How does food security affect rural women, in Kenya and in Africa as a continent?

Rural women and men play different roles in guaranteeing food security for their households and communities (FAO, 2017). In the African communities, women are the homemakers, this is the perception men and women have (S. Sithole-Fundire, 1995). Men are the providers in the family household, they mainly go to look for work in the village and market areas, search for menial jobs to provide them with income to support their families. The man’s work is seen as more profitable (Garcia M. D., 2013, p. 88). Men are also responsible for the field crops and their cultivation, they toil in the fields so they can produce food for the markets and for his family’s consumption. The cattle and livestock are a shared

18 responsibility in some African communities, herding and feeding them is sometimes allocated to children to do instead of the adults. The role of women is normally unrecognized, their role and situation in the rural areas depends on their geographic region, social class, age and ethnicity (Garcia M. D., 2013, p. 88). Rural women carry out most home food processing, which ensures a diverse diet, minimizes losses and provides marketable products. Domestic chores like carrying water and firewood, doing agricultural and livestock tasks, as well as selling surplus from their harvest at the local markets. Women in food security and nutrition cultivate, harvest and prepare the food (FAO, 2017). In developing countries, women work more hours than men in housekeeping, childcare, fetching water, collecting firewood and in the fields. Women contribute three quarters of the labour requires to produce the food consumed in Africa, averagely they work sixteen hours a day (Gladwin, 1991, p. 50). Women are more likely to spend their incomes on food and children's needs - research has shown that a child's chances of survival increase by 20% when the mother controls the household budget. Women, therefore, play a decisive role in food security, dietary diversity and children's health (FAO, 2017).

Women are the backbone of these communities and contribute greatly towards the agricultural sector. African women provide 60-90% of subsistence agricultural labour;

dominate food production with labour contributions of 50-85% of total agricultural labour;

engage in a high percentage of cash crop labour, thereby generating household income for food purchases; have substantial decision-making power concerning timing, location of crops, use of inputs and intensity of crop management; provide 90% of the labour for collecting household water and fuel, 80% of the work in food storage and transport from farm to village, 90% of the work in hoeing and weeding and 60% of the work in hawking and marketing (Carney, 2015). The necessity of focusing on female famers is due to the accelerated rise in the number of households which are female-headed and may consequently be comprised by only female farmers and their descendants. In countries, such as Kenya and Malawi, the poorer the household, the more likely it is to be headed by a woman. These female-headed households include single mothers, divorced or widowed women, women whose husbands have abandoned them, those whose husbands are away for an unspecified amount of time including migrant labourers, those whose husbands make only a marginal contribution to the maintenance of the household due to disability and unemployment (Gladwin, 1991, p. 50).

19 Women face additional challenges when doing their daily responsibilities, such as collecting water and firewood, they must walk for long distances to rivers and forests on food to retrieve the water and firewood. They must leave their children and other responsibilities behind.

Access to transportation, water, energy and finances pose challenges to the rural women (Richardson, 2014). Majority of agricultural households across the world are largely hungry and poor, even though their prevailing mode of life is farming, they lack access to sufficient high quality land and other natural resources or means to seek self-employment, this eventually leads to hunger and malnutrition thus making individuals less productive (FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2015). Women face financial challenges and they do not have formal titles to their land (Richardson, 2014). Rural women are disadvantaged and cannot access the same opportunities and resources as men, these include land, energy, technology, loans, pesticides and fertilizers, training, information, public services, social protection and markets (Garcia M. D., 2013, pp. 88-89). If rural women were given the same access to these opportunities and resources, they would increase their yields up to 20-30%.

(UNIFEM) This gender discrimination shall end when the rural women are ensured avenues to achieve and receive education and health care (Sachs, 2015, pp. 54-55).

Pietila, H. & Vickers, J. (1996) concluded in their survey named The World Survey on the Role of Women that the survey enumerates the ways in which agricultural and rural development programmes have been jeopardized because of the actual and potential roles of women were not recognized. There are six main ways:

1. The workload women have is not usually taken into consideration, as well as the lack of equipment to assist the women with their workload.

2. Women’s performance in agricultural tasks are overlooked as well as their challenges in receiving agricultural information and training.

3. Women as independent farmers or livestock keepers was overlooked and women were largely left out of integrated rural development and other agricultural programmes.

4. The increase of family income is identified with an increase in women’s income.

5. Women’s labour is considered as family labour.

6. Women’s special needs and constraints as mothers and wives as small independent farmers and as heads of the household, are not considered in their access to credit and other services.

20 Women as well aren’t consulted on how much work they are to do and what their constraints are (J. P. Gittinger, 1987, pp. 135-136). These are some of the multitude of challenges rural women face.

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