Up to 2.5 billion people hold and use the world’s community lands, yet the tenure rights of women—who comprise more than half the population of the world’s Indigenous Peoples and local communities—are seldom acknowledged or protected by national laws.

The Land Act, 2012

The Land Registration Act, 2012

The National Land Commission Act, 2012

The Environment & Land Court Act, 2011

The Urban Areas & Cities Act, 2011

Land is the most important asset for many rural Liberian women and men, and is often a family’s primary source of cash income, food and nutritional security, health care, and education. Though women play a central role in agricultural production in Liberia, women’s rights and access to land are often not equal to those of men due to biases in the formal legal framework and customary law.

Ancestral land refers to ‘land of ancestors’. That is the land occupied by ones’ forebearers for generations and left something behind of value for current and future generations. There are usually contestations as to which ancestors the land

belongs because of the history of internal migration and of displacements by stronger nations (tribes).

Measuring gender inequality in land ownership is essential for assessing progress in women’s economic empowerment, tracing the impact of progressive laws on actual practice, and monitoring SDG 5 on gender equality. To effectively assess inter-gender (male-female) gaps in land ownership, however, requires multiple measures. We also need to know which women are more likely to own land by tracing intra-gender differences. To date, no study on India has provided a full range of measures on inter-gender inequality in land ownership or focused on intra-gender variations.