Gender and food self-sufficiency among the indienous Miskitu and Mayangna of the Bosawas niosphere reserve in Nicaragua

Abstract

Nicaragua has made significant progress in social indicators related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). In spite of this, it is estimated that this country will not achieve all of the MDG by 2015. Thus, although the extreme poverty has declined from 18.3% to 11.9% between 1993 and 2005, and child mortality has reduced from 63.9 to 29.1 deaths per 1000 live births, inequalities still persists. In this sense, the poverty in is more than twice as great in rural than in urban areas, and is higher in the Caribbean region than in the Pacific region. Focusing on gender inequalities which constitutes a serious obstacle to advancement in development, Nicaragua is ranked in 101st place in the Gender Inequality Index (out of 146 countries), with a score of 0.506. Gender inequality among indigenous is highly related with the unequal access of resources, which mostly affects women, who have less access to them. This lower access to resources can lead to gender inequalities in food self-sufficiency. In this regard, this paper makes an approach to the study of the gender inequalities in food self-sufficiency among indigenous of the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua by means of econometric models. Data has been obtained from a survey made to 4,695 people in 2004 at all the households of fourteen indigenous communities, located in the most isolated area of the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve, in the indigenous multi-communal territory called Kipla Sait Tasbaika. Food self-sufficiency is estimated using agricultural productivity in the crop rice, key in the subsistence indigenous system. The study was perform in BOSAWAS as this natural area is doubly important, from an ecological perspective, it constitutes the largest area of preserved rainforest in Mesoamerica, and from a social perspective it is the home of two ethnic groups, Miskitu and Mayangna. These Mayangna and Miksitu communities are highly dependent on their natural resources, which are exploited via their traditional practices, like agriculture based on traditional multi-crop management, hunting with dogs, fishing, harvesting forest products and so on. In these communities, therefore, the food selfsufficiency is mainly guaranteed by the household's capacity to exploit their natural resources. The relevance of the study is based on the lack of studies which provide quantitative data about indigenous use of natural resources in Nicaragua, in general, and the necessity of analyzing gender behaviors in the food self-sufficiency capacity, in concrete, in order to design and implement measures addressed to promote equal conditions through national social politics and international cooperation.