Every year in October, the International Day of Rural Women, established in 2008 by the UN, is duly celebrated with its share of announcements and praise for Algerian rural women invested with “authentic” national values, understanding, humble, respectful of traditions and often opposed to the overly westernized city dweller. These sexist clichés praising the modest peasant woman are however contradicted by rural women’s will and ambition to engage in agricultural work. Breeding, beekeeping, craft micro-enterprises and projects developed by women are no longer rare. Rural Algerian women have an incredible desire for prosperity and autonomy.
More than 100,000 of these rural women hold the female farmer’s card and 7.3% are at the head of holdings with an area of between 1 and 5 hectares. They represent almost a quarter of the seven million Algerians living on a farm. Official statistics, which do not take account of the informal activity of women working on small family plots without pay, estimate their presence at 18% out of one and a half million of the national agricultural labor force.
Both in the South and in the North, they have transmitted their knowledge from generation to generation maintaining the land when the men were in the maquis fighting for the country’s independence and then emigrated to France or to work in factories in the cities. Yet, land has long been associated with the honor of men, with their blood. It bears the name of the line and should in no case fall into the hands of strangers to the clan.
However, the intoxication of the re-conquest in the blood of this land despoiled by French colonization has gradually subsided in the face of the challenges of economic profitability. The current complex agricultural system results from trial and error, reforms and measures to ensure food independence and the development of the rural world. The private sphere, that is, 35% of the useful agricultural area, stands alongside the EAC collective farms and the EAI individual farms granted by the State under a 40-year concession. The administration grants credits, supplies seeds and markets strategic crops, including cereals. The bureaucracy and corruption related to this hybrid system are additional constraints for farmers especially female ones.
Atika Terriel Saadi, aged 44 years, knows only too well that “owning land is a blessing, keeping it is a struggle”, as she describes it. She is one of the few farmers to own a forty-hectare farm. With her late husband, Atika was lucky enough to buy back the land of her grandparents in Frenda, about two hundred kilometers away from Oran, capital of western Algeria. To keep her operation afloat, “a real money pit,” she has diversified her activity: breeding cattle and goats, vegetable gardening and cereal growing.
Atika dreams of a “healthy and modern” agriculture and wishes to expand her vegetable gardening transforming it into organic cultivation without however requesting the organic “label” because the Algerian administration is a heavy machine capable of discouraging the most motivated.
“I have no problem with my employees or with my neighbors when I am on my tractor or in the fields,” states Atika Terriel Saadi on her tractor.
“It is the dinosaurs in the offices that look askance when not with lust, as soon as you approach them for a project,” she continues. Yet, women persist in their agricultural dreams.
At the initiative of permaculture training workshops in Algeria, Faycal Anceur, a former journalist, was able to count a significant number of women farmers and academics among his trainees. They were very interested in this technique and some even launched their own project.
Of course, women are not the only ones to suffer from bureaucratic complexity or obstacles to accessing bank loans, but they are more likely to experience precariousness. “Only the big fish succeed in obtaining significant funding,” regrets Atika.
The invisibility of women’s work has not disappeared despite the efforts of some associations to break out their isolation
The Algerian press has indeed written extensively about the scandals of thousands of hectares “granted” to people close to the Algerian authorities, including generals and ministers. If the Algerian Civil Code grants them the same right as men in terms of buying and selling the property they have acquired or inherited, the more unequal Family Code in terms of succession provides 1/8 for the widow with children, 1/6 for the childless widow. The brother’s share is twice that of the sister.
With its backward-looking text, this code is based on the assumption that land should not pass into the hands of the future husband of the women of the clan. For a long time, the sisters did not dare to claim their share so as not to confront their brothers and cause scandal. Giving up your right also allows you to be supported by the family in the event of divorce or widowhood. Another illusion fueled by the patriarchal order because in practice, women work hard to make a living and can be excluded from their share of inheritance. Cultivating a vegetable garden, raising poultry and a few sheep, making pottery, pancakes, weaving carpets and blankets are all tasks undertaken by generations of mothers who have sold their produce to feed their families.
Atika knows this well: “I have seen all these women in the fields from sunrise to sunset. They taught me a lot about working the land with few means.” The invisibility of women’s work has not disappeared despite the efforts of some associations to break out their isolation and provide them with information to manage their assets.
The difficulties of rural areas are multiplied by traditions and the weight of patriarchy on women. The predominantly male public space in the cities is more restrictive with regard to the mobility of women in the villages due to the lack of transport or for fear of a bad reputation. In addition, women do not have access to training and information on financing opportunities or on agricultural techniques that must be sought from institutions.
Despite everything, Atika is always proud to answer, “I am a fellaha” (farmer) when asked about her profession.
