The gender division of agricultural labour

Participatory rural appraisal draws on a suite of exercises including seasonal calendars that allow farmers to share knowledge of their life and conditions.

Based on the specificity of the agricultural tasks for each crop, seasonal calendars allow men and
women to share their detailed knowledge of cultivation practices and work entailed in farming. Both men and women participate in physical, hard manual labour such as land preparation, land clearing, digging holes and pruning branches.

Men seem solely responsible for pesticide and fungicide application in coffee plantations. Likewise, there are other post-harvest activities that women are solely responsible for such as storage for maize and beans.

These results which are specific to some villages in Uganda and Tanzania illustrate one type of data
that calendar exercises generate.

Marimo, Pricilla; Caron, Cynthia