Tool kit for Gender and Agriculture - Economic Commission for Africa

2. Approaches to Gender Analysis in Land Access and Ownership
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Gender Issues by Subsector
Because more secure access to land can potentially enhance productivity, public policy
has a role to play in promoting more gender-balanced access to ownership and control
of land. Many strategies exist to effect this, for example:
• Preserve women’s traditional, communal, or usufruct land rights through nondiscriminatory
registration and titling
• Promote the inclusion of women as sole or cobeneficiaries in land reform, titling,
and settlement projects
• Review and simplify legal procedures to facilitate land titling for land held by
all women, including household heads
• Explore ways to list women as co-owners of family land or conjugal land
• Where individual women have restricted access to land, explore creative alternatives
to ensuring access, such as purchase or lease of land for use by
women’s groups.
To be most effective, the choice of options needs to be explored in close consultation
about national and local preferences, in particular, with women’s organizations.
Box 14: Giving Women Land Rights for Sericulture in India (Ln. 3065, Cr. 2022)
The World Bank−supported Indian National Sericulture Project includes several creative
strategies to promote women’s access to land for sericulture activities.
• Local departments prepare proposals supporting requests by women’s groups for
land to develop under a one-time assistance program.
• Provision has been made in Jammu and Kashmir for women to obtain joint title to
their mulberry gardens with a “no objection letter” from their husbands or the landowner.
• State land-grant schemes in Andhra Pradesh promote women’s access to land.
• In Karnataka, project funds are used to lease lands for women’s groups.
Box 15 : Land Title for Women in Thailand
The Bank-financed Land Titling Project (Ln. 3797) in Thailand intends to
benefit women in two ways:
• Some women will receive title to land in their own right, because women comprise
12 percent of rural and 20 percent of urban landowners.
• Ensuring title and registration for up to 3 million parcels will strengthen security of
tenure for both women and men, because land sales cannot be registered without
the spouse’s approval and signature.