Gender-Based Factors Explaining Disparities In Expenditure Of Income From Tobacco In Urambo District, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Literatures define gender equity as fairness for both men and women by giving them equal opportunities to access and own resources. However, incidents of men squandering income from tobacco and denying their wives of benefiting from the income are common in Urambo District. It seems tobacco earnings are dominated by men. This is in terms of the allocation of resources and benefit sharing at the household level being done in such a way that women and children, particularly in rural areas receive less than their fair share while their inputs are equitable. The research was conducted in Urambo District (in November and December 2010), and it employed a cross-sectional design. The study population was all tobacco farming households. A sample of 117 tobacco growers (household head and spouse) was used to determine gender-based factors for equitable and inequitable expenditure of income from tobacco. T-test was used to compare the proportions of expenditures of tobacco income among men women, children and the whole household. It was found that men’s proportions of expenditures (35.2%) and that of women (12.1%) of the household income were significantly different at the 0.1% level of significance (p = 0.000). The rest 10% was spent by children, and 42.7% was spent by whole household i.e. family-wide expenditures. This implies that there is great disparity in expenditure of tobacco income as men spend higher than women and children. Findings on men’s dominance of tobacco income, propagated by patriarchy, led to the conclusion that men have highly dominated tobacco income, and where there is more male domination, wives spend much less than in households where there is less male domination. The results substantiate the need for more efforts in provision of gender education through mass media and trainings on financial management among tobacco farmers.