Tobacco farming – counting the costs for the rural poor

In the Southern African region, particularly the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – a 14-member grouping, the bloc set up targets called the SADC gender protocol which aims at mainstreaming gender across the broad spectrum of life beginning from the home, school or workplace.

In many spheres of life though there is strong gender disparity whereby the males dominate their female counterparts. According to our local traditional Zimbabwean culture, the male (father) is the head of the household on whose shoulders lies the responsibility to make sure family members are protected from attacks, fed, sheltered and educated among other responsibilities. This held custom ordinarily makes a boy child assume a superior position and importance ahead of the girl child in the family.

Sadly, this set-up seems to cascade into the school and the workplace. Despite constituting the majority of the population (52%), women occupy positions of less influence be it in the media, in agriculture, politics and the economy among others.

The writing of my article was motivated by developments in the agriculture sector in Zimbabwe. Around the year 2000, the government of Zimbabwe embarked on land restructuring exercise that saw thousands of previously landless black citizens being resettled on new farms.

The programme was meant to empower all citizens economically but on deeper analysis, it appeared the programme benefitted more men as compared to women. In short, there were more male beneficiaries of pieces of land as compared to men.

To the few women that benefitted, there was not much done to improve their farming potential through empowering them with inputs, capital, machinery, technology transfer and training so as to empower them as farmers.

The story also goes on to celebrate the success stories of the few women making it on the farms as well as highlighting their challenges and strategies for success.

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