Land restoration and changing gender dynamics in the drylands of eastern Kenya

Editor's Notes

1. I’m Mary Crossland I’m a PhD student from Bangor University in the UK, working in collaboration with the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Today I’ll be talking about a piece of work we have been conducting around on-farm land restoration practices and gender dynamics in eastern Kenya.
2. So, this work is being conducted under a larger dryland restoration project led by world agroforestry. This project is taking a “research in development” approach by working with international development partners to systematically test restoration options across a range of contexts to find out what works where, why and for who. In Kenya, the project has been working with now over 2000 farmers across three counties to conduct on farm trials of two land restoration practices - tree planting and planting basins, which are small pits that are dug and crops planted within them. Farmers have been comparing the performance of different sizes of basin, different tree species and associated management practices to explore what works best on their farms.
3. While the main focus of this project has been on the performance of the technologies we wanted to conduct an assessment focusing on the gender dimensions of these practices. Our questions being: How the practices affect men and women’s time and labour? How these changes affect other activities – both on and off the farm? What are the decision making dynamics around the uptake and management of the technologies? Who has access and control over the potential benefits from these technologies? With the aim of providing recommendations on how to improve the design and dissemination of these practices so as to make them more gender responsive. In order to answer such questions we have been conducting focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and have also been integrating questions around gender into the on-going monitoring surveys being conducted to monitor the performance of the practices.
4. Most of the data collected through these surveys have focused on time and labour. Here you can see the responses from farmers using the basins to questions on who is involved with preparing land using their usual practice, such as ploughing with oxen and who is involved with digging the basins. We can see that there is a higher percentage of joint labour between men and women for the usual practice than for digging basins where we see a shift towards more female only labour. this might suggest increased labour burden for women or potentially more autonomy to carry out an activity that previously required male assistance – such as ploughing
5. We also asked about whether the use of basins had changed the amount of time they spent preparing land but also the overall amount of time they spent on the farm. Interestingly you can see that, while the majority of farmers reported that basins increased the amount of time spent preparing the land, but there is a shift towards basins having decreased the overall amount of time they spend on the farm especially for women. This is primarily due to two reasons – basins have a high initial labour investment, once dug they may only need repairing each season and do not need to be re dug completely and secondly, they are said to substantially reduce the amount of time taken for weeding – an activity women are heavily involved in.
6. The second aspect we have been exploring is decision-making around the practices. So, who makes the decision to test the technology, where to put it , how many basins to dig and who makes decisions over the produce and income from it. Through the interviews we have seen that the level of autonomy women have over a decision varies with the type of decision and resources required to act out those decisions For example, while women would often report that they had made the decision to test the practice - a decision implicating their own time and labour, decisions over where to dig the basins tended to be through consultation with their husbands – a decision involving the use of land. We also saw a lot of variation in the types of consultations and negotiations between husband and wife, from women having been given complete autonomy over farming decisions, to informing husbands of a decision, to discussion and to having to ask for permission.
7. We also saw women reporting increased participation in farming decisions over the past five years – something we explored further in our focus groups. We found that women had gained increased participation and agency over not only farming, but also household decisions reportedly due to : - Increased participation in agricultural trainings and development projects and thus knowledge - changes in laws regarding domestic violence - Education - and wider awareness of gender equality Women reported that they had attend trainings, gain knowledge, implement new practices, and when shown to be productive, may gain more freedom to make decisions regarding the practice and greater participation in farming decisions Most of this work so far has focused on Kenya where I have been conducting a gender assessment on the technologies using semi structure interview and FGD but also putting in sex-disaggregated questions into the monitoring surveys Through this assessment it became apparent that men are often not so involved with farming activities – either they have off-farm income or live and work elsewhere, for example in Mombasa or Nairobi. We have therefore also started to look at male out-migration as a wider context within which land restoration has to occur. And as you can see here there is a lot of variation in terms of rural mobility across the three counties I am working in. Given that efforts to restore degraded lands are often knowledge- and labour-intensive, changing household demographics have important implications for the development, uptake and success of land restoration initiatives.
8. Joint decision making was also seen as more positive or desirable than making decisions alone. It was thought to reduce conflict within the household and reduce chances of divorce It was also often reported to be strategic, in that household members that are more involved and feel heard in the decision making process are more likely to support that activity and provide their labour. Men also reported it was important to involve their wives in livelihood decisions so that should they pass away, their wives would know how to continue managing the farm and carrying out the husbands plans into the future While exploring decision making dynamics it also become clear that these decision making process and the degree of autonomy women have varied with the presence of men within the household We have therefore started to include questions around mobility and the impacts of movers on land management and decision-making.
9. Here are some initial results You can see there is a fair amount of variation in the percentage of households with migrants - this mainly varies with the economic opportunities within those areas. We can also see that this migration of predominantly men has implications for labour on the farm. Especially in Makueni where farms tend to be quite large and households comparatively small compared to the other sites. But here we can see that for the majority of household with migrants those that leave are still involved with decisions on the farm to some degree
10. Land restoration is often labour and knowledge intensive and presents both risks and opportunities for women. Important to consider wider demographic and societal changes within which land restoration is occurring and how this affects not only access to labour but also how farming decisions are made Women in these areas seem to be gaining more access to information and trainings and receiving technical support, thus influencing their bargaining power within the household Male out-migration may lead men to renegotiate decision-making power, with women gaining more agency over certain farming decisions in their absence