2. Review of Literature
2.6 Women and Agriculture in Zimbabwe
Over the last two decades, women’s issues have moved rapidly up the policy agenda of international organisations and national governments (UN Women, 2017). After the independence of Zimbabwe there was a major increase in policies designed to prevent women from being marginalised from the mainstream economy such as the Affirmative Action which allowed the pushing of girls through quotas in government institutions and education (ZimVac, 2017; FAO, 2015). Although these policies acknowledged women’s presence in the public sphere there was little change in women’s livelihood. Most research done, in rural and urban Zimbabwe, by the government of Zimbabwe and independent researchers showed the continued difference between men and women’s standard of living (UN Women, 2017;
ZimVac, 2017; FAO, 2015; MCCTPT, 2016; Handa et al., 2016; Nyathi, Ziga & Thobejane, 2018). Surveys conducted concluded that one major reason for women’s unchanged economic status was due to gender prejudice and the only way to address this issue was through creating gender sensitive policies (ZimVac, 2017; FAO, 2015).
Government’s change towards a gender approach was an important step as it allowed for the policy to be sensitive to issues that affected men and women based on their socially constructed roles. Socially constructed norms in both the Ndebele and Shona culture favour men as
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compared to women (Horrell & Krishan, 2007). Men get to have access to education, land and financial institutions just to mention a few public sectors. Hence, there is a need to implement
‘gender sensitive’ policies that incorporate gender issues into policy processes. So if development is to take place in the agriculture sector there is need for gender equity to take place. Gender equity means people having the same rights to meet their basic needs irrespective of one’s sex, colour, creed or religion (Touray, 2016).
Hence, in agriculture there were policies formulated by different governing bodies that allowed for gender mainstreaming. For example, the Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX) policy, the Fast Track Land Reform policy and the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) policy are some of them. The policies’ main emphasis was on identifying and removing the gender inequalities that prevent women from realising their full potential. Eighty percent of women live in the communal areas where they constitute 61 percent of the farmers and provide 70 percent of the labour (Touray, 2016, FAO, 2015). With these statistics one can note that women farmers are necessary for any agricultural industry to thrive.
Most of the labour in the farming community is free labour from women and children, women normally spend 16 to 18 hours working. Forty-night percent of that time is spent doing agricultural activities and about 51 percent on domestic activities (Thome et al., 2014;
Lumbasi, 2018). The land that women till on is normally family farm land or their husband’s family farm land and this normally work against them on how the land is utilised as they always have to seek permission to use it (Horrell & Krishan, 2007; Thome et al., 2014; Lumbasi, 2018).
According to a 1993 household survey of the Department of Agricultural Technical and Extension Service (AGRITEX) in FAO (2015), in male-headed households, men dominate decision-making. 60 percent female-headed households in the communal areas women are responsible for farm management choices, however, most of these households still have men (relatives of their late husbands or their brothers) making major decision in the way farms are managed and crops are sold even in their absence. Although men are the ones who normally determine the prices of crops, women are the ones who make decisions on how to spend the money generated from activities such as selling vegetables and poultry farming. Selling a family bull which is men’s responsibility costs between USD250-800USD (Daily News, 29 January, 2020) while a hen (women’s responsibility) goes for a maximum of USD 6. With this one can note that women are normally in charge of livestock that brings little revenue. If men
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can sell a herd of cattle, they can end up having a lot of disposable income compared to that of women. In the end men can be able to use the land they own and herds of cattle as collateral to finance their agribusiness (Gaidzanwa et al, 2012).
Although, women hold a 75 percent portion of members of the prestigious Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) only 4,5 of the women have positions in higher office (Gaidzanwa et al., 2012;
FAO, 2015). In the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) women comprise only 8.6% of the members, reflecting the low percentage of women owning large farms. The proportion of women office bearers is 10% as can be seen from the table below from (FAO, 2017).
Figure 5: Percentage of women in the position of influence in the farming community of Zimbabwe (FAO, 2017)
As the percentage of women normally is low indicating a low representation which means a small number that can vote in favour of their interests (Figure 5). If women’s poverty’s status is to change women need to be given a free platform to participate in issues that deal with their empowerment. Women also need to be equipped with agricultural training and knowledge on
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what crops to farm on their land and how to tend to them till harvest (FAO, 2017). Women also need financing to get the land to work on as women own less land in Zimbabwe, the laws, customs, traditions and cultural practices do not favour women the rights of ownership to land (Krishnan & Horrell, 2007; ZIMSTAT, 2017). Even when they get the land getting financed to have farming implements is something tough as many banks fear giving them loans as most of the rural farming land has no tittle deeds for security in case they fail to produce on their land the bank will need to recover (FEWS Net, 2016).