JENDA: A JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND AFRICAN WOMEN STUDIES ISSN: 1530-5686 Issue 7 (2005)

Gladys B.Mutangadura

Abstract

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub Saharan Africa is increasingly becoming one of the major impediments to sustainable development. The increased mortality and morbidity of prime-age adults caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic has brought wide ranging socio-economic impacts on all aspects of rural livelihoods that includes erosion of food security and the livelihood asset base, decreased access to education and other productive assets thereby exacerbating poverty. It is widely acknowledged that the impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods are not gender neutral, they deepen and widen existing gender inequalities. This paper examines how the socio-economic impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods have aggravated gender inequalities resulting in the increased vulnerability of women to poverty and HIV infection. Yet women play a crucial role in agriculture and household food security. The paper suggests policy response options that can promote equal opportunities for women and men within the context of HIV/AIDS particularly in access to food and resources such as assets, capital, technology, agriculture and rural development services, as well as to employment opportunities and decision-making processes.

In Africa, AIDS Has a Woman’s Face

“. . . today, as AIDS is eroding the health of Africa’s women, it is eroding the skills, experience and networks that keep their families and communities going. Even before falling ill, a woman will often have to care for a sick husband, thereby reducing the time she can devote to planting, harvesting and marketing crops. When her husband dies, she is often deprived of credit, distribution networks or land rights. When she dies, the household will risk collapsing completely, leaving children to fend for themselves. The older ones, especially girls, will be taken out of school to work in the home or the farm. These girls, deprived of education and opportunities, will be even less able to protect themselves against AIDS. . . . If we want to save Africa from two catastrophe (HIV/AIDS and famine), we would do well to focus on saving Africa’s women.” -- Source: Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Introduction

The increased mortality and morbidity of prime-age adults caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic has brought wide ranging socio-economic impacts on all aspects of rural livelihoods that is demanding heightened responses to address the emerging challenges. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is slowly eroding food security and the livelihood asset base, exacerbating poverty and widening gender inequality. If left unchecked, the epidemic risks undermining all other efforts aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of poor and hungry in the world by 2015.

Until recently, responses to mitigating the social and economic impacts of the pandemic in rural areas have not received as much attention or funding. Development work on the pandemic has tended to concentrate on prevention and care as opposed to mitigation. Although it is widely acknowledged that the impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods are not gender neutral as illustrated by the excerpt of the United Nations Secretary-General presented above, limited work has been done in advocating that mitigation responses effectively address the gender dimensions of the impacts of the HIV/AIDS. This paper focuses specifically on the socio-economic impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods and at household level from a gender perspective, and suggests mitigation strategies needed to effectively address these impacts. Although HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment are very crucial to addressing gender inequality in rural areas, this paper limits its discussion to mitigation, which has not been extensively explored in existing literature. The paper examines six key inter-related questions with regard to gender, HIV/AIDS and rural livelihoods: What are the global mandates and commitments for promoting gender equality? What are the gender differences in rural livelihoods? What are the gender related impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods? What are the required mitigation responses? Are there any simple lessons to learn about mitigating the gender dimensions of the impacts HIV/AIDS in rural setting? What are outstanding critical gaps in knowledge?

The Global Mandates and Commitments for Promoting Gender Equality

To improve gender equality and livelihoods, the international community has created specific standards set in different commitments. All the 8 Millennium Development Goals and related targets adopted in 2000 are very important in promoting gender equality. The four that are most relevant to rural livelihoods and gender equality are Goals 1, 2, 3, and 6. Goal 1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, Goal 2 aims to achieve universal primary education, Goal 3 aims to promote gender equality and empower women and Goal 6 aims to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly provides the basis for realizing equality between women and men through ensuring women's equal access to and equal opportunities in, political and public life -- including the right to vote and to stand for election -- as well as education, health and employment. CEDAW continues to provide the framework for promoting gender equality for rural women, as it is the only international legally binding instrument with specific provisions for rural women (Article 14).

The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action is an agenda for women's empowerment and gender equality. The Platform for Action upholds the aforementioned Convention and builds upon the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, as well as relevant UN resolutions. The Beijing +10 review has reviewed the progress made and identified the gaps in implementing the Beijing Plan of Action. It called for collective responsibility to ensure that gaps in equitable access to resources and opportunities in rural and agricultural communities are met. Countries must translate the global commitments and objectives regarding the advancement of women and gender equality into institutional and national policies and action strategies. It would appear that we have the correct guiding framework to promote gender equality in rural areas, what is required is that these global commitments be translated into policy realities and concrete actions at national level. The need to do so has been heightened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Gender Differences in Rural Livelihoods

Despite rapid urbanization, the bulk of the populations in sub Saharan African countries still live in the rural areas, on average 70 percent. In Southern Africa the figure ranges from 42 percent in South Africa to 85 percent in Malawi . More than 60 percent of this rural population comprises of women. Even before the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS there are significant differences in livelihood opportunities and outcomes between women and men in these rural areas. Although the differing roles and responsibilities between women and men vary from country to country and within countries reflecting differences in economic, social and cultural forces, some important generalizations on gender differences in rural livelihoods can be made. These include gender differences: in gender roles in agricultural production and food security, in household work burden, in access to land and water rights, in access to credit and income, and in access to education.

Gender Difference in Agricultural Production and Food Security

In most Sub-Saharan African countries, small-scale farmers, the majority of whom are women, produce 60-70 percent of food. Women play a major role in the different aspects of agricultural production. Although men and women participate in most agricultural tasks, men predominate in land preparation, and ploughing; women are primarily engaged in watering, planting, fertilising, weeding, harvesting and marketing --activities that are typically labour intensive. Women work more hours per day and more days per year in agriculture than men (see annex 1 for an example from Kenya). Cash crops are considered men's crops and men control the money received from them, even though women do considerable amounts of the work. Though performing different activities, women and men remain on par as farmers in agriculture, but unequal in some agricultural policy and planning.

Gender Differences in Household Work

Women and girls are also traditionally tasked to do all domestic maintenance work, hauling water firewood gathering, food processing and preparation, cooking and other domestic chores. Household work done by women is characterized by long and strenuous days with very few relevant and affordable technologies to ease their workloads and drudgery. The heavy workload already imposed on women often prevents them from adopting improved technology that requires additional labour inputs.

Gender Differences in Access to Land and Water

Land is considered the most fundamental resource to women's living conditions, economic empowerment and, to some extent, their struggle for equity and equality. Despite the importance of land to women in their livelihoods, their land rights are still largely discriminated against. Most women in patrilineal customary system have access to farmland only through their husbands or fathers as they are only granted usufructuary rights as land title pass through the male line. In a study done by the Economic Commission for Africa-Office for Southern Africa (ECA-SA) in 2003, the major obstacles facing women in owning and controlling land in Southern Africa were identified to include customary law, some legal clauses that do not allow joint ownership of land by married couples under statutory tenure and non-synchronization of the inheritance and marriage laws with the Land law. In situations where women can own and control land such as where one can buy the land from the land market, women are constrained by several socio-economic factors which include illiteracy, lack of capital and implements, lack of collateral, lack of farm management experience, training and advice.

Gender Differences in Access to Credit and Income

Women have little access to credit. While women are reputed as efficient in paying loans, ironically they have the hardest time in securing loans without collaterals, male consent, security against the loan, etc (Fortmann, 2001). Women's uncertain access to land, credit and education denies them exposure to and control of new technologies that might help them out of the mire of poverty. In many Sub-Saharan countries female-headed households are usually poorer and fewer rural female-headed households own agricultural productive resources. For African women, combining farm and non-farm income-earning activities has long been a survival strategy which allows them to reduce the risk of starvation for themselves and their families during periods of chronic or transitory food insecurity. However despite this, their incomes are generally lower than their male counterparts. For example in Zimbabwe, female-headed household incomes are 40percent less than rural-male headed households and within the female-headed households, poverty is greatest in de facto female-headed households (the woman is heading the household because her husband is absent) and de jure households (women who are single, widowed or divorced) (Mutangadura, 2001). Most of the de facto female-headed households are found in the rural areas (89 percent).

Gender Differences in Education

Women are more likely to be less educated than men. Adult female illiteracy rate is less than 20 percent in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, but is higher than 50 percent in Mozambique and Malawi (UNDP, 2004). In terms of agricultural production and improving rural livelihoods in the context of HIV/AIDS, illiteracy leads to inability to understand and adopt new technologies, accessing credit, accessing HIV/AIDS prevention messages, inability to know their rights and support mechanisms that are available.

The Gender Related Impacts of HIV/AIDS on Rural Livelihoods

HIV/AIDS has severe socio-economic impacts on both sexes but is not gender neutral. AIDS worsens existing gender-based differences in labour burdens and in accessing key resources such as land, credit, and other resources; education; agricultural services and technology (Haddad et al, 2001). The major gender related impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods includes: increased workload of women due to HIV/AIDS related morbidity and mortality of family members thereby affecting their role in agricultural production and securing livelihoods, loss of non-farm income, loss of assets and decreased access to resources, collapsing rural safety nets leading to increased burden of caring for orphans, increased vulnerability of women to loss of rights to land and property, withdrawal of girl children from school.

Increased Workload of Women and Impacts on Agricultural Production

HIV/AIDS adds to rural women's workload, as women are the traditional care-givers when people are sick. In rural areas, time spent on patient-care often directly impacts on time available for agricultural production and for pursuing other non-farm income generating activities. The outcome might be less timely farming practice resulting in reduced yields or reduced land under cultivation, threatening household and eventually national food security. In Northern Zambia affected households, and in particular female- headed households reduced the total area under cultivation due to labour shortages (FAO, 2004). In Tanzania, women spent 60 percent less time on agricultural activities because their husbands were ill (Rugalema, 1999).

Increased Domestic Work Load for Women

HIV/AIDS related care-giving responsibility disproportionately adds to women’s domestic workload which is already heavy as noted earlier.

Loss of Non-Farm Income and Assets

Because they are overburdened, women no longer have time for non-farm activities such as artisan crafts, market gardening, food processing and others, activities that previously contributed to the family budget. This negatively impacts on their livelihood. Literature confirms that during times of drought or pest attacks, women who have multiple sources of income are better off in meeting the food security and other livelihood needs of the household (Peters 1995, Maxwell and Frankenburger 1992). In cases where affected women have sold off their assets, they cannot access rural micro-credit institutions for lack of collateral. Gender differences become more acute when productive resources are eroded, reinforcing the poverty and vulnerability spiral for female- and children-headed households.

Declining Rural Safety Nets and Increased Burden of Fostering of Orphans

The numbers of children that have become orphans as a result of HIV/AIDS is staggering. At the end of 2003 UNAIDS estimated that there were 12 million orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa. The care of orphans is a burden that falls disproportionately on women. In Northern Zambia, female-headed households were found to have about three times as many orphans as male-headed households (FAO, 2004). These female-headed households with orphans were found to have the lowest average land available per person (less than half a hectare), have a significantly higher dependency ratio and experience a greater shortage of labour. This is because they tend to take care of more, but younger orphans, and thus have four times less family members in the economically active age category compared to male-headed households with orphans. Thus female-headed households, and especially those fostering orphans, constitute one of the most vulnerable groups to poverty.

Withdrawal of Children Especially Girls from School

The loss of adult labour has forced families to withdraw children especially young girls from school to be caretakers for younger siblings and/or to help in food production. The lower level of education thus attained, of course, perpetuates the cycle of poverty across generations and reduces prospects for decent work opportunities. For example in Swaziland, school enrolment is reported to have fallen by 36 percent due to AIDS, with girls most affected (UNAIDS, 2004). In other high prevalence countries, girls’ enrolment in school has decreased in the past decade. HIV/AIDS is threatening recent positive gains in basic education and disproportionately affecting girls' primary school enrolments.

Impact on Property and Inheritance Rights of Women

Access to, ownership of, and control over property are fundamental determinants of secure livelihoods: they provide a secure place to live, a site for economic and social activity, and collateral for credit and other resources and services essential to prevent and mitigate HIV/AIDS (Aliber et al 2004, Strickland 2004). Widespread exclusion of women in developing countries from owning or controlling property, as well as limits often dictated by custom concerning their access to and use of property such as land, means that they are often barred from many of the resources that would allow them to improve their chances of preventing infection or enhance their capacity to mitigate the consequences of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS, 2004). In countries where the impacts of HIV/AIDS on land tenure systems have been studied (these include Lesotho, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi), one major impact of the epidemic was identified to be the increase in the vulnerability of women, children and poor households to dispossession by patrilineal kin on the death of male household heads (Aliber et al, 2004, Topouzis, 1998, Katunzi, 1999, Rehmtulla 1999, Strickland, 2004, FAO, 2004). Losing land impacts directly on the women’s ability to meet household food needs through own production. In South Africa and Lesotho the studies showed traditional authorities playing a role in helping to protect the land rights of widows and orphans but not always being effective in enforcing their decisions when relatives usurped land (Drimie, 2002). The main recommendation emerging from these studies is the need to draw up legislation that can protect the land rights of women and children.

According to the recently launched UN Secretary General’s Task Force Report on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, as the death toll from AIDS is mounting, many widowed women are experiencing dispossession in rural areas. Women often do not have marriage certificates or other documentation to protect their rights (and wills are rarely drawn up). Unfortunately many who experience dispossession lack recourse. The major obstacles that stand in the way of any woman attempting to assert her rights to property or inheritance include fear of violent reprisal, sluggish bureaucracies and official indifference (UNAIDS, 2004).

Increased Challenges of Elderly Women Who Are Caregivers

HIV/AIDS has adversely impacted on the livelihoods of elderly women. In areas with high death rates of women and men in productive years, older women face enormous responsibilities without financial and other resources to ensure the survival of their grand children. A recent survey in South Africa revealed that 70 percent of caregivers were female, with almost a quarter of them over the age of 60 (UNAIDS, 2004). Research in a district of western Tanzania (Rugalema, 1998) found that the elderly who had lost adult children to AIDS were invariably destitute. During the course of their children’s illnesses, most of the elderly disposed off their assets to pay medical bills and purchase of foodstuffs for the sick. After the deaths of the adult children, who in most cases were the caregivers of the elderly parents, the elderly faced acute shortages of cash, food, and other household necessities. All of the elderly were much poorer and hence more insecure than in the pre-AIDS period, and about 25 percent had psychological problems, such as crying spells. Because AIDS intensifies the vulnerability of the elderly, who are left without social and economic support there is need to innovate new strategies for elderly care in areas of Africa severely affected by AIDS.

The Required Mitigation Responses

For governments there are no simple lessons beyond restating that it is essential that they act. The socio-economic impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods are not gender neutral – they exacerbate gender inequalities in rural livelihoods. The overarching objective of national responses should aim at promoting equal opportunities for women and men within the context of HIV/AIDS particularly in access to food and resources such as assets, capital, technology, agriculture and rural development services, as well as to employment opportunities and decision-making processes. Key issues affecting the vulnerability of rural women need to be realistically tackled. Experience from traditional food security work and development projects in general shows that efforts to mitigate household food insecurity are most effective when they focus on easing women's time constraint and income generation productivity, improving their access to productive resources and mainstreaming of gender in all the response areas.

Improving Agricultural Productivity of Women in HIV/AIDS Contexts

Agricultural institutions can play an active role by reorienting their policies towards the needs of women farmers burdened by HIV/AIDS. Agricultural extension should advise or train women farmers on effective labour and income-coping strategies suitable in HIV/AIDS related labour and capital constrained environments. Relevant extension messages include promoting labor saving technologies, crop diversification, and low-input agriculture. Examples of relevant technologies include: intercropping to reduce weeding time, promoting use of high yielding crop varieties which are not labour intensive (eg. sweet potatoes, cassava), and conservation farming techniques which include zero or minimum tillage to reduce the need for expensive ploughs and oxen, and promoting natural pest management, thus reducing the need for expensive chemical inputs such as pesticides (Munn et al 2003, Michiels, 2001, FAO, 2003, Jayne et al, 2004). Crop diversification as opposed to narrow crop farming allows for diffusing labor loads through time and it also assures the household of some crop yield in a drought situation.

Many innovative ways of promoting these extension messages to target women farmers include: training of government extension workers on technologies and production activities that are relevant to HIV/AIDS situations, rural radio programs, women’s associations, adult literacy classes, church associations, school based training and participatory training of farmers through for example farmer field schools (as explained by Page, 1999) or through the FAO’s People's Participation Program (PPP), or telecentres as in Uganda and Mali (as explained by Michiels, 2001).

Agricultural research institutions need to consider the emerging gender sensitive technological needs resulting from the AIDS epidemic. Research can focus on some of the following technologies that can be very helpful to women to maintain or improve production and meet food security needs: selection of the appropriate variety of crop (eg early maturing, disease resistant, easily threshed or pounded, low input), improvement of existing labor saving inter-crops, high-value food crops which are drought resistant, and the introduction of farm equipment that can be used by women, by the weak or by donkeys (eg lighter ploughs and planters and a modified hoe). New technology that address the most labour demanding activities of weeding and harvesting – activities mostly done by women – will greatly lighten the labour burden of women in HIV/AIDS situations.

Direct provision of inputs such as seed and fertiliser to women will help increase their returns to agricultural production and help improve livelihood security of their families.

Strengthening and Protecting the Rights of Women to Land and Property

Law reform to give legal recognition to women's rights to land and property is often the first step necessary to promote gender parity in land and property rights. Law as an instrument of social change needs to be supported by an efficient law enforcement system that can help prevent and restore land and property that is taken and by legal rights awareness campaigns to promote a change of attitudes among both women and men and to enable beneficiaries to pursue land and property claims. There is need to work with traditional leaders to resolve discrepancies between women’s property rights and the discriminatory provisions of customary law (UNAIDS, 2004). There is a continuous need to sensitize and educate the public about gender supportive land and property laws. In some countries for example Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Malawi, Uganda and Kenya a number of NGOs have emerged which are actively engaged in promoting the rights of women to land and other property (UNAIDS 2004, Rehmtulla, 1999). The main problem however is the fact that most of the NGOs are based in urban areas, such services in the rural areas is still limited. There is need to scale up these initiatives.

Technology Development to Ease the Domestic Labour Burdens of Women and Strengthening Rural Service Delivery Institutions

Technology development should recognize the social realities of the multifaceted work of rural women in the house, agricultural production, natural resource management, and care-giving. Water and energy are basic resources that improve the economic opportunities and quality of life of rural women, who often spend much of their time and labour collecting water and fuelwood. This calls for improved basic services in rural communities such as closer water points, improved water-harvesting techniques, more efficient stoves and other affordable household technologies that may improve the working situation of rural women.

Strengthening Informal Strategies

Different forms of informal and traditional schemes to help women meet agricultural production activities and other capital and input requirements have been in existence in many societies in countries in Africa South of the Sahara for a long time (Kaseke, 1997). Examples of such schemes include labor-sharing clubs, women-only mutual-aid societies, benevolent groups in churches, draft power clubs, rotating and savings club and cooperatives and market women's groups. These schemes allow them to pool resources to reduce their workload and have been helpful in helping mitigate the impacts of the epidemic on women (Mutangadura et al, 2001). Operation of such organizations is not governed by any legislation. They operate in accordance with rules agreed by the membership. Studies in Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, found free community labor-sharing to be a common community coping response adopted by communities to help support affected households. Experience in Rakai and Masaka districts in Uganda shows that labor-sharing clubs have been effective in relieving HIV/AIDS related labor shortages (IFAD, 2001). Overall there is a dearth of information on how NGOs or governments can build up on these interventions to successfully address the HIV/AIDS induced household food insecurity.

Economic Empowerment of Women Through Provision of Credit and Income Generation

Critical mitigation intervention required to make women less vulnerable to the socio-economic impacts is empowering women to access credit and in generating income. Income generating projects have been used widely in development programs even before HIV/AIDS to address lack of access to food, primarily economic access and as a major poverty reduction strategy. Income-generating programs for affected women can include support for micro-enterprises, micro-credit schemes, training and market access. A study of 37 income generating projects in 5 countries (Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda) the results indicated that the most commonly implemented IGAs by women affected by HIV/AIDS were gardening, peanut butter making, craftwork such as sewing/knitting, embroidery, beadwork, piggery, poultry production, small retailing of cooked food, freezer pops, candle and soap making, goat raising, sunflower oil expressing, mushroom production, revolving credit program, dairy farming, cattle rearing, fishing, bee keeping and gum tree nurseries (Mutangadura, 2002). The IGA, which were reported to be very effective at generating income, were piggery, revolving credit, poultry and peanut butter making. The very high levels of unemployment and lack of access to markets in rural areas limit income generation opportunities. However training was indicated to be a major determinant of success of an IGA.

Assistance to Elderly Women

The key constraints facing elderly women in coping with the illnesses and deaths of their children due to HIV/AIDS need to be tackled realistically. Provision of adequate support and care for orphans and the elderly through community-based interventions remains one of the most important strategies in mitigating the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the elderly and their grandchildren. The elderly require labor support and material support. The governments need to design a partial old-age support package that specifically targets the elderly who are in difficult situations, such as fostering grandchildren. Such a program could offer free health care to the elderly, supplemental food for the elderly, and assistance with the school fees of their grandchildren.

Girl Child Access to Education

Policies and programmes to keep girls in school are needed such as abolition of school fees, assistance with uniforms, income generation opportunities for girls, distance education, flexible learning options such as double-shift system and others.

Male Participation in Care-Giving and Domestic Work

Encouraging male participation in care-giving and domestic work would significantly alter the burden of care on women (UNAIDS, 2004).

Integrating Mitigation With Prevention And Improved Access To Treatment

It should be stressed that without prevention the spread of the disease would not be halted. Access to anti retroviral treatment will also help lengthen the productive life of people living with HIV/AIDs thereby minimizing the socio-economic impacts on households. Although this paper has focused mostly on mitigation – the most appropriate response to addressing the gender dimensions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on rural livelihood is a combination of all the three responses mitigation, prevention and treatment.

Simple Lessons To Learn About Mitigating The Gender Dimensions Of The Impacts HIV/AIDS In Rural Setting

There is very little available in terms of lessons learnt from mitigating the gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods. It is too early to tell what the lessons are. However some of the lessons include the following: (a) Impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods are not gender neutral–there is need for mitigation responses to address the gender specific needs of affected populations. Mainstream gender in HIV/AIDS mitigation policies and programmes. (b) Empower women socially and economically to make them be less vulnerable to the impacts of HIV/AIDS and help reduce their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection. This may involve legal literacy campaigns, provision of credit, income-generating opportunities and market access. (c) Protect the land and property rights of women in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Civil society in particular is playing a major advocacy role and should continue to do so. (d) There is need to record experiences on mitigation of gender related impacts of HIV/AIDS and share them. Best practices should be shared widely through a strong network, a database, meetings conferences, eforums, newsletter etc. (e) The agricultural institutions (ministries, donors, NGOs) working on mitigation interventions should ensure that gender issues have been adequately addressed. (f) Existing community-based initiatives need strengthening.

Outstanding Critical Gaps In Knowledge

Even though this paper has tried to throw some light on the gender dimensions of the impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in rural areas, there remain huge knowledge gaps that might be important in designing relevant policies and programs. Essential research areas include:

Gender disaggregated data

A major constraint in analyzing the gender dimensions of the impacts of HIV/AIDS on rurallivelihoods is the lack of sex- and age- disaggregated data. Despite growing recognition of the role of women in securing livelihoods and in efforts to eradicate poverty, this knowledge gap remains (Strickland, 2004). Such information about the gender division of labour and responsibilities can help shape more effective and equitable policies.

Detailed Experiences On Gender-Focused Interventions

Experiences on gender-focused interventions to mitigate HIV/AIDS induced food insecurity have not been documented in research. This is clearly a knowledge gap that needs to be investigated in the future.

Prioritization Of Mitigation Interventions

There is need to come up with robust evidence on impacts and effectiveness of mitigation interventions so that a form of prioritization can be developed.

Gender-Based Indicators For Monitoring And Evaluation.

Monitoring and evaluation data are important to ensure that inventions actually make a difference in the lives of women, and provide a basis for adjusting interventions to make them more effective. Whilst there is substantial information available for monitoring and evaluating gender impacts of HIV/AIDS prevention interventions and food security interventions, very little information is available that can be used in monitoring and evaluation the impact or progress on gender equality of HIV/AIDS mitigation programs. For example there is need to develop national and local level indicators (gender disaggregated) that would measure progress towards equity for women in accessing land and credit in HIV/AIDS environments.

Conclusions

Even before HIV/AIDS, rural livelihoods are characterized by marked gender differences in roles between men and women. Most women in rural Africa South of the Sahara bear heavy responsibilities for food crop production, weeding and harvesting on men's fields, post-harvest processing, fuel wood and water provision, and household maintenance. The HIV/AIDS epidemic presents a disproportionate burden on women, as their role as caregivers intensify while at the same time they may lose access to land, labor, inputs, credit and support services. Women are expected to meet the food security needs of their households with less income and a higher labor burden. The HIV/AIDS epidemic thus compounds existing gender inequality.

Given the central role played by women in sustaining rural livelihoods, governments should address these impacts. There is need to address institutional, social and economic constraints that limit women’s ability to cope with the epidemic, notably credit, land, technologies, extension services, and training. Some of the key mitigation interventions required include labour-saving agricultural technologies, facilitating women's access to land and institutional credit, strengthening informal social and economic safety nets, establishing rural water supply systems, developing and popularizing locally appropriate fuel-efficient and time-saving stoves, and improving village-level transport infrastructure. It is well known from development experience that, in the developing world, investment in rural women provides high returns in terms of improved quality of life for the families and households.

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Annex 1. Percentage Share of Women’s Role in Rural Household Systems Tasks in Kenya

Citation Format:

Gladys B.Mutangadura. “Gender, HIV/AIDS and Rural Livelihoods in Southern Africa: Addressing the Challenges,” JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 7, 2005.

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