Quantifying women's and men's rural resource portfolios – empirical evidence from Western Shoa in Ethiopia

Abstract

It has been observed in many places that women access fewer resources than men across the range of resources in rural households. This unequal starting point inhibits the process of resource capitalization of women, and their capacity to move out of poverty. This article assesses the gender asset gap systematically, using data from two formal surveys undertaken in 2006 in rural Ethiopia, covering a probability sample comprising 604 farming women and men. Ethnography is used to assist in the identification of the locally relevant resources, which are organized in accordance with the sustainable livelihoods approach. The empirical analysis is dedicated to the assessment of women's and men's access to the identified range of rural resources, using descriptive statistics, and a specific analytical eye focuses on those women who head their own households. Doing so, the article quantifies the inequalities in resource access of women and men.

Il a souvent été observé que les femmes ont moins accès que les hommes aux diverses ressources des ménages ruraux. Cette inégalité inhibe le processus de capitalisation des ressources des femmes, et leur capacité à sortir de la pauvreté. Cet article évalue de manière systématique les écarts d'actifs liés au genre, en se basant sur les données de deux enquêtes systématiques menées en 2006 dans les régions rurales de l'Éthiopie. Celles-ci portaient sur un échantillon aléatoire composé de 604 agriculteurs et agricultrices. L'ethnographie fut utilisée afin d'aider à l'identification des ressources pertinentes au niveau local, qui sont analysées conformément à l'approche des moyens d'existence durables. L'analyse porte sur l'évaluation de l'accès des hommes et des femmes à l'ensemble des ressources rurales identifiées, avec un volet spécifique traitant des chefs de ménages féminins. Ainsi, l'article quantifie les inégalités dans l'accès aux ressources des femmes et des hommes.

Keywords:

• gender
• Ethiopia
• female-headed households
• rural development
• livelihoods
• social capital

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the team of enumerators for excellent assistance during field research, and thank the respondents for sharing their time and knowledge. The financial support of the research division of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

 1. For a detailed description of these forms of capital please refer to Woolcock (2000).

 2. Merton (1968) used the term ‘Matthew effect’ to describe how, among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than unknown researchers would, even if their work was similar, and that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous.

 3. Afaan Oromo is the second most widely spoken indigenous language in Africa (Kumsa 1997, p. 116), and the Oromo occupy approximately 40% of Ethiopia (Gascon 1997, p. 365).

 4. The area is characterized by land degradation (Terefe 2001), and land is scarce and fragmented due to population pressure. Basic social infrastructure is weak, and economic services are limited and there is a shortage of agricultural inputs and services; most notably of fertilizers (Kelbessa 2001). The area is moreover frequently affected by shocks, such as climatic fluctuations, animal diseases, market failures, and human diseases (including HIV/AIDS) (Mekbib, Kassayeb, Getachew, Tadesse and Debebe 2003).

 5. These were classified into six broad groups to facilitate the analysis: the government organizations, which included the Peasant Association and the Got; the productive organizations, comprising marketing networks, labour exchange networks, and the Grain Bank; membership in projects organized by non-governmental organizations (NGOs); savings and credit organizations which included savings (unspecified), iqqub, and Eshet; religious organizations, comprising mahabär, and eddir.

 6. These were government representatives (such as Got leaders, leaders of the Peasant Association and the Wereda administration); informal local leaders (Jaarsa); productive agents (middlemen or merchants, and extension agents); and the ‘outside’ (Addis Ababa and other countries).

 7. Cf. the position-generator methodology used by Nan Lin (2001, pp. 90–92).

 8. For example, in other places HIV/AIDS has forced farm households to sell off land, and women's right to remain on the land upon widowhood may not be secure (IFAD 2002). However, no data are available on that.

 9. This data has to be interpreted as rough indications of land access as the variable does not distinguish between access to and ownership of land, nor between the difference in quality and quantity of land.

10. Gamma (Γ) is a symmetric measure of association between two ordinal variables, which ranges between − 1 and 1. Values close to 1 indicate a strong relationship between the two variables. Values close to 0 indicate little or no relationship.

11. For men and women in households headed by men the association is weaker when it comes to the number of contacts (Γ .127–.151) and actually negative when it comes to membership in organizations (Γ –.051/–.117).

12. However, according to Porter (1997, p. 585), ‘perhaps nowhere in the law of Ethiopia is there a greater discrepancy between the Constitution and the Civil Code than in those articles affecting women’.

13. According to Bothner, Hayns and Podolny (2007, p. 4) the Matthew effect is central among the dynamics that generate social and economic inequality.

14. There is also considerable controversy regarding how social capital can be measured (see Lin 2001, pp. 26 ff. for a discussion on this).

15. Men's membership was 1–10 organizations (median 3); among women the median was 3, with a range of 1–9 organizations; the median of women who headed their households was 2, in the range 1–7.

16. Indeed, the variations in markers of sociability between the resource-rich and the resource-poor are highly signficiant (t-value − 6.07 for organizations significant at the < .000 level; and t-value − 9.38 for contacts, significant at the < .000 level).