Sustaining Our World: The Need to Empower Indigenous Women Farmers

By Andrea Moran

The March 21st panel at the Salvation Army in NYC.

Passion.
Power.
Potential.
Purpose.

These are the four keys to empowering indigenous women in farming, according to Tee Thompson, a presenter at the "Transforming Indigenous Women Through Agribusiness" event on March 21st, as part of the UN's 61st CWS.

But why farming?

The world's surging population is one reason. By 2030, the UN projects that the world's population will surpass 8.6 billion. (It reached 7 billion in 2011, so we're in for some incredible exponential growth).

Despite the dramatic increase in the world's population, the growth farming sector, as it is, will not be able to keep pace, according to Thompson. To make matters more serious, by 2030, over half the world's populations will live in urban areas. This shift from rural to city life will no doubt impact agriculture, a sector which is already showing a decline in the percentage of world population working in the field, according to the World Bank. 

"Women represent a whole lot of untapped potential," said Esther Ibanga, Founder of the Women Without Walls Initiative, (WWWI). Unfortunately, women in many countries, such as Nigeria, face extreme difficulties in accessing land, equipment, loans, and training to take leadership roles within agriculture. Empowerment and enablement to hold power in this sector is crucial not only for the development of the nation, but to ensure these women can sustain their families and communities with food.

Ibanga applied for a loan in Nigeria, and 4 years later, she said her loan application has not advanced. She said patriarchal and traditional views of women's roles hinder their advancement and involvement in the agriculture sector. Overcoming these attitudes, and allowing women  legal rights to land, training, and loans, is crucial if the nation is to develop and include women within agribusiness.

While humanitarian aid sends food to Africa, Africa already has all the resources and arable land it needs to sustain itself, said Barrister Udy Ubom, a lawyer and panelist. The key is enabling Africa's women to become empowered leaders of their agricultural lands and small farms.

"They don't need food shipped from America. They have land, they have rivers," he said, re-affirming that instead of sending aid money to supply food to Africa, donors should send aid to support women in the above mentioned areas.

Additional Resources:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Article: Levelling the Field: Improving Opportunities for Women Farmers in Africa (World Bank)

Is all we need a little more justice?

In a panel sponsored by Crossroads International and Women in Law and Development in Africa, a series of women representatives from Togo, Swaziland, and Ghana gathered together to discuss “Decreasing Violence against Women through Access to Justice” in their different contexts. Agreeing that all women’s organizations have a unifying goal of violence prevention and obtainment of equal rights, the women on this panel aimed at opening women’s access to justice in their countries, specifically by the passing of empowering legislation and the insurance of its implementation on the ground. And, in order to do so, these women shared how their organizations strive to strike a balance of working with both government and civil society through gendered perspectives in order to promote women’s empowerment from the grassroots level up.

In order to set the stage, panelists from Togo, Swaziland, and Ghana explained the social and legal climate surrounding women’s issues in their country. In Togo, 42% of married women are subjected to physical and/or psychological violence, and these victims are left unsupported without the backing of the law. While a ‘family code’ exists within the current legal framework of the nation, this code is against discriminatory treatment in general – but not specific to women and girls. Without this specificity, perpetrators abusing women and girls remain unpunished and unaccountable for their actions and their actions’ consequences. This lack of justice and accountability is exacerbated by a disorganized national police force that does not have precedents or protocols established for properly handling cases of violence against women, leaving many abusive situations inadequately addressed. 

In Swaziland, legislation against gender-based violence does in fact exist, however its writing is archaic, dating back between the years 1880 – 1920 and has not evolved to address the threats and dangers that women face in modern day. For instance, violation of a women through anal penetration or penetration with an object is not mentioned under the law, and is regularly considered a simple assault through the eyes of the court. Magnifying this problem is Swaziland’s monarchical system of government that allows the nation’s King to veto any bill that he does not see fit, such as he did with recent legislation designed to protect women in both public and domestic spheres in modern day.

Prior to the passing of any legislation in Ghana, one out of every three women in the country was physically abused and one out of every five women in the country was psychologically abused. Now however, Ghana can serve as a slightly more positive example, boasting quite progressive anti-violence laws for their region, the most recent passed in 2007. Nevertheless, Ghanaians are not immune to the aforementioned obstacles of their region, as demonstrated by the seven-year long struggle it took for such legislation to be passed. Additionally, it is important to note that the act of passing legislation does not automatically translate to the adoption of such practices on the ground, as many Ghanaians continue to struggle unaware of the law or unsure of how to properly use it.

Therefore, while these women interestingly represented three different organizations hailing from experiences in three different nations, the synchrony of their underlying fights and aspirations was striking. The whole panel agreed that the struggle to protect women against instances of violence and to open their access to the justice system is an ongoing, uphill battle against the region’s inflexible customs of patriarchy that are so deeply embedded in their legal and social systems. The panel also believed that “advocacy, advocacy, advocacy” was the solution to overcoming these barriers. Firstly, the panel wants to use advocacy to target the way that people think, challenging their mentality that domestic violence should be kept in the secrecy of the domestic sphere, and hope to raise awareness that such abuse is not a family issue to be dealt with privately, but a societal issue that should be fought against publically and without stigma. From this, the hope is that all those in the region will begin to take issues of domestic violence seriously, both personally as well as legally, with the ultimate goal that all forms of domestic violence should and will be criminalized and persecuted in the future.