Women in the quest for achieving food security and agricultural sustainability in Zimbabwe

Although women contribute an estimated 70–80% of agricultural labour in Zimbabwe, women smallholder farmers continue to face systematic constraints in access to land tenure, agricultural credit, productive technologies, extension services, and decision-making platforms. These structural inequalities undermine household-level food security and weaken the sustainability and resilience of national agricultural systems. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork across three high-agricultural-output provinces, Mashonaland West (Zvimba District), Masvingo (Gutu District), and Manicaland, (Chimanimani District), this article interrogates the gendered political economy of food production in post-land reform Zimbabwe. It documents how patriarchal norms, statutory tenure gaps, and gender-blind extension systems constrain women’s productive potential, while also highlighting emergent sites of agency: women-led ‘pfumvudza’ conservation plots, indigenous seed collectives in Chimanimani, and digitally enabled market cooperatives in Zvimba. The analysis engages feminist political ecology and food sovereignty frameworks to argue that food security is not a technical challenge, but a question of power specifically, who controls land, labour, and knowledge. Findings reveal that when women gain secure tenure, targeted inputs, and collective bargaining power, yields increase by 35–50%, household nutrition improves, and climate resilience strengthens. The article concludes with six policy imperatives grounded in intersectional praxis: institutionalizing gender-disaggregated data, reforming inheritance and land registration systems, co-designing extension with women farmers, investing in care infrastructure, legally recognising women’s cooperatives, and mandating gender equity audits in agricultural programming. This research contributes to Southern African agrarian studies by centering women as epistemic and economic agents of agroecological transformation.