Women, Agriculture and Irrigation in Egypt

Summary

Recent studies’ findings confirm the unchanged findings of studies that have been conducted over the past decades regarding women’s involvement in agriculture and irrigation. The main findings are that many rural women are fully engaged in agriculture and irrigation; however, this reality is denied due to social norms and customs. Findings also show that female farmers suffer from the same obstacles endured by male farmers (e.g. marketing, lack of funding, etc.) and have almost equal access to all the resources (e.g. agricultural inputs, machinery, traders, etc.) as male farmers, except for information, in terms of techniques and technologies that would allow them to make better decisions. Over the past decades, many attempts have been made to support women, however, the knowledge gap is still evident for which innovative endeavours are needed.

Women’s Role in Agriculture and Irrigation

According to the latest Capmas figures, women’s engagement in agriculture accounts for about 20%, second only to the education sector (Egypt in Figures 2022). Women in rural areas have always played a central role in agricultural production. They?work in the house and care about the animals, and their role increased in the field when male farmers travelled abroad since the 1970s (Binzel & Assaad 2011). Recently, this role further expanded,?because of soaring agricultural production costs and the stagnation of crop prices coupled with?the shrinking landownerships that make agriculture alone insufficient for supporting a household, thus forcing male farmers to seek jobs elsewhere, while leaving women to care about the land.?

Nevertheless, it is still not considered proper to voice that rural women work in the field. Therefore, in rural areas many men and women express that women do not play a role in agriculture and irrigation. However, reality shows the opposite as women play a direct and indirect role in agriculture and irrigation.?Many women do help their husbands in the field, especially those with small landownerships to?help increase the household income.?

A woman in Beheira governorate expressed:

I do everything to help my husband in all agricultural activities to reduce the cost of laborers. When he goes to work as a laborer to get some extra income he operates the pump for me and I open the mud field ditches to allow water to flow in our land (half a feddan).?

In areas, where irrigation improvement projects have installed collective stationary pumps, irrigation has become easier, as no pump needs to be moved from one place to the other, and the pump is operated by an operator. In addition, the marwa improvement (quaternary on-field channels) has saved male and female farmers from having to walk in the mud as one has only to open the field outlet valve to allow water to flow in the field.?

A woman from Kafr-El-Sheikh stated:?

The collective pumping station made irrigation easier, as we had to move the pumps from the canal to the drain in the past to have access to water now we just tell the operator to operate the pump and open the on-field ditch to allow water to flow in the field.?

In the Delta region, women involved in agriculture also hire day laborers, and sell their produce to local merchants or to buyers at local markets. Furthermore, in some northern governorates, women exchange their labour for the planting of rice seedlings in the summer.?

In general, the role of women in agriculture and irrigation -?according to farmers -?could be described as follows:

First, they work in the field to support their family with small land holdings, especially in the Delta governorates.

Second, male farmers state that women do not work in the and only work at home and care about the animals to save face, because it is not socially accepted, while in reality making use of female support in the field.?

Third, some educated females in rural villages, especially those with a university degree refuse to work in the field and consider it a dirty job.?

Fourth, well-off families who can afford to hire laborers or machines do not need the support of females in the field.?

Fifth,?in some governorates – especially in Upper Egypt - composed of a mixed population who consider themselves to be from Arab descendants i.e. with nomadic origins, are more conservative concerning women’s work in the field and prohibit their involvement.?

However, rural women even though that they do not all work in the field they all admit that they play a central role in deciding on the selection of the cultivated rice and wheat varieties, as they tell their men about their preferences. Thus, women are in most cases the ones indirectly deciding on the cultivated wheat and rice varieties. They also have a say in investment decisions, e.g. in improvement of on-field irrigation channels, because they are responsible, together with their husbands, for the household budget. Therefore, they need to be supported just as men; however, in a way that accounts for their conditions, i.e. limited mobility, occupation, land ownership, literacy level, etc.

Nevertheless, the problem is that the role of rural women in irrigation and agriculture is not only undervalued by their male family members but also by the concerned ministries and their officers, e.g. extension workers. This hampers women’s access to agriculture and irrigation related techniques and technologies that would help them in taking better decisions, either when indirectly supporting their husbands or when taking decisions for themselves as household heads. The need for female involvement is expected to increase with climate change and its evident and predicted impacts on agriculture.

Therefore, agriculture service providers (e.g. agriculture extension services, veterinarian services, and microfinance services, etc.) must service the different needs of male and female farmers to ensure that they are equally supported.?

However, there are a number of obstacles - due to the invisibility and/ or undervaluation of the role of women in agriculture and irrigation - that hinder this from happening:

·??????Many extension sector and rural financial institutions’ campaigns are only targeting male farmers, underestimating the role of female farmers and thus unaware of how to tailor services to suit different female farmers’ needs (e.g. housewife, laborer, livestock breeder, small landowner, etc.).?

·??????The public extension service has not taken account of increased rural women involvement, which is also reflected in the?lack of women extension workers on the village level. In 2011, their percentage did not exceed 4% of total village extension workers.?

Therefore, it would be useless to stress on building the capacity of these few female extension workers, but more innovative solutions must be sought:

v?Female farmers are not homogeneous; therefore, it is important to develop of a profile of female farmers based on age, marital status, education, landownership, type of agricultural activity, etc. to be able to create customized services.

v?Define the services targeting different female farmers’ and the means by which they are to be addressed based on their profile. Either through…

·??????Training young female volunteers from villages to work as extension workers to support their fellow female villagers under the guidance of the extension sectors of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Irrigation.?

·??????Developing TV agriculture extension programs that are accessible to small hold farmers, especially female farmers with low literacy levels, lack of time and constrained mobility.

·??????Provide digital solutions that are gender-sensitive for educated female farmers who have access to smart phones and the internet.

·??????Invite key female farmers to tailored extension training workshops - that consider their conditions - to inform them about their rights and duties without seeking to force foreign concepts on them.

#egypt?#agriculture?#naturalresources?#ruralcommunities

References

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