Pooling, Straddling, Juggling, and Balancing on One Foot

Abstract

Because nearly every household in contemporary Mwanza, whether low-, middle-, or high-income, tends to include ever changing combinations of women, men, children, and paid laborers, an individual’s access to food may be complicated by the need to negotiate a complex network of relations and food-related roles and responsibilities. Females and males of all ages regularly contributed in some way to feeding their households, and the present chapter examines the gender relations involved in this intrahousehold income distribution, decisionmaking, and labor allocation.¹ Extrahousehold support networks also are addressed since people’s food-related activities and responsibilities often extended beyond the boundaries of their households.