By Sofanit Mesfin, Ripple Effect Gender and Social Inclusion Regional Coordinator
Imagine being a woman facing hunger crisis in rural Africa. You are less educated than the boys and men in your community; you have limited opportunities to earn any money, and very little say in what crops might be grown, or what the family’s money might be spend on.
You are the person responsible for producing meals for your family, but when you have cooked the food, you eat last: after your husband, after your children. Often that will mean that you don’t eat at all.
Women serving, but not eating
I know this sacrificial role of the mother is common across the world, including in the Global North when women on low incomes are struggling to feed their families. My colleagues in the UK tell me that women there might say, “Oh, I ate earlier” or “I ate while I was cooking,” or they just make themselves busy while their family is eating.
But here in the communities where we work these are deeply embedded gender roles and expectations, even for women who are pregnant, or breastfeeding. In many villages it would be quite normal for the woman to be sitting with the family while they eat, but she is not eating.
In Ethiopia, some cultural practices actually preclude pregnant and breastfeeding women from eating certain high-protein foods. This is highly risky behaviour for women’s health at a time when their bodies need nutritious food, and our work challenges all these practices with intensive work to shift mindsets and family relationships.
Focusing our work on women
This is why our gender and social inclusion work is deeply embedded in all our work to combat hunger and poverty, training in sustainable agriculture and developing enterprise skills. It is the first work we start with when we set up a project.
When we are recruiting project participants our target is that at least two-thirds of them will be women. We will seek them out in established self-help groups and in isolated homes. If we don’t reach women, we don’t reach the key food providers – who are also, very often, the poorest of the poor.
Our results have shown that the women who have worked with us are more resilient in the face of hardship and crisis. We have seen some of the most extreme examples in Ethiopia, when our Developing Business Women project was overrun by the conflict at the end of 2021.
Empowering women saves lives
When we first started working here in 2019 it was the men who decided everything. By September 2021, 98.5% of the women involved in our Developing Business Women project reported having “high” involvement in decisions about livestock and cash management.
When the men were driven from their homes by Tigray forces, women suddenly became the heads of their households. Women involved in the project had been empowered to make decisions that helped them to survive.
Aregu Ali, 52, is one of them. She has seven children and lives in the Alansha kebele in Kutaber. When her husband had to leave, along with all the other men in the area and the Ripple Effect training staff, the women enrolled in the project formed their own social support networks across the kebeles. With local markets deserted they shared skills and vegetable production.
Aregu herself travelled to Dessie city, a round trip of 30km, to sell vegetables throughout the growing season, earning 30,000 birrs (more than £450) to support her family. It’s not too much to say that the ripple effect of our training and knowledge transfer saved some of these women’s lives.
Want to learn more?
Learn more about the worst hunger crisis in east Africa in 40 years. Hear from Doreen Angom in Uganda and found out how you can help.
Learn more about Transformative Household Methodology (THM), a tool that helps families to see the overwork and disempowerment of female family members.
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