
gardens or forest products. They spend this income on
meeting family food needs and child education.

removed from school to assist with farming and house-
hold tasks.
Since the bulk of women' s work remains unpaid and
unrecognized, it is usually not counted as “income.” Since
men are the “earners,” they are perceived to work harder.
In the latter part of the twentieth century , the United Na-
tions, World Bank , and a variety of other influential or-
ganizations came to recognize the fundamental role of
women in agriculture and food security . T To illustrate this
point, one study in the Indian Himalayas revealed that on
a2.47 acre (1 ha) plot over the course of a year on average,
a pair of bullocks worked 1,064 hours; a man worked
1,212 hours; and a woman worked 3,485 hours.
Not only do women usually work longer hours than
men, but also they earn less as paid laborers. Female farm
workers' wages are lower than men' s, while low-paid tasks
in agro-processing are routinely “feminized.” In other
words, since it is understood that “women' is work isn't as
good as men' s,” it isn't worthy of equal pay . Therefore,
low-paying jobs are “women' s work.” In Pakistan, women
earn a mere 33 percent of men' s wages. In Indonesia and
Thailand, the figures are 51 and 61 percent, respectively .
Although women make substantial contributions to
household well-being and agricultural production, men
largely control the income. (Thai and matrilineal soci-
eties in Malaysia are exceptions.) Some 70 percent of In-
donesian women are not permitted to keep their income
or decide how it should be used. Failure to value
women' s work reduces them to virtual non-entities in
economic transactions, allocation of household re-
sources, and wider community decision making.
Money can bring respect to women. In rural
Bangladesh, where Grameen Bank and other NGOs have
helped some women, women use the phrase Garam
T aka— “weighty money .” Money has weight because it
gives women control over their earnings and assets,
which gives them weight within the household. One
woman reports: “I gave 20,000 Taka to my husband for
his fuel wood business, now my voice is louder than his.”
And another woman says: ”If you have no money , there is
no value for your choice. Y ou are sitting in the corner like
a little thief. If you have assets, everyone loves you.”
Women have few property or land rights. With the
death of a husband, land is often inherited by his family ,
who can leave the wife destitute. Women' s exclusion
from control and ownership of property or land can lead
them to the following, in the words of young Nepali
women, “If we are not taken care of at home, we go to
our parental home. If our parents reject us, we go to In-
dia” (referring to the sex trade in Mumbai).

FLEXING GENDER ROLES
As agriculture becomes increasingly commercialized, the
dominant position of men is changing gender roles—often
in men' s favor. For example, as urban demand for vegeta-
bles increases, men are expropriating women' s gardens
and turning them into larger commercial enterprises.
This diminishes the role of women in household security
and their social standing in the community .
Another growing trend is outmigration of poor, rural
men in search of employment, although a significant num-
ber have been returning because urban job opportunities
have declined with the recent economic crisis. If men do
leave, however, women are left with sole responsibility for
food production and child-rearing. Consumed with plant-
ing and animal care, gathering water and firewood (often
from faraway sources) along with the demands of children
and households, women have little time to attend educa-
tional programs and they often have to withdraw their
children from school to help them.
Women' s experiences of economic growth and re-
form in agriculture and other economic sectors are medi-
ated through their gendered position within and outside
the household. As we discussed in Chapter 3, percep-
tions of gender are deeply rooted in society . They vary
widely between and within cultures, and change over
time. But in all cultures, gender determines power and
access to resources for both females and males. Female
power and resources are lowest in rural areas of the de-
veloping world and rural women comprise the majority
of the global poor. They have the least education and the
highest illiteracy rates. The poorest of all are female-
headed households.
Rural women suffer systematic discrimination in ac-
cess to resources essential for socioeconomic develop-
ment. Credit, seed, fertilizer, and other supply facilities
and services generally are not geared to dealing with
women. Women are often excluded from training pro-
grams such as irrigation management. Rural women are
rarely consulted in development projects that ultimately
assist men and add to women' s workloads. When work
burdens increase, girls are more likely than boys to be