IFAP International Conference on Women in Agriculture

19-21 November 2003
Manila, The Philippines

B. Moore, Coordinator
International Land Coalition

Towards Greater Access to Land and Water for  Women Farmers

In 1979 , two important documents gained international agreement - the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Peasants Charter, otherwise known as the Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development - a United Nations initiative by the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Both emphasized the importance for women to have equal rights of access to land.  The foundation for these agreements was the central role of women in rural economic development, including, but not limited to, household food security. The need for women to gain resource rights has been emphasised in international summits ever since (Box 1)   However, the obstacles to putting principles into action remain challenging, if not elusive.

• 75 % of the poor, some 900 million people, live in rural areas.

• 70% of the extremely poor are women.

• In developing countries, women own less than 2% of all land and receive only 5% of extension services .

Among the poor, women and women-headed households continue to constitute the majority of the extreme poor.  In many contexts, major causes of women's impoverishment are continued discrimination and lack of access to education and to resources, especially land rights, including inheritance rights.  Whether married, widowed or single, women carry primary responsibility, in many countries, for household food security.  It is essential to current and future family well-being that laws, and customs, especially involving divorce or practices on the death of a husband, be appropriately revised.  Discrimination, including lack of access to resources, especially land, is a primary cause of the 'feminization of poverty'.

The importance for women to gain secure access to land is framed by two complementary perspectives.  First, the rights-based approach being women's rights to equality, human dignity, non-discrimination and autonomy or freedom.  Second, the development-based approach arising from the evidence that resources owned and controlled by / with women bring greater social and economic benefits to society.  This is the premise of the commonly cited arguments linking women's resource access to both overcoming rural poverty and ensuring household food security.

While the principle of gender equity is increasingly recognised by governments, access to land has not been a major focus in the drafting of new land policies over the past decade. Governments often wish to qualify, some say circumvent, their commitments to land rights for women, in international agreements, by lobbying for wording that limits responsibility to the boundaries of social norms and community practices, wherein women frequently find that they do not have rights to land.  

As entrenched as these customs may be, the movement for change is expanding.  The opportunities for change, as is often the basis for social change, are arising from the confluence of changing values and economic needs.  Social norms that appear discriminatory to women are increasingly questioned in relation to rising concerns for social equity.  When these values are combined with the changing economic situation of families, particularly the rising numbers of female-headed households, the need to improve the resource rights of women becomes prominent.  Among the factors contributing to the increasing vulnerability of women are male out migration; the growing pattern for individual land rights to replace communal resource tenure; and the effects of HIV/AIDS on the male labour force.  While land laws providing for and protecting women's rights of access are not sufficient conditions to overcome historical obstacles, legislation and regulations are a necessary pre-condition.

At times, the agenda for women's land rights is divided by women themselves.  Gender activists tend to emphasize rights as a goal in itself; whereas, economists tend to see access as a means to an end.  The result seems to be a lack of consensus on why and how women are disadvantaged and on which strategies may best advance women's access to land.  

The women's land agenda can be shaped by working toward a common platform on why secure access to land is not only important to women, but important to those who benefit from the way the behaviour of women will be enhanced when security of land tenure is achieved.  For example, when women in Uganda where asked what spousal co-ownership of the family farm would mean to them, they answered that they would:

• put more of their labour into the farm;

• achieve greater food production;

• become active in important decisions; such as, choices of crops, tree planting, soil conservation, acquiring farm implements and machinery; and,

• have greater influence on other family decisions including the spending of family income.

Building a common platform on women's access to land can be shaped at the global level through such alliances as IFAP and its role as a member of the International Land Coalition, including as a member of the governing body.  An international women's platform can then be adapted to the realities of women farmers at the country level.  Some of the key features for a common platform on women's access to land may include:

• secure access is directly related to the important role of women in the rural economy, especially agriculture;

• ensuring that land assets are registered in the names of beneficiary members of the household rather than only in the name of the head of the household taking particular care for the ownership rights and inheritance provisions for women and girls;

• entrenching women's rights in the shift occurring in many countries toward indiv idual tenure systems in the capitalist market model where there is a risk of women loosing the land traditionally provided to them under customary rights; and,

• raising the visibility of women farmers.  In the socio-economic context of labour migration or in situations of political conflict, women are becoming the heads of households at an accelerating rate.  They are full economic actors without having full rights.

The International Land Coalition is a partner with women's organisations. Through the Community Empowerment Facility (CEF), the International Land Coalition aims to enhance the ability of the rural poor, recognizing the particular needs of women and their organizations at local, national and regional levels to gain and maintain access to: productive resources; knowledge; technology, and finance and to promote representation of these groups in local governance. A Land Coalition CEF project in Malawi assisted women in four villages, historically unable to use community-controlled land, to establish seed multiplication plots, and organize local teams to manage these plots.  Through a process of involving local male leaders in the project design, more than 200 women were able to access community plots, and pilot the use of new rice-growing techniques to increase agricultural output.

Through the Women's Resource Access Programme (WRAP), the International Land Coalition helps to open spaces for dialogue by listening to and documenting the views and opinions of poor rural women on the value and importance of secure access to land and other natural resources.  WRAP aims to raise understanding, particularly among policy-makers, of

the need to improve women's access to these resources by showing how secure access can transform the lives of not only poor rural women but also their families and communities.  WRAP aims to integrate participatory workshops into the design and evaluation activities of local governments.  For example, i n Nepal, four WRAP workshops were organized as part of an ongoing development project on leasehold forestry and forage development.  The workshops catalyzed efforts by local organizers to increase local women's involvement in project management, by creating an opportunity for them to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the project among each other, and identify common concerns that they later voiced to project officials.

Through global advocacy efforts, the Coalition organises campaigns for collective action.  For example, d uring the World Summit on Sustainable Development , in Johannesburg, the Coalition organised a successful campaign with the W omen's C aucus to ensure that the language/agreement on women's rights to own and inherit land was effectively expressed in the final Johannesburg Plan of Action .  This campaign experience provided lessons on the challenges faced by the Coalition and women's groups. M any governments attempted to stall the negotiations on the language pertaining to women's land rights.  The learning experience was to form a cohesive force among different stakeholders - women and land rights groups working together with international organizations - and to ensure a collective advocacy effort .

Most recently, the International Land Coalition embarked on a study with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Gender and Population Division and with International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Gender and Household Food Security.  The study titled "Rural Women's Access to Land and Property in Selected Countries" was based on initial and periodic reports by national governments to the Committee o f CEDAW that reports to the United Nations.  This study specifically examined Article 14, which deals with rural women and covers women's rights to land and relevant support services, as well as women's rights and roles to participate in the decision-making processes and implementation of policies. This report is available on the web at www.landcoalition.org

For example, the report to CEDAW by the Philippines is the product of a consultative process between government organisations and non-governmental organisations, a process in which the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) collaborated with NGOs.  In many countries, NGOs have also used the reporting procedure to prepare "shadow reports" that provided alternative information to the Committee and drew attention to areas of non-compliance and thereby placed pressure on their government. Linking national advocacy efforts with the global processes of the CEDAW presents a potential opportunity for women's groups and land groups to work together. 

Poor rural women need to be supported, so that they can represent their interests and have a direct role in setting policies affecting their access to natural resources.  Women farmers are crucial to this debate.  The International Land Coalition puts a high priority to the needs, roles and important contribution of marginalised groups to rural development needs, in particular women, farmers, indigenous peoples and pastoralists.  The Coalition's support to this IFAP International Conference on Women and Agriculture is not only a step to support such empowerment initiatives but a means to find ways to work together to empower women farmers so that they can increase their access to land.  Triangulation options like women in development, gender mainstreaming, and gender roles of men have been used in the past to respond to the challenges of women's rights.

The Coalition is seeking new ways of working with groups of women farmers in the interest of helping to empower them to have greater control over the resources upon which their livelihoods depend.