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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Deere, Carmen Diana Working Paper The feminization of agriculture? Economic restructuring in rural Latin America UNRISD Occasional Paper, No. 1 Provided in Cooperation with: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva Suggested Citation: Deere, Carmen Diana (2005) : The feminization of agriculture? Economic restructuring in rural Latin America, UNRISD Occasional Paper, No. 1, ISBN 9290850493, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/148788 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu OCCASIONAL PAPER 1 The Feminization of Agriculture? Economic Restructuring in Rural Latin America by Carmen Diana Deere UNITED NATIONS RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT Occasional Paper 1 The Feminization of Agriculture? Economic Restructuring in Rural Latin America by Carmen Diana Deere February 2005 UNITED NATIONS RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT This United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) Occasional Paper was written for the preparation of the report Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World. The work for this report is being carried out with the support of the European Union, the Department for Research Co-operation of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida/SAREC), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa, Canada) and the government of the Netherlands. Copyright © UNRISD. Short extracts from this publication may be reproduced unaltered without authorization on condition that the source is indicated. For rights of reproduction or translation, application should be made to UNRISD, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland. UNRISD welcomes such applications. The designations employed in UNRISD publications, which are in conformity with United Nations practice, and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNRISD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The responsibility for opinions expressed rests solely with the author(s), and publication does not constitute endorsement by UNRISD or by the funders of this project. ISBN 92-9085-049-3 Download this publication free of charge from www.unrisd.org/publications/opgp1 contents Acknowledgments . ii Acronyms . ii Summary/Résumé/Resumen . iii Summary . iii Résumé . iv Resumen . v I. Introduction . 1 II. Neoliberalism and Poverty in Rural Latin America . 3 II.A. Gender dimensions of the economic crisis . 8 III. Rural Livelihoods and the Diversification of Household Incomes . 12 IV. Methodological Problems in Analysing the Changes in Rural Women’s Work . 17 V. Agricultural Labour Markets as Gendered Institutions . 22 V.A. The development of non-traditional agro-export production . 25 V.B. The feminization of the wage labour force . 28 V.C. Flexibilization and segmented labour markets . 31 V.D. Wage labour and female empowerment . 35 VI. The Viability of Peasant Agriculture and its Feminization under Neoliberalism . 40 VI.A. The withdrawal of the state, liberalization and household food security . 41 VI.B. The decline of traditional agro-exports . 43 VI.C. Peasants in non-traditional agro-export production . 44 VII. Rural Women’s Access to Land and other Resources . 47 VIII. Concluding Comments . 52 Appendices I. Estimates of women’s wage employment in traditional agro-export production . .55 II. Estimates of women’s wage employment in non-traditional agro-export production . .56 Bibliography . 59 Tables 1. The evolution of agricultural production in Latin America (1970 = 100) . 6 2. Growth in agricultural sector exports and imports, Latin America and the Caribbean, 1979–2001 . 6 3. Incidence of poverty and indigence, Latin America, 1980–2002 (in percentages of the population) . 7 4. Female share of rural–urban migration, selected Latin American countries . 9 5. Rural economic activity rates by sex, Latin America 1980–2000 (in percentages) . 10 6. Female household headship in Latin America, 1999 (by percentage of households) . 11 7. Distribution of economically active population by sector and sex, Latin America, 1999 . 14 8. Population occupied in agriculture, rural and urban, by sex, Latin America, 1999 . 21 9. The gender wage gap in non-traditional agro-export production, Mexico, 1994 (daily wage in packing houses, in current pesos) . 34 10. Distribution of landowners by gender, Latin America (in percentages) . 48 11. Method of acquisition of land ownership by gender, Latin America (in percentages) . 49 OPGP 1 – THE FEMINIZATION OF AGRICULTURE? ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING IN RURAL LATIN AMERICA acknowledgements The author is grateful for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper by Martine Dervin, Lovell Jarvis, Elizabeth Katz, Shahra Razavi and an anonymous reviewer. acronyms ACEP Asociación Colombiana para Estudio de la Población ATC Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo AVANCSO Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences (Guatemala) BID Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo CBI Caribbean Basin Initiative CELADE Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Demografía CEPAL Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe CEPLAES Centro de Planificación y Estudios Sociales CETRA Centro de Estudios del Trabajo CIERA Centro de Investigación y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria CLOC Coordinación Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo EAP economically active population FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FLACSO Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas FUNDAJ Fundação Joaquim Nabuco GDP gross domestic product IICA Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura ILO International Labour Organization ISI import substitution industrialization LSMS Living Standard Measurement Survey NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement USAID US Agency for International Development PAGE ii SUMMARY/RÉSUMÉ/RESUMEN summary résumé resumen SUMMARY The main trends associated with the economic crisis, neoliberal restructuring, and the growth of rural poverty rates in Latin America include a continued diversification of rural household income-generating strategies, an increase in the number of household members seeking off-farm employment, and the increased participation of rural women as both own-account and wage workers in the agricultural as well as non-agricultural sectors. While methodological problems persist in analysing changes in rural women’s work over time, the dominant trend in the region over the past several decades has been towards the feminization of agriculture. The growth in women’s agricultural wage employment has been concentrated in the non-traditional agro-export sector favoured under neoliberalism: specifically, in the production and packing of fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers for Northern markets, what now constitutes Latin America’s leading agricultural export rubric. In many countries women and children make up half or more of the field labour for these crops, while women constitute the vast majority of the workers in the packing houses geared to the export market. Nonetheless, the character- istics of this employment, principally its temporary, seasonal and precarious nature, have made it difficult to cap- ture quantitatively in national censuses and household surveys. The essay analyses the role of gender-segment- ed labour markets in increasing the demand for female labour, as well as the significance of women’s increased participation in wage labour for female empowerment. There is also evidence, stronger for some countries than others, of a feminization of smallholder production, as growing numbers of rural women become the principal farmers—that is, own-account workers in agriculture. This phenomenon is associated with an increase in the proportion of rural female household heads; male absence from the farm, in turn related to growing male migration and/or employment in off-farm pursuits; and the decreased viability of peasant farming under neoliberalism. There is little question that the principal factor driving these trends is the need for rural households to diversi- fy their livelihoods. The combination of growing land shortage, economic crises and unfavourable policies for domestic agriculture has meant that peasant households can no longer sustain themselves on the basis.