A Disappointing Harvest for Rural Women - A WOW! e-brief
WORLD NEIGHBORS AND RURAL WOMEN
World Neighbors works in marginalized rural communities, where the situation for women is dire. Women in rural areas of the developing world lack access to resources, such as health care, education and credit that could improve their quality of life.
World Neighbors role in its partner communities is not to manage development but rather to support communities as they increase their ability to manage their own development process and find lasting solutions to critical needs. Because of this, World Neighbors works within the community to avoid creating dependency on outside organizations.
Since the mid-1990s, Ecuador has been experiencing one of the worst economic crises in its history. Poverty is particularly prevalent in the rural areas of Ecuador among indigenous communities where the population lacks access to basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, modern health care and family planning.
In rural areas, teenage pregnancies form a considerable obstacle to overcoming poverty. Adolescent pregnancies account for 16 percent of the total on an annual basis.
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World Neighbors began its work in this country at approximately the same time as the economic crisis took hold. To help improve the lives of rural women, Julio Beingolea, country director for Ecuador and Peru, supported the women in forming a group aimed at addressing issues relevant to their lives. World Neighbors work focused heavily on helping women better their farming techniques as well as their self-esteem. World Neighbors provided training and activities such as field trips, informal visits and exchanges with farmers in order to help rural women learn more effective practices.
In addition to providing rural women with education to help improve farming methods, World Neighbors works there and elsewhere to help provide women opportunities to participate in other income-generating activities.
For example, in Guatemala, World Neighbors provided the IK-Luna Women’s Group with revolving credit as well as capital to set up a handicraft business. In addition, World Neighbors helped the women secure seeds to start a coffee and tree nursery. World Neighbors provided training to help the women care for the nursery and to plant their own gardens and cultivate subsistence crops, like tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cilantro and other local favorites.
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The work World Neighbors does in rural communities also focuses on improving social relations between men and women. One method utilized by World Neighbors representatives is to demonstrate the disparity in the unpaid workload between the sexes, a major cause of female poverty. Because women spend so much time on unpaid labor in their community, they lack the time and energy to work in income generating activities.
One method of helping a community realize this problem is an activity called “24 stones.” In this activity, women and men are given 24 stones, each signifying an hour in the day. They are asked to place the stones in various piles that represent the time spent on various activities and chores. In the end, both men and women realize how much larger a workload the women have. The shock of this exercise often results in men offering to shoulder some of women’s work, such as gathering firewood, collecting water or feeding animals.
World Neighbors also supports creating a more equal balance of power in decision-making. Providing women with ways to generate income has the potential to help women improve their status within the home and the community. Many decisions about the distribution of resources are made by men and women within the family, involving negotiation and the exercise of power. Control of resources tends to be determined, in part, by the financial contributions each individual gives to the household. Women, unfortunately, earn much less income and contribute fewer physical assets than their male partners, which often makes them less influential in making household decisions regarding resources.
The work World Neighbors does in its partner communities focuses on many dimensions of women’s social conditions, such as poverty, access to education and basic social rights. World Neighbors strives to improve the lives of rural women by offering them access to the tools needed, such as education and income generating activities, to alleviate poverty and better their quality of life.
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Photo credits this page:
1 - Shulala girl, by Kathy Edwards
2 - Ecuadorean women, by Steve Sherwood
Other sections of this e-brief:
1 - Rural Women and Agriculture: An Overview
3 - Profile: Carmen Muyulema
4 - Learn More and Get Involved
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A WOW! e-Brief
Work of Women @ World Neighbors
February 2008
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