Livelihood Shifts in Hausa Niger: the Gendered Impacts of Climate and Social Change

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is two-fold: 1) to clarify the ways in which households of a village in the climate-volatile Sahel deal with both biophysical stresses and with social change which may or may not be related, and whether their actions increase or alleviate their levels of vulnerability; and 2) to determine whether the changes undergone in the village have differential effects on the male and female members of households in order to determine how forces such as climate change may affect women's vulnerability as compared to men's vulnerability.