Local gender contract and adaptive capacity in smallholder irrigation farming: a case study from the Kenyan drylands

Abstract

This paper presents the local gender contract of Sibou, Kenya: a smallholder irrigation farming community.Women's role in subsistence farming in Africa has mostly been analyzed through the lens of gender division of labor. In addition to this, we used the concept of 'local gender contract' to analyze cultural and material preconditions shaping gender-specific tasks in agricultural production, and consequently, men's and women's different strategies for adapting to climate variability. We show that the introduction of cash crops, as a trigger for negotiating women's and men's roles in the agricultural production, results in a process of gender contract renegotiation, and that families engaged in cash cropping are in the process of shifting from a `local resource contract' to a 'household income contract.' Based on our analysis we argue that a transformation of the local gender contract will have a direct impact on the community's adaptive capacity climate variability. It is therefore important to take the negotiation of local gender contracts into account in assessments of farming communities' adaptive capacity.

“Women in groups can help each and learn from each other”: The role of homosocial practices within women’s social networks in building local gender contracts

“…Water control is an expression of masculinity which hinders women´s access to resources, especially if they are widows or their husbands is absent. Often they might find themselves in the situation where they have to pay a man to be able to keep their crops from dry up and dying putting in jeopardy the wellbeing of their children (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015). Through these activities, Harambees are truly a life saver for women.…”

“…Her research explicitly focuses on how women´s microcredit groups actively adapt to climate variability (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015), while carrying out her current research in Kenya and Tanzania, she observed women groups engaging in shared activities: saving, self-help, mutual support in agriculture, traditional dance and beading of decorations. Traditional networks of mutual support have long been present in Sub Saharan Africa.…”

Full issue

“…Group dynamics created gendered systems of belongings which appear to be important to maintaining LGC structures. The group and community dimensions were briefly mentioned by Hirdman (1990) and tentatively studied by Caretta and Börjeson (2015), but never operationalized in the analysis of gender contract.…”

“…In more recent developments, gender contracts have been studied at the individual level for instance research regional variations of gender contract in Sweden (Forsberg, 2010) and local gender contracts in Norway (Grimsrud, 2011;Gerrard, 2011); housing conflicts in Southern Africa (Larsson and Schlyter, 1995); women´s self-help housing in Botswana (Kalabamu, 2005); the renegotiation of the LGC in Laos due to the rubber boom (Lindeborg, 2012), gender adaptive capacity to climate change in Kenya (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015) and landscape formation in East Africa (Caretta, 2015b).…”

“…Negotiations are not necessarily associated with substantial marked changes in gendered power structures as they are manifested through small changes found in the working arrangements of everyday practices (Webster, 2016). Instigated by small negotiations at the family level, which in turn influence societal working arrangements, overtime these negotiations yield changes in the shared understanding of femininity and masculinity and so new gender contracts emerge (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015;Hirdman, 1990). Group dynamics can create a safe place for practicing negotiations and even testing new forms of engaging in gender power relations before applying to the broader social structures.…”