If asked to describe gender roles in pastoralist settings in Africa, many development practitioners and policy makers might state that men control the livestock and women control the milk and/or the cultivation.
These descriptions are accurate to a degree, but the intersection of gender and dryland livelihood systems is — and always has been — more complex than these dichotomies imply.
This briefing paper summarizes some of the nuances that exist and the shifts that are occurring within gender dynamics in pastoralist livelihood systems in Africa.
The production of this briefing paper was funded by the United States Agency for International Development via Cooperative Agreement No. 7200AA21CA00020, Pastoralism in Africa, to the Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
