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| Title |  |
A plot of one's own: gender relations and
irrigated land allocation policies in Burkina Faso. (Research report, 13 pages) |
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| Author | Margreet Zwarteveen | |||
| Organisation | International Water Management Institute | |||
| Year | 1997 | |||
| Summary/ Introduction |
Land allocation
policies in command areas* of new irrigation systems
rarely allow women to obtain an irrigated plot. Plots are
normally given to heads of households only, the majority
of whom are men. Even though a number of studies suggest
that allocation of irrigated plots to men only is one of
the causes for the disappointing performance of
irrigation projects in West Africa (e.g., Carney 1988;
Dey 1990; Jones 1986), the normal practice in Burkina
Faso continues to be the allocation of plots to male-headed
households only. The reluctance to allocate plots to
women stems from a number of implicit and explicit
assumptions about the intra-household organization of
agricultural production, and about the roles of men and
women in this organizational setup. In particular, (1)
there is fear among policy makers and project planners
that the allocation of plots to both men and women will
result in lower overall irrigated agricultural
productivity, and (2) the need for allocating plots to
women is not clear, because it is assumed that women will
benefit from the plots of their husbands. Also, unless
plot sizes are varied, allocating more than one plot to a
single household will be inequitable as it will lead to a
situation where fewer households will have access to
irrigation. The Dakiri irrigation system is one of the few systems in Burkina Faso where some women obtained irrigated plots on an individual basis; 60 women (or 9% of the total number of plot-holders) have individual plots. Most of their husbands also have plots. This report presents the findings of a case study carried out in the Dakiri irrigation system in 1995. This study explored the effects of the allocation of plots to both men and women, by comparing the households in which only men are plot-holders with those in which both men and women have access to irrigated plots. This comparison was made with respect to (1) the agricultural productivity of irrigated plots, (2) the labor contributions of male and female household members to the different plots and fields, and (3) the intra-household distribution of agricultural incomes. The findings of the study in Dakiri show that both the productivity of land and the productivity of labor are higher in irrigation systems where both men and women have plots. Income of women increases sharply, while the proportion of labor contributed by women to men’s plots is virtually the same. It is important to recognize that households where both men and women have plots have more irrigated land than households where only men have plots, but the evidence suggests that allocating smaller plots separately to men and women would have positive production and social benefits. *Command area is the total land area reached by an irrigation system. |
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