Gender Imbalance in Agricultural and non-Agricultural Activities and its Impact on Household Food Security: a Case Study of Morogoro Rural
Ndiyo,D.| Urassa,J. K. / 2002

This study was conducted in November 2001 to March 2002 in Mkindo village Morogoro rural district. The aim of the study was to assess gender imbalance in agricultural and non-agricultural activities and its impact on household food security. The specific objective was to determine the extent of gender imbalance in agricultural and non-agricultural activities, to determine the role of women in household food security and to determine ownership of means of production between men and women and its impact on household food security. The study used an explanatory cross sectional design in which data was collected once through a structured questionnaire with some open and closed ended questions. A total of 75 respondents were involved in this study where by 43 were female and 32 were male, purposive and simple random sampling were used to get the intended respondents. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 9.0 for windows. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, mean, percentages and cross tabulation were used to summarize the information. Results show that, unequal ownership of means of production between men and women, a burden of women’s domestic work as compared to men, poor participation of men in non-farm income generating activities, and limited women decision-making were some of the contributing factors on household food insecurity revealed from the study. However it was observed that bad weather conditions, poor technologies used in agricultural activities and lack of capital was the major contributing factors to food insecurity for majority of interviewed households. Equal ownership of means of production between men and women, equal participation in agricultural and non-agricultural activities between men and women, crop