IFAD's projects in Madagascar give women more opportunities, but the struggle continues
Madagascar -- Women in Madagascar, as in other parts of the developing world, are slowly gaining more economic power through step-by-step involvement in new projects. They have proved to be highly responsible managers, sometimes more so than their male counterparts. Yet despite apparent progress they are still under-represented in the local economy and more often than not they are unaware of their possibilities.
On the whole, women have been particularly responsive to the microfinance initiatives put in place under IFAD’s latest projects in Madagascar, and they have joined new schemes when given the chance.
Women took an active part in the various activities of the recently completed North-East Agricultural Improvement and Development Project in the north-eastern Sava region. The project had the aim of improving the living conditions of small-scale vanilla producers by enhancing vanilla processing and introducing a credit union system.
Women accounted for nearly 30 per cent of the 17,500 members of the credit union and benefited from one fifth of the loans granted. The same was true in the southern region, where the Mandrare project, currently under implementation, transformed the Mandrare Basin into a rice producing area for the entire region, and where a credit union also was put in place. So far at least 20 per cent of the credit union’s members are women and overall membership is still growing.
Women have proved to be efficient managers. In some areas where up to 30 per cent of them run farms, they have been particularly good at using the credit system. They have turned out to be better savers than men and they have showed a higher level of maturity in running their businesses.
Women have also become active participants in farmers’ organizations that have been put in place under various projects. In the North-East Agricultural Improvement and Development Project, which created more than 400 professional associations, women represent about 27 per cent of the total of about 10,000 members.
Despite recent progress, the role of women in rural society remains a traditional one. When asked about their daily life, women in Madagascar, with the exception of women in one or two communities, say that there is a well defined division of tasks between men and women. Women run the household, prepare food for the family, look after the children and are responsible for the less arduous work on the land, such as fetching water, weeding and seeding. They also go to market occasionally, although not as often as men, and that is where they keep informed.
Traditionally, to supplement family income, women also undertake other activities. They weave baskets and sell their products on the market, or they work as paid labourers in agriculture when the family is no longer self-sufficient. In many, but not all, communities men manage the family’s income and decide on expenditures.
“Our rice production is not sufficient for the whole year. I have to weave to supplement our income. I can make one mat and a sobika basket per day. I earn 500 ariary for a sobika. My daughter helps me from time to time,” said Marie Rose, mother of four children, from the village of Fanjakana in the High Matsiatra region. Her husband is a carpenter and they live in a small two-storey house. She grows rice, manioc and vegetables outside the rice season.
Her situation is not a bad one by local standards. Many other villagers live in a one-room house and have a larger family but a small rice plot and only a few domestic farm animals such as chickens and pigs.
The daily wage for small-scale agricultural work is about 600 ariary (US$1=2,000 ariary). In comparison, a 60-kilometre ride into town in a taxi-brousse costs between 7,000 and 10,000 ariary. Often women learn new farming techniques by working at a paid agricultural job but they can never use them at home because of reluctance on the part of their husbands, who prefer traditional methods.
In general, women aspire to get married, have children and share with their husbands the work of feeding their family. Because of a liberal attitude towards sex, girls tend to marry very young, usually around the age of 12 (boys marry at about 14), and they become mothers at about 14. Women also say that from the time they are nine years old children have to cope for themselves to buy clothes, so they often try to get a job and they say that “some young women would even spend the night with a man to earn money.”
Weddings are generally celebrated according to tradition and are not registered with local authorities. The same is true of childbirth. Most women deliver their babies at home with the help of an unregistered midwife because maternity hospitals are distant and costly. They do not bother registering the birth afterwards. This is a widespread problem for Madagascar, where it is difficult for the government to keep a registry. Unregistered children have no access to public schooling and no voting rights. Divorce is widely accepted and many women prefer to divorce their husbands rather than accept polygamy.
Education is at the core of women’s aspirations for their children. In some communities, women have taken the initiative of setting up their own private schools to educate village children. The schools are entirely funded by the parents, often with great difficulty. A mother in the village of Ranomainty, in Amparafaravola district in the Alaotra Mangoro region, said, “I went to school and I was an avid learner, so in 2002 we created our own school, and it is the parents who pay the teacher. It is very difficult, but we want our children to be educated.” The system is not without its difficulties. As one of the mothers explains, “There aren’t enough classes and the teacher is absent most of the time.” Because teachers are paid irregularly, they are often absent, working on their land instead of teaching. Many parents choose to be separated from their children so they can attend school, often sending them to live with a close relative.
What emerges from conversations with many women in remote villages is the fact that they do not have a great sense of a community as women. A female teacher in the Amparihivola community said, “We tried to gather together women in the community for Women’s Day on 8 March to convince them to plant jatrofa [seed], but nobody came. They don’t want to appear different, and they don’t see the benefit of being in a group. Often they are jealous of one another.”
The one concern they share, however, is family planning. They have six to eight children on average but would like to have fewer children and would like to be better informed about family planning. They believe this would put them in a better position to feed and educate their children.
For women, being poor means having many children, having to go without eating rice every day, not having anything else to sell when there is no rice production, not owning a zebu ( cow) or a rice parcel, not having paid employment on the land, and being a single mother or widow.
Source: IFAD
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