Mulheres no desenvolvimento agrícola: estudo sobre as actividades agrícolas com enfoque no papel das mulheres na Aldeia de Diavanhane Distrito de Guijá

Abstract

The District of Guijá has agriculture as a potential activity for its possible development. Its population is basically peasants surviving on subsistence agriculture. However, the past six agricultural seasons have been ravaged by natural disasters, leaving the population in a situation of poor food security and consequently destroying the commercial network in the District, making seeds scarce. Animal husbandry, which once disappeared with the war, has now started to recover. The Lutheran World Federation project, which has carried out activities to benefit this population in the areas of agriculture, health, education and social assistance, and the Faculty of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering proposed to carry out this work which has as its theme "Women in Agricultural Development: the study of agricultural activities with a focus on the role of women in the village of Djavanhane, District of Guijá". The work had the following orientation: bibliographical revision, an exploratory visit to the District where contacts were made with the District Direction of Agriculture, the Lutheran World Federation and the village of Djavanhane, where some informal interviews were carried out in order to get acquainted with the agricultural situation of the District. In a next phase, 52 informal interviews were conducted based on a pre-made script with the help of Swift's model (see page 3), with the objective of quantifying some information collected during the exploratory visit. A small case study of the family that hosted the student during the data collection was also prepared. With this work it was possible to discover that in the village of Djavanhane women have responsibilities in production, reproduction and community activities, sometimes working in precarious conditions. There are women with different family situations, to highlight married with present husband, married with absent husband, polygamy with present husband, polygamy with absent husband, divorced and widows with living conditions and habits sometimes different, and with different opinions on community and social aspects of the village. Therefore rural development and support projects acting in the village must deal with women not as homogeneous groups, but as heterogeneous groups with distinct particularities, and any improvement in women's lives can only be made if the way in which women's and men's lives are interconnected in a given society is analysed. (TRADUÇAO NOSSA)