Access to Rural Non-Farm Livelihoods - Natural Resources Institute

for retail traders whose stock often moves slowly in comparison to price fluctuations, making
it difficult to determine how profitable a product or even the business really is.
5.5.3 Age
Old age and failing strength, health, and eyesight were cited as barriers to continuing with
any economic activity. Of those at the community meetings, non-farm IGAs were reported by
all age groups, but data from the household interviews indicate that those involved in the
most capital intensive non-farm IGAs (for example, trading), as well as those requiring
experience and skill (for example, midwifery) tend to be older. However, other older people
are involved in some of the least profitable, lowest entry activities, such as basket making,
which they are pushed into as a result of their decreasing ability to undertake the strenuous
physical work of farming. However, there is evidence that this “push” out of farming can also
be a positive force, particularly if other, younger household members are able to continue
with farming, leaving the older person free to diversify and explore other alternatives 121 .
5.5.4 Gender
Reproductive labour demands clearly constrain a woman’s ability to undertake other
activities of all kinds, and concerns about satisfactorily combining childcare and IGAs were
voiced by several women 122 – the burden of childcare is often exacerbated by the high
number of orphans and the high incidence of widowhood 123 . In addition to reproductive and
domestic labour, women also undertake much of the farm labour, and women, far more than
men, cited lack of time, or tiredness, or overwork as a barrier to starting a new IGA or as a
constraint to an existing one 124 .
Because of their weaker position in society women often suffer more in economic terms than
men from personal “misfortune”, and find it more difficult to recover from setbacks,
affecting their abilities to accumulate start-up capital and keep working capital in existing
businesses. Households headed by women, typically widows or divorcées, are generally less
able to produce significant quantities of crops for sale than those households with access to
male labour, and such women often turn to relatively low barrier, low profit IGAs such as
basket making 125 . Opportunities for remarriage are limited – data from the household
interviews (albeit a small sample) indicate that women noticeably outnumber men in
Kitambuza, primarily as a result of men’s earlier deaths. Furthermore, in all three cases of
divorce or separation recorded, the man had left the area, while the woman remained 126 .
Some widows and divorcees do undertake relatively profitable non-farm IGAs, either as a
121 See Box 17.
122 See Boxes 18 and 21.
123 Thirty-six children under the age of 16 were enumerated in the household interviews. Of these, only four
were living with both their mother and father – the rest were living with their widowed (17) or
divorced/separated (4) mothers, or with their mother with only occasional visits from their polygamous father
(2), or with their widowed grandmothers (5), or with other kin, such as grandparents (1), older siblings (2), or a
widowed aunt (1). However, some households (4) include more than one adult woman, and/or are
multigenerational. See also footnote 133 for more information on the incidence of widowhood.
124 See Boxes 15 and 16.
125 See Boxes 15 and 16.
126 Of 17 households interviewed, eight were headed by widows, and two by divorced/separated women whose
husbands had left the area, while two were headed by young unmarried men, and one by a divorced man who
was primarily based in Kampala, but returned home periodically to help his elderly parents with farming and
visit his young son who lived with them. Four households were headed by married men, one of whom had four
wives, and one of whom had two.
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