Women farmers on the rise in Zimbabwe

The spike in women managing their own agricultural land following Zimbabwe's 2000 land reform programme catapulted the country to high up in the African league of female farmers tilling their own farms, although accurate data for gendered land ownership on the continent remains a grey and contested area.

Women provide the majority of sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural muscle and produce up to 80 percent of the region's basic foodstuffs, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Prior to Zimbabwe's land redistribution, which saw about 4 500 white-owned farms - accounting for more than a quarter of the country - handed to an estimated 245 000 black farmers, fewer than 5 percent of Zimbabwe's women had land registered in their name. But in the wake of land reform, women now comprise about 20 percent of landowners and leaseholders.

"Anybody, male or female, could claim pieces of land [with the advent of the land reform programme]," Thandiwe Chidavarume, director of Women and Land in Zimbabwe (WLZ), an NGO campaigning for greater land access for women, told IRIN.

However, Zimbabwe's formerly white-owned redistributed land is provided on a 99-year leasehold and remains the property of the state, so tenure is not guaranteed, and deciphering gender ownership of land in Africa also hinges on the question of what "ownership" means.

The land ownership matrix since the 2000 redistribution completely altered the landscape, but communal land, where patriarchal norms persist and traditional leaders determine land access, has remained largely unchanged.

About 50 percent of Zimbabwe consists of communal land, where 70 percent of the population resides and small-scale farmers work average plot sizes of about two hectares.

Fuzzy ownership

A December 2013 paper by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) entitled Gender Inequalities in Ownership and Control of Land in Africa: Myths versus Reality highlights the "gross simplifications" regarding women and land in Africa, leading to bald statements that "less than 2 percent of the world's land is owned by women" or "women own approximately 15 percent of agricultural landholdings in Africa."

FAO's Gender and Land Rights Database uses the term "agricultural holdings headed by women". Mali is at the bottom of a 19-country list, with 3,1 percent. Madagascar has 15,3 percent, while Cape Verde tops the list with 50,5 percent.

The IFPRI paper acknowledges the paucity of information regarding land ownership by women. Whereas property deeds might identify an owner, other considerations were also at play.

"For example, a woman may have the right to farm a parcel of land and bequeath it to her children, but not to sell it without permission from her kinship group. Second, the single statistics that are used seem to imply that individuals own land.

"Without further qualification, however, it is not clear how land that is owned jointly is classified. In particular, it would be important to note how land that is owned by couples is included in the measure. It is also unclear how land owned by clans, tribes, institutions, or government actors, rather than by individuals, is included," the paper said.

"Analysis of LSMS-ISA [Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture from six countries] shows that of the total land area owned or accessed by households, women solely own (documented and undocumented) a high of 31 percent in Malawi, followed by Uganda (16 percent), Tanzania (15 percent), Niger (8 percent), and Nigeria (less than 1 percent)," the paper said.

The paper surmises that in the absence of comprehensive data "the pattern that women own less land than men, regardless of how ownership is conceptualised, is remarkably consistent. Further, in many cases, the gender gaps are quite large."

A 1993 Land Tenure Commission appointed by President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government investigating post-colonial land issues had no gender perspective in its brief, although it is estimated about 70 percent of Zimbabwean rural women are engaged in daily agricultural activities, from land preparation for planting through to post-harvest activities.

In 1998 WLZ was established after the realisation, Chidavarume said, "that in spite of Zimbabwe being independent [since 1980], women were still treated unfairly when it came to accessing agricultural land . . .

"We continue to lobby Government and are pushing for more than 20 percent now. With hindsight we should have asked for more from the beginning," she added.