TY - JOUR
T1 - Capital, labor, and gender
T2 - the consequences of large-scale land transactions on household labor allocation
AU - Hajjar, Reem
AU - Ayana, Alemayehu N.
AU - Rutt, Rebecca
AU - Hinde, Omer
AU - Liao, Chuan
AU - Keene, Stephanie
AU - Bandiaky-Badji, Solange
AU - Agrawal, Arun
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Rights and Resources Initiative (Grant Number 4971); the National Science Foundation?s Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems program (Grant Number 1617364); the UK Department for International Development (Grant Number 203516-102); and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?s Land-Cover and Land-Use Change program (Grant Number NNX15AD40G). The authors would like to thank Etenesh Mulu for her help in conducting focus groups and compiling transcripts, as well as all the focus group participants who were so willing and ready to tell us their stories.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/4/15
Y1 - 2020/4/15
N2 - Contemporary large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), also called land grabs, are historically unprecedented in their scale and pace. They have provoked robust scholarly debates, yet studies of their gender-differentiated impacts remain more rare, particularly when it comes to how changes in control over land and resources affect women's labor, and thereby their livelihoods and well-being. Our comparative study of four LSLTs in western Ethiopia finds that the transactions led to substantial land use change, including relocation and decrease in size of smallholder parcels, loss of communally-held grazing lands, and loss of forests. These changes had far-reaching impacts on household labor allocation, the gendered division of labor, and household wellbeing. But their effects on women are both more adverse and more severe, expressed in terms of increased wage labor to make up for lost land and livestock, more time spent gathering firewood and water from increasingly distant locations, and an increased intensity of household responsibilities where male members underwent wage labor migration. These burdens led to negative psychological, corporal, and material effects on women living in and near transacted areas compared to their situation prior to transactions. This article both responds to the deficit in studies on the impacts of LSLTs on gendered livelihoods, labor relations, and wellbeing outcomes, and lays the groundwork for future research.
AB - Contemporary large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), also called land grabs, are historically unprecedented in their scale and pace. They have provoked robust scholarly debates, yet studies of their gender-differentiated impacts remain more rare, particularly when it comes to how changes in control over land and resources affect women's labor, and thereby their livelihoods and well-being. Our comparative study of four LSLTs in western Ethiopia finds that the transactions led to substantial land use change, including relocation and decrease in size of smallholder parcels, loss of communally-held grazing lands, and loss of forests. These changes had far-reaching impacts on household labor allocation, the gendered division of labor, and household wellbeing. But their effects on women are both more adverse and more severe, expressed in terms of increased wage labor to make up for lost land and livestock, more time spent gathering firewood and water from increasingly distant locations, and an increased intensity of household responsibilities where male members underwent wage labor migration. These burdens led to negative psychological, corporal, and material effects on women living in and near transacted areas compared to their situation prior to transactions. This article both responds to the deficit in studies on the impacts of LSLTs on gendered livelihoods, labor relations, and wellbeing outcomes, and lays the groundwork for future research.
KW - Ethiopia
KW - Tenure changes
KW - agricultural investments
KW - gendered impacts
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U2 - 10.1080/03066150.2019.1602520
DO - 10.1080/03066150.2019.1602520
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078941898
SN - 0306-6150
VL - 47
SP - 566
EP - 588
JO - Journal of Peasant Studies
JF - Journal of Peasant Studies
IS - 3
ER -