ABSTRACT
As it becomes more readily accepted that so-called ‘primitive’ people, and peasants in general, are very far from being the stupid, conservative barrier to change which is how they have been described, it seems that this new awareness of peasants as highly rational decision-makers is still stopping at the last frontier: women. Western male stereotypes of women include the idea that they are ‘irrational’ or ‘illogical’ because they do not conform to men’s expectations. This prejudices the attitudes of Westerntrained planners towards women in the Third World. Virtually no attention has been paid to the question of providing adequate incentives for women to participate in planned change. Payment for work done by women is often made to their husbands; and even more universal is the habit of paying men only for crops produced by the joint labour of all members of the family. This helps to transform husbands into bosses and wives into servants, creating great friction and also undermining the co-operation between partners and the quality of the work done by them.
