Study says banana boom peeling off marriages in Imenti

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A man displays bananas on market. Commercial farming of the crop in Imenti South is tearing families apart as women get empowered and their husbands feel threatened. Photo/FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By GATONYE GATHURA gathura@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Saturday, November 3  2012 at  00:30

IN SUMMARY

• Most men find it hard to cope with enterprising women who have taken up breadwinner’s role, reveals report by Kari

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Successful commercial banana farming is breaking up homes, turning men into drunkards and putting more burden on women, a research by Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) has revealed.

The researchers say women in Imenti South district have massively taken up commercial banana farming renting own land and managing own bank accounts while the disempowered men spend their time at local markets playing a game called maune or drinking local brews.

“Some of us have taken men’s roles. We own separate bank accounts. Our children no longer ask for school fees from their fathers. Our husbands have become lazy, spending all their time at local markets playing maune,” says a respondent in the study.

The researchers found that more women control the banana income, which is attributed to the fact that they own bank accounts. They use the finances to hire separate farms to plant the crop.

The researchers told a scientific conference at Kari in Nairobi early this week that 32 per cent of the women had bank accounts compared to only 26 per cent of men.

But it turns out that women are shouldering a heavier family burden even after being empowered through banana farming.

Wives in these households, says the research, are further burdened by performing both domestic and providing roles.

“In households where men are forcing their wives to surrender the income, it has led to separate banana farms for the wife and husband, hence causing gender conflict in the household. This has caused break-ups of some marriages,” says the study report.

The study noted that in a majority of poor households where men were drunkards, women were in charge of the entire household.

“This empowerment of women has changed household duty allocation hence contributing to intra-household gender conflicts in a majority of resource-poor households,” it says.

The researchers also cited earlier studies, which had found similar pattern in Maragwa district in Central Province. Now the scientists want agencies promoting agriculture in these and other similar areas such as Technoserve, Africa Harvest, ministry of Agriculture and Kari to address the emerging trend in farming.

“They could for example initiate training through gender responsive farmer groups that focus on pooling resources and equitable budgetary allocation in the household,” the study suggests.

As banana becomes an important commercial crop in the area, more men are also taking up the venture previously thought to be a women’s crop.

According to the researchers, as an income generation crop, banana was ranked number one with the previously dominant coffee taking a distant second.