This paper contains a careful and focused analysis of the gendered impacts of commercial pressures on land (CPL), and especially their impacts on women. It is based on a review of the literature on CPL to date and an analysis from a gender perspective of International Land Coalition country case studies carried out in India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda and Benin. Arguing that women are both likely to be affected differently from men by large-scale land deals and disproportionately more likely to be negatively affected than men because they are generally vulnerable as a group, the paper provides recommendations as to how tools and procedures envisaged by proposed regulatory frameworks must be locally appropriate and must specifically address all four aspects of women’s vulnerability with respect to CPL: productive resources, participation in decision-making, relative income poverty and physical vulnerability.
