The relevance of intra-household division of labor for overall household wellbeing is common knowledge, especially among development practitioners from the developing world. While division of labor acquired a newer impetus as a consequence of a strong and emerging gender narrative a few decades ago, its momentum seems to have been torpedoed by the comfort of gender mainstreaming; reducing the role of gender analyses in agricultural extension and sustainable development initiatives. We briefly revisit the gender evolution, and empirically apply Caroline Moser’s triple roles framework in order to rekindle the role of gender analyses in understanding and promoting targeted extension services and sustainable development. A cross sectional, empirical survey was carried out in the North West region of Cameroon from 7-30 October 2014. Two rural and urban divisions were purposively selected. One division had difficult road access, while the other was fairly accessible. Eight villages (four rural and four urban ones) were randomly selected from both divisions. Gender analyses using Moser’s triple roles framework were carried out separately in all villages, with groups of 30-35 self-selected men and women, facilitated by trained enumerators; and complemented with focused group discussions and key informant interviews.
Wide differences between the productive, reproductive and socio-cultural roles in rural and urban communities were unveiled; with even stronger differences between men and women based on gendered results. As expected, more women were engaged in reproductive activities than men, irrespective of setting. Strong bias against women evident in the gender literature was not reported. The results emphasize the implications of regular gender analyses for development effectiveness. There is need for consistent gender analysis as prelude to improving agricultural extension initiatives, achieving gender balanced sustainable development of rural and urban areas in developing countries and upgrading development effectiveness. Context-specific aspects should be considered in informing gender based development actions and policy.
The focus of this research was to identify the role played by agricultural cooperatives in rural development in the era of liberalization in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon. Primary sources were used for data collection. Questionnaires were administered to 329 respondents from 52 agricultural cooperatives in 40 villages with a response rate of 78.7% in the North West Region and 21.3% in the South West Region. Agricultural cooperatives and government officials were interviewed in both regions. Findings from the field show that 80% of the respondents agreed that agricultural cooperatives play a role in rural development especially in the areas of trainings, increased output production, the provision of inputs and marketing of farmers produce. Agricultural cooperatives can effectively and conveniently handle only two major roles in its rural development efforts: Improved Agricultural Production and Capacity Building. Seventy percent of the respondents declared that they were satisfied with the role agricultural cooperatives play in rural development despite the sociopolitical crisis in the study area. The government should increase investments in agriculture and rural infrastructure and create an agricultural bank to enable agricultural cooperatives play its role fully in rural development.
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