Browsing by Author "Murugani, Vongai Gillian."

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Land use security within the current land property rights in rural South Africa : how women's land based food security efforts are affected.
(2013) Murugani, Vongai Gillian.; Kolanisi, Unathi.; Chitja, Joyce Magoshi.
Rural women‘s land rights in South Africa remain secondary in spite of laws founded on a constitution that promotes gender equality. Patriarchal customary laws prevail and women‘s land rights and use security are inextricably linked to their relationships with their male relatives. Rural women are key producers of agricultural products due to historical and continued male outward migration, which has led to a feminisation of agriculture. Although women farm the land, their land use security is poor and can be further threatened by divorce or widowhood. Given that most vulnerable women are based in rural communal South Africa, how can their land rights be secured under the customary law framework? While the statutory law framework seems to provide a solution, it is less applicable in rural areas where customary law and traditional practices prevail. If statutory law cannot be superimposed on the existing customary law framework, how can women‘s land use be further secured to support their household food security efforts? What kind of framework can be introduced to strengthen women‘s land use security? A study was conducted in rural Limpopo Province to explore this complex and yet important question. A mixed methods approach comprising interview style questionnaires with a mixture of closed and open-ended questions, coupled with focus group discussions and observation was employed. Qualitative data from the focus group discussions and open-ended questions was analysed for common themes using content analysis. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS to establish descriptive data, frequencies and establish the relationships between variables. Results of the analyses were used for building blocks to develop a land rights framework that is more gender sensitive and secures the rights of the actual land users. Women‘s land rights were largely confirmed to be secondary and land use security was linked to the continued relationship to male relatives through marriage and natural blood lines. From these findings, a gender sensitive framework that enables and improves land-based food security efforts has been proposed.
Women empowerment in agriculture : agency and institutions for improved market access and household food security in Limpopo Province.
(2016) Murugani, Vongai Gillian.; Chitja, Joyce Magoshi.
Developing the smallholder agricultural sector has been proposed as a way of developing rural communities. These assertions are partly based on the results of the Asian Green Revolution. Women’s contribution to agricultural development as workers and farmers is acknowledged, but, what is questioned is the extent to which agriculture will result in their empowerment. Local institutions and social norms have largely resulted in women owning and controlling very few productive assets and this is thought to contribute to their disempowerment. It is argued that unless women are empowered through transformed institutions, they may be further disempowered by any interventions to uplift smallholder farmers. Empowering women is considered an essential part of sustainable development and agriculture offers the right platform, since it employs almost half of the rural women in the developing world. Although they are the backbone of smallholder agriculture, female smallholder farmers do not always fully benefit from their work, particularly financially. Their limited access to productive resources and their exclusion from formal markets restricts their capacity to contribute more to agriculture and household food security. Women’s contribution to decision-making has long been used as a proxy measurement for empowerment. For empowerment to take place women must have access to resources and the agency required to transform their resources into livelihoods outcomes. In spite of their aspirations to increase production and access markets, prevailing institutional and social norms may limit female smallholder farmers from achieving their goals. Transformed agricultural, social and market institutions and secure access to productive resources are important to improve women’s productivity and raise the numbers of women participating in formal markets. This study was grounded in the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and people-centred approaches to development. Research was conducted in three purposively selected irrigation schemes in Limpopo Province, to assess the current institutions and their effect on smallholder market access, to determine the level of empowerment in the study area and the determinants of market access and finally to measure the effect of women empowerment on household food security. A mixed methods approach was used in the study and data was collected in August and December 2013, using questionnaires from purposively selected respondents, observations and focus group discussions. The December survey was conducted using an adapted Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) questionnaire. The quantitative data was analysed using Statistical Package Social Sciences (SPSS) for descriptive statistics and to generate the 5DE index, farmer GPI and modified WEAI. The qualitative data was analysed using content analysis. The results show that, firstly, the current institutions restrict farmers to subsistence farming as there are few capacity building initiatives in the communities. Secondly, just over half of the respondents were empowered and were at par with their male colleagues. The women’s adequacy in the access to credit and leisure satisfaction indicators contributed least to women’s empowerment. Finally, the study showed that the households were predominantly food secure, although there was a relationship between women empowerment and food security. In conclusion, the importance of institutions in defining the opportunity structure and as enablers of agency is demonstrated by the prevalence of predominantly subsistence-oriented agriculture in the study. Empowerment is a complex process that requires a combination of personal attributes and an environment which is enabling. It is recommended that the government departments and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) working in the community work to address women’s secondary access to resources, capacity building needs of extension officers and smallholder farmers and to integrate the different training activities currently available to smallholder farmers.