Work division in family farm production units: feminine responsibilities typology in a semi-arid region of Brazil

Abstract

There has been evidence indicating that women in underdeveloped (or developing) countries carry a disproportionate burden of the costs of this economic dynamics while men enjoy its benefits. These criticisms on analysis moved gender from the periphery to the center of the development debate. Brazil and particularly the state of Ceará have not yet seen any of the repercussions of the analytical advances. This study on the role of women in the agriculture of the semi-arid aims to analyze the complexity of the factors that interact in order to recognize the nature of women’s participation in semi-arid world areas comparatively to other disadvantaged environments. In the semi-arid area, rural women are able to cover a broader spectrum of tasks and fuller management activities when compared to other disadvantaged areas of the world. They cover all rural management activities. Besides, rural women’s work is predominantly more complex when compared to mens work in semi-arid regions worldwide. Their greater ability to perform these activities is because these women combine different strategies in an efficient and dynamic way, adapting themselves to the demands of labor and the natural semi-arid environment.