This article argues that gender-specific projects which do not
recognize the traditional organization of social
and productive forces in a given society are bound to fail.
The Maasai Peoples' project, which focused on
primary health care, is presented here as an example.
A popular concept among development agencies working in health care in Africa is the empowerment of women (Kenya, no date). This idea is based on the controversial generalization that women in African societies are exploited by men. It is even claimed that African men eat all they want before women and children are allowed any food. However, there is little empirical data to demonstrate that African men are better nourished than women. Poverty in tropical Africa is not gender-specific, although its impact on various groups can vary. There are wide variations across tropical Africa in terms of women's social position. This reflects the great diversity of traditional social arrangements, which in turn reflect cultural pluralism (Hay and Stichter, 1984).
Health and development projects have often been carried out in the name of women with no regard for the intricate social interaction between the sexes in any given culture. Sometimes gender-specific projects have been proposed, planned and implemented without any consideration for traditional social structures and norms. In most African societies social affairs tend to be discussed and agreed between men and women in private. But men are the ones who most often speak in public. To many Westerners, this is evidence enough that women are subjugated.
I argue that gender-specific projects which do not recognize the traditional organization of social and productive forces in a given society are bound to fail. One example is the Maasai Peoples' project, which focused on primary health care. It considered housing, agriculture, environmental sanitation, natural conservation, personal hygiene and maternal child health all to be interrelated. Since the project focused on health and the home, the main target group was women, and for this reason, women were employed as development motivators.
The Maasai women were encouraged to cultivate land as a way of diversifying family diets and thereby improving the nutritional status of the community. Traditionally, the Maasai are a pastoral people who utilize livestock products, especially milk. The supply of milk dwindles during the dry season, however, as herding resources decline. Cultivation would provide food security, especially during periods of food shortage, as well as additional income for families. This extra income would hopefully be ploughed back into the households to improve family health and welfare. One of the project's main strategies was to motivate Maasai women through one-day workshops. A typical workshop programme would comprise lectures, role-playing, drama and discussion. The development motivators would then make follow-up visits to the participants' homesteads.
One of the one-day workshops sought to encourage Maasai women to build modern houses. Traditional houses leak badly during the rainy period, which leads to respiratory infections. Efforts to introduce the use of polythene paper sheeting on walls and roofs to keep out moisture proved futile, however. Although among the traditional Maasai it is the women who build houses, the community is governed by a male gerontocracy. The male elders are unwilling to let women engage in activities that appear to be departures from their age-old social order. Furthermore, the new type of housing required relatively large monetary investments, which were difficult for the women to raise since Maasai men have ultimate control over family resources.
The project strategy, which called for the exclusive use of women as development motivators, therefore had a built-in constraint. Given that the specific functions and roles of women are subordinated to those of men, it was unlikely that men would take lessons from either their wives or from women extension agents. The involvement of both men and women in the workshops to introduce innovations in cultivation and housing might have yielded better results.
Isaac Sindiga
Moi University
P.O. Box 1125
Eldoret
Kenya
Acknowledgement
The editor thanks Dr M.E. Fernández for her
assistance.
References
Hay, M.J. and S. Stichter (1984), African Women South of
the Sahara. London and New
York: Longman.
Kenya, Republic of (no date), National Development Plan for the Period 1994 to 1996. Nairobi: Government Printer.