DIPLOMARBEIT - ÖH Uni Wien - Universität Wien

work in the dry season decrease from 560 to 530 for women because no fieldwork has to bedone, for men it goes down from 426 to 350 (Wickramasinghe 1993 in Momsen 2004: 159).A phenomenon that is spreading in developing countries is the one of female-headedhouseholds. Besides nuclear families consisting of a father, the breadwinner, a mother, thecaretaker, and the children, also extended families exist where households with low incomesalign to ensure their survival. In contrast to female-headed households the nuclear familyalways demands the subordination of women (Ruckser 1994: 24).It is distinguished between de jure female headed households where the husband is divorcedor dead and de facto female headed households where the husband is absent for a longerperiod because of work migration (Tasli 2007: 4f.). It is estimated that about one-sixth of allhouseholds in developing countries are headed by women, with the highest figures in sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, the focus country of this thesis, two-fifths of the rural families areheaded by women (Momsen 2004: 41;43). It is important to mention this developmentbecause many projects are based on the assumption that all households consist of a nuclearfamily, with a productive husband and a non-productive wife. Project planners still oftenassume that if men benefit from a project, this is also the case for women. But this is justincorrect (Brett in Coles/Wallace 2005: 1ff.). The reason for this assumption is that thenuclear family is a European and American family form. But it is not universal and especiallyin African countries very unusual. It is promoted there by colonialism and neo-colonialism aswell as international development organisations (Oyewumi 2002). According to Momsen inthe ideal case female-headed households have “an independent access to subsistenceopportunities through work, inheritance, or state-provided welfare and are permitted to controlproperty and have separate residence” (Momsen 2004: 44). These opportunities also have tobe manageable with childcare and have to provide enough income for the whole family(Momsen 2004: 44).Fact is though, that female-headed households are mostly associated with poverty. Althoughmigrated men often send helpful money back home, they are also still in control overhousehold finances and exclude the women from decision-making processes. It is furtherassumed that the children in these families are disadvantaged because they have to supporttheir parents and thus cannot go to school. But Momsen disagrees with that because accordingto studies single mothers are more likely to send their girls and boys to school than married35