Women and household sustenance: changing livelihoods and survival strategies in the peri-urban areas of Ibadan

This paper describes the livelihoods and survival strategies of lowincome households in two peri-urban locations in Ibadan, drawing primarily on interviews with 96 women who sell goods from makeshift stalls or who live in poorquality houses. This includes reports of these women’s perceptions of poverty, their incomes (44 per cent earned less than US$ 1 per day) and the strategies they used to avoid poverty (for all, working longer hours; for most, having their children engage in income-earning activities although, for most, this was after school or during holidays; and, for some, working in more than one business). Many had at one time farmed (mostly using “idle” land), but few now did so as the availability of land for farming had diminished.