Written by
Christiana Charles-Iyoha
The plight of women as an economically, socially and
politically disenfranchised community in Africa is aptly summed up by Mzee Mwalimu Julius Nyerere when he noted that “Women
in Africa toil all their lives on land that they do not own, to produce what they
do not control and at the end of a marriage through divorce or death, they can
be sent away empty handed”.
Women as a group account for over 70% of people living
in poverty particularly in developing and least developed economies and 50% of
the populace worldwide generally. In
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, women form nearly 50% of a population
that is under very heavy pressures from a social organizational pattern that is
inherently unprepared for sustainable development and the socio-economic
transformation of the poor, vulnerable and marginalized peoples, largely
located in the rural areas and peri-urban areas.
Women’s poverty is further heightened by limited or
lack of access to productive resources.
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recently noted that in
the rural areas where the majority of the world’s hungry live, women and girls
produce most of the food consumed locally.
Their contribution could be far greater if they had equal access to
essential resources and services, including information. Rural women have even less access to
information and technologies than men and are thus at a disadvantage when it
comes to making informed choices about what to produce and how best to market
their products. Lack of information also
limits their influence in their communities and their ability to participate in
decision-making.
Issues of access to productive resources often evoke
issues of power relations and marginalisation.
Women, an already excluded class by reason of customary practices and
religious practices that locate women in families as legal minors subject to
the authority of either the father or the husband in the private sphere are
further excluded from accessing
productive resources, usually located in the public sphere. Patricia McFadden captures this scenario
aptly noting that “Through rituals and
practices that have become euphemistically understood as 'cultural' and
'traditional', women's capacities and abilities to labour and to reproduce are
institutionalized in the patriarchal family as the private property of their
fathers and husbands”.
Emerging from women’s lack of access to productive
resources are far reaching poverty implications as they have to face a narrower
choice of economic options including engagement in high risk behaviour such as
vulnerability to being trafficked for forced labor or prostitution, involvement
in the informal sector with daily harassments, slave labor in export processing
zones and involvement in the global sex tourism industry as victims or
perpetrators of the crime against women and humanity.
Central to women’s lack of access or limited access to
productive resources is ignorance of their socio-economic rights and
incapacitation to advocate for such rights.
Therefore closing or narrowing this gap through sustained publicity
campaigns, awareness building, informed advocacy campaigns targeted at
enhancing women’s access to productive resources will help in defeminizing
already deepening feminised poverty further exacerbated by liberalisation
policies.
As noted by FAO, “ For a woman, owning land or
understanding her legal rights over a piece of land she farms also has
environmental benefits. Women with secure land tenure are more likely to invest
in their land than those without legal land rights, through irrigation, for
example, or by farming in a more sustainable manner rather than for short-term
gain”.
According to a
World Bank report, “increased land tenure security increases the value of
the land and can greatly increase poor people's wealth, in some cases doubling
it”.
FAO further noted “Improved access to land allows a
household to increase its food consumption, thereby helping to ensure household
food security. It enables the household
to increase cash income by producing a surplus for sale in the market. It improves the ability of a household to
access credit. Secure access to land
often provides a valuable safety net as a source of shelter, food and income in
times of hardship. A household’s land can be the last available resort in the
case of emergency or disaster.
Consequently, to enhance rural women’s access to
productive resources in Nigeria calls for Multistakeholder
Sensitization and Consultation meetings on Enhancing Rural Women’s Access to
Relevant Knowledge, Assets, Capacities and Livelihood Strategies. Such
meetings should be strategic zonally inclusive and cascadable engagement with
grassroots women organizations, women’s networks, government officials,
community leaders and other development stakeholders.
The objectives of
such meetings should include:
a needs assessment
survey to review existing knowledge, attitudes and practices of productive resources
in the rural areas noting in particular rural women’s challenges in accessing
these resources.
sensitization,
consultation, capacity building and advocacy workshops for policymakers and
representatives of rural women’s organizations in the six geo-political zones
of Nigeria on enhancing rural women’s access to relevant knowledge, assets,
capacities and livelihood strategies for women’s socio-economic empowerment and
transformation in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.
Sustained sensitization/advocacy
campaigns on the benefits of enhanced rural women’s access to relevant
knowledge, assets, capacities and livelihood strategies amongst policy makers in
Nigeria through the publication of policy briefs and advocacy visits.
Establish
multistakeholder partnerships between government agencies, community leaders,
community development agencies, women’s groups in the rural communities and
other development stakeholders in rural Nigeria to facilitate the actualization
of and sustainability of enhanced rural women’s
access to relevant knowledge, assets, capacities and livelihood strategies to
ensure sustained women’s socio-economic empowerment and transformation in the
six geo-political zone of Nigeria.
Establish The Nigeria Rural Women’s Network for Socio-economic
Empowerment and Transformation designed for sustaining the
sensitisation/consultation expected to serve as a roadmap for sustained
advocacy on enhancing rural women’s access to relevant
knowledge, assets, capacities and livelihood strategies for women’s
socio-economic empowerment and transformation. This will further
strengthen rural women's capacity to engage policy makers, community leaders
and development stakeholders in the zone on enhanced access to productive
resources in the zone to ensure women’s socio-economic empowerment and
transformation. 
No comments:
Post a Comment