Louise Sibusiso Nkomo, a project leader in water management in Zimbabwe, describes the gender issues she saw on a recent field visit to Tanzania.
Video transcript:
Firstly what we found out was that, in terms of membership within the scheme, we had close to a 50/50 split between men and women, which was a balanced sort of membership within the group. However, when we then further investigated issues to do with land ownership we found that less than 10% of the women members owned any schemes. This means that men were largely responsible for or were the land owners and only a few women actually owned the land. The majority were renting the land from its owners. But we also noticed a very interesting dynamic: women more than men accessed loans for credits to be able to buy inputs such as fertiliser and seeds. That kind of credit was available to them and the discussion showed that the women were paying up the loan facilities and they were able to do this over a period of six months.
We will then look at the issue of women in leadership within these particular schemes and within the constitutions or the set-up of these schemes; there was a deliberate clause to say that they needed at least a minimum of one woman within the scheme management. But we found that key leadership positions such as the chair, the treasurer and the accountant were being held by the men.
We had women as committee members and in one interesting scheme we noted that the woman was there as the treasurer of that particular scheme. When we further tried to investigate the reasons for this it really came out that, where women and men are together in large schemes of over 500 hectares, the issue of conflict management was one in which women did not really feel confident. They were not sure they had the leadership skills to handle conflict. Perhaps that’s a gap that needs to be addressed so that women do not shy away from leadership positions. In general women are participating in agriculture; they are able to make gains and they are able to get high incomes that are similar to those of the men within the schemes.