The discipline of context: commercializing a “women’s crop” in Southern Malawi

Abstract

Commercialization may disempower women if men take control of “women’s crops”. We tested this hypothesis for pigeonpea with a sample of 175 married households in Phalombe district, Southern Malawi. Commercialization did not change women’s control over decision-making for pigeonpea. An experimental game was used to identify preferences for the intra-household distribution of income at two different levels of income from pigeonpea. At both low and high levels of income women and men both preferred to pool income rather than have separate shares. The allocation of income between investment and consumption did not differ between women and men, nor when wives played independently or together with their husbands. Women were only willing to accept a higher income from pigeonpea if this increase was shared equally with their husbands. We conclude that the commercialization of pigeonpea will not disempower women. A matrilineal system of inheritance and matrilocal marriage strengthen the bargaining power of women in Southern Malawi. Context determines who wins from commercialization.

Keywords:

• Gender
• commercialization
• pigeonpea
• Malawi

Acknowledgements

We thank the Sukamphete Pigeonpea Growers’ Cooperative which facilitated access to farmers and the farmers themselves who patiently answered our questions; Joachim Weber for suggestions to improve the questionnaire; Edward Bikketi and Sheena Orr for literature; and Zoltan Tiba for organizing the logistics of the household survey. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helpful criticism. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies or the institutions with which they are affiliated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The poverty scorecard is based on 10 indicators from Malawi's Second Integrated Household Survey (IHS) of 2004/5 to estimate the likelihood that a household has a consumption below a given poverty line (Schreiner, 2015). For its application to the household survey see OPM (2019: 10, 12–14).

2 The Chichewa word katundu is translated as “goods” or “stocks to sell” (Plass, 2013), sv.

3 The Chichewa word kusunga is translated as “to reserve or keep” (Plass, 2013) sv or “to hoard, reserve for future use” (Guerin, 1985) sv.

4 The Chichewa word kukambirana is translated as “sharing of experience or views; dialogue; discussion; negotiation”, and mgwirizano as “agreement, cooperation” (Plass, 2013) sv.

5 The SRMS household survey did not collect information on land ownership by gender or on how land was acquired.

6 Many proverbs in southern Malawi reflect this patriarchal view of the household where the man is the “final” decision-maker: Wamkulu mbanja ndi mwamuna [the head of a household is a man] and Ng'ombe yaikazi sikoka ngolo [A cow does not pull an ox-cart] (Nagoli & Chiwona-Karltun, 2017).

7 “Rudeness” has a social meaning in Malawi. “A woman’s breaking a rule of marriage made her rude" (Schatz, 2002, p. 274). Examples of wives’ rude behaviour include talking back to their husband, stubbornness, not bringing him food and bathwater, or not washing his clothes. One-third of husbands considered “rudeness” as sufficient grounds for divorce (Ibid., 282 ff).

8 Researchers on micro-finance have also found that, “counter to what we know from research with low-income women of other parts of the world”, married couples in southern Malawi routinely shared decisions and information about household finances. https://www.womensworldbanking.org/news/blog/helps-note-household-dynamics-rural-malawi/ Their astonishment at the power of women echoes that of the first colonial observers (Kuzara, 2014. p. 54).

9 An abortive attempt by the colonial state to commercialize groundnuts foundered partly because of opposition from women. This was intended to increase the potential revenue from hut tax. However, hut tax was paid by men whereas the income from groundnuts was controlled by women. Commercialization would therefore have transferred income from women to men (Bezner-Kerr, 2010).

10 A generalized model of patriarchy has also been found inappropriate for other regions. A comparison of four countries in Southeast Asia concluded that the “results contradict the conventional narratives of gender inequity in agriculture that have emerged from the studies of farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia” (Akter et al., 2017, p. 277). Among the findings was that “in all study sites, the income of the husband and wife is pooled as family income and in most cases (90%) is managed by the wife” (p. 275).

Additional information

Funding

Research was funded by UK Aid from the UK government through its program Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning in Africa (SAIRLA).

Notes on contributors

Alastair Orr

Alastair W. Orr ([email protected]) is an agricultural economist, formerly ICRISAT’s Assistant Regional Director in Eastern and Southern Africa and currently an Honorary Research Fellow, ICRISAT-Nairobi. His main research interest is in smallholder commercialization, with recent publications in the Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies (2018) on smallholder value chains as complex adaptive systems.

Rosario Kambalame

Rosario Raphael Kambalame ([email protected]) is a senior health professional in the Ministry of Health, based in Domasi Rural Hospital in Zomba district, Southern Malawi. His research interests include food security, health and agriculture. He has participated in numerous research projects for various organizations over the past three decades.

Peter Porázik

Péter Pal Porázik ([email protected]) is an ICT engineer, and data scientist working for Ericsson Telecom Hungary. He is focusing in interdisciplinary research related to ICT and social sciences, like applied game theory, econometric modeling methods, and data analysis of human behaviors and interactions.