Lecturer, Bahir Dar University, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Department of Disaster Risk Management and Sustainable Development, Ethiopia.
Doctoral Student in Anthropology Department College of Arts and Commerce, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India.
The study focuses on access of rural female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) to labour in Libo Kemkem Woreda1, Ethiopia. Data were collected from December 12, 2011 to February 1, 2012. To this end, I employed qualitative and quantitative methods. Descriptive statistics were used to interpret the data. The findings show that female headed households and male-headed households have different access to labour especially adult male labour. Male-headed households are by far in good status regarding possession of labour capacity power. Due to lack of labour power and cultural embargo imposed upon on female-headed households, unlike of their counterparts they could not utilize their assets like farmlands and oxen effectively. They were forced to sharecrop or rent out their lands as well as oxen. This makes them vulnerable to food insecurity. The Chi-square analyses revealed that there were significant relationships between gender, labour and household characteristics (p<0.01). The findings of this study, therefore, must have some relevance for the design of rural development projects targeting women as well as for theories explaining the relationship between gender and labour in patriarchal rural social organizations.
Gender, Labour, Libo Kemkem Woreda
