In this booklet the Sustainable Economic Development Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains the bottlenecks women face in the production, preparation, processing and trading of food. The booklet also presents an overview of Dutch-funded organisations and projects focused on food security that are working to enhance the economic empowerment of women.

The publication starts by arguing that the first condition for sustainable food production is enhancing women’s land rights.

The Optional Protocol entered into force in 2000.

The right to own and inherit property is a crosscutting right that traverses the realm of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. This right is central to the true empowerment of everyone in society (men, women, boys and girls) and is a key developmental right. It is the common right to all societies and cultures. It is central to securing the dignity of all members of the society.

WOLREC undertook this action research in order to enhance women’s bargaining power through improved access and control over land in the patrilineal and matrilineal communities in Southern and Northern Malawi. For WOLREC, as an action-orientated NGO, the exact nature of the relationship between women’s bargaining power in the household and their access to, and control over land is key to deciding which interventions improve poor rural women’s access to economic justice.

[From UN-Habitat] Women’s equal rights to adequate housing, land and property are well elaborated under international human rights law but are often elusive in practice. This document is a reference guide to international human rights standards identifying both the substance of women’s rights as well as the commitments made by States with regard to improving women’s rights to adequate housing, land and property.

This Policy brief provides a summary into women’s land tenure issues in East Africa. The brief aims to highlight the gap between women’s land tenure security and the policy provisions to secure women’s access to land. The brief is aimed at policymakers, administrators, women in the community, intermediary institutions and non-governmental institutions who work to improve women’s access to land.

This lesson brief examines the ways in which women's rights groups collaborated and engaged in the land law reform process in Tanzania. It is part of the Focus on Land in Africa: Land Tenure and Property Right online educational tool.

[From the Executive Summary] Many poor communities depend on women to grow most of the food they eat, yet women farmers struggle with a severe lack of extension services, credit, inputs, and productive assets. Merely by ensuring women farmers get the same access to these resources as men, the G20 could lift 100 million people out of hunger.

These two important documents include obligations related to women's housing and inheritance rights. Under the Habitat Agenda, States commit themselves also to:

"Provid[e] legal security of tenure and equal access to land to all people, including women and those living in poverty; and undertaking legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies" (Sec. 40b)

This scoping study on women's access to land in East Africa sets up a conceptual framework in which to consider issues of women's land tenure and identifies key aras for future research as well as key actiors toward increased jender equity in land rights.