Gender Roles in Sawah System of Rice Production in Nigeria A. Kolawole 1 , O. I. Oladele 2 , C.I. Alarima 3 and T. Wakatsuki 4 1 C/0 Hirose Project International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria E-mail: ayorindeline@yahoo.ca 2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, North –West University Mafikeng Campus. South Africa E-mail: oladele20002001@yahoo.com 3 Faculty of Life and Environmental Science Shimane University, Japan E-mail: corneliusalarima@yahoo.com 4 Faculty of Agriculture, Kinki University, Nara 332-7204, Japan E-mail: wakatuki@nara.kindai.ac.jp © Kamla-Raj 2011 J Hum Ecol, 36(1): 79-83 (2011) KEYWORDS Gender Roles. Rice. Sawah Technology ABSTRACT This study examined the gender role in Sawah system of rice production in Nigeria. This study was carried out in five states where Sawah is being practiced. The states are Niger, Kaduna, Ondo, Kwara and Ekiti. Data used in this study were collected in all the Sawah sites in Nigeria namely: Ejetti, Etzuzhegi and Nasarafu in Niger state, Nakala Pampaida millennium village in Kaduna state, Elerinjare in Ilorin Kwara state and Aule in Akure Ondo state. A well structured interview guide was used to elicit information from the farmers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the socio-economic and farming characteristics of the farmers. The results showed that respondents were predominantly male, married and acquired their land through inheritance. Farm sizes ranged from 1ha and 13ha. Majority of the farmers are members of farmers’ association. Farmers got information about Sawah from their friends and Sawah coordinators in their zones. INTRODUCTION Nigeria is the largest country in West Africa with the largest rice producing area (Oladele and Wakatsuki 2010). The rain fed lowland inland valleys that have good potential for intensification and are more robust than the upland system are largely un- exploited (WARDA 1989). Inland valley bottoms and hydromorphic fringes cover about 50 million hectares in West Africa (Nigeria inclusive) of which about 10 million hectares have potential for small scale irrigated Sawah based farming. Ten to twenty million ha of Sawah can produce food for 300 million people in future (Oladele and Wakatsuki 2010). Sawah, a system of rice production practiced in the inland valleys that ushered in the green revolution in the Asian countries has been identified as the pre- requisites for realizing similar feat in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hirose and Wakatsuki 2002)). Efforts in the past 30 years particularly in research in rice cultivation has yielded valuable results only at the institutes and experimental station level but have made no great contribution to productivity at the farmers‘ field (Hirose and Wakatsuki 2002) The term Sawah refers to a leveled rice field surrounded by bunds with inlets and outlets connection to irrigation and drainage canals (Wakatsuki and Masunaga 2005). It is adaptable to a lowland ecosystem that require eco-technology skills, including those for minimum changing of topographical and ecological features, such as land leveling, bunding, and irrigation and drainage (Oladele and Wakatsuki 2010). The essence of bunding and puddling and leveling is to ensure that rice plant is supplied with adequate amount of water and soil nutrients (Issaka et al. 2008). Sawah development tasks which include clearing, stumping, canal construction, bunding, puddling, leveling , smoothening and transplanting are labour intensive and masculine in nature, making men to be clearly more active in the Sawah development activities, however this should not masked the gender roles in the production and post harvesting processing in Sawah rice production. Gender is a concept used in social science analysis to look at the role and activities of men and women. Gender plays an important role in influencing technology adoption decisions. Nowadays women are found in every area of development including agricultural and rural development, but sometimes their roles are being overshadowed based on gender differences (Fakoya et al. 2010). Poor rural women