The gender concept has become increasingly important in development due to the realization that gender differences have an impact on the achievements and results of development projects.

Gender and Sex:

Gender is not synonymous with women as it is often implied, nor does it mean the same as sex.

Sex on the other hand refers to the biological make-up of an individual, which is determined before birth and cannot be changed.

Why pay attention to gender issues

•  Women and men have different roles, constraints and opportunities. A focus on gender enables these differences to be recognized and taken into account in the design and implementation of technologies, projects or programmes.

•  Women play a central role in agriculture and food security. Their contributions are overlooked as many of the activities are assumed to be undertaken by men. A focus on gender enables the contributions of women and men to be appreciated and strengthened.

•  Women and men have different access to and control over resources and benefits of production. Women have limited control over such resources as land, equipment and finances. A gender focused approach enables disparities in resource control to be identified and addressed in the course of the project.

•  Because of the differences in gender roles, rights and responsibilities, projects impact differently on women and men. In some cases, projects can benefit one gender while they disadvantage the other. Gender analysis enables possible negative impacts to be detected and corrective measures taken.

A major concern in agriculture relates to women's limited participation in decision-making. While they provide most of the labour on small-scale farms, their involvement in decision making both at household level and community level is often much lower compared to men. Women also have limited opportunities for training and capacity building. A gender-focused approach is important to remove barriers towards women's participation and empower them to play their roles more effectively and to benefit from their efforts in agriculture.

Gender analysis provides information and reveals disparities in the division of labour and workload and enables researchers and planners to work towards designing labour-saving technologies and to advocate for more equal distribution of labour between men and women.

Introducing basic gender analysis tools:-

Gender analysis is a systematic attempt to understand the roles and responsibilities of women and men within a given society. Gender analysis helps to:

• Predict how development projects will impact on women and men.
• Determine the relevance of certain policies, technologies or activities for women and men.
• Identify the "real" target groups and participants for specific activities including training, and identify barriers to their effective participation.
• Assess if agricultural projects will result in equitable and sustainable development

Basic tools for gender analysis were introduced and discussed. These included the following:-

• Activity profiles: which helps to generate information or who does what in the project area. The analysis considers the productive roles, reproductive roles and community work.
• Access and control profile: helps to generate information on resources available, what resources do women and men have access to? What resources do they each control? How will this situation be affected by the project?
• Participation of women and men in decision-making.
• Analysis of influencing factors; what factors influence the current situation?

Gender and DAP

The role and the contribution of women to the economic welfare of the peasant family remains a neglected topic in the analysis of agricultural production. Women are in many ways the invisible agricultural producers. Invisible to ‘developers', invisible to extensionists, invisible to those who disseminate agricultural technologies like animal draft power.

Development programmes and the promotion of animal draft technology have been directed mostly at male farmers, forgetting that the majority of farmers are women. Women, along with men, are subjects of development, but development so far has had a different impact on women relative to men.

Technology transfer in support and utilisation of draught animal technology has moved sluggishly in many areas due to lack of involvement of those that perform particular tasks.

For instance, weeding has always mainly been carried out by women, and as such animal weeding technologies introduced without their involvement have always remained locked with men without any applications.

In a number of cases, animal traction projects have tended to allow men to expand the amount of land under cultivation for cash crops and reduce their workload in land preparation, while increasing women's workloads in transplanting, weeding, harvesting and transporting produce from the field. This, and similar negative effects of animal traction technology on women necessitate a reorientation of animal traction programmes to serve women better.

Affirmative action type strategies aimed at simply providing oxen and animal traction implements will not suffice. An holistic approach which calls for the re-examination of the past and current socio-economic and political institutions within which women operate is essential.

One strategy for reaching out to women to ensure full participation in animal traction projects specifically and in development generally as proposed by Makwanda (1994), is to involve women as a group independent from men. The same strategy is advocated by Marshall and Sizya (1994). Through organising women into groups they gained access to and were able to control draft animal technology.

On one hand, we have to recognise that ‘women only' projects in one sense demonstrate the underprivileged status of women in society. It is because women have been neglected in development that they have to be given special attention in order to address the imbalance. On the other hand, care should be taken not to define women's advancement only as a concern of women, but as one which particularly requires cooperation and a change of attitudes by both men and women. In some circumstances, for example in sex-segregated environments, based on either tradition or religion, women-only projects are the only option.

Typical animal traction projects are introduced as a means of improving smallholder farmers' productivity and improvement on agricultural output and income. It has, however, become increasingly clear that targeting project benefits to the rural population generally and hoping that women within the communities in question will get their share, simply does not work. Moreover, the design of such projects does not take into consideration the nature of tasks to be performed by each gender within households. The time and labour requirements of such projects do not take into account the already overburdened schedules for women.