* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Jasmine Gideon is a lecturer in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies at Birkbeck College in the University of London. The opinions expressed are her own.
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has chosen to highlight the situation of rural women in 2012 and seeks to empower women in their roles in poverty and hunger eradication.
While this is potentially a ‘good thing’ we must also ensure that the responsibility for such significant tasks does not overly depend on women’s unpaid labour.
There are two key elements to limiting this feminisation of responsibility: state policies to support women in this role and a challenge to gender roles within the household.
My research focuses on Latin America, where the prime importance assigned to economic growth for development has meant that governments continue to seek new means of ‘improving productivity’ in the agricultural export sector and place the demands of capital above (rural) labour.
Women have been central to this international drive towards cheaper labour and higher productivity.
In much of Latin America women, rather than men, tend to carry out the low paid, low status work in new agricultural industries such as floriculture and horticulture that have developed across the region.
A significant body of evidence has shown that these women are systematically exposed to occupational risks which can jeopardise both their physical and mental health.
At the same time, their unpaid domestic responsibilities can mean that these risks can be directly transferred to other household members.
Women can inadvertently spread hazardous chemicals through the household when washing clothes or preparing food.
Rigid gender norms within the household often mean that even where women are taking on more paid work, men’s involvement in unpaid household work does not increase significantly and women retain responsibility for household health and well-being.
At the same time significant rural-urban disparities in Latin American mean that rural health services are often under-resourced and unable to meet the health needs of local users.
Many of the workers in the new agricultural industries do not have labour contracts and they are not protected by any occupational health legislation.
Irregular wages mean that workers are unable to contribute to health insurance schemes and often unable to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Although some attempts have been made to protect workers from the occupational health risks they face, through codes of conduct which companies sign up to, they are often difficult to enforce.
If rural women are unable to effectively look after their own health they are unlikely to be able to act as long term agents of change.
