Most women’s empowerment interventions in Sierra Leone have failed because they have focused on addressing practical rather than strategic gender needs. In this case, enhancing women’s control over decision making process over factors of production could significantly contribute towards their empowerment.
Globally, there is an evident correlation between gender inequality, societal poverty, and the failure to respect, protect and fulfil these rights for women. This failure widens the gender inequality gap, giving men more power against their female counterparts. Therefore, strengthening women’s secure rights to land can help empower them to reach their potentials as citizens and as economic actors, and enable them to take decisions in the homes and take control over their own lives as well.
However, the study has shown that some women have also taken up some roles that used to be regarded as for men like household decision making especially on what and how to grow. This is
evident in their small farming and gardening plots. Also, it shows that women also contribute in terms of labour to agriculture like the men in the 12 districts I studied.
Land, Food Security and development
The overall development of a country depends upon agriculture and rural sector infrastructure development. The rural sector development in turn depends on agriculture for its livelihood, and various kinds of industries, businesses and employment opportunities. The linkage to food security and sustainable development is clear, looking at those with the least power having the little access to resources and the greatest constraints in using their resource base productively, facing the greatest risk of food insecurity and having the fewest opportunities to improve their livelihoods. Land tenure, tenure security issues and access to land strongly influence decisions on the nature of crops grown for subsistence agriculture. They are a great influence to the extent that farmers are prepared to invest their financial capital and human resource to improve production.
The landless or near landless and those with insecure tenure rights often constitute the poorest and most vulnerable groups, especially women. Agricultural productivity and industry is the combined result of technology being used or to be used, with complimentary inputs such as irrigation, fertilizer, supply of raw materials, and marketing, and easy access to rural credit.
There are a number of major challenges facing the agriculture sector worldwide, which is reflected through low productivity and worsened by recurrent droughts and floods, and have led to food insecurity in Africa. The most critical challenge is the decline of agricultural productivity for domestic food and industrial requirements, relative to both the growing needs in relation to demographic changes and the growth of production for exports.
Land policy reforms are more acceptable when a range of stakeholders is included. Recent land tenure policy reforms that have been developed from more participatory processes, are more comprehensive in scope, and have generally strengthen the rights for individual citizens and fewer rights to the State.
Land tenure
The findings from this study conforms to assertions by Villarreal, that male family members have an upper hand when it comes to rights to inherit land Villarreal, (2006). As asserted by Moser, (1991) in rural areas women acquire land through their relationships to individual males.
This is also confirmed by the experiences of the widows in the communities interviewed. It is further confirm views expressed by Villarreal, (2006), Walker, (2002), Jackson, (2003) and UNECA, (2003) asserting that women’s rights to land are directly linked or associated with the institution of marriage.
However, this study shows that the family as a unit can be more powerful regarding how land allocated to families is distributed. A defiant brother of the deceased can single-handedly deprive a widow and her family of their rights to family land. It reflects a breakdown in the traditional system resulting in land tenure tending towards being based on more subjective principles. This is confirmed by the varying treatment of widows.
The relationships between land tenure, agricultural investment and production have been thoroughly studied in Africa and there is ample evidence as a basis for the development of improved land policies in support of food security. The land tenure issues that affects food security includes; manifestations of unequal distribution of land, sub-optimal utilization of land and insecure tenure. Where the security of tenure is weak in general, livelihoods can be constrained. Thus, tenure remains a key factor for improving land management practices. And, where land distribution structures are highly unequal, the negative food security trends are exacerbated.
Access to land and control over productive resources
Secure access to land is vital when considering the question about productivity. Secure access to land would increase the flexibility and choices female peasants have when choosing their livelihood strategies. Most of the land tenure problems that exist in Africa have their origin in the colonial period. Women are highly restricted in land access compared to men, due to gender discriminations where men are seen as the head of household, hence the owner of productive resources.
This study has demonstrated that women face challenges to access productive resources more than men. There are some implications for technology adoption, food security and access to markets. Increasing women’s access to land, education, financial services, extension, technology and rural employment has the potential to boost their productivity and generate gains in agricultural output, food security, economic growth and social welfare (FAO, (2011); Meinzen-Dick et al., (2010).
Women have limited decision making powers over land use, due to the inequalities in distribution of land rights which affects sustainable agricultural production. Besides land, this study has revealed that women’s low economic status affects their affordability of inputs on the market. Giving women credit can enhance and boost their affordability of inputs, but the challenge is that financial institutions are mostly not available in the more rural areas.
Furthermore, procedures to obtain credit limit their ability to access it.
Dispossession and threats to livelihood have happened in all wards. Women lost arable fields.
The study established that widows are heavily exposed to dispossession of their land and other property rights. Most of the widows interviewed had been subjected to various kinds of threats.
There were also some evictions where fields were not utilized following either the death of the husband, and at the same time, there were some instances of neighbors’ encroaching on the land
of widows. The women complained that, the encroachers think that widows were underutilizing the land, thus tempting them to annex their land. The study has not gone in-depth to further examine this problem. So, the form of underutilization and the reasons behind it, require more investigations.
The finding of this study revealed that the level of relationship with in-laws can have a certain influence on the act of property grabbing. This is confirmed by Mamashela in Schuler, (1986:129), who shows that if a woman’s relationship with the in-laws, is not cordial, she may not be able to convene a family meeting for intervention. However, from the findings of the study, it can also be argued that even where the level of relationship is good or moderate, death or separation may lead to the same consequence. The study showed that there are very few communities can do to protect widows land rights. The other reason given by widows for not fighting their in-laws was fear of antagonizing them and this would not be in the interest of the children. Fear of being bewitched also acted as a block to widows seeking protection of their rights, with few exceptions.
Policy response
There have been very slow efforts in the response by the legal framework regarding land reform policies. This limits the enforcement of policy initiatives. The Gender Acts of 2007 seeks to remove discriminatory tendencies to land use and ownership. It advocates for equal opportunities in inheritance of land for children regardless one’s gender. But this has yet been fully operationalized. However, there are other international and national policies that promote women’s empowerment or aimed at reducing gender inequalities, implementing them is however problematic. The structures have not been reviewed to create an enabling environment for policy implementation.