According to a recent employment study, rural non-farm employment will be the largest single source of additional employment for the forseeable future (World Bank, 1988b). As noted above, rural women presently have limited offfarm income-earning opportunities. Their main sources of income are derived from the farm and other household-based activities involving food processing and petty trade. In this regard, improvements in agricultural productivity (strongly influenced by access to services and resources) will continue to play a major role in increasing incomes. It will be important, however, for women to be able to participate in the non-farm growth sector. Labor-saving technologies to help alleviate some of their work burden can contribute to women's ability to engage in remunerative off-farm activities. In addition, if the employment possibilities and incomes of women are to improve on a continuous basis, short-term solutions based on the development and dissemination of new technologies must be complemented by longer-term policies to increase women's access to training, credit and other resources.

Special attention needs to be paid to increasing the economic viability of women's groups since many group income-earning activities are being supported and few have shown themselves to be financially strong. Better market feasibility studies and supportive management and technical training are essential elements to making these projects truly income-generating. The proposed activities need to be carefully assessed as to the marketability of the products, and the technical and administrative skills requirements. To the extent that poorer women, including female heads of household and landless women, are currently under-represented in women's groups, public and private development agencies who are funding such groups should make efforts to identify such women and encourage their participation. In addition, however, individual women also need to be targetted for training and employment opportunities.

The continued development and dissemination to producers of improved technologies and methods in food processing, storage, and preservation (charcoal refrigerators, solar drying equipment, improved stoves) could open up new income-earning opportunities for women (in addition to having a beneficial nutritional impact). The cultivation of existing or new high value horticultural crops (if market feasibility studies supported such cultivation) could be enhanced by such developments. Many areas already grow fruits and vegetables which are plentiful at harvest time. There exists a potentially large international market for dried products such as mango, banana chips and coconut (Monsted and Riunge, 1987). A better dissemination of the technical information by public or private agencies, perhaps in conjunction with the establishment of an appropriate technology center, in addition to the development or expansion of distribution channels will be necessary to reach this potential.

Assisting women to market their produce is an essential part of their motivation to produce a greater diversity and quantity of agricultural goods and their ability to earn income. At present, women's involvement in marketing is limited to a small geographical area. The lack of coordination in marketing efforts often leads to a situation where different groups of women are in competition with each other in trying to market their goods to the same local market. The development of marketing cooperatives and/or women's increased participation in existing cooperatives could help them better organize their 34