Excluding themselves from development? Carework as a discursive resource for women farmers in Ethiopia.

This article examines women’s engagement in state-led community development meetings in rural Ethiopia, focusing on how cultural expectations of motherhood influence their participation. Based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 50 interviews, the study finds that women commonly cite caregiving responsibilities as reasons for leaving or avoiding these meetings. However, rather than representing a fixed cultural barrier, motherhood functions as a discursive resource that women strategically mobilize either to justify their absence or to legitimize their participation when they perceive the meetings as valuable. The research highlights both the agency women exercise within gendered constraints and the material consequences of their limited access to development resources, especially for female-headed households, thereby offering a nuanced understanding of carework, gender, and development in Ethiopian rural contexts.