Darna Dufour
Weatherhead Resident Scholar 1997-1998
Poverty and Nutrition
in Cali, Colombia
The woman balancing a basket of avocados on her head is a street vender in
Cali, Colombia. She lives in a squatter settlement on the edge of the city,
and she had a fight with her neighbor yesterday. This afternoon she discovered
that all her money had been stolen, the equivalent of six US dollars. Would
she make enough money at the market to feed her five children today? Or would
they all go hungry tonight?
What do women living in poverty do when money to buy food
runs short? Darna Dufour's book project, "Impacts of Urban Poverty on Women's
Health and Nutrition," considers this question along with many others, presenting
a holistic view of the biological and cultural dimensions of poverty in a developing
country. Reporting the results of a five-year study of the nutritional intake
and energy expenditure of women living in squatter settlements in Cali undertaken
by Dufour and two colleagues, the book places her fieldwork in the context of
a growing interest in urban populations in developing countries. "The rapid
urbanization of developing countries is one of the most dramatic demographic
phenomena of our time, but its impact on human biology is not well understood," said
Dufour.
The book's central theme is the diet and nutritional status
of the women studied—the coping strategies they used during periods of economic
constraint, their level of physical activity, and their strategies for times
of low food availability. Dufour's fieldwork in Cali revealed the paradoxical
nutritional pattern of obesity in the midst of extreme poverty, a pattern also
being noticed in Venezuelan cities. Following such urban obesity among the poor,
Dufour says, could be "a tsunami of diabetes" and other chronic diseases.
A second theme is the life histories of the women, highlighting
their role in the dynamic process of urbanization in Colombia. "Some of
the women we studied were the pioneers who originally 'squatted' on the land
and virtually built their homes from nothing. They are the food venders, domestic
servants, and neighborhood child care providers, as well as the mothers and homemakers.
This is a sector of the economy beyond the reach of the labor laws that define
acceptable working conditions and minimum salary."
A third theme focuses on the work the women did to earn a
living, the reasons they chose one type of work over another, the conditions
they endured, the economics of their work, and the place of their work in the
larger urban economy. Dufour's study will be the first to document physical activity
patterns in urban settings. Finally, the book summarizes what the authors learned
about the biological and cultural dimension of impoverishment.
These findings, Dufour hopes, will be used by policy-makers
to implement changes—from immediate steps such as fortifying grain products
to extended strategies helping the urban poor join the economy of the nation—in
order to improve the living conditions of the avocado vender and the women she
represents.
Dufour's residency allowed her the time to assimilate the
immense amount of statistical and quantitative data involved in her study. After
immersing herself in the numbers for a year, Dufour looks forward to integrating
into her work the case studies and stories of individual women. Her fieldwork
was funded by the National Institute for Health.
Return to Resident
Scholars 1997-98
