Hilal Elver, the third person to hold the position of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is a law professor and globally distinguished fellow at UCLA Law School's Resnick Food Law and Policy Center.
Last updated on 1 February 2022
This indicator is currently classified as Tier II. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is the main Custodian agency. UN Women, the United Nations Statistics Division, the World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and UN-Habitat are partner agencies.
Unit of measure: Proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure tenure rights over agricultural land, by sex; share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure
The empowerment of women and girls and the realization of gender equality are pivotal in achieving sustainable development, peace, food security, and other benefits for communities and societies at large. For rural women in particular, rights and access to land are needed to secure food and income for families, and to make women's voices count in community decision-making.
SDG indicator 5.a.1 monitors ownership and rights over agricultural land and is useful in profiling gender differences in agricultural land ownership and control in the sense of being able to sell or bequeath land, for example. As such, it allows to measure gender inequalities in agricultural land ownership and control. An increase in the percentage of women who own and/or control agricultural land indicates that progress is made towards achieving equal rights to land among men and women.
According to the metadata document, data collection draws on agricultural surveys and censuses or national household surveys. The indicator uses the agricultural population as a denominator with emphasis on the adult population living in households that have practiced agriculture over the last 12 months. This allows to capture agricultural households even if interviewed off-season. As of late 2021, ten countries have reported their official data on indicator 5.a.1.
In collaboration with UN-Habitat and the World Bank, FAO developed a joint methodology for the indicators 1.4.2 and 5.a.1 to facilitate efficient and cross-country comparable data collection. More information and additional data relating to indicator 5.a.1 such as the distribution of agricultural holders (by sex), distribution of agricultural land area owned (by sex), distribution of agricultural land value owned (by sex) is disseminated through FAO’s Gender and Land Rights Database. Disaggregated data by tenure type shall receive more attention in future reporting.
By Anne Hennings, peer-reviewed by Everlyne Nairesiae, GLII Coordinator at the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII) at GLTN, Un-Habitat and Clinton Omusula, Land Data and Knowledge Management Specialist at the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII) at GLTN, UN-Habitat and by FAO.
The two sub-indicators measure how prevalent ownership or secure rights over agricultural land are in the reference population as well as the share of women among owners or rights-bearers. * Select "year" below to see the most recent data for more countries. ** To refresh the map with other official data, use the "Select an indicator" field. Type in the other indicators titles, as given in the table below.
In addition to the official indicator data, the following indicators provide information concerning women’s tenure security, land rights, and access to land.
Indicator | Min-Max Number of years |
Countries / Obs | Min / Max Value |
---|---|---|---|
Distribution of agricultural land area owned by sex (female - share%) | |||
Formal recognition of women's right | |||
Women's property rights are recorded (i) urban (ii) rural | |||
2016 - Women's property rights to land are equal to men's (i) in law and (ii) in practice |
By: Kathryn Bryant
Date: June 10th 2016
Source: FoodTank
Hilal Elver, the third person to hold the position of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is a law professor and globally distinguished fellow at UCLA Law School's Resnick Food Law and Policy Center.
By Amanda Richardson, Resource Equity
This blog was produced for the LEGEND Land Policy Bulletin. Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) is a DFID programme that aims to improve land rights protection, knowledge and information, and the quality of private sector investment in DFID priority countries.
By Rachel Turner, Director, International Finance & Senior Land Champion, UK Department for International Development
This blog was produced for the LEGEND Land Policy Bulletin. Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) is a DFID programme that aims to improve land rights protection, knowledge and information, and the quality of private sector investment in DFID priority countries.
By: Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava
Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Updated: Dec 12, 2015
India witnessed an impressive surge in the number of women owning or managing agricultural land in 2001-11 with landholdings under them registering a faster growth in this period than the ones controlled by men, shows a World Bank-backed study that points to improved gender equity in land rights.
Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
The indicator is conceptually clear, has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, but data is not regularly produced by countries.
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