Women's Economic Activities, Household Decision Making & Child Welfare in Manabi, Ecuador

第二次世界大战后，欠发达国家的经济发展项目侧重于为男性创造收入，假设男性会将收益分配给妇女和儿童。经过几十年的经验，发展专家意识到收入分配往往不公平——妇女和儿童的福利往往被忽视。在过去的20年里，各种项目都试图把重点放在妇女作为儿童的主要照顾者。本项目评估了一种形式的发展项目——合作食品加工厂——对妇女控制资源和改善子女福祉的能力的影响。该奖项授予匹兹堡大学，用于支持一个人种学项目，研究厄瓜多尔农村贫困妇女参与经济发展项目对其家庭经济和健康福利的影响。这项研究将在四个社区进行，其中两个是合作开发项目的所在地，另外两个不是。该项目将记录妇女对收入和其他资源的控制，审查涉及家庭资源的家庭决策，并研究参加创收活动对妇女和儿童的健康和营养状况的影响。有待检验的假设是，妇女在合作项目中的活动对其子女的福祉有积极影响。将收集关于各种变量的人种学和调查数据，包括社会参与、社区对社会福利和保健的投资、个人对男女重要性和社会价值的看法，以及人体测量学和营养数据，以评估研究村的一个家庭样本的福利。这项研究很重要，因为没有妇女和儿童福利的显著改善，经济发展就不可能成功。评估改善福利的不同战略的重要性的新知识将有助于规划者和政府设计更好的方法来改善农村福利。

Economic development projects in the underdeveloped world after World War 2 focused on generating income for men, assuming that the men would distribute the benefits to women and children. After decades of experiences development specialists realized that the income frequently was not fairly distributed -- the welfare of women and children was often ignored. For the past 20 years projects have attempted to focus on women as the primary caretakers of children. This project evaluates one form of development project -- a cooperative food processing plant -- in its impact on women's abilities to control resources and improve the well-being of their children. This award to the University 0f Pittsburgh supports an ethnographic project to study the effects of poor rural Ecuadorian women's participation in economic development projects on their household economic and health well-being. The research will take place in four communities, two which were the sites of cooperative development projects, and two which were not. The project will document the control of income and other resources by women, examine household decision making concerning household resources, and study the impact of participation in income generating activities on the health and nutritional status of women and children. The hypothesis to be tested is that activity by women in cooperative projects positively affects the well-being of their children. Both ethnographic and survey data will be gathered on a broad range of variables including social participation, community investment in social welfare and health, individual perceptions of the importance and social worth of men and women, as well as anthropometric and nutritional data, to assess the welfare of a sample of households in the study villages. This research is important because economic development can not be successful without significant improvement in the welfare of women and children. New knowledge which assesses the significance of different strategies of improving welfare will be useful to planners and governments in designing better ways to improve rural welfare.