Volume 5, Number 1
July 1999

Workshop Held on Poor Women Rice Farmers

Last September, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) held a workshop to discuss strategic research on gender issues in a rice-based household economy. The workshop brought together social and biological scientists from around the world and female farmer cooperators from Central Luzon in the Philippines.

Life is changing on the Asian farm as the men head for the cities and the women face the enormous challenge of growing food, finding money, and taking care of their families. Participants at the workshop emphasized that much research needed to be done at the farm level to understand how the shifting roles, responsibilities, and social relationships occasioned by these changes will affect farm households.

Male heads of farm households in many parts of Asia are increasingly migrating on a temporary or semipermanent basis to urban areas to seek better paid work. In this situation, women are often left with increasing responsibilities for managing farming activities. These women, with inadequate access to education and technical knowledge, are often handicapped in maintaining the productivity of their farms and exerting themselves in household decisionmaking that affects food production, income, and the well-being of their families. Workshop participants discussed these issues and the research needed to uplift such marginalized women. Members of the Women's Association of Tampac, Nueva Ecija, joined researchers in a dialogue, sharing their experience in testing and evaluating appropriate technologies developed by IRRI—such as a portable rice micromill, a rice flour mill, a rice husk stove, and seed management.