Volume 1, Number 2
March 1995

New Reports

On Credit

An IFPRI study of Freedom From Hunger's Credit With Education Program For Women in Mali (de Groote et al. 1994) evaluates the impact of this program on women's income, household food security, agricultural production, and women's and children's health and nutrition status. The report found that project credit raised women's incomes, but only for women with no preschoolers. Moreover, controlling for overall household income level, increases in women's income improved women's nutrition, but only for women from the wealthiest two-thirds of households. Women's income increases also improve preschooler weight-for-height, but only for preschoolers below 24 months in age. The results of the study suggested that access to project credit but were not able to use it effectively, and, in fact, became worse off after the project. The clear implication is that the project would be even more successful if the time burdens on participating women could be reduced.

Another study on women and financial services in Africa Egypt, Ghana, and Uganda by Morris and Adams at Ohio State University (1994) concludes "Overall our studies showed that many women are finance literate: they know how to save, they know how to lend, they know how to repay loans, and they know how to use funds wisely...Because of their position in society, women are also concerned about unforeseen occurrences. Thus they desire unutilized credit reserves that can be drawn upon in times of emergency, reserves that are often not provided through traditional formal credit...There is often a mismatch between what the formal financial system offers and what women find to be most useful."

A recent World Bank paper evaluating the Grameen Bank and BRAC programs in Bangladesh by Pitt and Khandker (1994) shows that men and women use credit for very different things: women use credit for investments in child health and household food security, and men, more for personal expenditures. But another study of women and credit in Bangladesh, this time from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, cautions that credit targeted to women can be appropriated by men (Goetz and Sen Gupta 1994). It is not clear if the nominal increase in women's status translates into a real increase in status (can a quid pro quo be demanded by women in return for male access to credit) or worsening conditions for women (longer hours in getting the credit, only to have it taken away against their will). One possible disincentive for male appropriation is to associate the credit with something that falls within the woman's traditional sphere of influence, such as combining credit with nutrition education.

A recent article in World Development reminds us that the matter of differential access, uses, and impacts of credit on women remains a controversial subject. Baydas, Meyer, and Aguilera-Alfred (1994), also from Ohio State University, ask: does discrimination against women in formal credit markets represent reality or rhetoric? Using data from Ecuador, their analysis indicates that although fewer women than men entre- preneurs apply for formal credit, the percentage of women entrepreneurs that apply for credit is greater than the percentage of men entrepreneurs that apply. Their study further finds that once the decision to apply for credit is made, men and women find it equally difficult to get access to that formal credit.

On Water and Irrigation

An extensive review of the literature on the gender aspects of irrigation management by Margreet Zwarteveen (1995) of IIMI has just been published. The review shows that most irrigation plans and designs continue to be based on the assumption that the farm household consists of a male farmer, his wife, and a number of children. Different male-female access to resources (including irrigation) and assumptions that women can be automatically counted upon to provide free family labor to irrigate crops, and that they have a say in spending the proceeds of that labor, lead to irrigation projects that are poorly designed. Irrigation project designers seldom realize that men and women have different incentives to invest in irrigation, and thus evaluate new irrigation opportunities differently. Margreet warns, however, that changes in irrigation management practices and institutions cannot on their own be expected to redress societal gender imbalances, but notes that changes in irrigation management may be a good entry point to challenge wider male-female access to rights and resources.

On Fertility

A published study by Schuler and Hashemi (1994) from Bangladesh finds that the greater social and economic empowerment of women (as measured by an empowerment index that they construct) leads to more frequent use of family planning services and a smaller desired family size. In a similar vein, an unpublished study by IFPRI researchers on a sample of Kenyan households from South Nyanza Province found that improved women's status had a negative impact on the number of pregnancies of evermarried women in the sample, even controlling for women's education and household income. The indicators of women's status used were the age rank of an evermarried woman in the household and control of a plot for cereal production (Kennedy, Haddad, and Jacinto 1994).

While applauding the renewed focus on women in understanding fertility behavior, some have begun to wonder if the exclusion of men from fertility initiatives and questionnaires makes sense. A research project--from Ann Biddlecom (Brown University) and Aurora Perez (University of the Philippines, Diliman) addresses this issue from the point of view of the costs and benefits of including fathers in fertility studies (Biddlecom and Perez 1994). They conclude that it is crucial to understand the different way in which men and women construct their experiences and expectations about family and fertility. They encourage the use of identical surveys for men and women, and suggest that relaxing the principle that the two interviews should take place simultaneously would reduce survey costs in terms of missed appointments, especially in urban contexts.

On Time Allocation

An IFPRI multicountry study on time allocation, which served as a background paper for the World Bank's paper for the upcoming Beijing Conference on Women (September 1995), was completed in 1995 by Brown and Haddad (1995). Among other things, the study supports the commonly held belief that women spend more hours in productive activities per day than men. Agricultural commercialization policies need to pay particular attention to how output increases are generated. In Asian examples where land is constrained, higher income generated from improved yields translates initially into lower female time burdens in agriculture but higher burdens in nonagricultural activities. Further increases in income are associated with reductions in female time burdens. In the African contexts, agricultural commercialization took place through an expansion in cultivated land as opposed to substitution of modern varieties or cash crops on previously cultivated land. Relative to the traditional varieties, adoption of modern hybrid seeds is often consistent with an increase in total labor demand, although this is generally accompanied by a lower relative share of female labor. The overall result, however, is usually an increase in female labor demand.

This result is echoed by research from the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) in the Côte d'Ivoire, which observes that women provide the bulk of labor to extensive rice production, and that this proportion actually increases as rice moves from extensive to intensive cultivation (contact: Dr. Akinwumi Adesina). This begs the question: what happens to control of income and labor allocation when rice becomes a recognized cash crop?

Gender Research in the CGIAR

Hilary Feldstein (Head, Gender Research Program, CGIAR, currently a visitor at IFPRI), has produced a document that summarizes gender-related research completed and ongoing at the CG centers. The document was released over the network in bite-sized portions in February 1995 (Feldstein 1995).

IFPRI Presentation at Beijing Prepcom

IFPRI prepared a brief on "Generating Food Security: Women as Producers, Gatekeepers, and Shock Absorbers" for the Prepcom meetings in New York for the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing. The brief examines the key role that women play in maintaining the three pillars of food security: food production, food access, and food utilization, and looks at the high social costs of the constraints that women face in generating food security. The brief will be mailed separately to all recipients of the Gender-CG Newsletter, and is also available upon request from Christina Abad, c.abad@cgiar.org.

Other Correspondence

Gender-CG is beginning to serve as a forum for a wide range of information exchange on gender and intrahousehold issues. Calls for papers, position announcements, and questions on literature searches have been a steady feature of the network. Please keep them coming in. Other news: Meyra Sebello Mendoza, a researcher at IFPRI, is a new member of the American Agricultural Economics Association's Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics....Jacques de Guerney, the FAO (Rome) focal point on HIV/AIDS research, is very interested to hear from those working on HIV/AIDS from an explicit intrahousehold perspective....The InterAmerican Development Bank has recently set up a Gender Analysis Unit, headed up by Marguerite Berger, formerly of ICRW and the Futures group.... Caroline Moser and Julian Holland's (World Bank) four-country study on women, poverty, and vulnerability in urban Zambia, Ecuador, the Philippines, and Hungary is near completion....A Conference and Global Network Meeting on Women in Agriculture 1994 was convened by Anna Lottkowitz and Margaret Carroll in Australia to gather together women interested in developing a global network for women in agriculture....Pablo Eyzaguirre of IPGRI is interested in organizing a meeting on the role of women in genetic resources conservation and use....USAID/WID started a Washington-based seminar series on WID issues in a number of sectors.

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