Zambezi River Basin

Gender Women and men play gender-specific role in all socio-economic activities including, agriculture, mining, fishing, hunting and gathering, forestry, tourism, recreation, crafts, transport, water resources development and environmental management. Men are generally responsible for attending political and social meetings as well as being responsible for hunting, fishing and animal husbandry. They also make decisions about what crops to grow, what land preparation procedures to use, when to harvest and howmuch produce to sell. In Zambia, 90 per cent of agricultural land falls under traditional authority, which is based on patriarchal principles of allocation. This is despite the existence of a clause in the 2002 Land Policy of Zambia, which aimed to allocate 30 per cent of land to women. There is no strategy to change customary law so that women can have both use and ownership rights to land. In 2002, the government of Zimbabwe also committed to allocating 20 per cent of land to women through resettlement, but implementation of this provision is weak (SARDCWIDSAA 2008). © Leonissah Munjoma © SARDC

Women are active and knowledgeable managers and caretakers of the environment. In many rural areas, women carry out natural resources conservation work, such as soil conservation and planting. In the urban areas, women take primary responsibility for the maintenance of clean living conditions for their families. While women constitute the majority of the agricultural workers in the region, and are mainly responsible for food production, their land rights are limited in all countries in the basin. Technology is used mainly for crops grown by men, and for the large part, men are the ones who receive Master Farmer training. They are also usually responsible for overseeing the family water and sanitation systems. Due to factors such as urbanization, gender roles have begun to change with women taking over decision-making positions that were previously dominated by men. In order for the basin and the rest of southern Africa to achieve its poverty reduction and eradication objectives, its policies and strategies should address the gender gaps that exist across southern African society (SADC and SARDC 2008).

Women are mostly responsible for cooking, tilling gardens, fetching firewood and water, and keeping small livestock such as goats. Women alsohave obligations, which fall within their domestic domain such as food preparation and childcare.

© Mukundi Mutasa

© P. Johnson, SARDC

Firewood is the most common energy source in the Zambezi basin’s rural areas.

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