International Women’s Day today challenges us to ‘break the bias’. This is key when it comes to the climate crisis as women are more vulnerable to climate shocks, yet less able to build resilience due to the cultural and legal biases that frustrate their agency over land and resources. Subjective data offers us ways to spot these biases and target ways of breaking them.
As observed in many countries, women’s access to land in Burundi is hampered by customary practices. ZOA, VNG and MiPAREC are scaling up a gender-sensitive approach to strengthening women’s rights to land. Experiences from the past prove that sensitization and awareness raising are for a meaningful and successful outcome for women. But there are also many challenges and pitfalls when it comes to working on a topic as women’s land rights.
« ‘Je prie Dieu qu’il ait partage et communion entre nous les femmes, que nous parlions d’une seule voix, pour se faire entendre par les autorités, qu’ils nous écoutent et nous soutiennent dans nos initiatives, à vaincre la faim et avoir abondement à manger’ Marthe Ladem, productrice rurale Logone orientale ( voir histoire de vie ‘Avec la femme rurale pour un Tchad sans faim&
Land has profound meaning to all people. It represents ‘home’ and cultural values, political power and participation in decision making processes; it can provide services for living such as food production and clean water and shelter and it can be used as an economic asset for income generation, as collateral for credit and as a means of holding savings for the future. Though women contribute to almost half of the world’s agricultural production, a mere 15% of these women have legal rights to the land that they work on.
“It will be fun to develop land-use planning, if we do it together.” This was a comment from one of the local land managers during 30 online workshops run by PCC to introduce new Gender Guidelines for local land management in Mongolia.
In many countries men control who gets to use, own, and make decisions about land.
“We used to stay in a corner, quiet. If someone came to take our land or exploit our forests, we did not have the courage to try to stop them.” These words from a woman in Mecoburi, Mozambique reflect how women across the world often feel powerless to defend their rights to land and natural resources. For rural communities, land means everything, from the ability to produce crops for food and income to leveraging financial assets.
Women own less than 20 percent of land in the world
Half of the world’s smallholder farmers are women
70 percent of Africa’s food is produced by women smallholder farmers
Gender equality guidelines will motivate Zambia’s traditional leaders to champion women’s rights in land and resource management
Curating land information is part of our daily work in the Land Portal. It includes selecting, categorizing, and enriching information with analysis and/or additional data, graphic visualizations, etc. In times with so much information available to choose from, people are increasingly seeking sources that offer selections of high-quality knowledge and provide analysis that make sense of it. Understanding how partners in the land community are meeting this demand is a great source for us to improve our work of curating, and providing meaning to land data.
In Africa women play an integral role in the continent’s agriculture sector, representing up to 60 percent of the agricultural labour force in some countries. In Tanzania, agriculture accounts for the largest share of employment, more than 80 percent of women are engaging in agricultural activities and subsequently contributing to the country’s food requirements.
In sub-Saharan Africa, less than 13 percent of women aged 20-49 have rights to land, according to research by the World Bank. Therefore, securing their land rights remains a very crucial matter to boost their socio-economic empowerment.
The effectiveness of sustainable land use governance can be undermined if local affected people perceive land-use policies as not reflecting social objectives, or as ‘unjust.’ To transform externally-conceived sustainability principles from the international level into on-the-ground practice, involves the interplay of various organizations and peoples from the government, civil society, and the private sector.
