Gender roles in tea farming and its effect on gender equity in Singorwet Ward, Bomet County, Kenya

Abstract

Studies in various parts of the world inclusive of Vietnam, India, and China indicate that men and women have certain roles in agriculture. In many developing countries assignment of these responsibilities in agriculture are based on social and cultural norms. In Africa and Kenya women take most of the roles that involve spending long hours and using a lot of energy. Their work receives less recognition and value. The main objective of the study was to examine gender roles in tea farming and its effect on gender equity. The specific objectives were to examine the effect of access and control over land, assess the effect of access to financial services, analyse the effect of traditional division of labour and evaluate the effect of access to agricultural extension services in tea farming on gender equity in Singorwet Ward, Bomet County. The study was based on the theories of social change. A cross-sectional study design was used since it enables the understanding of the prevalence of gender inequity issues through a study of a large group of people at the same period. A sample size of 532 tea farmers’ respondents (comprising of 431 male tea farmers and 101 female tea farmers), 2 directors and 10 farm labourers were involved in this study. Purposive, stratified and simple random sampling was employed to get five zones based on sub-locations within two director zones in Singorwet ward and then tea buying centres were randomly selected within the two zones- Singorwet Zone and Mugango Zone. The two Zones were used because of their existence within Singorwet Ward, the area covered by the study. A pilot study was done in one tea buying centre in every sub location, and the centres were picked purposively- those that have the largest number of registered tea farmers. This was to get variety of respondents in terms of educational level, age, marital status among other factors. A combination of these sampling techniques was employed due to the segregated respondents to allow for an understanding of each case per gender and age among other demographics. Questionnaire, interviews and observation schedule were used for data collection. Data analysis was done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS V.25) for quantitative data and QDA Miner lite for qualitative data. All major decisions on tea farming rest with the men, as well as all gender equity indices and access to and control of financial services in tea farming. The overall gender parity ratio stood at 0.2 which was in favor of men. The study recommends to all tea farming stakeholders to invest in programs to reduce time pressures for women and support joint decision making and ownership of income and resources at the community and household level to attain gender equity.