Academic literature on the topic 'Agro-pastoral women'

Abstract Objectives To determine the difference in underlying factors related to child nutritional status between pastoral and agro pastoral based communities in Ethiopia. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in two rural pastoral communities located in the Somali region and agro pastoral community located in Southern Nations. Pairs of mothers and their infants aged 6 to 52 months were randomly selected to participate in the survey. Data was collected using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, Dietary Diversity, and Sanitation for Household Survey. Anthropometric measurements taken included height, length, and weight using WHO Anthro version 3.2.2. Chi-square tests were used to assess differences between communities. Logistic regression were used to analyze factors that contributed to infant health status. Results A total of 232 participants from both communities completed the survey. The agro pastoral community reported a higher food insecurity rate at 87% than the pastoral community at 70%. The prevalence of women not achieving the minimum dietary diversity was significantly higher in the pastoral community than the agro pastoral community (94% vs 68%, P < .001). Similarly, more households in the pastoral community reported accessing drinking water from unimproved sources (64% vs 0.9%, P < .001) and using unimproved toilet facilities (97% vs. 77%, P < .001) than the agropastoral community. Although almost all participants from both the agropastoral and pastoral communities reported washing their hands during critical times (100% and 96%) respectively. In addition, the pastoral community had significantly higher prevalence rates of infants’ wasting (44.5% vs 0%, P < .001) and underweight (47.8% vs 7.7%, P < .001) than the agro pastoral community. Conclusions Even though the prevalence of food insecurity was higher in the agro pastoral community than the pastoral community, they had lower rates of infant malnutrition. In contrast, although the pastoral community reported a lower rate of food insecurity, they had higher rates of child wasting and underweight, reported low dietary diversity, and poor hygiene practices. Based on these findings, dietary diversity and environmental sanitation may be protective of child wasting and underweight over and above food insecurity. Funding Sources Feed the Future Livestock Systems Innovation Lab (LSIL).

Recurrent droughts due to climate change has led to vulnerability of the pastoralist communities, leading to loss of assets and food insecurity. Climate change will have different impacts on women and men’s livelihoods. Building resilience at individual, household and community level will largely depend on the suitability of interventions to the local context, particularly in relation to the social dynamics and power relations that create differences in vulnerability. Most of the research have focused on national and regional studies. The impact of climate change will not be uniformly distributed in countries within Africa or within the same country. This specific research focuses on two diverse ecological zones at the local level in the same County of Turkana in north western Kenya: agro-pastoral zone and primary pastoral zone. This paper aims to evaluate women and men’s adaptive capacity to climate variability in Turkana, north-western Kenya. It is evident that increasing resilience can be realised by reducing vulnerabilities and increasing adaptive capacity. The results revealed that agro-pastoralists are more resilient to climate change than primary pastoralists. Male headed household are more resilient than female headed households. Access to basic services is contributing more in the resilience score than assets, gender of house hold head and age. Generally, few families in this region have very high resilience score.

This article addresses a gap in current biblical scholarship regarding food production and consumption. Using meat and beer as two brief case studies, the potential of food to symbolise and inculcate identities and status in the agro-pastoral Israelite and Judahite household will be demonstrated. A case will also be made for attributing agency to food. In particular, this method elucidates the roles and identities of various members of the household, including its animals and deities, and especially focuses on the ritual agency of women.

The study was conducted to find out dairy production practices among Agro-pastoral Fulani women in the derived Savannah of Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria. Data were collected, using structured questionnaire from 120 Fulani women in three Local Government areas namely: 0yo West, Atiba and Ogbomosho North respectively. The study revealed that the main dairying activities are milking of cattle, processing and marketing of dairy products. The most preferred dairy products are wara (local cheese), ghee and butter. Marketing was done exclusively by self or in combination with intermediaries ("middlemen"). Main reasons for engagement in dairying activities are: Income generation, cultural and husband's wish. Constraints mostly encountered are bad roads, inadequate transport facilities and inadequate supply of raw milk from the cattle in dry season. Sources of agricultural information include; friends/neighbours, radio broadcasts, and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Programme, Ibadan.

Rural banditry in Nigeria’s northwest in recent years has made the zone a hotbed of violence. What started as localized disputes in the agro-pastoral sector in 2010 has today metamorphosed into an intractable crisis posing a major threat to national and regional security. Banditry in the zone is characterized by large scale killings, abductions, raids on communities, rape of women and girls and displacement of people and is exacerbated by collapse of governance and absence of law and order, injustice, porous borders and proliferation of Small and Light Weapons (SALWs) among others. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, banditry continues to take devastating tolls on its victims, especially women who are the most vulnerable in times of crisis. Women and girls face a double challenge of gender-based violence perpetrated by bandits and intimate partners during the global health crisis. The pervasiveness, intensity and intractability of banditry in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic is worrisome as it could make worse existing gender inequalities such as rape, transactional sex, child marriages, increase in the number of out-of-school girls and the practice of purdah. To address the conflict, a multi-approach involving all stakeholders in the conflict is recommended.

In mountainous country Nepal having large populations of culturally unique indigenous peoples poses threats of glaciers retreat and resource bases change. The indigenous people living in mountain plays the major role in carbon management. Further, the role and responsibilities of men and women varies differently in natural resource conservation and management. However, their participation in decision-making and benefit sharing is poor. The majority of women have unequal access to productive resources and decision-making process. Therefore, study on gender based agro-pastoral activities, their contribution on carbon management and decision-making process were carried out in Tamang ethnic group of Gatlang VDC of Rasuwa district, Nepal. For the purpose, 30 households were selected purposively. Similarly, four focus group discussions were carried out among the separate group of women, men and group consisting both men and women. Carbon management types: input carbon and output carbon activities were studied on men and women. In total, 23 different agro-pastorals related activities were found, among them 57% of work were supported by women, 39% by both men and women, and 4% by men only. With respect to fuel-wood, in average, 10 kg per day fuelwood is necessary for one household. The use of biomass for cooking emits chocking smoke and causes indoor air pollution. All these disadvantages lead to carbon emission which might lead to health deterioration of women by increasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and respiratory disorders. The average fuel-wood requirement was found to be 840 kg/capita/year which are found to be higher than the other physiographic regions of Nepal. This is due to use of fuel-wood as only source of energy in the study area. Out of total respondent, it was observed that 30% literate men allow their wife to make joint decision on the major household issues. Similarly, 3% literate women respondents took the major decision by their own or jointly with their husbands. On the other hand, 30% illiterate men and 37% illiterate women either didn’t allow their wife or don’t participate in major decision-making process. Further, it is revealed from the chi square test that literacy plays major role in decision making (x2 = 5.625, df =1, p=0.017). Similarly, educated women actively join together with their husband in decision making. Moreover, women have high contribution in carbon input and output activities. Therefore, the women education should be promoted to make their equal and strong participation in decision making, which ultimately contribute in carbon input and output activities, through their greater roles in livestock husbandry and fuel-wood management relative to men. Further, importance of women’s role in carbon management should be given greater prominence.

Wedding gift exchange from the turn of the century to the present has served as a medium through which women in the Maradi valley of Niger could assert their worth, create social ties and respond to a shifting political economy. Rather than exploring the implications of ‘bridewealth’ and ‘dowry’ in isolation, this paper sees wedding prestations as an ongoing and evolving dialogue in which women's roles and worth are contested, the nature of wealth is redefined and the terms of marriage are negotiated. The crisis in domestic labor which arose with the decline of slavery in the early decades of the century gave rise to informal unions through which the labor of junior women could be controlled. Women responded to these informal marriages by staging highly visible ceremonies which established the worth and standing of the bride. With the growth of an increasingly urban-centered commercial and bureaucratic economy, women have been drawn into a desperate ‘search for money’ to continue to meet their obligations in the gift economy. While the outward form of wedding gift exchange appears unchanged, the importance of cash to the acquisition of goods, services, and productive resources has radically altered both the content and the significance of gift exchange. Gifts no longer embody wealth in people derived from ability within an agro-pastoral economy. Instead they reveal the giver's access to the resources of the state and the market. Women's eroding position within the economy since 1950 has drawn them further and further into gift exchange, both in order to build a safety net in the form of exchange value stored in a woman's dowry and to secure the social ties which can ensure their continued access to increasingly contested resources.

AbstractThis article deals with metida avoidance practices as they emerge in daily and ritual practice among the agro-pastoral Datoga-speaking peoples of Tanzania. The elaboration of the avoidance practices varies starkly between and within Datoga segments, but these practices are commonly particularly elaborate in connection with death or death-like events, and with birth or birth-like events. In the study area women may spend years of their lives with severe restrictions on their conduct in terms of movement and socialization. We argue that in making sense of such avoidance phenomena the strong influence of Mary Douglas's ‘dirt’ and ‘pollution’ concepts has hindered an understanding of the fact that the metida seclusion does not only isolate substances perceived to be dangerously contaminating, but in similar ways secludes fertile and vulnerable elements in order to protect them. A Strathern-inspired transition to a focus on bodies as open and dynamic systems that mingle with other bodies in intimate flows or exchanges of bodily fluids may be fruitful in this context. We indicate, however, that incautious substitution of a ‘pollution’ concept with the concept of ‘flows’ may lead to challenges not entirely dissimilar to those that attended the employment of Douglas's concepts.

The aim of the study was to develop strategies to reduce the unmet need for modern contraception among agro-pastoral women. The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of unmet need for modern contraception, determine the factors associated with unmet need for modern contraception, and explore the barriers that hindered agro-pastoral women from using modern contraception. A mixed-method research design was used to conduct the study. Data were collected from agro-pastoral women and family planning service providers. Questionnaire and individual in-depth interviews were used to collect the data. The validity and reliability of the quantitative data and trustworthiness of the qualitative data were ensured. Use of standard data collection tools, employing method and data triangulation, and documenting all the procedures of data collection and analysis were among the ways employed to do so The quantitative data were analysed using simple descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the qualitative data. Ethical principles of research such as beneficence, justice, informed consent, respect for persons, privacy and confidentiality and scientific integrity were considered to conduct the study. The study revealed an unmet need of 29.2% (n=112) for modern contraception among agro-pastoral women. The unmet need for birth spacing constituted 21.1% (n=81), whereas the unmet need for birth limiting was 8.1% (n=31). The age of the women, the number of living children, knowledge of modern contraceptive methods, and knowledge of FP service centres were found to be associated with women‘s unmet need for modern contraception. Lack of time and money, lack of knowledge about modern contraception, and fear of side effects were the major individual-level barriers. There were also culture-related factors such as the need for many children that hindered agro-pastoral women from using modern contraception. Moreover, the study disclosed that religious unacceptability and husband‘s and relatives‘ opposition were also among the mentioned barriers. The quality of FP service provision in terms of the competence and behaviour of health service providers, unavailability and inaccessibility of FP service, were also indicated as barriers. The findings informed the development of strategies to reduce agro-pastoral women‘s unmet needs for modern contraception in Eastern Ethiopia. The study further recommended that the health bureaus of the region, zone and district collaborate in ensuring that agro-pastoral women realise the significance of the provision of accessible, equitable, quality modern contraception. It is also essential to equip health facilities with qualified health service providers and necessary facilities. Religious leaders should be involved in disseminating vital, relevant and empowering FP information.<br>Health Studies<br>Ph. D. (Public Health)