Securing women’s land rights remains high in the news and in the development agenda in recent months. A quick search on Land Portal shows since March this year more than 250 resources related to land & gender, including news articles, blogs and publications.

By: Thais Bessa, gender advisor at Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG). 

Purnima Kora is an ambitious farmer. She owns two small parcels of land that she purchased with her husband’s support and years of savings she earned from farming PepsiCo potatoes and rice, as well as by leveraging micro loans through a women’s self-help group. She also leases another half-acre plot to farm potatoes.  

The impacts of agribusiness and plantation investments on the forests of the Mekong region have been widely documented. Taken together, much of this evidence paints a picture of global economic forces bearing down on fragile ecosystems and ethnically diverse communities of smallholder farmers. What emerges is a set of well-known trade-offs – agricultural investments can bring livelihood improvements and benefits to smallholders, but also multiple risks to people and landscapes.

Advancing women’s land rights is a priority for the international development agenda. Yet, there is no consensus on which rights should be monitored and reported. Three indicators of women’s property rights are widely used in the literature. Each captures a different aspect of women’s land rights, but a recent paper explores the extent to which these different rights are held by the same person, using data from six African countries.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year was 'Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World’.  It celebrated and highlighted the remarkable efforts made by women and girls around the globe to shape a more equitable future in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over a decade, data advocates have reserved one day out of the year to celebrate open data. Now, more than ever, the world has turned to open data to support in addressing the complex and unprecedented challenges of our times. The ongoing global pandemic, systemic racism, sexual violence, climate change and global poverty, are but a few of the global issues that require openness and transparency, if we want to eradicate them as the most pressing social, economic and political problems of our day.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year was 'Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World’.  It celebrated and highlighted the remarkable efforts made by women and girls around the globe to shape a more equitable future in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

What are the state-of-the-art and new approaches to land consolidation as part of integrated rural development strategies in North Africa and Near East? That was the main question around which several experts from Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Turkey joined the FAO/ RVO roundtable discussion on land consolidation during the Second Arab Land Conference last February; a session which 110 participants attended – both in person and online.

The Commission on the Status of Women convenes its 65th Session (CSW65) from 15-26 March. The priority theme of the session is “women's full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” In this blog, I will highlight some of the international and regional commitments as well as Tanzania’s legal framework which seek to improve women’s participation in land governing bodies.

National datasets differ on women's land rights because they use different criteria in their calculations.

Bhubaneswar: There are wide variations in national datasets on women's land ownership in India depending on which agency made the estimate, frustrating efforts to design and implement gender-balanced policies, our analysis shows.

On the International Women’s Day – and every day – we must call out gender bias wherever we see it. The trouble is, when it comes to land and property rights, much is hidden behind closed doors. But now, a new survey is giving voice to women around the world, letting them share their perceptions of their property rights.

In Jharkhand, eastern India, women are not entitled to own land and accusations of witchcraft are wielded against them to silence their claims to land

When Talabitti’s husband died in 2016, her claim to the family land seemed to die with him. Though her husband had worked the family land by himself, upon his death his male cousins laid their claim. If Talabitti attempted to make a competing claim, they threatened to drive her away – with violence, if necessary. Sadly, this threat materialized.