27 June 2006, Rome – More than any other
group, female-headed households in Ethiopia’s Southern Tigray region – one of
the poorest in the world – have little access to tree and plant resources, which
are vital for their livelihoods.
“Female-headed households, which
constitute nearly 30 percent of this region’s population, are among the most
destitute,” according to Patricia Howard, a research professor at Wageningen
University in the Netherlands.
In a study recently presented at FAO
headquarters (*) following four months of field research in Southern Tigray,
Howard underlines “the striking correlation between extreme poverty and
female-headed households.” The study was conducted in conjunction with an FAO
project on improving food security and nutrition funded by
Belgium.
“Being a member of a female-headed household in highland
Ethiopia means having a 35 percent chance of being destitute, compared with only
an 8 percent chance if one belongs to a male-headed household,” according to the
study.
“Female household heads are far more likely to be landless and,
when they do have access to land, 70 percent must sharecrop it out – losing
around half of the yield in the process – since they cannot access enough labour
and livestock to farm it themselves.”
They also lack access to plant
resources. In a region severely affected by soil erosion, deforestation and
overgrazing, such access has been eroding due not only to cultural bias that
leads to gender inequality in access to assets but also to inadequate measures
that enclose common grazing lands and woodlots, restrict their use, and
encourage planting of single species, according to the study.
The study
also deplores cultural factors detrimental to women, such as high divorce rates
– in Tigray the average marriage lasts only 7.5 years – which lead to the
diminution and fragmentation of farms.
“Setting up a new household,
divorcing one spouse in order to marry another with more land, and having
children with more than one woman all presented other means especially for men
to gain access to additional land,” according to the study, which reveals that
the average number of children that a Tigrinian woman will have in her lifetime
is around 6.8.
Noting that poor female-headed households are currently
supported by food aid and food-for-work programmes, the study notes that despite
formal equality between men and women “their specific needs are otherwise barely
addressed while, at the same time, they remain socially and economically
excluded.”
“Development dynamics in the highlands appear not just to
marginalize but to continually generate these extremely poor households as
though they were a structural feature of particular economic policies, like
under-employment or inflation.”
Development interventions should be
geared towards female-headed households’ realities. Income-generating
activities, home gardens and fuelwood initiatives are badly needed, according to
the study.
The FAO food security project
In this context,
the FAO project, with support from the Belgium Survival Fund, has since 2001
implemented a series of initiatives targeting food security and nutrition
problems through interventions in agriculture, health, education, water and
sanitation.
Female-headed households account for 80 percent of all
malnutrition cases in the project area, covering disadvantaged rural zones of
Northern Shoa and Southern Tigray.
“The objective is to strengthen their
access to assets such as land, water resources, skills, and technology -- and
also to improve their health, their diet and, ultimately, their social status,”
explains FAO expert Karel Callens.
Among the most successful initiatives,
Callens mentions the production of fruits and vegetables, “a novelty in
communities where less than 6 percent of households grew vegetables.” Also the
production of cash crops like garlic and spices “proved to be a viable
income-generating activity, especially for landless households and smallholders
without oxen.”
Other initiatives included the planting of degraded
communal grazing land with fuelwood trees and the introduction of energy-saving
stoves.
Belgium has committed around US$3.6 million for the same project
for the 2006-2008 period.
(*) The study was presented at a session
organized by FAO’s Gender and Population Division and was supported by FAO’s
Livelihood Support Programme.