Potato sacks dwarf traders at one of Nadezda Amaya’s research sites.
When Bolivian farm families bring their produce to the sprawling market in Tiraque, husbands help their wives carry in the huge sacks of potatoes that are the main commodity, and the women take over from there.
“Men rule the fields, but women rule the markets,” said Nadezda Amaya, a master’s degree student in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. Her analysis of male and female roles in the farming communities of the Andes is part of the SANREM CRSP’s research on gendered access to markets in seven countries.
