Eliminating the gender gap in agriculture is widely seen
as crucial to alleviating poverty and improving food security, and the
effects of inequality are likely to be further compounded by climate
change.
“For global development to be sustainable, the issues of climate change,
gender equality and food security must all go hand-in-hand,” said Mary
Robinson, former President of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson
Foundation - Climate Justice, told a recent meeting of experts in Rome
convened to mark International Women’s day.
“Family farmers are the dominant force in global food production. And,
at the same time, they are among the world’s most vulnerable people,”
Food and Agriculture Director-General José Graziano Da Silva said at the
gathering.
“Much of the future of global food security depends on their realizing
their untapped potential. Rural women are an important part of this, not
just as famers but also in processing and preparing food, and local
markets,” he added.
But, in many countries such as Tanzania, an outmoded system of land
tenure continues to shut women out of land ownership. Despites strong
laws prohibiting the practice, women farmers still face discrimination.
Asha Ramadhani, a farmer in Tanzania’s Mwanga District, has been trying
to access a piece of land she desperately needs to boost her meagre crop
output. “It’s a tricky and frustrating process because I am a woman my
issue is treated as a favour rather than a right,” she complained.
Local attitudes to land ownership make it difficult for them to access the best land.
The 44-year-old divorcee has in the past three years been leasing a
two-acre farm near Mangio village where she grows maize, beans,
vegetables and sweet potatoes.
While farming in this village is based on tenancy through exchange of
crops, drier weather is making it harder for Ramadhani to pay her lease
due to dismal yields.
“My landlord wants a quarter of my crop yield every season as lease
payment, but the drought makes it harder to come by,” she told IRIN.
Women own only 20 percent of registered land in Tanzania, according to a
US Agency for International development (USAID) property rights and
resource governance country profile for Tanzania, and land held by women
under customary law is likely to be much lower.
The Land Act and the Village Land Act of 1999 govern women’s land
rights. The constitution of Tanzania also enshrines the equality of all
persons.
The law gives women the right to access, own, and control land on an
equal footing with men and allows them to participate in decision-making
on land matters.
Section 3(2) of both the Land Act and the Village Land Act states: “The
right of every woman to acquire, hold, use and deal with land shall, to
the same extent and subject to the same restrictions, be treated as the
right of any man."
Women are also allowed to own or occupy land jointly with other persons,
while protecting them against unlawful transfer of land tittles under
joint occupancy.
But legislation is insufficiently enforced.
All over Mwanga district, women are finding it increasingly difficult to
access land and water sources in the face of ever drier weather.
“Most people with large tracts of land are men; there are hardly [any]
women who own land, especially close to the water sources,” Ramadhani
told IRIN.
The village land ownership procedure gives men the upper hand, she said.
“Many of my friends have lost hope because whenever they lodge their
request for land they don’t succeed,” she added.
The few women who manage to navigate the bureaucracy end up getting small plots - and far from water sources.
Anna Tibaijuka, Tanzania’s minister for land and human settlement
development, told IRIN men and women should be treated equally in terms
of land ownership, but said that, “Importantly, the people must know
their rights and not let anyone trample on them.”
“Discriminatory attitudes”
Yefred Mnyenzi of Haki Ardhi, a Lands Rights NGO in Tanzania, told IRIN
that most women have access to land through male relatives, adding that
unmarried daughters, widows and divorced women are often “bullied” by
their male relatives.
“In some cases husbands have been using title deeds to secure loans
without the knowledge of their wives, causing evictions or loss of their
property,” he said.
Lack of awareness, a male dominated system, social stereotypes and
outdated traditions are some of the challenges undermining women’s land
rights in Tanzania. “The general population must be sufficiently
educated to understand these issues,” Mnyenzi said.
“Women are typically given few or no rights to land during their
marriages - never being permitted, for example, to add their names to
documents indicating ownership of property - and even fewer upon the
death of a husband,” noted the USAID report.
“Customary law focuses property rights on men or kinship groups
dominated by men, and thus the ability of women to claim or inherit land
is extremely limited,” it said.
According to Mnyenzi, the government needs to decentralize land
administration to allow grassroots communities to participate in
decision-making and economic empowerment and fight discriminatory
customs, beliefs and attitudes.
“In situations where women are degraded to an inferior position in the
society due to cultural norms, we need to have support systems that
enable them to own and use land without problems,” Mary Lusibi, a
women’s rights activist with Tanzania Gender Networking Programme, told
IRIN.
Continent-wide problem
Such discriminatory practices aren’t just limited to Tanzania. Women own less than 1 percent of land in the African continent, notes William Garvelink, [ http:// ] senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“While statutory law may be gender neutral, customary law prevails and
is based on a patriarchal system. Securing property rights for women is
crucial to the economic development of Africa,” he said.
Experts are calling for equitable land rights to be included in the post-Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agenda.
“The post-2015 agenda should include targets and related indicators on
secure rights to land, natural resources and other productive assets
that explicitly include women’s rights,” said a statement by 38 international organizations.
“Securing women’s land and property rights is a necessary strategy for
ensuring gender inequality and advancing women’s empowerment worldwide,”
said a background paper for the UN global thematic consultations on the post-2015 development agenda.
“There is an evident correlation between gender inequality, societal
poverty, and the failure to respect, protect and fulfill these rights
for women,” further noted the report, authored by Mayra Gomez of the
Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and D. Hein
Tran of the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights.
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