Sex and starvation: Famine and three Chadian societies

This chapter looks at the way three traditional Chadian societies: the Kanembou, the Maba and the Sara, divide labour tasks along the lines of gender, and the impact this division has on risk avoidance and famine coping. The most crucial factors in coping with a food deficit is the possession of some economically productive skills and the right to use and dispose of a large variety of resources on which an individual can depend for existence. Pronounced differences in the definition of gender, like those among the Maba and Kanembou, deny one sex the flexibility of using the behaviours or resources which belong to the other sex, thus reducing the range of coping systems and hence chances for survival. Although the study suffered from a lack of data to conclude as to which groups are the most at risk, three lessons can be learnt from the experiences of these societies, namely: (1) the need to consider all the factors governing access to resources and acquisition of skills; (2) that poverty is not in itself an infallible indicator of at-risk groups; and (3) the need to look at reactions to famine in the framework of stages of famine in order to determine which groups are most at-risk and why they are most at-risk. (CAB Abstract)