Gender Differences in Assessing the Impact of Inter-Parental Conflict on Students Academic Achievement Motivation in Ruiru Sub County Kenya

Research suggests children of different gender exposed to a similar environment of inter-parental conflict may have varying responses. While the impact of inter-parental conflict may be similarly damaging for both girls and boys, they may have different reactions to conflict and hostility between their parents. This necessitates the need to comprehensively understand why some children may be more vulnerable to the impact of inter-parental conflict than others. In this paper, the author seeks to establish the perception of who between the male and female students is mostly affected by inter-parental conflict in terms of academic achievement motivation. The study was guided by Fincham’s cognitive contextual framework theory and adopted a mixed method research design. A total of 281 students participated in the study. Purposeful sampling was used to select guidance and counseling teachers and parents of the students. Proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to select schools from the 13 public and 18 private schools in Ruiru sub-county as well as to select students from the chosen schools. Data was collected using four instruments: Children Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Questionnaire (CPIC) and Academic Motivation Survey (AMS) for Students, interview schedule for seven guidance and counseling teachers and focus group discussion for ten parents of the students. Data analysis was conducted both descriptively and using inferential statistics. In this, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient (r) was used to establish the relationship between inter-parental conflict and academic achievement motivation at 0.05 significance level. T-test was used to determine sex differences in inter-parental conflict and academic achievement motivation. The results were summarized in tables of frequency distribution and percentages. The results provided evidence that there was a significant gender difference with regard to inter-parental conflict and some domains of academic achievement motivation which were in favor of girls in both data sets. Keywords: Inter-parental conflict, gender differences, students, Ruiru sub-county, children perception, Academic achievement motivation.

Climate services for agriculture in Rwanda: What farmers know about climate information services in Rwanda

We evaluated 3,046 farmers spread across the country’s districts to establish baseline about climate information and climate change, in September 2016. This Info Note shares insights into the status and needs for climate services in Rwanda at the time of this survey

PABRA markets evolution and precedents

PABRA’s market facing approach has evolved over the last 2 decades, with a strong client focus. It has evolved from participatory planting breeding through participatory variety selection, niche market breeding, value chain focus, innovation platforms, demand led breeding and to corridor approach and lately with digital inclusion. The current demand led corridor model was introduced by PABRA to provide a framework for catalyzing and intensifying production, distribution and marketing and consumption of beans and bean products

Deconstructing leisure time and workload: case of women bean producers in Kenya

Background: The notion of leisure became pronounced more than 20 years ago when women who worked on or out of the farm came home to a “second shift,” which entailed domestic work and childcare. This gap continues today not only between men and women but also among women and men. Women’s challenges in terms of their leisure arise out of or are shaped by social norms and diferent life contexts. Method: The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) was conducted to understand women’s empowerment and disempowerment status in agricultural activities in five counties in Kenya in 2017. In 2019, focus group discussions were carried out in two of the fve counties to understand how men and women farmers define leisure and assess the leisure gap and its effect on women’s farm and household activities. We were also interested in understanding how men’s and women’s workload affects leisure and other productive economic activities, resulting in empowerment and how women’s unpaid work contributes to income poverty. Result: The WEAI showed that 28% of disempowerment (5DE) in women farmers is due to lack of time for leisure activities and 18% from being overworked. This means that the time indicator accounts for 46% of disempowerment in Kenyan women bean farmers. Men in Bomet and Narok spent more time than women in raising large livestock and leisure. Women in Bomet spent more time than men in cooking and domestic work (fetching water and collecting fuelwood), while men in Bomet spent more time than women in managing their businesses. Conclusion: Work overload is a constraining factor to women’s empowerment in bean production and agricultural productivity. What is considered leisure for men and women is embedded in society’s social fabrics, and it is contextual. This paper highlights instances where leisure provides a way for women to embody and/or resist the discourses of gender roles in the bean value chain and households to enhance food security and healt

Climate Services for Agriculture in Rwanda Baseline Survey Report

This report presents analysis of a baseline household survey for the Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project – a four-year, USAID-funded initiative that seeks to benefit Rwanda’s farming communities and national economy through climate services and improved climate risk management. The survey intends to provide a baseline assessment of the state of climate services among agricultural households in Rwanda. A random sample of 3,046 respondents was nationally surveyed in the all four provinces of the country and in the city of Kigali. A total of 52% of the sample were female respondents, while two-thirds of the households interviewed were male-headed households. The baseline includes outcome indicators related to access, use of climate information, channels of communication, behavioral change and perceived livelihood benefit/impact. The project evaluation will involve assessing changes over time in these benchmark indicators and eventually comparing the changes across beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. A qualitative component of the evaluation will provide deeper insights into users’ decision making, behavioral change and any socially differentiated effect

Improving bean production and consumption in Zimbabwe baseline report

This report presents descriptive information from a baseline study conducted in 2016 to benchmark the indicators of outcomes of the flagship initiative in Zimbabwe, understand the drivers of bean improved technology adoption and potential impacts of the initiative. The primary data from 752 bean growing households that were selected from 15 districts with highest bean area were used. These districts were selected from a list of 60 districts because they allocate the largest area to bean production in 2013-2015. Study findings revealed increased severity of bean production constraints that significantly reduce bean productivity, thus PABRA focus on Zimbabwe as a flagship country for improving bean production and productivity will help poorer households access more bean for consumption. So far, households demonstrate limited awareness of improved technologies including varieties, which calls for enhanced dissemination in terms of geographical scope and capacity of farmers on how to implement it profitably. Interventions should also account for the risk of rainfall failure by putting emphasis on climate smart technologies. Irrigation is one of climate smart technologies that have been promoted in Zimbabwe and is helping farmers make huge profits from bean production. These farms have a potential to produce more surplus for marketing after expanding their area under beans. Simulations under various scenarios revealed that for the new technology to be attractive to farmers, they should generate at least yield increase of 30%. Technologies will be attractive even with 10% yield increase if adoption is accompanied by irrigation. However, use of irrigation is associated with increased demand for hired and family labour, with women likely to bear more burden of extra unpaid labour. All interventions need to be sensitive to gender as women and men contribute unpaid labour and participate in decision making for bean production and marketing but with varying intensities in specific activities or decisions

Survey data on income, food security, and dietary behavior among women and children from households of differing socio-economic status in urban and peri-urban areas of Nairobi, Kenya

This article describes data collected to analyze consumer behaviors in vulnerable populations by examining key access constraints to nutritious foods among households of differing socio-economic status in urban and peri‑urban areas of Nairobi, Kenya. The key variables studied include wealth status, food security, and dietary behavior indicators at individual and household level. Household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS), livelihood coping strategies (LCS), food expenditure share (FES), food consumption score (FCS), household dietary diversity score (HDDS), minimum dietary diversity-women(MDD-W), and child dietary diversity score (CDDS) indicators were used to measure food security. Household assets were used to develop an asset-based wealth index that grouped the study sample population into five wealth quantiles, while income levels were used to estimate FES. The hypothesis that guided the cross-sectional survey conducted to generate these data is that vulnerability to food insecurity and poverty are important drivers of food choice that influence household and individual dietary behavior. Data from this study was thus used to assess direction and strength of association between; household food insecurity, wealth status, women, children, and household dietary behavior in both urban and peri‑urban populations sampled

Unbundling water and land rights in Kilifi County, Kenya: a gender perspective

Feminist scholars and activists have drawn attention to the importance of women’s land rights, and studies focused on irrigation have explored the gendered relationships between land and water rights. Yet little of this work has focused on the relationship between land and water rights for domestic and productive purposesmore broadly.Within rural communities, women andmen have dierent rights to both land and water.We explore these interconnected relationships using community profiles, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews from two communities as well as survey data collected from multiple adult members of rural households in Kilifi County, Kenya. Using a bundle of rights framework, we find that few individuals hold the complete bundle of rights over water, and the extent to which the rights are acknowledged by others and enforceable varies by the land-water tenure system. The full bundle of rights to water ismost likely to be complete and most robust for men who have private water points on household land they hold. Even then, other people may assert claims to water at the water point, although these claims may involve negotiation or payment. Many water rights across the land-tenure systems are shared with others rather than being held by one individual. As such, the ability to negotiate water access is particularly important. The duration of the rights, or the length of time for which the rights are held, is embedded in social relations and exchange, particularly on others’ household land. Women more than men seem to maintain a complicated set of social networks that allow them to negotiate for water from other women who manage the water transactions. The process of negotiation needs to be re-articulated each time. Thus, the duration of these rights to water depends on the ongoing relationships