Women Eat More Rice and Banana: The Influence of Gender and Migration on Staple Food Choice in East Africa

ABSTRACT

An original approach was used to examine how staple food choice differs by gender and migration: this consisted of a quantitative survey (six locations with urban consumers from various economic classes (n = 123)), a qualitative in-depth interview with a subset of those consumers (n = 18), and focus group discussions (n = 13). Men and women had similar results in terms of their preferred staple food choice attributes; yet women indicated consuming more rice and banana, and men, more maize and cassava (Chi-squared test; p < .05). Migration status and life stage (formative or adult years) also influenced the type and diversity of staple crops reported.

KEYWORDS:

• Food choice
• staple
• gender
• urban migration
• mixed methods

Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken as part of, and funded by, the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) and supported by CGIAR Trust Fund contributors https://www.cgiar.org/funders/. The views expressed are however those of the authors. The authors would like to thank Dr. Thierry Tran from the RTB program for reviewing the manuscript. We thank the Hossana Ngonyani from IITA, Tanzania and the enumerators (Anyes James Pius, Jackline Sebastani, Happiness Lema, Joan Paula, Alimelda Clement, Victor Mongi, Vitalis Mwandesite, Elizabeth Masaga, and Newton Deogratius). We are grateful to the men and women who gave us their time to answer the interviews.

This work was funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) and supported by CGIAR Trust Fund contributors.