Resources

This case study examines gender roles and rural livelihood systems in Pwani, a recently populated resettlement village on the western edge of Lake Nakuru Park in Kenya. The objective of the research was to understand the ways in which natural resources are managed in the community and within the household, with emphasis on the institutions and individuals who make and carry out management decisions, particularly as distinguished by gender. PRA was one of several methodologies used to carry out the research. Spatial data was obtained through transects, village sketch maps and farm sketches. Time lines, trend lines and seasonal calendars provided time-related data. Social data was gathered through household interviews and diagrams of village institutions. By linking gender-focused research and PRA it was possible to learn about gender within the context of the community's history, its future aspirations and its resource management and development problems.

This study investigates issues of gender and resource management in Siquijor island in the Philippines. A rapidly growing population, severe environmental degradation and declining economic growth means that rural women and men are often forced to make short-term decisions about managing natural resources which are not necessarily appropriate for the long-term sustainability of the resource base or of their families. The study analyses gender roles in rural livelihood systems in order to clarify the ways in which rural people are responding to these problems, and to give direction to future efforts to assist these processes. The research methodology involved the complementary use of PRA techniques and more conventional survey methods. For example, wealth ranking was used to ensure that the household survey sample proportionately represented the range of household circumstances in each community. The results of the wealth ranking and household interviews were then used to help formulate questions for key informant interviews, focus group meetings and a short confirmation survey. Other PRA methods used included transects, mapping, seasonal calendars and institutional analyses.

This paper describes a game and a story that were presented during the workshop to show how PRA can "help people to address and resolve conflict". The TASO game (described in the appendix) was used to illustrate current HIV transmission rates in Uganda. The story showed how PRA exercises conducted by Redd Barna in Zimbabwe brought out women's and men's different views of a proposed irrigation scheme. The potential for PRA to help resolve such conflicts is the emphasis placed on "the value of good communication skills". Development workers need to learn "facilitation and arbitration skills" in order to deal with, rather than "glossing over" conflict and "failing to acknowledge the political dimensions to all our interventions". Psychological stress (particularly in relation to HIV and AIDS) also needs to be recognised as "a valid development issue".

The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) had two main objectives: i) to assess the effectiveness of participatory methods as a means of collecting baseline information; ii) to identify indigenous indicators of women's health and wealth status. A 'smorgasbord' of participatory methods were used; social and demographic mapping; health and wealth ranking; timeline and focus group discussions; key informant interviews and life histories of women. Fieldwork was conducted in a village where the BRAC had been active for five years and another where it had been involved for six months. Participatory methods were confirmed as a means of gathering information 'quickly and relatively accurately.' A 'remarkable consistency' emerged as to indigenous indicators of women's status from which BRAC constructed a seven component measure of household well-being: food security; land ownership; types of income; agricultural assets; homestead condition; days off work due to illness and education.

Body mapping (pictures of the perceived working of the female reproductive system) was conducted with women in southern Zimbabwe. The study aimed at bridging local knowledge and western medical explanations of non-indigenous contraception. Maps were drawn on the ground with a stick. The use of body maps helped to generate discussions from which an understanding of local idioms and ideas of contraception emerged.

Participatory Rural Appraisal was conducted in two villages in Southern India in order to supplement formal survey information. One of the objectives was to develop a procedure for determining emic indicators of health and nutrition security. Four types of PRA were employed: i) participatory mapping (conducted separately by women and men) - to identify 'high' and 'low' risk households; ii) food charts - participants use beans to indicate the relative importance of foods consumed; iii) women's activity chart - beans are used to indicate the relative time spent on daily activities. iv) seasonality chart - this method was conducted with small groups (differentiated by gender and caste) to understand the yearly changes in rainfall, harvest of staples, food consumption, labour demand, childhood illness and women's illness. An ethnographer used in-depth interviews, key informant interviews, focus group and participant observation to conduct six household case studies in the two survey villages. The PRA techniques generated emic indicators of food-security which could be compared with the etic indicators of the formal survey.