This story was submitted as part of the Land Portal Data Stories Contest and was the recipient of the second prize.
Conservation, said Aldo Leopold, is harmony between (wo)men and land. Land should justifiably figure not only into the conservation, but also in development debates, policy and discourses. Missing land rights and land tenure security can be costly for states, communities as well as local and global development.
The plight of women has largely been ignored, not only by local officials and lawmakers, but also by the way in which data about land rights is understood and processed
When Rajkumari Devi’s husband died 12 years ago, the world that centred on the mud hut they shared in a village in north India fell apart. Reeling from the loss of her husband, she was unable to secure title to her home and the scrap of farmland nearby that they had worked together.
On December 11 2018, at the sidelines of the second ordinary session of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, a parliamentary network on gender equality in land, agricultural investments and food security was launched.
The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) launched an Alumni Profile Series in which alumni of CCSI’s Executive Training on Sustainable Investments in Agriculture are interviewed about their career paths.
Beji Caid Essebsi says the measure was a long time coming but some are sceptical about the proposal's motivations.
Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi says he will submit a bill to parliament granting women and men equal inheritance rights, in line with a proposal put forward by a government-backed committee.
In Zimbabwe, Transparency International has been working extensively on land governance issues, and what has emerged is that women are often coerced to engage in sexual acts with a male person in authority in order to have access to land. Land is a form of property and a source of livelihood for most people in Zimbabwe. Both men and women find themselves one way or another being coerced to engage in corruption, mostly bribery to own a piece of land both in the urban and rural/communal areas. However, women are often subjected to sextortion in the quest to own land.
Twenty years ago, I learned a valuable lesson about the power of land and inheritance rights to affirm the status and contributions of women. My father-in-law, then 80 years old, was dividing his land to his children. In doing so, he made a decision that was unusual for a man in Kenya– he gave a piece of land to me, his daughter-in-law. He had come to believe that it was only just to affirm the role that women play in contributing to the household and caring for aging parents.
A Q&A with Patricia Chaves from Espaço Feminista, Brazil, explains the discrepancies in accessing property and inheritance rights for women in Brazil as well as data that helps to inform grassroots women about their rights. The piece also provides powerful accounts of women's personal experiences.
By Jim Grabham (Mokoro Ltd, UK) with Ezekiel Kereri (HakiMadini, Tanzania), team members of the global Women’s Land Tenure Security (WOLTS) project.
Addressing gender disparities in the context of land reforms is not easy. Effectively addressing gender issues takes time and effort, which can sometimes make it more expensive in the initial stages of a project or program. However, evidence shows that integrating gender throughout land reform interventions not only increases benefits for women, but strengthens the intervention overall. Meaningfully including gender into land reform approaches often requires a change in behavior among decision-makers and program participants that, in some cases, may take years, even decades.
