family. A study of Kikuyu families showed that in farming households with less than 2 acres of land, more men migrated to cities in search of remunerative employment (Feldman, 1982). Their earnings Lnable a household to maintain a certain level of income despite the small size and low productivity of the holding. On the other hand, income from off-farm sources cant allow a household to adopt improved agricultural technologies and contribute to higher productivity on the farm (COK and UNICEF, i984). Related to this, it has also been demonstrated that the level of off-farm income influences both the ability and willingness of smallholders to take out loans for farm improvements (ILO, 1986).

The distinction between, and interdependence of, farm and off-farm activities is, to a large extent, a gender issue. It is estimated that 94 percent of working women above the age of 15 are exclusively employed on the holding compared to 70 percent of men (GOK and UNICEF, 1984). While this may underestimate the time women spend on other activities related to their agricultural work that are often done on a periodic or part-time basis such as their involvement in women's group activities, it does reflect the critical importance of women's labor to agricultural (and especially food) production, and to family income. It has been shown that 60 percent of farm-derived family income is produced by women (World Bank, 1989).

Women's ability to shoulder these on-farm responsibilities (and the fact that they have limited access to other types of employment) enables men to work off the farm. While women provide the bulk of on-farm labor, by and large, paid employment opportunities in the rural labor market and rural entrepreneurial activities remain male-dominated (Rogers, 1985). According to a recent study on employment and growth in Kenya, only 6 percent of working women above the age of 15 are employed for pay or profit, compared to 30 percent for men. While women overwhelmingly participate in work activities and put in longer aggregate hours than men, their access to wage employment is very limited (World Bank, 1988b). Households headed by unmarried women are in the most precarious position since, in general, they have much less access to off-farm income. Without husbands from whom married women heads of household are able to get remittance income, unmarried women can only receive income transfers from other family members who are likely to be engaged in farming activities and who have families of their own (ILO, 1986).

With landlessness or near-landlessness an increasing problem, however, women are being drawn into low paying casual agricultural labor or offfarm labor as an economic necessity. Host of the women employed as casual laborers are poor and landless (Nonsted and Riunge, 1987). It is estimated that women comprise about one-third of these workers overall -- a much higher proportion than among regular workers (ILO, 1986; GOK and UNICEF, 1984). A recent survey of workers on a rural roads project showed that 80 percent of the laborers were single women with children who had no other means of supporting themselves (NORAD, 1988). Other evidence from tea plantations suggests that the majority of casual labor is also made up of destitute women with no access to land of their own (Conversation with Diane Rocheleau, 1988).

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