Applying Participatory Rural Appraisal to Unlock Gender Group Differences in Some Communities in Rural Cameroon

Abstract

Aims: The relevance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in promoting community participation, enhancing sustainable development in rural communities, and its capacity to succeed where other approaches fail is well recognized in the rural development literature. Some PRA tools have been widely applied empirically for gender analysis than others. This paper analyzes gender differences through the less-applied access and control profiling. Study Design: Cross sectional, empirical survey. Place and Duration of Study: North West region of Cameroon, 7-30 October, 2014. Methodology: Two rural divisions were purposively selected. One division had difficult road access, while the other was fairly accessible. Four rural villages (two from each division) were randomly selected. Access and control profiling was applied separately with different gender groups. In each village, a group of 30-35 self selected men, women and youths were guided by the research team to implement the tool separately. Access and control over resources was scored on a likert scale from 0 to 4, in ascending order of importance. This was complemented by focused group discussions and key informant interviews. Results: Huge differences were observed in access and control over resources between gender groups within and across communities. Men were generally found to have the strongest access and control over resources under difficult accessibility and higher rurality (  =2.9), while women dominated under higher accessibility and lower rurality conditions (  =3.6). The youth generally lagged behind men and women in both communities ( Participatory rural appraisal =2.0). Results suggest a relationship between accessibility, rurality and gender based access and control over different resources. Conclusion: The need to consistently do gender differentiated PRAs prior to community intervention, as prerequisite to achieving gender balanced sustainable development of rural areas in developing countries is emphasized. This is best done on case by case basis in order to capture case-specific dynamics.