Gender matters - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 88

(Mies 1986). This ideal encouraged senior males to become breadwinners and
heads of households, while women were idealized as being responsible for
taking care of the home and children (ibid.). The division of labour worked
because all family members had their assigned duties, which in combination
covered the reproductive and consumption needs of the entire family (Tsuruta
2008).
When structural adjustment programs (SAPs) were implemented across
SSA in the 1980s and 1990s in an effort to strengthen the continent's failing
economies through liberalization, privatization and fiscal stabilization measures,
the conditions of this gender division of labour changed (Mohan et al. 2000).
Changes began when the SAPs encouraged governments to cut fertilizer
subsidies, which led farmers to shift from cash crop development back to crops
with quick or regular year-round returns (Bryceson 2002a). With the economic
returns from cash cropping declining significantly, many men and children
had to seek other income-earning opportunities, to prevent impoverishment
(Francis 1998). In the LVB, elderly farmers testify that this shift had devastating
impacts on families, as most men were forced to abandon their cotton farms
and migrate to urban areas to seek employment. Moreover, SAP conditions
prompted bankrupt African governments to remove subsidies on school fees
and user fees at health centres, which meant that the cost of welfare services rose
radically, to be paid by the patients (Francis 1998; Ellis 2000; Bryceson 2002a).
These prices have remained high throughout the LVB, consuming a substantial
portion of smallholders' household budgets (Gabrielsson et al. 2013).
Overall, these economic policies have led to significant changes in the
organization of labour, and to reliance on cash in rural areas: agricultural work
has become increasingly replaced by non-agricultural work, unpaid work has
become paid, and activities formerly performed by the household are now
usually carried out by an individual (Francis, 2000; Bryceson 2002b). Part of
the reason lies in the significant inflation in prices of basic goods like cooking
oil, gasoline and sugar, and the price volatility of staple food crops caused by
the instability of the global market (Minot 2010). In addition, the widespread
impacts of the HIV and AIDS pandemic changes not only the continent's social
structures but also its food production systems (Hydén 2013). The devastation
of the pandemic is particularly evident in the LVB, where HIV prevalence on
the Kenyan side is estimated to be as high as 15 percent of the population and
even higher among widowed and divorced women, with many families left
traumatized and in financial crisis, in addition to the loss of labour (Gabrielsson
and Ramasar 2012).
For rural women in the LVB this stage of socio-economic development is
uniquely challenging: they have sole responsibility for feeding their families,
but are restricted from accessing and controlling the livelihood assets needed
to increase their food production and income diversification possibilities, such
as land, money, credits, farming tools and education (Gabrielsson and Ramasar
2012). According to focus groups discussions and individual interviews with