Anthropometric characteristics of female smallholder farmers of Uganda – Toward design of labor-saving tools
测量了89名乌干达女性小农户的身体尺寸，发现班图与尼罗特族群间及与美国女性间差异显著，强调建立撒哈拉以南非洲女性人体测量数据库对设计省力工具的必要性。
Sub-Saharan African women on small-acreage farms carry a disproportionately higher labor burden, which is one of the main reasons they are unable to produce for both home and the market and realize higher incomes. Labor-saving interventions such as hand-tools are needed to save time and/or increase productivity in, for example, land preparation for crop and animal agriculture, post-harvest processing, and meeting daily energy and water needs. Development of such tools requires comprehensive and content-specific anthropometric data or body dimensions and existing databases based on Western women may be less relevant. We conducted measurements on 89 women to provide preliminary results toward answering two questions. First, how well existing databases are applicable in the design of hand-tools for sub-Saharan African women. Second, how universal body dimension predictive models are among ethnic groups. Our results show that, body dimensions between Bantu and Nilotic ethnolinguistic groups are different and both are different from American women. These results strongly support the need for establishing anthropometric databases for sub-Saharan African women, toward hand-tool design.