3 min read
Women and Land: Why Female Tobacco Farmers Can't Leave the Crop
Women perform the majority of labor in tobacco farming but rarely own the land. Without land rights, they cannot decide to stop growing tobacco—the landowner decides. Land rights are the key to women's tobacco transition.
A woman in Malawi works her husband's tobacco fields—planting, weeding, harvesting, curing. She cannot decide to stop growing tobacco—the land is his, and he decides. **Land rights are the invisible determinant of women's tobacco transition. Without land ownership, women cannot choose alternative crops. The gender dimension of tobacco farming is, at its core, a property-rights issue—and the transition programs that ignore it will fail the women who need them most.**
