The Silent Struggle: Women in Agriculture Bearing the Weight of Every Task

In Sub-Saharan Africa, women have a triple role – community, reproductive and household chores. With new technologies being proposed that involve capacity-building programs and training, many women are left to handle every task on the farm and their mandatory household responsibilities; they are overworked and exhausted and have little time left for them. As a result, the intended outcomes of capacity-building programs, which include economic independence, leadership opportunities, and empowerment, remain out of reach for most women farmers, especially in Makueni.

As men increasingly remain absent from farming, the dream of women’s empowerment risks becoming a mirage, more so in countries grappling with chronic food insecurity like Makueni County in Kenya. Men have shifted focus from agriculture to other employment and are increasingly pursuing non-farm activities. The problem is not about unequal representation or gender discrimination but rather the over-reliance on women to help sustain farming. Though efforts to empower women through decision-making and access to resources, the massive absence of men in agriculture results in an overwhelming workload for women farmers, hindering their ability to benefit from empowerment programs effectively.

Redistributing responsibilities and workloads in agriculture can ensure that the workload is fairly and equitably shared among men and women. This requires addressing situations that disproportionately burden women with agricultural labour. Possible solutions proposed by women were;