LABOUR: Rural African Women Suffer Multiple Discrimination

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

BUCHAREST, Oct 22 2001 (IPS) - The work of the rural African woman is misunderstood, underestimated and shunned, despite its important contribution to the food security of the general population, charge women unionists.

As occurs with a family’s domestic chores, the work of most women is not remunerated, said Senegalese activist Angelique Correa, of the Democratic Organisation of African Workers’ Trade Unions (DOAWTU).

A meeting of the International Women Workers Conference – a division of the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) – met over the weekend in Bucharest, where experts and activists discussed the situation of women in Africa who are responsible for their family’s farming duties.

The WCL, an international union movement that represents some 140 autonomous and democratic workers organisations, is holding its quadrennial congress in the Romanian capital this week.

The debate on rural African women highlighted the extent to which they are responsible for feeding the continent, as they perform at least 80 percent of the labour that goes into subsistence farming.

But, despite their overwhelming presence in the sector, “a mere five percent of the resources supplied by external services are available to women,” said Correa.

Most resources and technical aid are channelled toward men producing crops for export, she said, adding that “seeds for growing and improved implements are supplied to the largest commercial farmers, almost invariably men.”

Another factor that relegates African women to a secondary status is land ownership. In many countries of the continent, women do not own the land they till, stated the DOAWTU activist.

WCL confederal secretary Necie Lucero, of the Philippines, set the problem in a broader context, stressing that government transfers of land almost always go to men, a practice revealing that government policies are permeated with misconceptions of gender roles in rural Africa.

Correa agreed with WCL leader, saying that discrimination in land transfers is “linked to the perception of male responsibility and female dependency rather than to the fact that in agrarian societies of today, more women than men work the land.”

In a report presented during the weekend conference, the WCL described farming as one of the sectors suffering most from the impacts of the globalisation phenomenon.

The rural world is clearly marginalised, and has been particularly hard hit by poverty and misery, said Willy Thys, secretary general of the union confederation.

The distribution of land today occurs through the market, not the state. As a result, thousands of farmers are excluded as they do not even have a plot of land to cultivate for their own survival, according to the study.

In contrast, there is a concentration of great tracts of land, as it ends up in the hands of large landholdings, often belonging to big transnational corporations. In some countries, there is even talk of “agrarian counter-reform,” says the Belgian-born Thys in the report.

This phenomenon has meant that in Africa and in other developing regions agricultural production is focused on export crops, while poor nations are becoming totally dependent on food imports and their populations suffer famine and malnutrition.

Correa pointed out that in the few cases in which African women own arable land, it is usually a very small area of little economic value. Furthermore, if a woman is widowed or divorced, she can be forced off the land she is working.

Another obstacle rural women face is the lack of access to bank credits. The same occurs when they seek new farming technologies, training and the marketing of their farm goods.

In many African countries, credit associations and co-operatives that market food export crops restrict membership to heads-of-household only, said the DOAWTU women’s leader.

This means that most women are excluded, whether they are married or not. “Banks demand guarantees in the form of landed property and male consent before granting loans to working women,” she explained.

In Africa, the AIDS pandemic has further aggravated the rural unemployment crisis and problems of malnutrition, thus creating further burdens for the continent’s farming women, said Correa.