the impact of land reform on women: the case of ethiopia

ZEN TADESSE

Introduction

Since Ethiopia is now in a state of transition, it is difficult to talk about the present socio-economic situation. Although gradually changing, it remains heavily loaded with the remnants of the immediate past. Until recently, Ethiopia was a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist state. 95% of total agricultural production was subsistence agriculture. Over 85 % of the Ethiopian people are peasants, and land was concentrated in the hands of a few landlords. The modern sector of the economy that provided employment was made up of government bureaucracy, mostly foreign-owned industrial firms , and a small number of commercial farms (now transformed into state farms). Institutions like schools and hospitals - the few that existed - mostly catered for the needs of the ruling class, and the great majority of the people was completely neglected. The result of this situation was a vast number of unemployed, a constantly rising cost of living and a very serious famine in many parts of the country.

These factors combined with outside forces started the disintegration of feudalism. The State became incapable of resolving the contradictions between the ruling classes on the one hand, and on the other the oppressed masses who organised active struggles against the social system. This gave rise to repeated and sporadic peasant uprisings, a militant democratic intelligentsia, the upsurge of a youthful working class movement, and other increasingly politicised social groups such as oppressed ethnic groups. The incapacity of the State to respond to the interests of the different groups and social classes by means of even palliative reforms, the  convergence of this with the most serious world economic crisis since the last world war, and the greatest agrarian crisis in Ethiopia's history, brought the whole social structure into crisis in February 1974.

The February movement and the seizure of power by the military junta has resulted in some far-reaching changes. The most significant change is, of course, the land reform and the dissolution of feudal institutions at the political, legal and socio-economic levels. This paper attempts to examine the impact of the land r e form on peasant women.

The condition of rural women — the background 

First, a word of caution: Ethiopia is inhabited by people of different nationalities whose cultural heterogeneity is also reflected in the many forms of social relations. The following generalisations should therefore be taken as broad representative samples of the country .

The material base for women's oppression in Ethiopia lies in the fact that the vast majority of women do not own land or any other means of production (e.g. cattle).

In feudal society, the men owned the instruments of labour, while the women were propertyless dependents. The condition of the peasant women who make up the bulk of Ethiopian women, can be summed up as the "tenant's tenant " before land reform, and unfortunately still " tenant " even after a thorough land reform decree which has officially abolished tenancy.

 Although Amhara women could inherit land in principle, even in most parts of the north, a woman did not inherit land, unless her father died before giving her hand in marriage, in which case she was entitled to a dowry. The only other time she inherited land was in the absence of male heirs. Inheritance, of course, is no longer important as both the rural and urban land reforms have abolished it. It is interesting to note, however, that previously not being able to inherit land and/or own it was the root cause of women's oppression. Thus, land holding rights for women in practice would have been a tremendous breakthrough in the struggle for genuine emancipation.

In a society where land ownership is the primary criterion for political, social and economic power, it should come as no surprise that lack of land ownership is also the cause of the downtrodden position of rural women. This economic reality is reflected and justified by religion, law and social customs which perpetuate the superiority of men as a normal, necessary and even God-given right in the life of the society. One clear example is given in the old Ethiopian Civil Code

which made no pretensions as to who is the boss in the family:

1 . The husband Is the head of the family.

2. Unless otherwise expressly provided by this Code, the wife owes him obedience in all lawful things which he orders.

3. Where the husband is not in a position (to do so) she is bound to attend to the household duties herself. 

(The Civil Code, Addis Ababa, 5 May 1960, Articles 635, 647)

In this type of patriarchal family the man is the provider and decision maker in spite of the woman's voluminous contribution towards the family income. In fact this social aspect of submission and denial of a decision-making role is so completely accepted that rural women submit their independent earnings, for example from petty trade, to their husbands.

The family is not just an economic unit, but also a cultural institution which maintains the old values of authoritarianism and domination. All aspects of peasant life are determined according to the Ethiopian patriarchal family system which is guided by the principles of domination of age over youth and male over female. As for socialisation, a boy undergoes the training given a prospective warrior and learns the proper methods of farming, while the girl is taught to care for younger children and assists her mother in all the household chores. Girls, like their mothers, have no position in the home of their father, brother and all male relatives, in front of whom they are not even allowed to converse out loud. The most important fact of their youth is that " good " husbands are found for them.

As can be seen, rural women are totally oppressed and subservient in law, custom and religion, as well as political and socio-economic relations. It is important to understand this in order to properly evaluate the direct and indirect implications of the land reform for rural women

Impact of land reform on women

As mentioned earlier, one of the fundamental changes gained by the February movement was the Land Reform Proclamation for which the oppressed peoples of Ethiopia have fought under the banner of " land to the tiller" . Keeping in mind the general conditions of women, let us then examine its impact on women, who clearly have been tilling the land and who have always been " tenants"

The section of the Land Reform Proclamation (Addis Ababa, 4 March 1975) that deals with women is Chapter 2, No. 4 entitled" Distribution of land to the tiller in provinces with the privately owned rural lands". 

(1) With out differentiation of the sexes, any person who is willing to personally cultivate land shall be allotted land. 

(2) The amount of land to be allotted to any farming family shall at no time exceed 10 hectares (1/4 of a gesna). 

(3) The amount of land to be allotted to farming families shall as far as possible be equal... 

(4) No person may use hired labour to cultivate his holding; provided that the foregoing prohibition shall not apply to a woman with no other adequate means of livelihood, or where the holder dies, is sick or old, to the wife or the husband thereof or to his or her children who have not attained majority.  

 (7) The minister shall determine by regulations the size of land sufficient for the maintenance of a farming family. (Emphasis added).

The Proclamation goes on to state in Chapter 2, No. 3, regarding the Prohibition of Transfer of Land: 

   No person may sell, exchange, will, mortgage, lease or otherwise transfer his holding to another; provided that upon the death of the holder the wife or husband or minor children ... shall have the right to use the land.

These then are the major articles pertinent to the peasant women. This seemingly egalitarian proclamation has created tremendous problems of implementation and when interposed vis-a-vis the Ethiopian family structure, it is, to say the least, contradictory. Let us look at point (1) above. In Ethiopian reality and in a concrete, legally accepted sense there is a marked differentiation of the sexes in the family which is literally summed up,' The man is the head of the family ". For the phrase " with out differentiation of the sexes" to have concrete meaning land should have been allotted individually, giving women the right of ownership of land - a right they never enjoyed before -  which in effect would have eliminated their subordination and liquidated all types of tenancy from rural Ethiopia in accordance with the aim of the Proclamation. This would not necessarily have changed the unit allotted to a family but would have emphasised the economic  equality of women. That the Proclamation does not grant equal access to both partners in a family is clear when we examine No. 5 (above) which states that, upon the death of the holder, their for husband shall have the right to use the land - this right could have been made automatic by allotting a piece of land to each partner and registering both partners

Further more, to lump together "a woman with no other adequate means of livelihood " and "persons who due to illness, old age or youth, cannot personally cultivate their holding ", as Chapter 2, No. 4 does, is nothing short of a total lack of recognition of the tremendous amount of agricultural work that women perform in the rural areas. This not only perpetuates tenancy but also discourages women from participating actively and directly in the land reform movement.

The feudal outlook of viewing women as inferior in spite of their important share in the rural division of labour is again carried through in Chapter 3 of the Proclamation dealing with the function of peasant associations: 

   (7) ... to cultivate the holdings of persons who, by reason of old age, youth or illness or in the case of a women, by reason of her husband's death, cannot cultivate their holdings.

The need for peasant associations of women, or at least membership in associations regardless of sex, is omitted in the Proclamation. Hence we see that instead of changing the self image and expectation of peasant women, redefining their economic role, and elevating their status in the family and in the village community by completely breaking the pre-existing institutional barriers, the land reform programme has left women still dependent on their husbands.

It is obvious that all these weaknesses in the Proclamation emanate from the fact that those who drafted it did not study the problems peculiar to women and other institutional barriers that may hold back implementation. Thus, the seemingly egalitarian phrase, "the size of land to be allotted to any farming family ...", would be ludicrous if it were not so tragic for women in polygamous areas where the word "family" loses its meaning (the standard understanding of family has no real meaning anywhere in Ethiopia). The Proclamation, which has based itself on the assumption of monogamous families, has created immense problems in the polygamous areas where men have been registering one wife and leaving the others aside. With no women's organisation fighting on their behalf, the victims being totally unaware of their legal rights, Moslem women and their children are calling for a solution in many areas.

Women's organisations

- before February 1974

History teaches that unless there is a strong organisation with a clear understanding of women's condition and their  rights, the battle for their emancipation will always be lost. This also applies to Ethiopia.

The first nation-wide women's organisation was known as the "Ethiopian Women's Volunteer Service Association", which was formed during the Ethiopo-ltalian war. Although the leaders, then as now, were ruling class women, their patriotic call was answered by women all over Ethiopia. In the war of resistance, Ethiopian women fought side by side with their menfolk both on the field of battle as well as in passive resistance against the Italians. Under the social conditions that exist in Ethiopia today, their massive participation is barely mentioned but their major contribution was nevertheless powerful, moral, material and incontestable. After the war, the organisation remained in the hands of ruling class women. Having changed its name to the Ethiopian Women's Welfare Association, it can at worst be characterised as very reactionary and at best philanthropic. Both before and after this change, the members of this organisation have proclaimed the achievement of the emancipation of Ethiopian women. In fact
this is a far cry from the reality.

-  since the February movement

The general change taking place in the country and particularly the Proclamation of Land Reforms both rural and urban has led to a new leap forward, with the emergence and articulation of a new consciousness among women. Young and militant women defied the passive non-political role of women and spoke out and wrote about the oppression of women. They identified the system as the cause of their oppression and called on women to stand up and fight for their emancipation. A small committee was formed in February 1976 known as the Coordinating Committee. It has, until recently, been involved in mobilising women by sponsoring seminars, lectures and political educational forums for women. Although the committee, being the first of its kind, has been able to achieve some political awareness, it has not, for several reasons, been able to make a very strong impact. Consequently, although there are more scattered attempts at mobilisation of women than ever before, Ethiopian women do not yet have a women's organisation which unites their forces, gives expression to their aspirations, fights for their rights and interests, and above all calls for implementation of policies and decrees regarding equality of men and women. The scattered attempts, however, deserve critical appreciation, as they can very well be the nucleus of a strong women's organisation in the future.

 If a women's organisation is to be viable and effective, it must be all-inclusive, with peasant and working class women being its main force, and aim at bringing about the complete emancipation of women.

Visits to two rural areas to assess the impact of land reform and the extent of women's involvement in the movement have shown that the women's  associations were almost always initiated by campaign students, particularly female participants who were conscious of the need to organise and politicise rural women. While attempts by these students were very positive and commendable, they had negative aspects when viewed from the long term perspective of creating a stable and viable women's organisation. To mention a few

1. Campaign students, particularly those from the urban areas, were not themselves aware of the magnitude of the patriarchal oppression that rural women faced; their agitation around the need for complete equality between the sexes met with staunch hostility from the men who still held both economic and social superiority. Hence not only were men hostile, but many refused outright to let their wives participate. Many peasant women were beaten for trying to suggest that they agreed with the campaign students' agitation for equality.

2. Although campaign students tried very hard, in spite of tremendous obstacles, to organise women, in most cases they themselves did not see that rural women's emancipation could only come about if they got a direct share of their own land, thereby ensuring their economic independence as a prelude to their social and political emancipation. Hence the peasant associations were peripheral to the actual land reform movement and focused on improving the domestic life of women or on teaching them what can broadly be termed "home economics", thereby excluding women from the political struggle.

3. Campaign students did not stay long enough to create a strong viable women's association which would then have been able to independently sustain the long struggle for complete emancipation. This last point is perhaps one of the significant drawbacks of not having permanent and full-time staff. It became clear that when the campaign students pulled out, the women's associations either disintegrated and/or hardly any meetings were carried out regularly. In addition, the land reform agents were too busy to pay particular attention to organising women and/or did not see the need for it. The fact that the ministry fails to appreciate the need and importance of women's associations in order to wipe out all remnants of feudalism can concretely be observed from its recent publication entitled " From Yekatit to Yekatit" (a summary of land reform movements from the time land reform was proclaimed, March 1973 to March 1976), in which not a word or a figure was mentioned about women's participation.

In conclusion then we can safely state that although land reform has brought significant socio-economic changes to the peasantry as a whole, its impact on women has been very limited and indirect. Due to the economic benefits emanating from land reform, peasant women now do not have to worry about where the next meal is coming from and are less restrained when asking their husbands to buy them new clothes or items for the house, etc. However, rural women are still dependent on their husbands economically and therefore their social and political position in society is still subordinate to men.

Conclusion

Agrarian reform in Ethiopia cannot have a direct and meaningful impact on women until there is an all-out struggle against patriarchal authority. One major solution is a marriage law simultaneous with land reform, which negates the embedded concept of "head of the family" and recognises and encourages women's responsibility outside the home. As it now stands, the Ethiopian Land Reform Decree, perpetuates the legalised and feudal family structure, thus excluding women from directly participating in the agrarian reform movement. Moreover, the weaknesses in the decree, coupled with the absence of a viable nation-wide women's organisation, particularly since the February 1974 movement started, has held back the possibility of meaningful and long-lasting change for women, thereby delaying social transformation in the country as a whole.