Abstract:
Literatures define gender equity as fairness for both men and women by giving them equal
opportunities to access and own resources. However, incidents of men squandering
income from tobacco and denying their wives of benefiting from the income are common
in Urambo District. It seems tobacco earnings are dominated by men. This is in terms of
the allocation of resources and benefit sharing at the household level being done in such a
way that women and children, particularly in rural areas receive less than their fair share
while their inputs are equitable. The research was conducted in Urambo District (in
November and December 2010), and it employed a cross-sectional design. The study
population was all tobacco farming households. A sample of 117 tobacco growers
(household head and spouse) was used to determine gender-based factors for equitable and
inequitable expenditure of income from tobacco. T-test was used to compare the
proportions of expenditures of tobacco income among men women, children and the
whole household. It was found that men’s proportions of expenditures (35.2%) and that of
women (12.1%) of the household income were significantly different at the 0.1% level of
significance (p = 0.000). The rest 10% was spent by children, and 42.7% was spent by
whole household i.e. family-wide expenditures. This implies that there is great disparity in
expenditure of tobacco income as men spend higher than women and children. Findings
on men’s dominance of tobacco income, propagated by patriarchy, led to the conclusion
that men have highly dominated tobacco income, and where there is more male
domination, wives spend much less than in households where there is less male
domination. The results substantiate the need for more efforts in provision of gender
education through mass media and trainings on financial management among tobacco
farmers.
