Women and Agribusiness — an Overview

Agribusiness, over the past decade or more, has stimulated an increase in female employment in many countries, not only Chile. In order to analyse the integration of women into Chilean fruit exports, we need to explore some of the broader analytical issues connected with the insertion of female labour into agribusiness. This enables us to draw together the various dimensions relevant to understanding the issues. There are a number of important case studies on women and agribusiness (for example Arizpe and Aranda 1981 and 1986; Barron 1994; Collins 1993; Kritzinger and Vorster 1996; Macintosh 1989; Marcus 1989), and some comparative studies (Barrientos and Perrons 1996 and 1998; Jarosz 1996). However, the development of a broader analytical framework, which links gender and agribusiness in developing countries, remains an area that needs further research (Raynolds 1991), and often the literature on agribusiness itself tends to ignore the gender dimension (Bernstein et al. 1990). While this chapter considers some of the broader analytical issues, our purpose is to obtain further insights into our particular case study rather than develop a generalised perspective, although we hope the issues we raise will help contribute to the latter.