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Improving Women’s and Girls’ Land Rights: Illustrative Interventions from India and Uganda

This article highlights the importance of women's land rights and explores barriers to these rights, including legal and cultural factors. It presents case studies from India and Uganda that illustrate interventions targeting women's and girls' land rights, such as the IKP Land Purchase Program in Andhra Pradesh and initiatives for vulnerable women and girls in post-conflict Uganda.

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Improving Women’s and Girls’ Land Rights: Illustrative Interventions from India and Uganda

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  1. Improving Women’s and Girls’ Land Rights: Illustrative Interventions from India and Uganda Tim Hanstad Rural Development Institute (RDI)

  2. Outline • Introduction • Why do women’s land rights matter? • Barriers to women’s land rights: a legal perspective • Putting a gender lens on land projects targeted at “households” • Illustrative interventions targeting women’s or girls’ land rights • Land Purchase for Women: Andhra Pradesh, India • Daughters, Dowry, and Early Marriage: West Bengal, India • Women and Girls in IDP Camps: Uganda

  3. Why Do Women’s Land Rights Matter? • More than half of all women in developing world work in agriculture • Women effective agents of economic and social change • Land as key resource – food security, income, wealth, power, credit, status, government services • Secure land rights for households impact females differently than males

  4. Benefits of Women’s Land Rights • Access to markets • Incentive framework for productivity • Social security • More bargaining power • Children’s welfare • Reduced domestic violence • Reduced Risk of HIV/AIDS

  5. Barriers to Women’s Land Rights: A Legal Perspective • Formal Law Framework: Discriminatory or poorly drafted laws and regulations • Legal Literacy and Aid: Lack of awareness and understanding of rights • Customary Law: Entrenched customs, especially related to land and marriage, divorce, bride price/ dowry, polygamy, and inheritance. Land rights must be both legally and socially legitimate to be usable and enforceable.

  6. Gender Lens on Land Projects • Legal and field analysis to identify gender factors and limitations • Involve women in project planning and design • Outreach and awareness aimed at females • Incorporate activities and elements designed to address legal and cultural issues. • Monitor involvement from and impacts on women

  7. The IKP Land Purchase Program: Andhra Pradesh, India • 80% of women workers in rural India depend on agriculture • Women rarely have rights to land • IKP Program: State Govt of Andhra Pradesh, World Bank, and RDI help landless women purchase land

  8. IKP Land Purchase Program: Andhra Pradesh, India • Women SHGs identify land on market, negotiate price with seller, and obtain financing • Community Coordinators support process • Plot is subdivided, individually titled • Grant + loan + beneficiary contribution

  9. Benefits of the IKP Land Purchase Program • Women are generating 72% of total household income from plots • Women have improved status and respect, both within families and communities • Women report improvements in family’s diet and health • Women’s families are better able to access credit • Women report lower incidences of domestic violence • Women report decreased likelihood that husbands will evict them • Spending on children's education has significantly increased

  10. Daughters, Dowry and Land:West Bengal, India • Girls considered a burden: Fewer prospects to earn income and almost always leave family at marriage • Girls often do not inherit land, even though there are formal inheritance rights: • Hindu daughters have a right to equally inherit land; • Muslim daughters have a right to inherit a portion; • Most families know the law, but don’t follow it

  11. Daughters, Dowry and Land:West Bengal, India • Poor families have greater pressure to marry daughters early • Early marriage can mean trafficking or “unsafe migration” • Ongoing program context: State govt land purchase and allocation

  12. Daughters, Dowry and Land:West Bengal, India • Program design: 1)Government: Prioritized allocation for families with vulnerable girls and ensure girls’ rights to land 2) Community: “community conversations”; girls’ and boys’ groups; to increase awareness of girls’ vulnerability and land rights

  13. Vulnerable Women & Girlsin Post-Conflict Uganda • Many Ugandans have been living in internally displaced person (IDP) camps over last 20 years • Women’s access to land is through her husband, father or brother • Many women and girls in the IDP camps lost family ties through death, rape, disappearance • Now IDP camps are closing; many women and girls have nowhere to go

  14. Vulnerable Women & Girlsin Post-Conflict Uganda • RDI intervention: • Help women and girls in IDP camps get access to land as a group • Promote collective input purchasing and marketing of goods they produce • In partnership with local NGO, identify and dialogue with chiefs and elders willing to allocate a portion of clan land • Uphold the women and girls’ right to the land

  15. Final Remarks Critical to understand the complexity, challenges and barriers to women’s and girls’ land rights; but it IS possible to design interventions to overcome those barriers

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