The Gender Gap in Land Rights
Publisher: FOA, CGIAR
Date: 2018
Topics: Gender, Land, Livelihoods
For rural women and men, land is often the most important household asset for supporting agricultural production and providing food security and nutrition. Evidence shows that secure land tenure is strongly associated with higher levels of investment and productivity in agriculture – and therefore with higher incomes and greater economic wellbeing. Secure land rights for women are often correlated with better outcomes for them and their families, including greater bargaining power at household and community levels, better child nutrition and lower levels of gender-based violence. However, in many parts of the world both men and women have inadequate access to secure rights over land. Women are particularly disadvantaged in this regard. Reliable, sex-disaggregated data on land is crucial for highlighting disparities in land rights between women and men. This helps us improve policy formulation and monitor progress towards gender equality in agriculture and land tenure. Although there are significant efforts underway to collect better and more relevant data on land rights, there is still a lack of understanding as to what data are available and needed, and what they can tell us about women’s land rights. There are two important dimensions for conceptualizing and measuring gender gaps in terms of access to land. The first dimension focuses on the bundles of land rights held by individuals, such as the rights to sell, bequeath, manage or control the economic output from their land. These different concepts of land rights are often used interchangeably, although they differ. The second dimension focuses on the indicators that are used to provide an accurate picture of the inequalities in land rights between women and men. This information brief highlights the key concepts around land rights, the various indicators that are needed to understand the gender gap, and the statistics available for each indicator. The brief discusses the concepts and measurement behind each of the statistics and offers potential policy responses for improving women’s land rights and the monitoring of those rights.