This document discusses priorities for securing rural women's land tenure rights through action and research. It notes that women's human rights are often violated and their key role in food security and natural resource management is unrecognized. Priorities for advancing women's land rights include understanding rights through information, claiming rights via monitoring and mobilization, and guaranteeing rights with supportive policies and implementation. Challenges include social and cultural norms that discriminate against women and threats to land security that disproportionately affect women. The document outlines recommendations for building capacity, conducting advocacy research, promoting mutual learning between partners, and supporting innovative action plans to further research and action on women's land rights.

1. Securing tenure rights among the rural
women: priorities for action and
research

2. Why women’s land rights?
1 Women’s human rights are violated
2 Women’s key role in food security and natural resource management is not recognised
“If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they would increase yields on their
farms by 20-30 percent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5-4
percent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 percent”
(FAO, 2011: 5)

3. Priorities and challenges in
advancing
women’s land rights
Priorities
1 Understanding rights: the importance of information
2 Claiming rights: the importance of monitoring and mobilisation
3 Guaranteeing rights: the importance of enabling environments and implementation
Challenges
1 Cultural and social norms discriminate against women and delay/contain social change
2. Increasing threats to land security disproportionally affect women

4. Priorities for action and research
1 Action-research: working with CSOs and grassroots communities to build their capacity
2 Monitoring gendered impacts of globalisation (i.e. land grabbing, contract farming …)
3 Monitoring gendered impacts of programmes (i.e. allocation, food security, rur. dev., laws)
Identifying and documenting good practices for replication and scaling-up (how to reach
4 rural women; how to ensure women’s participation; how to ensure fair allocation; what
works and what does not… )
5 Using/assessing monitoring tools
6 Keep a gender lens through-out your work (need for gender disaggregated data)

5. Securing Women's Access to Land:
Linking Research and Action
→ 3 years action research project in EA and SA (2007-2010)
Implemented by the Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) in Uganda and the
→
Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) in South Africa)
10 small research projects (i.e. impact of legislative reforms; widow’s land rights;
→
establishment of watchdog groups; inheritance systems)
→ More than 20 partners (i.e. NGOs, grassroots women’s groups, research organisations)
→ 7 countries

6. Securing Women's Access to Land:
Linking Research and Action

7. Securing Women's Access to Land:
Linking Research and Action
1 Building capacity: strengthen women’s ability to monitor and analyze their contexts
2 Research & advocacy: research processes and outputs used for advocacy at various levels
Mutual learning and strengthening linkages: peer-to-peer exchange with all the partners
3
and researchers, to share the knowledge and debate
4 Innovating: competition for innovative action-plans

8. Recommendations for further
research and action on WLR
• Build partnership for strategic advocacy from national to global with women’s rights
organisations (not only with land rights’)
• Address gaps, such as socio-economic trends that undermine traditional and formal concepts
of marriage
• Look beyond access to and control over land to focus on how women can derive their
livelihoods from the land and what additional resources they need to access;
• Pay attention to customary land tenure systems to identify any opportunity they provide for
women as they might have a more immediate positive impact on women than national level
policies unlikely to be implemented.
• Importance of the work of grassroots organisations at the basis of national, regional and
global efforts to promote women’s land rights

9. Thank you!
l.miggiano@landcoalition.org
If you want to know more on the ILC’s Women’s Land Rights Initiative,
please visit www.landcoalition.org