Time-use patterns of rural women and implications for scheduling agricultural extension activities

Introduction

Why do women miss extension meetings? The easy answer is that they're busy. But busy doing what, and when? Without specific data on how rural women distribute their time across competing responsibilities, extension planners are guessing about scheduling, and guessing badly [1] . Across Latin America, women's participation in agricultural extension remains 15-30 percentage points below men's, a gap often attributed to gender norms but rarely traced to the concrete scheduling conflicts that those norms produce [2] . In Peru's highland regions, women shoulder a triple burden of agricultural labor, domestic work, and caregiving that constrains their engagement with external activities [3] . Time-use research, which tracks minute-by-minute activity patterns, offers a tool for making these constraints visible and actionable. Work from sub-Saharan Africa has shown that rescheduling extension meetings to match women's available time slots can raise attendance by 40-60% [4] . But comparable data from Andean farming systems are scarce [5] . This research mapped daily time-use patterns among rural women in Cajamarca Province and assessed how scheduling alignment influenced their extension participation. The objectives were to identify time allocation across activity categories, determine windows of availability for extension engagement, correlate scheduling convenience with attendance, and document seasonal shifts in time patterns [6] .

Theoretical Framework: This research draws on Moser's triple-role framework, which categorizes women's work into productive, reproductive, and community management domains [7] . The framework highlights how formal time demands across these three roles create competing claims that disproportionately limit women's access to public services and development programs. Time-use methodology, as developed by Hirway and Jose [8] , provides the empirical basis for quantifying these competing demands and identifying intervention points where scheduling adjustments could improve access.

Material and Methods

Material

A mixed-methods design combined structured time-use diaries with participation tracking. The target population was rural women aged 18-65 engaged in agricultural activities across four districts of Cajamarca Province: Cajamarca, Baños del Inca, La Encañada, and Namora. Stratified random sampling yielded 206 participants. The research was conducted between September 2023 and June 2024 at the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences, National University of Cajamarca, Cajamarca, Peru. Time-use diaries recorded activities in 30-minute intervals over seven consecutive days during both planting and non-planting seasons. Ethics approval was granted by the National University of Cajamarca Ethics Committee (Protocol NUC-EC/2023/056, August 2023) [9] .

Methods

Time allocation was calculated as percentage of waking hours (defined as 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM) devoted to each www.extensionjournal.com activity category. Extension attendance was tracked across all locally available sessions during the research period. Scheduling convenience was scored by matching session times against each woman's recorded availability windows. Pearson correlation assessed the scheduling-attendance relationship. Seasonal comparisons used paired t-tests. Focus groups (12 total) explored women's experiences with schedule conflicts [10] .

Ethical Considerations

Written informed consent was obtained in Spanish and Quechua. Time-use diaries were self-administered with researcher support for low-literacy participants. All personal data were anonymized. Participants received a summary of findings in accessible format as reciprocal benefit. Women with well-aligned scheduling attended nearly 2.4 times more sessions than those with poorly timed offerings.

Results

The difference was highly significant and robust across districts. The positive correlation (r = 0.68) confirms that timing is a strong predictor of women's participation, independent of interest or motivation levels.

Discussion

These findings confirm what many extension practitioners suspect but rarely measure: scheduling is a primary barrier to women's extension participation. The 42.6 percentagewww.extensionjournal.com The seasonal compression of available time during planting months has practical implications. Extension agencies that maintain fixed year-round schedules effectively exclude women during the very periods when agricultural advice is most needed. Flexible scheduling, perhaps shifting to early morning or late afternoon sessions during planting, could maintain access without requiring additional resources [12] . The dominance of domestic chores in women's time budgets (28.3%) reflects patterns documented across Latin America by Gammage [13] . Until domestic labor is redistributed or mechanized, extension scheduling must work around these demands rather than competing with them.

Limitations

Seven-day diary periods may not capture full seasonal variation. Self-reported time allocation involves estimation error, particularly for overlapping tasks like childcare during field work. Four districts in one province limit geographic generalizability. The research didn't assess whether improved attendance translated into better agricultural outcomes.

Conclusions

Rural women in Cajamarca face tight daily schedules dominated by domestic and agricultural labor that leave narrow windows for extension engagement. Scheduling convenience strongly predicted attendance rates, with welltimed sessions achieving more than double the participation of poorly scheduled ones. Extension services should conduct local time-use assessments before setting session schedules and adjust timing seasonally to match women's shifting availability patterns. Mid-morning and early afternoon slots showed the best fit during non-planting periods. These scheduling adjustments represent a low-cost, high-impact strategy for improving women's access to agricultural extension.

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