SHE gives wholeheartedly of her labour to prepare the land and come harvest time, her back breaks as she races against time to collect all the crops and ferry them back home for the sale.

Her husband, by law the holder of the title to the land, not only decides what crop to sow and where the crops should be sold, he also makes the decision on how the money should be spent.

And to the women in the small Horn of Africa nation of Eritrea, this is very normal and what is expected of a good Eritrean woman during the farming season.

An Eritrean woman recently narrated this story with undisguised incredulity as she tried to illustrate how African women continued to be denied land rights in various countries on the continent.

She pointed out that although in most African countries, women constituted almost 80 percent of the agricultural labour force; governments still enforced traditional or customary laws when it came to women's rights to land.

Another participant, Tumani Sila, a Tanzanian lawyer noted that although women's rights have been recognised in some areas, when it came to land "a woman still has to have a husband, son or father under whose name the land is registered".

While a 1998 draft land policy in Zimbabwe encourages women to jointly register land with their husbands, where they wanted sole ownership, the draft demanded that they registered under their married names.

On the other hand the country's Constitution still regards women as children and even when they attain the legal age of majority, they are still considered minors who cannot own land except through the male members of their family.

In its land reforms the government has committed itself to availing at least 20 percent of resettlement land to female-headed households.

Since 2000 when land hungry peasants in Zimbabwe invaded white-owned commercial farms demanding a share of the land, the Southern Africa region has been plunged into the fray with women's organisations urging their governments to desist from discriminating against women in land reforms.

As a result, women's organisations have been formed to lobby for women's land rights.

About a week ago female lawyers and activists from nine Southern African countries came together in Harare to find ways of ensuring that women not only have access to land, but also qualify for ownership in their own right.

The delegates agreed that patriarchy which cuts across policies and legislation that govern land redistribution, low economic status of women, women's legal minority status and duality of laws were mostly responsible for disenfranchising women.

But pointed out Swaziland's Doo Aphane: "Even where women have money of their own and can afford to buy land, they are forced under Swazi laws to register it under their husbands' names."

Aphane said like elsewhere in the region, Swazi women enjoyed access to land when they were married or under the wing of male family members.

When widowed or divorced they either had to be inherited or were left with no choice but rejoin their biological family.

Abby Mgugu of the Zimbabwe Women's Land Lobby said that a meeting held in 2000 on women's land rights had noted that the historical significance of land rights in the region impacted negatively on women.

She said the meeting had also noted that there was insufficient commitment on the part of the governments to implement gender sensitive land policies and that where they have been carried out, it had been in a fragmented approach.

It had been agreed as far back as then to "engage traditional authorities to ensure practices don't discriminate against women, their land rights, human rights and dignity".

There was also need to audit and review constitutional and legal frameworks to enshrine women's land rights.

Mgugu noted that although the regional council of ministers had last year agreed that the land question be dealt with at a regional level, the council had remained silent on the implications for women as an integral group of the region's development.

Over the years urban women have been accused of misrepresenting the wishes of rural women. Male politicians argue that rural women are happy with the cultural way of parcelling out land.

It has also been argued that land is a male-family inheritance and as such should remain in the husband's name to be passed on from one male member to another.

Participants at the land rights conference said these were some of the arguments they had to deal with and try to bring around traditionalists to a more reasonable way of thinking.

Mgugu said the just ended conference would help reinforce work already being carried out by each country and as a region and lobbying together as a group would grant them more mileage.

While the participants were optimistic that their quest for land ownership would be eventually rewarded, they expressed disappointment that male legislators who made up the majority in their parliaments, seemed unwilling to change laws that govern ownership of land by women.