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4 Access to and control over resources
4.1 Access to material and financial resources and services
Although women play a central role in agriculture and also in the post-harvest sector in particular, in comparison to men they have less access to material and financial resources (land, means of production, or money in form of credit or something similar) and services (use of labour force, etc.) For example, land titles are for the most part issued in the names of heads of households - mostly men - and therefore women frequently have only indirect access to land, through their fathers or husbands.
Access to financial resources
Next, access to financial resources in particular will be more closely examined: at the outset of their marriage, women who do not come from prosperous families often have at their disposal only a small amount of starting capital. They invest this mostly in processing and / or small-scale trade, just as they do any profit realised. Often the meagre capital is used up in a short time through business failures or following pregnancies. In such situations, women still have some financial means left only if banks or savings and loan associations allow them access to credit.
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Economic self-sufficiency
"Many women regard building up an economic activity between pregnancies as a labour of Sisyphus, for, with every new child, they use up their capital and savings and once again become more dependent on the man...During a stay in the village of Atotinga (Bénin), it was observed how particular women - who already had five or six children - resisted becoming pregnant again because they wanted to extend their economic activities. Their husbands stood on their own marital rights, however, and fought against the increasing independence of their wives. Public opinion supported them in this and went against the women, who all too frequently strive for economic independence to the neglect of their marital duties...It is striking how often successful woman traders turn out to be older women or women with comparatively few children..." (Feil 1995, p. 50, S. 50).
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Access to material resources and services
Introduction of new processing methods in the post-harvest sector (e.g., manufacture of new products or increase in output through technical innovation) raises various questions:
- Who has control over the resources needed to do the work?
- land, water, machinery / implements, drying and storage facilities, labour force, know-how
- Who finances the necessary machinery?
- Who controls the means of transportation?
- Who builds storehouses for temporary or final storage?
- Who develops markets?
- Who decides the conditions under which resources are committed?
On the project level it is important to examine gender-specific differences with regard to access to resources, in order to orient project design accordingly.
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Using draft animals to power mills
Expectations were particularly high that the introduction of animal-powered mills would save women both work and time:
But in many parts of Africa the use of draft animals to drive the mills proved more difficult than at first expected. In most cases, the men of a household have control over the draft animals and are unwilling to give up their right to use them. Even at times when the animals are hardly needed, the men prefer to let them rest so that they stay in good condition for - in the men's eyes - more important tasks (agricultural work and transportation). Thus the women have less chance to use the animals to power the mills.
In countries where no draft animals are available to women to power mills (Burkina Faso), they must form groups to acquire them. Another problem is that women often have no experience handling draft animals and so must depend on the help of a man. In practice, this causes problems in several respects:
- additional cost of paying a miller and dependence on his time and willingness to work
- need to clarify who is in charge of and responsible for the animal
- women in difficult economic circumstances can often only afford an inferior donkey which cannot do the work adequately
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Regarding access to services, the relationship between the project and government extension personnel, mostly men, on the one side, and the women within the target group, on the other, is not always free of problems. Relations between these two groups are, as a rule, marked by a mutual lack of acceptance, as well as by too little consideration for the specific needs of women, etc., on the part of the project and extension staff. On the project level, the following should be clarified:
- What extension services are requested by women / men?
- What extension services are offered for women / men?
- What access is there to extension services?
- extension staff (men / women)
- extension approach
- target group
- frequency
- costs
- results
Individual and collective strategies for resource allocation1
Traditionally, there are well-functioning savings and loan associations in nearly all West African countries. Here the combination of credit cooperatives with individual credit use has proved relatively successful. Less successful, on the other hand, are the collectively financed and operated facilities such as mills or grain banks - whether their management is in the hands of men, women or mixed groups. Among the factors in play here are organisational shortcomings, too little sense of responsibility, conflicts over repairs, uses of reserves and profit, one-sided personal gain, and lack of profitability compared to private one-person operations.
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Collective loans for individual businesses
The women of Burkina Faso had their reservations about a project that linked financial support to collective storage, processing and marketing as a condition. The women regarded their products as a form of liquidity, access to which they did not want to let out of their hands under any circumstances.
In contrast, the target group accepted a collective loan for the speculative warehousing of peanuts, which the women divided among themselves in order to buy, store and sell individually (having agreed on a maximum purchase price). Subsequently the loan was repaid collectively.
The goal of the project was to keep a portion of the products in the village and to earn a profit to top up the cooperative account (GTZ-PfN 1994).
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Generally, however, great interest is to be found among women in "projects for women's groups." Often this is because they cannot bear investment costs alone and therefore put up with collective activities which they themselves do not favour, but which the financiers want. On the project level, it would be worthwhile considering models that would make it possible for women to finance investments at the same time for individual businesses through group loans. Granting credit to individuals should also be possible, basically. The following questions need to be answered:
- What possibilities are offered for men and women to save ?
- separate savings and loan associations for men and women, respectively
- banks
- How is access to credit regulated ?
- creditor
- amount of credit
- duration
- interest
- surety
- What individual / collective strategies are available?
In case collective strategies are relevant:
- goals of existing collectives (procurement of loans / subsidies, competitive advantages)
- history of origin (voluntary, forced)
- financing
- group dynamics
- efficiency (particularly relative to individual solutions)
- How can each of these strategies be supported ?
4.2 Control over resources and goods produced
Men's right to dispose of women's property
Besides their superior access to resources, in many cases men also have the right to dispose of and control property in form of land as well as monetary funds and other resources. Moreover, they also not infrequently exercise control over goods produced by their wives / womenfolk, mothers and daughters.
Therefore, for the purposes of project design, it is important to examine the following questions:
- How is the product used ?
- proportion for own use
- proportion for marketing
- Who decides the use of goods produced ?
- Who receives the related income ?
- Who decides how the income will be used ?
- full / limited right of disposal
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Control over financial resources
In some regions of North Ghana the growing of yams is traditionally the man's business, but the woman is responsible for selling them and receives a commission from her husband for this. It came out in conversations with women that there are great differences in how these commissions are handled: it is not unusual for the men simply to keep the commission themselves. Moreover, many of the women questioned reported that they deposit the funds they earn (e.g., in form of small animals) with brothers or other relatives to keep their property out of the hands of their husbands (GTZ - PfN 1995).
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Along with increasing demands on women's time, changes are taking place on the level of family financial obligations, which tend to be more and more redistributed at the women's expense. Women's contribution to family upkeep is growing ever more significant. In most West African societies women manage their own fields and maintain their own stores.
Formally, they also have control over what they have produced and stored (cf. Chapter 4.2), but on the contrary, in practice, family quarrels about distribution are seen with increasing frequency.
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Women's granaries
Studies in Cercle de Kolikouro (Mali) and in Sanmatenga Province (Burkina Faso) have shown that there are no common granaries in these regions from which all family members can help themselves as needed. Responsibilities for, and therefore the rights of disposal of, the contents of the granaries are individually regulated. So, for example, there is the grenier du chef de famille, du chef de menage and the grenier de la femme. For the most part, the women themselves build at least the small granaries (canaús) and store in them both their own products and also what they receive from their husbands as payment in kind for work done in the fields.
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With the weapons of a woman
Studies in Atotinga (Benin) have shown that many men wish to reduce their commitments (responsibility for the family's own needs ) and reckon on their wives contributing the maize they have grown to the household. The women, however, try to sell their maize as soon as possible after the harvest, to avoid the social obligation to apply it to the needs of the family. Only in a few cases involving prosperous women is it to be seen that they have set up a maize bin for commercial reasons. A further evasive strategy of women is to plant market crops such as tomatoes and black-eyed peas, which are in any case consumed at home only in limited amounts. Thus the women are using a strategy of innovation to escape their culturally determined role as additional "provider" for the household. Since as a rule they occupy a weaker social position in the village than the men, they are unable to display their resistance openly. But this doesn't hinder them from taking as much advantage as possible of the behavioural scope they are permitted. (Cf. Feil 1995, p. 217)
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It is obvious that, in this case and in comparable situations, project activities implemented to improve storage in order to take advantage of seasonal price differences completely overlook the needs of women.
Ownership of property upon termination of marriage
When a marriage is ended through death or divorce, women often lose access to and control over important material resources (land, money), services (use of their children as labour force) and produced goods (harvest, etc.) To take this into account in designing the project, it is important to clarify:
- What are the consequences of the death of a spouse / a divorce ?
- inheritance law
- costs of burial, divorce
- access to and control over resources
- property situation
1 cf.: Seibel, Hans Dieter (1996): Financial Systems Development and Microfinance, GTZ Eschborn, TZ-Verlag Rossdorf.
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