Staying Grounded

Since the late 1990s, securing women's access to land has become prominent in development agendas. However, the lack of a conceptual framing of women's individual farming has often led to misconceptions around how women understand agriculture and the role of land in their livelihoods.
Building on the ethnographic case of fields called beolse that are allocated for individual use in Moore-speaking areas of Burkina Faso, this book presents the perspectives of ten women with different socioeconomic backgrounds and investigates how they conceive of land within their livelihood strategies and horizons of expectations. A double-edged sword, land is a pillar in women's activity portfolios and an asset severely put to the test by both environmental shifts and the indefinite duration of its use rights, making its value contingent on women's life circumstances. While considering beolse as 'cornerstones' in times of uncertainty, women tend to regard individual farming as equal to other income-earning options during moments of social and economic stability. Those shifting evaluations overlap with the social expectation that every married woman should farm an individual field, making beolse tokens of moral integrity. Challenging the widespread depiction of women in Africa as unconditionally committed to farming, this book provides a new perspective on women's diverse motivations for agriculture and suggests pursuing interventions that address land access and use as components of women's livelihoods.

Acknowledgements v
List of Figures xi
List of Photographs xii
List of Tables xiii

Chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1 Situating Women and Individual Farming Under Changing Agrarian Landscapes 5
1.2 Women and Individual Farming in Burkina Faso 9
1.2.1 Burkina Faso s Policies Addressing Access to Land for Women 9
1.2.2 The Field Site 12
1.2.3 Women and Individual Farming in Mossi Studies 20
1.3 Research Questions and Planning 24
1.3.1 Research Questions 24
1.3.2 Fieldwork Organization 25
1.4 Outline of the Book 27

Chapter 2
Understanding Women s Individual Fields: Epistemological Bewilderments and New Approaches 31
2.1 Women s Contribution to Household Economies and Agriculture: An Overview of the Main Theories and Approaches 34
2.1.1 From Unitary to Non-pooling Households 34
2.1.2 Division of Labor 41
2.1.3 A (Com)Promised Land? 49
2.2 Understanding Women s Individual Fields Through the Uncertainty Lens 54
2.2.1 Uncertainty and Intentional Action 55
2.2.2 An Approach to Understanding Women s Individual Fields 58

Chapter 3
Our `Pen is the Hoe We Use to Farm : Negotiating Access to the Field 61
3.1 Doing Fieldwork in T stenga: Setting the Scene 63
3.1.1 The Host Family 66
3.1.2 The Research Assistants 68
3.1.3 The Female Informants 69
3.2 Research Methods 72
3.2.1 Participant Observation 73
3.2.2 Semi-structured Interviews 75
3.2.3 Survey Questionnaires 77
3.2.4 Compound Sketches and Field Measurements 78
3.2.5 Reflections on the Use of Pseudonyms and the Promise of Confidentiality 80

Chapter 4
Allocating and Managing Land in T stenga: Households Livelihood Priorities and Land Use Practices 83
4.1 Land Distribution and Allocation Practices in Mossi Households 85
4.1.1 Household Head s Fields (zaksoaba-p to) 88
4.1.2 Individual Fields (beolse) 91
4.1.3 Land Allocation within Households 98
4.2 The entire village is full of hay! Managing Land under Environmental Challenges 100
4.2.1 Rainfall 102
4.2.2 Soil Types and their Classification 104
4.2.3 Farming Inputs 108
4.2.4 Farmed Crops and their Uses 110
4.2.5 Fields for Food, Fields for Sale 124
4.3 Where Do Gender and Field Categories Meet? 136

Chapter 5
Beolse Stories: Land in Women s Biographical Narratives 143
5.1 Land, Biographies, and the Politics of Storytelling 144
5.1.1 A Thorough Investment: The Story of Nafissata 148
5.1.2 The Unexpected Loss: The Story of Zenaabo 156
5.1.3 The Naked Soil: The Story of Asseta 164
5.1.4 Discovering beolga: The Story of Thérèse 172
5.2 Dimensions of (In)Security 179
5.2.1 Social Circumstances 181
5.2.2 Material Circumstances 184
5.3 Beolga and its Evaluative Shifts 186

Chapter 6
Set ga: Architectures of Provisioning 191
6.1 Exploring Women s Economic Arrangements 192
6.1.1 Beolga, An (Un)certain Ground 193
6.1.2 Other Income-Generating Activities 210
6.1.3 Arranging Activity Portfolios 218
6.2 Staying Grounded While Keeping the Flow Moving 228
6.2.1 Postures : Unpacking Anticipation 228
6.2.2 Cornerstones 230

Chapter 7
T l : Of Land and Its Moral Ambivalences 237
7.1 Behind the Norm 239
7.2 By not giving a beolga you will let her fall : Beolga as a Husband s Duty 241
7.2.1 They will tell you that you have a household head 241
7.2.2 If he doesn t ask, he doesn t love his wife 244
7.2.3 Narratives of Love in Land Negotiations 246
7.3 Your gain is your gain; your loss is your loss : Beolga as
a Wife s Duty? 247
7.3.1 The lazy woman will wander without a cloth to wear : Narratives of Laziness 249
7.3.2 You can t force someone to eat if she s not hungry : Diverting Preferences? 253
7.4 Beyond the Norm? 256

Chapter 8
Conclusion 261
8.1 Summary 261
8.2 New Perspectives on Women s Involvement in Individual Farming 269
8.3 Recommendations for Policy Makers and Practitioners 274

References 279
ANNEX A: Women s management of beolse based on data relative to rainy season 2017 293
ANNEX B: Quantity and use of beolse harvests in terms of the yields gathered after the 2016 rainy season 295
ANNEX C: Management, average gains, and evaluations of income-generating activities which informants were undertaking in the period between November 2016 and October 2017 297