Western ignorance of the relevance of women in pastoral and agro-pastoral dryland management continues to contribute to the extraordinarily weak performance of rural development interventions among the poor majority in the world's drylands (see Jowkar et al., 1991). While it is not the only cause of failure (other causes include generally impoverished understanding of the political ecologies of dryland production, the paucity of appropriate technical packages, and the often destructive policies of governments and donor organizations (Horowitz, 1989)), it is certainly among the most salient.