Gender relations and their effect on livestock management in Uganda: A case study of Ciforo Sub-county, Adjumani District

Abstract

In livestock farming development and research projects, many scholars, scientist, policy makers and implementers often focus on ‗technology development‘, broadly understood as development of all kind of methods to improve production and health, farm and animal management, and to decrease disease levels (Kimmins et al., 2004) in Mette Vaarst (2007). Wolmer and Scoones (2005) in Mette Vaarst (2007) emphasised that many of the challenges are not technical, but related to policies and institutions. The family as the lowest level of institution, often times issues of gender relations such as land and livestock ownership distribution, roles of men/boys and women/girls, access to, control of and decision making on productive resources have always been ignored as crucial to livestock management.

This cross sectional study was conducted in Adjumani between June and December 2009 with the main objective of studying the gender relations and how they affect livestock management in Adjumani district. Specifically the research determined the land and livestock ownership distribution between men/boys and women/girls, the roles and the responsibilities of men/boys and women/girls in livestock management, access to, control and decision making on productive resources. It also investigated how money earned from the sale of livestock and livestock products is spent by men and women. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Structured questionnaires were used to collect information from livestock farming household to generate quantitative data, while interview guide was used for collecting data on qualitative aspects of the research. The interview guide was used for Focus Group discussion and interview with key informants who included veterinary extension workers, gender technical officers at sub county level and women leaders. The study population was the livestock keeping households of Ciforo Sub County and a sample size of 100 household was arrived at using proportion estimates designed by Yamane (1967). Quantitative data collected was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS), Microsoft excel while content analysis, establishing themes, coding and comparison and differences were made for the qualitative data collected.

The results of the analysis show that there was disparity in land ownership distribution between men (88%), women (7%), boys (4%) and girls only (1%). It also shows that 80% of the men owned the cattle compared to 6.7% by female head and 8.9% by the family

Grazing and watering of animals was done mainly by boys (51.4% and 75%) respectively. Control or payment of the treatment cost against helminths is also mainly met by 90% of men. Similarly access to, control of and decision making on productive resources was dominated by men. The study concludes that the gender relations in regard to livestock are greatly skewed with more men being advantaged at the expense of the women.