Steps, pillars, and replication tips for Espaço Feminista’s women-led local model to design, implement and monitor land-related processes and policies.

The Sustainable Development Goals have created an extraordinary window of opportunity to increase the attention to women’s rights and women’s land rights in particular.

GOOD PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM SIX GLOBAL CASE STUDIES

Many studies have shown the benefits to women of secure rights to land: when their rights are secure, their status in the community and within the household can increase, their income can increase, and they and their families are less likely to be underweight or malnourished.

The Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights has created four new practice guides, which are practical resources for development practitioners, researchers, lawyers, advocates, and scholars to assess the situation for women’s land rights in three countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. They address both the formal legal structure and the customary framework that impact women’s secure access to land. A fourth guide, International Agreements and How to Build a Legal Case for Women’s Land Rights, provides insights and guidance on using international conventions (e.g.

March 2014 – This article presents a joint FAO and World Bank initiative to integrate the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security principles on gender equality into the Bank financed land administration projects in six Western Balkans countries. Even though the land agencies generate inordinate amounts of data, these are not efficiently used to inform policy makers, because of lack of capacity and manpower to properly process and link them between sub-sectors and over time.

March 2014 – Inheritance is the overwhelming way land is acquired in India, but societal practices exclude women from inheriting land. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005, an inheritance law that covers 83.6% of the population of India, corrected some fundamental inequalities in the law bringing the women in equal status to men in the right to inherit land. However, eight years after its enactment, the ground reality is that women still do not inherit land on an equal basis with men.

Mining has not always had good press in the development arena, due to a history of inadequate environmental and social governance. This short paper argues that there is enormous opportunity to be had in including women in mining operations. The author looks at how International Finance Corporations’ (IFC) Gender Program was able to implement strategies to help two IFC mining clients better integrate women into their operations. The author highlights how in so doing, IFC has contributed to the clients’ sustainability objectives and to improved performance through greater gender diversity.

Each year, tens of thousands of people in Bangladesh are internally displaced as a consequence of riverbank erosion. Yet, such erosion does not draw the attention of policy makers in the same way that other natural disasters do and as a result, a number of coping mechanisms are employed by those affected, with the burden of displacement largely falling on women. This brief argues that instead of attempting to alter the course of nature, it is time to address the institutional mechanisms needed to help affected people cope with displacement and their material and social loss.

For women in rural China, inheritance rights are often limited by traditional customs which give greater benefits to men. Although this is being challenged by new laws that recognise women’s legal rights, increased access for women to jobs and education, there is a big gap between legislation and reality.Research from
University College Chester analyses the transfer of resources between
generations within households and village communities in rural China, with
particular reference to Dongdatun, a village in the

This report cautions against an overly rigid approach to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which it argues could limit development options for poor countries, particularly in how they are able to manage critical water resources. It identifies key challenges such as setting realistic targets, carefully considering the local context to address the needs of the poor, and promoting sustainable water resources development in a way that values healthy ecosystems.

Countries throughout the world are rapidly urbanising, particularly in the developing world, and for the first time in human history, the majority of people today are no longer living in rural areas, but rather in cities. This report examines the worldwide phenomenon of urbanisation from the point of view of women’s housing rights.

This book examines the gender dimensions of natural resource exploitation and management, with a focus on Asia. It explores the uneasy negotiations between theory, policy, and practice that are often evident within the realm of gender, environment, and natural resource management. It offers a critical feminist perspective on gender relations and natural resource management in the context of contemporary policy concerns: decentralized governance, the elimination of poverty, and the mainstreaming of gender.The book is centred around three themes:

Overview of the relationship between gender, poverty and water. The first section explores how, in every corner of the globe, women play a central role in managing water supply and distribution. It also examines how access to water and sanitation has implications for women’s health and economic activities.