Strengthening Womens Property Rights: The Key to Food Security
1. Strengthening Women’s Property
Women s
Rights:
The Key to Food Security
United Nations’ Forty-Ninth Session of the
Nations Forty Ninth
Commission on the Status of Women
March 10, 2005
Presented by
Lauren Pandolfelli, IFPRI
Thursday, July 30, 2009
2. Overview
• Complexity of rights to
p y g
land and water
• IFPRI research
findings on the
importance of women’s
property rights and
t i ht d
assets
• Points of intervention
• Recommendations
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 2
3. Complexity of rights to land and water
• Separate bundles of rights for different users and
different resources
• Robustness of rights to withstand challenges
• M lti l sources of claims f property rights,
Multiple f l i for t i ht
including statutory, customary and religious laws
• Importance of “interstitial spaces” for women’s
interstitial spaces women s
production
• Dynamism of rights due to population pressure,
pressure
legal pluralism, and cultural change
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 3
4. In most societies, women’s property rights
are weaker than men’s
men s
• Although usufruct rights
may be guaranteed in some
societies, women usually
obtain access through men
(fathers, brothers,
husbands)
• Indirect access to land plus
land,
pro-male bias in titling and
land reform programs, leads
to disadvantaged p
g position in
acquiring secure rights in a
privatized system
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 4
5. Importance of women’s rights to property
and other assets
Demonstrated
Increases in:
• Agricultural
Productivity
• Household
Welfare
• Women’s
Decision-Making
• Project
Sustainability
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 5
6. Agricultural Productivity
Equalizing agricultural inputs between men and
women increases agricultural productivity
productivity.
• In Kenya, equalizing levels of education, experience,
y q g p
and farm inputs between men and women increases
women’s yields for maize, beans, and cowpeas by
22 %.
• In Bangladesh, new vegetable technologies
disseminated by NGOs and targeted to women are
more profitable than traditional agriculture
(controlled by men)
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 6
7. Household Welfare
Distribution of assets within the household matters
• In Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sumatra
and South Africa, assets in the
hands of women leads to greater
expenditures on child schooling
• I Bangladesh, a hi h proportion
In B l d h higher ti
of pre-wedding assets held by the
mother decreases the morbidity of
girls
il
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 7
8. Women’s Decision-Making Power
Gender equity in access is a valuable outcome in its
own right
• In Bangladesh, assets targeted to
women leads to greater mobility
for women, increased political
awareness, and fewer incidents
of domestic violence
fd ti i l
• In Mexico, wife’s education and
work experience is associated
with her making decisions by
herself
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 8
9. Project Sustainability
Attention to gender improves project sustainability
• A review of 271
World Bank projects
by IFPRI shows that
when projects
address gender, their
g ,
sustainability
increases by 16 %
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 9
10. Yet, there have been relatively few interventions
designed to improve gender equity in land
• Assumption that the household functions as one unit
and men and women pool their resources
• Few empirical studies documenting consequences of
unequal access t l d on rural li lih d on an
l to land l livelihoods
individual basis
• Cultural and political resistance to giving women land
rights on their own
• Limited information about the distribution of property
rights between men and women, on cross-national basis
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 10
11. Ways of Strengthening Women’s Property
Rights
• Legal Reform of inheritance laws or provision for joint titling
of land
• Community Programs have the potential to change
g
gendered p
power relations
• Collective Action Programs enable women to acquire
management, and often exclusion, rights over resources
g , , g
• Technology Interventions directed to meet women’s needs,
increase the value of women’s labour
• Credit, Information, and Inputs enable more productive
use of land
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 11
12. Recommendations
Reform and monitor legal institutions to attain
gender equity in property rights
• Legal reforms are necessary to strengthen women’s
entitlements and to make their claims over natural and
physical assets more enforceable.
• Legal reforms must be accompanied by legal-literacy
legal literacy
campaigns so that both men and women are aware of
such changes
• Women need access to administrative and judicial
channels
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 12
13. Recommendations (cont.)
Develop technologies to increase the returns
to women’s labor in the agricultural sector
women s sector.
• Technologies that increase
returns to women’s labor may
women s
increase bargaining power
and rights to land
• In Ghana, cocoa farms
increased demand for
women’s labor so much that
husbands gave “gifts” of land
in return for labor
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 13
14. Final Note:
From Research to Action
Women’s property rights are complex, dynamic
and vary according t i t
d di to intersecting id titi
ti identities
•Identify key gender/tenure interactions for each site
y yg
•Use cost-effective diagnostic tools to ensure stakeholder
participation
•Assess the multiple entry points through which women’s
rights over resources can be strengthened
o er reso rces
INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE Page 14