In rural South Sudan, markets for food, labour, and land are expanding, leading to increased workloads for women. Historically, rural women had two primary labour burdens: producing food for home consumption and providing essential life-giving labour such as child-rearing and household maintenance. These were unpaid. Now, they face a third burden: producing food for sale and selling their labour for pay to afford essential services like health and education.
This study explores the labour burdens of women in agriculture, based on interviews conducted in Western Bahr al-Ghazal and other areas of Sudan. As food, labour, and land become commodities, women’s working lives are transforming. The process of ‘commodification’ shifts rural life towards producing surplus food for profit rather than household subsistence. This change has led to the devaluation of unpaid work, adding to the cultural and social shifts in South Sudanese communities.