Women’s right to land is essential for promoting sustainable agriculture and the agricultural universities in Pakistan had a bigger role to play in terms of initiating research studies on the issues of women farmers who produced more than 60 percent of the food but owned merely 2 percent of farm land.
While addressing a seminar on ‘Women’s Right to Land and Sustainable Agriculture: Role of Agricultural Universities’ held on Monday by ActionAid Pakistan, in collaboration with Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, speakers including agricultural economists, media, students and development specialists highlighted the role of women farmers in ensuring food security across the globe and particularly in Pakistan. They lamented that it was pure injustice that women farmers were not allowed to own or have access to land.
Uzma Tahir, ActionAid Pakistan manager policy, advocacy and research unit, said that students being future leaders of the nation, needed to understand social issues and causes of injustice, discrimination and poverty.
She said that more than 44 percent of the population was dependent on agriculture as a major source of livelihood and women constituted more than half of that population. “More than 40 percent of rural land is owned by merely 2.5 percent of the population of the country, which shows the extent of injustice and discrimination prevalent in the country,” she added. ‘Inequality and injustice towards women start from the household where male members of the family dominate their female counterparts in decision making and ownership of land and livelihood resources’, Uzma Tahir said, adding that there was a dire need to acknowledge the role of women farmers in food production and food security and to introduce gender responsive agricultural policies and frameworks. She invited students to collaborate with the development sector to conduct women focused research studies. She observed that not a single woman in Pakistan had ever been recruited as a Patwari (land revenue officer), hence women faced discrimination at all levels.