“That Woman is a ‘Farmer”: Gender and the Changing Character of Commercial Agriculture in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Female participation in commercial agriculture as part of women’s work in Zimbabwe remains inadequately documented and theorised.  In a context of land reform and framed within the Transformative Social Policy framework, this paper seeks to highlight commercial  agriculture as a new work role for women that challenges the existing gender system characterising commercial agriculture as a male- dominated occupation. Primary data gathered through ethnographic feldwork, which formed part of the author’s doctoral research, reveals that the post-2000 land reform programme in Zimbabwe created a cohort of women commercial farmers, 12% are A2 farm  owners according to government statistics. Within the study site, Mkwasine sugarcane farming area, 24.4% of the redistributed  commercial sugarcane plots were allocated to women, justifying the exploration of women farmers in commercial agriculture, a research  niche yet to be adequately documented in the Zimbabwe land reform literature. Women commercial sugarcane farmers are defying the  gender system to claim the “farmer” title, once a preserve for men. This is despite household work remaining a female responsibility  making “being a farmer, a housewife and a mother just too much work for women.”