Illustration credit: Lo Cole/The Guardian
Having worked in women’s rights for over a decade, I’m very aware of the extent to which gender equality still exists in our world. While it is still very much present in our society, it is relatively hidden and easier for people to overlook or pretend it doesn’t exist. Sadly, although we have laws and policies in place to protect women and create equality, achieving that in practice still requires work. However, in some parts of the world, gender inequality is much more apparent and clear. I recently heard this story from Burundi which summarises this quite well. A colleague of my friend was on a field visit to an agricultural project, which supports farmers to manage their land, improve their yields and make a plan for their futures. During a meeting with some of the farmers engaged in the project, one of the farmers was speaking about how well his farm was doing following the training and how the situation of his family has now improved. His six children were better fed and he said he planned to have six more. The visitor, quite naturally, asked how his wife felt about that. He and all the other men gathered all merely laughed. Hearing this story immediately sparked a number of thoughts for me relating to women’s rights that are worth considering.
Firstly, all the people gathered for this visit were men. The law in Burundi doesn’t allow women to inherit land, which means that projects often engage with men as the title holders and land owners. However, women often perform a heavy burden of the labour on the farms, in addition to household chores and child care, which largely goes unrecognised. Men benefit from the profits and decide how those will be spent. Although this project engages women in some of the steps to integrate their voices in the farm planning, no steps were taken to ensure that female farmers were included or that the men’s wives were present and recognized for their contributions. If projects fail to find ways to engage women meaningfully, they will simply reinforce the status quo of male dominance and decision making, no matter how good their intentions in this regard.
Secondly, in Burundi, the idea of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is highly taboo, which is partly what provoked the reaction of laughter, and talking about those incredibly personal decisions is very unusual, which is understandable. There aren’t many people who would feel comfortable having that conversation with a complete stranger. However the point is that ‘family planning’ isn’t really a thing here. Although the projects work with the farming families to develop a family plan, this side of the picture is missed out. It is admittedly very hard to talk about sexual and reproductive rights; the Catholic Church is very powerful and people believe that God decides the number of children they will have. Contraception use isn’t encouraged and many women will take it in secret if they choose to do so. As a result, the fertility rate is more than 5 births per woman and there are over 1,500 live births per day. Yet, agricultural – or any community development – projects provide a unique opportunity to address sexual and reproductive health and rights in a meaningful way. How can we hope to improve food security if families double the number of children they have as their farms become more successful? Addressing food security, nutrition, value chains and the climate crisis, requires finding ways to take these topics hand in hand.
And finally, while they may have laughed partly from the awkwardness of the question, the men also laughed because the idea of involving your wife in that decision is so completely alien. It would never occur to think that their wife might have an opinion and deserve a say on this decision. To me, this truly shows the extent of the belief that women are there to reproduce, to do chores and look after the family, without having a say about the number of children they will raise or push out of their bodies.
This story demonstrates just how much there is to change. It is important to think about WHO we engage and HOW in order to identify ways to disrupt the status quo and avoid replicating harmful norms and structures. I believe that by using women-centred approaches which bring women’s needs and priorities into focus, we can help everyone work towards a better future.