ABSTRACT
There is now a sizeable body of literature documenting the complexity of rural livelihoods in developing countries.1 Recent development literature has generally depicted such diversification favourably, associating it with poverty reduction, employment generation and enhanced market linkages for rural households. While the multidimensionality of rural livelihoods is now taken for granted, the role that gender plays in enabling or disabling livelihood choices has received comparatively little attention. Yet a number of well-known gender-related constraints circumscribe the extent to which households are willing, or able, to increase their output. Female household heads, in particular, can face distinct constraints stemming from their sole responsibility for income generation and reproductive work, fewer endowments, and a higher dependency burden than male household heads (Rosenhouse 1989). Specifically, female headed households’ (FHHs) differential access to productive resources often limits their access to livelihood strategies that are more lucrative or impedes their capacity to overcome the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves.
