Sex roles, population and development in West Africa : policy-related studies on work and demographic issues

Population issues have been increasingly recognised as a fundamental element in development planning. The United Nations Decade for Women has shown how women are central to economic as well as social development. This book uses the examples from a particular region to reveal the importance of women in a range of activities from agricultural development to small-scale production.

The book uses data from varied cultural contexts in Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Sierra Leone to focus attention on a wide range of problems such as conceptualising variables and collecting empirical data in censuses. There is a common thread running through the book about the need for improved documentation.

A variety of people appear in these pages. There are the female farmers who have inadequate access to extension services; there are the women whose work in house, farm and market is not recognised in censuses; there are the pregnant teenagers who drop out of school without usable skills; there are the women perceived as 'wives' whose independent needs for training, housing, credit, contraceptives and new technologies are often overlooked; and there are the men whose activities as parents and househusbands are often ignored.