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the problems faced by poor people living inrural areas. 236 As a result of these factors, somegovernments, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,are beginning to recognize the need to take amore active role in the governance of markets inrural areas and in the provision of support to theagricultural sector. In some cases, these effortshave specifically focused on supporting small-scalefarmers, including women. 237Given the importance of women’s agriculturalemployment in rural areas, policies to make smallscalefarming more productive and viable areessential for redressing women’s socio-economicdisadvantage in agrarian settings. Investments inrural infrastructure, including water and sanitation,and social services, such as health care, are alsoneeded (see Chapter 3). In addition, secure landrights, bolstered by changes to marital propertyregimes are needed. Greatly improved access toagricultural inputs, services and markets to increasethe returns to women’s farming activities, shouldalso be priorities. Support to women’s collectiveaction and public procurement programmes canbe instrumental to increasing women’s access tomarkets.BOX 2.9Impacts of land dispossession on women in IndonesiaThe expansion of oil palm plantations has been a major cause of land dispossession and deforestationin South-East Asia since the 1980s, but the recent boom in biofuels has accelerated the trend. 238 Millionsof hectares of forest have been cleared in Indonesia, land that is typically held under customary tenureby rural populations who depend on it for their livelihoods but whose claims are not recognized by thestate. 239In the Hibun Dayak community in West Kalimantan, the provincial government granted long-term landuse concessions to private companies for oil palm plantations. Compensation schemes for dispossessedvillagers involved incorporating them as contract farmers, or ‘out-growers’, on small plots surroundingthe main plantation and on highly unfavourable terms.Before the concessions were granted, customary norms specified no gender differentiation ininheritance rights for individually owned land: whichever child cared for the parents inherited the mostland. The State’s compensation system undermined the property rights that women had previouslyenjoyed. Only ‘household heads’ were registered as out-growers and, as a result, just 6 out of 98 of thecontract farmers were women (who were either divorced or widowed).The effects on gender relations have been profound. Before the plantations there was a relativelybalanced division of labour between women and men in subsistence and cash-crop production.Afterwards, women became responsible for the most labour-intensive work, such as maintaining thetrees, on land they had no control over. This led to escalating domestic conflict over the control of oilpalm income and an increase in violence against women. Women’s reproductive work was also placedunder strain by the enclosure of common property resources: various kinds of local fruit and vegetablesthat were part of the local diet became scarce, and raw materials for craft production were lost whenthe forests were destroyed.