SOUTH AFRICA-AU/WOMEN EMPOWERMENT Empower women for greater development, African leaders urge

Record ID: 151342

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA-AU/WOMEN EMPOWERMENT Empower women for greater development, African leaders urge
  • Date: 16th June 2015
  • Summary: LOME, TOGO (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF WOMAN ARRANGING MAIZE IN THE MARKET VARIOUS OF MAIZE SELLERS
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ghana
  • Country: Ghana
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA2V08D4BDTDK9LC8NUJNL0MKF2
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: African leaders for the biannual Africa Union (AU) summit have called for greater gender quality and the empowerment of women across the continent. The summit took place in Johannesburg, South Africa from Sunday, June 7th to Monday, June 15th.
    Liberia president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf talked about issues around poverty and land ownership for women. She also highlighted a new campaign calling for the end of the use of the hand-held hoe.
    "Women have just laboured, women have injured themselves with this hoe, bending their backs - sometimes with their children, getting hurt, getting cut and injured by those hoes. Sometimes they break. Women who work from sun up to sundown in the fields with this rudimentary instrument that is so difficult for them - I think it's long overdue," said Sirleaf.
    The hand-held hoe is used by many small-scale and rural farmers across Africa.
    Campaigners say agricultural output on the continent is hindered by archaic tools like the hoe and outdated farming practices.
    Female African farmers are also often disadvantaged by cultural practices and laws that deny them equal access to land.
    But women's rights activists are intensifying their efforts to push governments to speed up land reform processes and establish clear legislation securing women's rights to own, access and control land and other natural resources.
    "Access to land, in too many of our countries, women don't have. Sometimes they have to get their husbands permission, sometimes there are no land laws that allow women to own land. Most times, land is what they use to for collateral to get finances from the bank so the lack of land leads to the lack of finances and lack of access to finances means you're constrained in all of your development, whether you're building a house, whether you're trying to expand your business, so that's a big handicap," added Sirleaf.
    A September 2013 report from the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the World Bank said a woman's ability to own, inherit and control land and property is vital to her ability to access resources and participate in the economy.
    The report also found that the global gender gap has narrowed in some areas but it is still there in others. It is particularly wide in education in Sub-Saharan Africa.
    Specifically, female attendance of secondary school, which is considered an important factor in girls' ability to avoid child marriage and contribute to their families and communities.
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