Access to land Inheritance. In the majority of WCA countries, land is inherited patrilineally or is allocated to males according to lineage. There are exceptions. In Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, matrilineal inheritance traditionally dominates, while in some other areas of West Africa, Muslim law permits direct female acquisition of land. In Burkina Faso, Nigeria and The Gambia, girls are often given plots of land for their own use or for the use of their families. Nevertheless, even in these countries, as a result of the increasing pressure on land, daughters tend to receive ‘movable or more liquid assets’ as inheritance (Palmer 1991), while land tends to remain concentrated in the hands of men. Security of access. While the ‘private ownership of land is a relatively new concept in Africa’ (Saito 1994, p. 47), the most common situation in WCA is for women to have usufruct rights to land. This implies that, in analysing women’s rights to land, one must concentrate on the level and security of access, rather than on land ownership. There is strong evidence (Saito 1994) that in all of sub-Saharan Africa, as in other developing areas (Agarwal 1994), women’s access to land is low and less secure than that of men, and this is so for a number of reasons. In the agricultural economy of sub-Saharan Africa, women and men are responsible for different plots of land that are usually managed separately and more rarely jointly (Saito 1994). The gender division of plots is rooted in the intrahousehold division of labour: women are in charge of the family’s nutrition, obtain land use from their husbands so as to provide them with the means to feed the family, and continue to have the use of this land only as long as they are married. Thus, first a structural factor for the insecurity of tenure among women is found in the case of divorce or of the husband’s death. A second factor of this insecurity derives from the practice of the allocation of plots of land among different households and among different members of the household on a short-term basis as a result of a change in household size, for example in the case of polygamy. There is evidence that women among the Hausa in Niger are allocated different fields each year, and a similar situation has also been observed in Nigeria (Palmer 1991). Uncertainty over which plot will be cultivated in the future has important consequences for farm management because it makes the decision process over input use and over the production mix (both of which depend on the quality of the land) extremely difficult. Lastly, a factor that has an increasing influence on women’s insecure access to land in sub-Saharan Africa is to be found in the scarcity of land that results from growing population pressure, environmental problems, or simply the introduction of export crops that increase the productivity of the land. This last legitimates actions to employ the land to cultivate ‘male’ crops, instead of ‘female’ crops, thus further concentrating access and control in the hands of men. Quality and quantity of land. The gender bias in access to land can also be observed in relation to the quality, the quantity and the size of plots. Evidence indicates that women are being pushed more and more towards marginal lands. This is the case, for instance, in the Guinea Savanna zone of northern Ghana, where women have been allocated land that has already been under cultivation for two or three years and is thus in need of a fallow period (Dey Abbas 1997). A similar case has been documented in Côte d’Ivoire, where women have been given, by their husbands, portions of the household land that is of low fertility because it has been continuously cultivated for a number of years (Lubbock 1998). Similarly, Palmer (1991, p. 35) reports that, in The Gambia, men get "the best land at the right time of the year". In Burkina Faso, women also tend to be pushed to marginal plots as a consequence of environmental problems that are deteriorating the quality of agricultural land (Saito 1994). Moreover, women’s plots are fewer and smaller than those of men. Recent research estimates that in Nigeria 26% of female-headed households have only one to two plots of land each, compared with 13% of male-headed households in this situation; moreover, the women’s plots are half the size of those of men (Saito 1994, pp. 50-51). Acquisition vs. government allocation. The last aspect that one must review in order to understand the scope of gender differentials in access to land is land acquisition via the market (through purchase or renting) as opposed to allocation by the government. Evidence shows that "traditional barriers to women’s acquisition of land have begun to break down" (Saito 1994, pp. 50-51) because women, particularly women heads of household, are acquiring land via the market, and only negligible differences are to be found in this respect between men and women. In contrast, gender differentials are very marked when land is allocated by the government. Examples of sexual discrimination in this process have been found in Nigeria and in Burkina Faso, where the distribution of land by village chiefs appears to be less gender biased than is the distribution undertaken by the Government. In particular, in Burkina Faso, women’s rights have been completely neglected by the Government in the allocation of land in those areas managed by the Volta Valley Authority (Saito 1994). Labour Family work. Family work covers one third to one half of a woman’s working day and includes, in addition to cooking, time-consuming and tiring tasks such as fetching water and fuel wood. Recent research estimates that for women in Burkina Faso and in Nigeria, the average working day is 14 hours, eight or nine of which are devoted to farm work, and the remainder to non-farm work; the corresponding figure for men is between eight and nine hours, seven of which in farm work, and the remainder in non-farming activities (Saito 1994). In the Center Province in Cameroon, women’s total weekly labour is over 64 hours, of which 26 are employed in carrying out family labour, while men’s weekly labour is 32 hours, four of which are for family labour (Henn 1988, quoted in Blackden and Bhanu 1999). The long working day for women covers different types of labour, of which that on the women’s own land is usually not the most important type. An important share of women’s labour in WCA consists of work for the benefit of others, including unpaid family labour and farm labour for husbands and kin that generates earnings. Farm work. In their role as independent farmers, women are often limited by the other demands on their labour. The competition for women’s work and the obligation to provide unpaid family labour and to work for husbands might easily become one of the causes of low productivity on women’s plots. This occurs in particular during seasonal bottlenecks. It has been reported that in Ghana and in Nigeria (Palmer 1991; Dey Abbas 1997) women are often unable to carry out important operations on their own land on time because they are obliged to work for their husbands. In Burkina Faso, men can oblige women to work on their husbands’ fields on those days that are customarily employed by women to work their own land and are therefore necessary for women’s own farming activities (Dey Abbas 1997). Moreover, owing to lack of financial resources and to the unequal gender division of labour within the household and the community, women have reduced access to the work of other individuals. As women do not usually hire labour, the only possibility left to them for coping with their work during peak periods is to count on a reciprocal labour exchange with their husbands and with other women. Labour exchanges with husbands are very common in WCA, but they are rarely based on equal conditions, and usually "men can end up doing very little on women’s fields" (Palmer 1991, p. 29). Sometimes, husbands compensate their wives in cash or in kind for the disparity in the labour provided, but often they do not. For instance, Yoruba women in Nigeria do not receive remuneration for their work on men’s plots, although they receive ‘gifts’ for their unpaid family work. In spite of the great variability in arrangements, the general rule seems to be that, similar to the case of unpaid family labour, women’s farm labour on men’s plots is considered a customary duty and is felt by women to be an obligation that has been included in the marriage arrangement. This is very common in most West African countries, such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Sierra Leone (Dey Abbas 1997). The implication is that women experience negative consequences in terms of the lower productivity of their own plots. Other work. The links between households and the market depend on household transport activities, and in this area, too, the division of labour is strikingly biased against women. In volume, women generally transport more on their heads than is transported in vehicles. The average time spent by an adult woman in sub-Saharan Africa in transporting water, fuel wood, crops and consumer goods ranges from a little less than one hour to 2.5 hours per day. Village surveys in Ghana and Tanzania have demonstrated that women spend about three times more hours in transport than men do and that they transport about four times more in terms of volume. In Burkina Faso, the total transport volume ensured by women carrying head loads amounts to 10 to 15 tonne-km per year per woman, while men provide less than 5 tonne-km. Credit Access to formal credit. Due to the gender-biased distribution in access to land, the productive potential of women’s plots cannot be increased because women’s access to inputs is constrained, mainly by a lack of financial resources. The availability of financial assets is a major support to productivity as it makes possible the purchase of inputs such as fertilizer, seeds, tools and machinery and the hire of extra labour. As independent farmers, "women are particularly disadvantaged in their access to formal credit services" (Saito 1994) because (i) they rarely have title to land, and (ii) they lack information on the availability of formal credit as a result of lack of education and of mobility. This implies that fewer female farmers obtain credit from formal sources. Indeed, informal sources, such as moneylenders, relatives and credit groups, provide the bulk of credit to women. Within the informal credit system, ‘rotating savings and credit associations’ and geographical and kinship groups are very common among women in sub-Saharan Africa (Udry 1989, quoted in Saito 1994). The case of Nigeria has been studied in detail by Saito (1994), who provides interesting evidence on the gender bias in the credit system. In Nigeria, 40% of female heads of household, against 36% of male heads of household, obtain credit from formal and informal sources, but only 3% of women receive credit from banks (against 15% of men); moreover, the average value of the loan obtained by women is only 42% of that of men. Another indicator that points to the existence of gender discrimination in the credit system is the amount of collateral provided for credit as a percentage of the loan. When the collateral is land, a future crop or a co-signature, the percentage of collateral required is regularly higher for women than for men. The average for women is 33% for the three items, against 25%, 19% and 23%, respectively, for men. Access to informal credit. While informal financial institutions, including kinship networks, moneylenders and group-based arrangements, work reasonably well for women farmers by allowing the women, through the use of their good reputation or kinship linkages, to overcome the constraints imposed by lack of collateral and by cultural barriers, they can only mobilize small amounts of financing, which are insufficient to satisfy the total credit needs of female farmers. This implies that an effort is needed to identify credit systems able to address the needs of women farmers, but it also demonstrates the gender bias of the present system, which results in the undercapitalization of female agriculture. Saito (1994) estimates that female-headed households in Nigeria possess less than one half of the total farming equipment owned by male-headed households, while in Burkina Faso, most female-headed households must rely on hand tools only. Another feature of the undercapitalization among female farmers deriving from the lack of financial resources is that women cannot count on animal draught power. Education, nutrition, health Education. The last source of gender bias considered here is to be found in the intrahousehold differentials with respect to access to education. The evidence is quite rich (Blackden and Bhanu 1999; Whitehead 1990) and shows the structural disadvantages of girls and female children who are employed in housework instead of being sent to school. McSweeny (1979, quoted in Palmer 1991) estimates that in Burkina Faso, girls at 9 years of age contribute up to 4.5 hours per day to household work, farming and family work, such as fetching water and doing laundry; and that at 15 years of age, a girl spends about 10 hours per day in productive tasks. Nutrition and health. Here, the evidence is scarce. Until recently no gender bias in nutrition and mortality was reported for sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, nutrition and mortality indicators suggested a slightly pro-girl bias. This situation sharply contrasts with the one reported for South Asian societies, where the gender bias in nutrition and mortality is currently seen as a major problem (Harriss 1990; Drèze & Sen 1989). Klasen (1996) shows that, since the beginning of the 1990s, the trend in sub-Saharan Africa has changed and that a small but rising anti-girl bias has emerged, which shows the "adverse development for women . . . caused by the slow erosion of women’s role in agriculture, reduced access to modern inputs and credit in rural markets, and the reduced access to off-farm employment" (p. 9). A major factor that might confirm the explanation of the rising anti-girl bias in mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa is the "enormous gender differential in the region’s sexual and reproductive burden of disease" that, when measured in disability-adjusted life years and deaths, is equal, respectively, to 30% and 26% for women, against 9% and 7% for men (Blackden and Bhanu 1999, p. 30). Gender differentials in education, together with the rising anti-girl bias in nutrition and mortality, suggest the existence of a relative deterioration in human capital assets that will surely exert a major effect on the next generations. This situation, particularly the aspects related to education, is not just a problem of poverty, since it affects all income classes, thus showing the determining influence of cultural factors (Blackden and Bhanu 1999). Nevertheless, it reflects the fact that there is a vulnerability among women in terms of economic growth, and this may become a cause of poverty as it represents a further constraint to women’s productivity and their participation in the market economy. Equal access to resources More and more evidence shows that, in cases of similar access to resources and decision-making, women and female-headed households are less poor than men and male-headed households. For instance, in Niger, households headed by women represent 8% of all households. Of these, 55% are poor, against 64% among male-headed families. A priori, two reasons may be assumed: (i) as heads of households, women are able to make their own decisions, achieve better access to resources than if they were married, and can use these resources more productively than do male heads of household; (ii) in cases where women are de facto heads of households, income transferred from husbands may raise the total household income. Among 19 countries examined in sub-Saharan Africa, the incidence of poverty in nine countries appears to be lower among female-headed households than among male-headed ones. In rural areas of Nigeria, the incidence of poverty among female-headed households declined from 42% in 1985 to 22% in 1992. The corresponding figures for male-headed families were 50% and 38%, respectively. Female-headed households not only exhibited a lower poverty incidence than did male ones, but also reduced the incidence more quickly than did households with male heads. The incidence figures for Ghana were 28% for female-headed families and 33% for male-headed ones. When women have more control over the use of household income, expenditures tend to be more focused on meeting the basic needs of the family and of the children. In studies in seven sub-Saharan countries, the children in female-headed households with amounts of resources similar to those of male-headed households showed higher school enrolment rates and better completion rates. When women’s control over household cash resources doubled in Côte d’Ivoire, the proportion of food expenditures to total income rose by 2 percentage points, while expenditures for cigarettes and alcohol dropped by 26% and 14%, respectively. In the same country, another study found that, from 1987 to 1988, female-headed households with characteristics that were otherwise the same as those of male-headed households were able to maintain the household standard of living during a period when the mean decline in household incomes per person was 35 217 francs CFA (USD 117), in other words, when comparable male-headed households suffered substantial income declines. Conclusion Evidence shows that when women have equal access to resources, their households are less poor than those headed by men. In addition, growing evidence shows that if women were to have the same access to farm resources as men had, then overall agricultural productivity would increase. Despite these results, the access to resources continues to be biased against women. Thus, future projects must seek to reduce the disparities in the distribution of resources as a necessary first step towards increasing the efficiency of the farm economy in WCA. This will involve a look at the following issues:
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