Rural women call for more land

Rural women have urged the Land Commission to consider allocating them more land since they are the backbone of households and rural development.

The Land Commission is conducting an audit to establish land ownership patterns in the country.

Speaking at the recent Rural Women Assembly national meeting in Shurugwi, Women and Land in Zimbabwe national coordinator Thandiwe Chidavarume said women occupied and owned 15 percent of the land in Zimbabwe, a situation that needed to be improved.

“We have realised that women own 12 percent of the A1 farms and 18 percent of the A2 land,” she said.

“The overall average of the women land ownership is currently at 15 percent. We are calling on the Land Commission to consider allocating more land to rural women as the majority of them are surviving on subsistence farming.”

Mrs Chidavarume said though Zimbabwe made remarkable strides in empowering women, more needed to be done in the sector of ownership and control of land, especially for rural women.

“In terms of global land ownership, only 5 percent is owned by women,” she said.

“We are progressing as a nation, though we need to increase the pace. As an organisation, we are working with rural women to increase profitability in their agricultural activities.”

Mrs Chidavarume said they were working with rural women on practising climate-smart agriculture, which was responsive to the prevailing climate.

“We have emphasised that they should consider growing drought-resistant seed varieties in light of the predicted El Nino climatic conditions,” she said.

Zimbabwe Gender Commission chief executive Virginia Muwanigwa said the commission will explore avenues of increasing women participation in the development agenda under the new Government.

The meeting was held under the theme “Rural women: Critical actors in the social, political, environmental and economic arena in the re -building of the nation” and was attended by solidarity groups from Zambia, South Africa and Lesotho.