Women's participation in the development of household production system
1997
Chauca-de-Zalvidar, L.
Rural women in Peru have always contributed to the development of their families and communities through their dual role of housekeepers and income-earners. Peasant economy, as a family productive system, comprises a great varietyof jobs that supplement agricultural work. As a whole, women's jobs are very important. Among other labour assignments, women take care of the animals, clean and select seeds, and sell their animals (guinea pigs, poultry, etc.), crops and handicrafts. While doing these jobs, women improve in communications, and become more aware of overall activities. Women's jobs do not represent great monetary value. However, they are most important for the nutritional welfare of their families. Despite the hard work and the time spent in the improvement of their ways of life, there still is much poverty among rural families. Due to economical problems that our country has had to confront, women's work has increased to keep minimal conditions of living. Now theyhave to work harder and for longer periods. In Cajamarca, Peru, the Guinea Pig Production Systems Project (INIA - IDRC) developed a non sex-discrimination family system program. In the long term, our research and the validation of our results were done with women. Twelve percent of these women have to take care of their families because they are either single mothers, widows or have been abondened by their husbands. In order to make this project successful we tried to improve women's self-confidence and pride. This could change the primary goal of the guinea pig breeders. Now, women have jobs that ameliorate the nutritional aspects of their families. With the small extra income they obtain, they may improve the family welfare, which is our final objective. We are encouraging them to develop very small guinea pig breeding enterprises that could help them to have better living conditions, and consequently increase in living standards of the whole community.
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