Theme: Women in developing countries spend many hours each day walking, which taxes their time and energy and can reduce productivity.
Worldwide, poorer rural people in developing countries lack transport and access to good roads. They therefore spend considerable time walking to complete their daily tasks. Many IFAD loan projects and studies recognize that this is even more often the case among rural women than it is among rural men. While walking, women also often carry their children on their backs and transport heavy tools, produce, or water. Development initiatives need to recognize adequately the resulting drain on women’s time and energy, as well as the implications for productivity and well-being.
IFAD’s 1998 evaluation of the Upper-East Region Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) in Ghana recognized rural women’s heavy workload. It found that the domestic responsibilities of rural women are very time-consuming largely because of the time needed to walk to water sources, fields, stores, schools and health posts. The same general pattern exists almost everywhere in the developing countries. Where women do marketing, they also often walk a distance of several miles to and from the marketplace.
Factors that increase walking time
An IFAD study undertaken in 1999 found that women in the hill districts of Nepal work around 16 hours per day. The study concluded that geographical and infrastructural factors aggravated the burden of the hours spent walking, which added to the long workdays. These factors included:
- the difficult terrain, which means that land plots are scattered or are on terraces;
- poor communications;
- poor access to basic services; and
- poor access to roads, markets and water supplies.
Although, in many countries, the terrain is not as rugged as it is in Nepal, other constraints are common and affect both men and women. In addition, women invariably face additional difficulties and have less access than men to animal transport or bicycles. Poor rural women generally walk everywhere they go, including on improved roads.
Road improvements are not enough
Tertiary roads in developing countries are usually built or maintained for the purpose of accommodating vehicular traffic rather than pedestrians. But such roads are often used mainly by pedestrians. An IFAD study in Uganda found that, of 715 journeys per day recorded at 55 points on rural roads, 75% were accomplished on foot, 22% on bicycle, and only 2% in vehicles. This is not an unusual situation. In fact, road improvements can deprive women, as well as children and men, of the tracks they previously used, leaving them at risk of being run over, or walking in ditches when there are no shoulders for walking along roads, or suffering foot pain when the road surfacing is rough.
Special constraints on women
Commonly, men decision-makers allocate women farmers the most remote, as well as the least fertile, land plots. For instance, in Ghana, land decisions at the community level tend to be dominated by men village chiefs, tindanas (landowners) and elders or heads of clans. When women do gain use of small plots, these are usually the plots that are the most remote and the least productive. IFAD studies have also found this to be typical in other countries.
Women in many countries are responsible for the animals around the homestead. Development projects sometimes introduce zero-grazing practices without recognizing that this will increase women’s workload. An IFAD study in the highlands of Kenya found that improved cattle breeds and a strategy of zero-grazing resulted in a situation in which women had to spend many additional hours in the collection of animal feed.
The burden placed on women’s time by inconvenient water sources is well recognized. An IFAD study in Mozambique compared water-collection times in a village that had a communal standpipe with the times in a village in which the water source was a two-hour round trip away. It found that, in the first village, women spent only 25 minutes per day collecting water, whereas, in the second village, they spent 131 minutes per day. The two hours or more per day that women frequently spend collecting water from distant rivers or springs could be put to use in farming, performing off-farm activities, or, simply, spending time with their children and resting.
In West and Central Africa, men may use bicycles or animal carts to go to towns or to transport items to market. But, normally, women farmers headload produce to market and headload consumer goods on the return trip. The IFAD assessment of rural poverty has estimated that the average woman in the region spends between 1 and 2.5 hours per day on such headloading. In Burkina Faso, it is estimated that, assuming a 300-workday year, the average farm woman carries about 20 kg over a distance of 2.5 km every day for marketing and other purposes. Headloading produce is not only more tiring, but limits the distances that women can cover. Hiring truckers is expensive, even more expensive if roads are in poor condition.
The negative impact of women’s walking time
The time taken up by walking can have a direct or indirect impact on productivity, the environment and, sometimes, women’s safety. In the highlands of Kenya, as women’s workload increased, it was found that the women were forced to take short cuts in traditional animal and range management strategies. Women cut back on those tasks that required additional time and effort, such as taking animals to distant pastures or splitting herds. In Senegal, an IFAD and Food and Agriculture Organization study found that the long walking distance to fields was aggravated by the heavy farm tools that women had to carry. The result was that, as women became more tired, they would drag the tools along the road. This rendered the tools less effective and caused them to wear out more quickly.
Development initiatives need to reflect more awareness of poorer rural women’s walking time. On the one hand, projects need to ensure that they do not unintentionally increase the walking time. On the other, the fact that women and poorer men often walk everywhere needs to be kept in mind in road design, the location of health centres, the organization of community labour, the planning of meetings and so on. There may also be opportunities to facilitate access to low-cost transportation, such as donkey carts, or cooperative purchases of trucks when road improvements have taken place. Finally, of course, the reduction of walking time through more convenient access to water supplies, marketplaces, fuelwood and so on is always of benefit to women.
Adapted from:
IFAD. 2001. Rural Poverty Report 2001: The Challenge of Ending Rural Poverty. Oxford University Press. February.
IFAD, Western and Central Africa Division. 1999. Assessment of Rural Poverty in West and Central Africa. Rome. August.
IFAD/FAO/Japan. 1998. Agricultural Implements Used by Women Farmers in Africa. Rome.
FAO. 2000. ‘IFAD’s Gender Strengthening Programme for East and Southern Africa: Uganda Field Diagnostic Study’ (Draft). Rome.
IFAD, Office of Evaluation. 1998. Ghana: LACOSREP I, Mid-Term Evaluation Report. Rome. July.
Nandini Azad. 1999. Engendered Mobilization: The Key to Livelihood Security: IFAD’s Experience in South Asia. Rome: IFAD.
Siddiqur Rahman Osmani. 1998. Food Security, Poverty and Women: Lessons from Rural Asia, Part I. Rome: IFAD/TAD. February.
M. Niamir-Fuller. 1994. ‘Women Livestock Managers in the Third World: Focus on Technical Issues Related to Gender Roles in Livestock Production’, Staff Working Papers, No. 18, Rome: IFAD, December.
