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Report No 9 Women and Development in Laos Report prepared for Women, Health and Population Division, Australian International Development Assistance Bureau by Sheila Thomson and Sally Baden February 1993 contents


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4.1 Agriculture1

Agriculture is the largest sector of the Lao economy accounting for 60 percent of GDP (1989) and employing 90 percent of the total population (Government of Laos PDR 1992: 5). General activities include rice cultivation, slash and burn cultivation, animal husbandry, vegetable growing and forest collection. Women compose 60 percent of the active labour force in the agricultural sector. The division of labour in the rural areas is such that all women, regardless of their ethnicity, are disproportionately over-burdened with work.


Table 1 gives an approximation of the gender division of labour in agriculture for the Lao Loum. The male household head generally organises and directs family paddy production (Ireson, 1989: 7-8). In family rice cultivation, women typically perform the following tasks: transplanting, weeding, sowing and almost all post-harvesting tasks including the gleaning and cleaning of the rice. Men prepare the land for cultivation with the help of buffalos, and thresh and harvest the rice along with women. In areas where slash and burn cultivation occurs, women traditionally weed while men cut down trees and burn the stumps in order to clear the land for cultivation. (Iinuma 1992: 5; Ireson, 1989: 8-9.) The division of labour described thus far, however, is not absolutely fixed as women often also perform tasks which are traditionally male, possibly because of the predominance of women in the rural provincial population due to the wars and to male out-migration (UNESCO 1989: 9). Men sometimes also perform traditionally female tasks such as transplanting or tending gardens (Ireson, 1991: 24). In some areas, cooperative groups carry out all the paddy rice work collectively, from seed-bed preparation to harvesting. Women and children still carry out the post harvest processing and prepartion (Ireson, 1989: 9).
Women also cultivate vegetables and some cash crops, and collect roots, shoots, firewood, and small animals from nearby forests mainly for subsistence purposes. Men hunt, collect timber and build and repair houses. Both sexes fish and gather river produce. Women are usually responsible for marketing family produce, except when there are large quantities of surplus rice and when large animals are to be sold. (Government of Laos PDR 1991: 5; Ireson, 1991: 24.)
A further activity of Lowland rural households is animal husbandry. Raising small stock (pigs, goats, chickens and ducks) is women’s responsibility while cattle, buffalo and horses are men’s domain. Children are also involved in feeding and grazing stock. Animals are one repository for family wealth, with the larger animals raised by males commanding the highest prices in the market. (Ireson 1989: 9.) Land, however, is often inherited by daughters among the Lao Loum (see above), but this is not the case among the other ethnic minorities.2 (Iinuma 1992: 3).
Aside from the responsibilities mentioned above, women of all ethnic groups perform the tedious and time-consuming chores associated with household management and child care. Some of these duties include water collection, which may take two to three hours a day; husking rice for family consumption, which may require two hours of work; milling rice; and caring for the sick and the elderly. (Ireson 19 :11.) Girls assist their mothers with these chores and they are often made responsible for care of younger siblings.
It is clear that women farmers have made a vital contribution to both household and national economies. However, women face a number of constraints which deny them access to the means required to increase their labour productivity. Aside from the burden of housework, Lao women lack skills training in agriculture as there are no government extension services in the country. Even when this service did exist prior to 1975, women were denied access to agricultural training. Instead, they were taught sewing and cookery. This reflects traditional stereotypes which view only males as farmers. In Laos, however, female farmers actually outnumber the males. (Ireson, 1989: 9.)
A further constraint faced by women farmers is a lack of access to the credit needed to expand production. Government agricultural credit schemes carry extremely high interest rates. Moreover, although some machinery has recently been introduced into farming activities, it is predominantly men’s tasks which have been mechanised. The most common machines include tractors to facilitate the ploughing and harrowing of land and rice threshers. (Ireson 1989: 9.) Women’s access to credit facilities, agricultural training and appropriate technology have nonetheless increased since the imposition of the NEM in 1986 as several external agencies have initiated projects targeted specifically at addressing women’s productive needs (see section 7.2 of this report).
Finally, women face increasing time and resource constraints resulting from the escalating deforestation which has occurred in Laos. The primary causes of this environmental degradation are logging and the clearing of land for shifting cultivation. It is estimated that 70 000 hectares of dense forest and 200 000 hectares of less dense forest are depleted each year. This loss of forest has serious consequences for women as it forces them to travel greater distances to collect wood and other essential forest products. Deforestation has particularly adverse effects on women in the Highland areas where household survival depends almost solely upon forest food and medicinal plants (Ireson 1991: 23). The Lao Government has begun to address the problem of deforestation by imposing bans on the export of logs and timber, first in January 1989 and again in August 1991. However, much more concerted efforts will be needed to enforce these policies as illegal logging is prevalent in Laos as it is all over South East Asia. (Iinuma, 1992: 6.)


4.2 Cottage industries

In most cases, agricultural activities barely meet the subsistence demands of rural families. Employment opportunities are scarce in the rural areas and thus, in order to supplement family income, women engage in the production of handicrafts in their spare time and during slack agricultural periods. These small-scale activities include the production of cloth, clothing and blankets for both domestic use and sale. (Ireson 1991: 23.) The domestic demand for woven products was high before 1987 as the Lao Government had imposed strict controls on most imports including clothing. Women were encouraged by the Government to dress in the traditional cotton or silk made sin (sarong) instead of Western attire, for ideological as well as economic reasons. (Evans, 1990: 84.) Since trade restrictions have been relaxed with the introduction of the NEM, cheap manufactured clothing imports from Thailand have been increasingly available in Lao markets. The implications of this for the demand for domestically woven garments, produced mainly by women, are as yet unclear, but it seems likely that a shift in demand away from domestically produced garments could occur, without special measures to protect or promote such cottage industries. Nevertheless, home-based weaving will continue to be an important economic activity for women particularly in isolated rural areas.


Women are also largely in charge of selling their products in local markets. Although the supply of a product may exceed the demand in rural areas at any given time, poor transportation systems make it virtually impossible for marketing to occur over great distances. (Heyzer 1986: 33.)
5. WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN THE URBAN ECONOMY


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