Food Vending: Adaptation Under Difficult Circumstances
The respondents discussed in this article depended on food vending as their main source of income. To succeed in this activity requires shrewd marketing and hard work. For the majority food vending was basically a hanging on and coping strategy, offering very limited surplus for investment. Food vending allowed them merely to stay in town while maintaining a foot in their home villages. The paper presents both a descriptive and an analytical account of food vending activities by female heads of households in Masvingo. The officially imposed constraints on food vending demonstrate the existence of competing and conflicting rationalities between male decision-makers and poor women. The inter -connections between food vendors and the formal markets are noted. Journal of Social Development in Africa Vol 15 No 2 2000, pp. 69-92
GENDERED SPACES IN DEVELOPING CITIES: SERVICES AND INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING IN KAMPALA CITY UGANDA
The understanding of space use in cities differs due to variations in planning experiences across the developed and developing world. This paper focuses on equal access to spaces with infrastructure and services that meet the residential, travel, commercial and leisure needs of women and men at neighborhood to city level. Triangulated data from Kampala city, Uganda’s capital, showed that women often prefer physical and social spaces that offer personal security, flexible mobility, hygiene and physical comfort while performing their domestic and commercial travels. Men on the other hand, were primarily concerned about quality alternative travel modes, adequately-lit streets, sufficient road safety measures and directional signage, which can guarantee punctuality, security and convenience as they drive and cycle around the city for connectivity to public utilities. But planning at city level is based on economic and environmental principles that overlook these gender differences in the use of physical and social spaces, which ultimately leads to the delivery of infrastructure and services that are less aligned to end-user needs. The paper therefore draws implications on how the design of urban spaces can be made responsive to women’s compared to men’s needs in the context of developing cities.
New peasant family forms in rural China.
"This article explores the responses of peasant households in China to the quite new and radical demands made on their resources as a result of the various recent rural economic reforms....[It attempts] to identify current changes in size, structure and activity of domestic and kin groups, and to analyse the new socio-economic relations within and between households. It argues that in order to mobilise and maximise their labour and other resources to arrange for the production, consumption and welfare of household members, close kin and neighbouring peasant households have combined to give rise to a new family form, the aggregate family. This study analyses the factors leading to its formation, identifies the characteristics of this new family form and examines its relations both within and beyond the village."