FSR/E is that researchers make use of the extension and research services as they are already set up in the host country. Farming systems researchers accept the bias of the system either because they do not recognize it as such and/or because it coincides with their own. In recent years there has been a reexamination of the assumptions behind the sexual seggregation in extension and research programs. In a number of places, the policies have become non-discriminatory so that technically women farmers can apply for credit or they can be part of FSR/E programs, although in practice the number of participants is low (Delancy, 1984). The question to be asked is what would happen if the equation were changed and if extension and research programs in practice were geared to all farmers regardless of sex. This might even entail new procedures to target and reach the neglected farmers rather than the standard procedure of assuming that one method works for all. A case study from Malawi examines the problem of relying on male extensionists in FSR/E and reports on some methods that were undertaken to change extension and FSR procedures in order to reach female as well as male farmers.
CASE STUDY FROM MALAI
Between 1981 and 1983, 1 directed an agricultural development project funded by the Office of Women in Development and housed within the Ministry of Agriculture in Malawi (Spring, 1985). The Women in Agricultural Development Project (WIADP) was of national scope and its aims were multifaceted: to research women's and men's roles in smallholder farming to use farming systems research to ascertain smallholder, and especially women's needs; to disaggregate agricultural data by sex; to work with extension and research units to target women as well as men farmers; to evaluate women's programs; and to orient policy makers to consider women farmers in agricultural programs. Primary and secondary research by the WIADP showed the contributions by gender for various commodities (Clark 1975; Spring,.Smith and Kayuni, 1983b). Women indeed did form the bulk of the agriculturalists in the rural areas. They spent as much time on their farm work as on their domestic work. Approximately one third of the households in the country were headed by women, but in some areas as many as 45% of the households were female headed. Women were taking over more of the management of family farms. This was true not only in households that they headed, but in married households because of male out migration for wage labor in cities and in the agricultural estate sector. Women were involved in a variety of cropping patterns from mixed subsistence to cash crops. They grew maize, groundnuts, rice, cassava, tobacco, cotton, coffee, and tea. They worked on both food and cash crops doing many of the operations such as spraying cotton and planting tobacco seedlings that were commonly believed to be done by men only (Clark, 1975). In fact, farm operations were differential by sex in some areas and in some households, while in other places and households they were not. The so called standard sexual division of labor where men prepared the land and women planted, weeded, and harvested had given way to expediency in many places (Spring, Smith and Kayuni, 1983b). The adult who was home on the farm did the operations and in many cases this meant that the women were doing the work and making the farm decisions. Women were involved in all aspects of farming including land clearing, plowing, applying fertilizer, crop protection, etc., either routinely or when male labor was unavailable. Women in many areas were involved in the care of livestock, especially of small ruminants and poultry. Free ranging cattle were mostly owned by men and cared for by boys and men, but as the animals were brought into the village for fattening in