Work division in family farm production units: Feminine responsibilities typology in a semi-arid region of Brazil

Abstract

There has been evidence indicating that women in underdeveloped (or developing) countries carry a disproportionate burden of the costs of this economic dynamics while men enjoy its benefits. These criticisms on analysis moved gender from the periphery to the center of the development debate. Brazil and particularly the state of Ceará have not yet seen any of the repercussions of the analytical advances. This study on the role of women in the agriculture of the semi-arid aims to analyze the complexity of the factors that interact in order to recognize the nature of women's participation in semi-arid world areas comparatively to other disadvantaged environments. In the semi-arid area, rural women are able to cover a broader spectrum of tasks and fuller management activities when compared to other disadvantaged areas of the world. They cover all rural management activities. Besides, rural women's work is predominantly more complex when compared to mens work in semi-arid regions worldwide. Their greater ability to perform these activities is because these women combine different strategies in an efficient and dynamic way, adapting themselves to the demands of labor and the natural semi-arid environment.

Perspectives of abandonment/continuity of typological groups of sheep farms in the semi-arid region of Central Chile

“…This characteristic, in turn, is associated with the presence of women as managers of the farms; thus, fowls were present in 63 % of farms managed by women and only in 33 % of farms managed by men. The predominance of small livestock is a common feature in farms managed by women, as pointed out by Vidal (2013). With regard to sheep production 83 % of the farmers produced only meat lamb, and the remaining 17 % added wool production.…”

The invisibility of young people in family farming: a gender perspective in the semi-arid region of Ceará, Brazil

“…In rural areas, family farming inserts patriarchal gender relations, based on a socio-historical construction, which in turn provides a differentiated relationship with the territory. The inclusion of gender issues in public policies and development projects should integrate women in the development process of a territory, and should also facilitate their participation as "subjects of transformation"; and make them able to perceive the problems of the territory and enable them to bring new ways of resolution (Vidal, 2013). For rural development to be sustainable, it must include equitable participation in decisionmaking processes, in terms of both gender and age.…”

“…However, it does not capture the differentiation of labor by gender in family production units (Pierotti et al, 2022), as well as power relations (Brumer, 2004). The focus on the family unit always gains emphasis on production, due to the conventional economic approach centered on the landowner, who is usually a man (Vidal, 2013).…”