Land Rights And Gender Research Paper

Despite its critical importance, however, the issue of women’s rights in land (and more generally in property) has until recently largely been neglected in social science scholarship and public policy. In fact, large-scale surveys and agricultural censuses in almost all developing countries collect property-related information by households not disaggregated by gender. At present, we thus have to draw upon small-scale surveys and the numerous village studies: these reveal that typically few women own arable land and even fewer effectively control some. Several reasons (outlined further below) have been put forward on why it is important for women to have effective and independent land rights. But first consider some definitions.

1. Defining Land Rights

Rights (in any form of property) can be defined as claims that are legally and socially recognized and enforceable by an external legitimized authority, be it a village-level institution or some higher-level body of the State. Land rights can stem from inheritance, transfers from the State, tenancy arrangements, purchase, and so on. They can be in the form of ownership or usufruct (rights of use), and can encompass differing degrees of freedom to lease out, mortgage, bequeath, or sell.

Three additional distinctions are relevant here. First, there is a difference between the legal recognition of a claim and its social recognition, and between recognition and enforcement. A woman may have a legal right to inherit property, but this may remain merely on paper if the law is not enforced, or if the claim is not recognized socially as legitimate. Second, is the distinction between ownership and effective control. It is sometimes assumed incorrectly that legal ownership carries with it the right of control in all its senses. In fact, legal ownership may be accompanied by restrictions on disposal, as among the Jaffna Tamils of Sri Lanka and several communities in Latin America, where a married woman needs her husband’s consent to alienate the land she legally owns. Third, we need to distinguish between rights vested in individuals and those vested in groups.

‘Effective rights’ mean rights not just in law but in practice. Some scholars also stress women’s ‘independent rights’, meaning rights independent of male ownership and control.

2. Why It Is Important For Women To Have Effective Land Rights

Effective and independent land rights for women have been emphasized in recent years on four broad counts: welfare, efficiency, equality, and empowerment (as elaborated in Agarwal 1994).

2.1 Welfare Implications

It is well accepted that land access can significantly reduce a household’s risk of poverty, but for several reasons land solely in men’s hands need not guarantee female welfare.

First, evidence from many countries reveals persistent gender inequalities and a bias favoring males in the distribution of resources within households, including allocations for basic necessities such as healthcare and education and, in some regions, even food. Biases in food and healthcare are revealed especially in anthropometric measures, morbidity rates, and most starkly in female adverse sex ratios (Dreze and Sen 1995).

Second, women without independent resources are highly vulnerable to poverty and destitution in case of desertion, divorce, or widowhood. In parts of South Asia, not uncommonly, even women from rich parental and marital families, deprived of their property shares on widowhood, can be found working as agricultural laborers on the farms of their well-off brothers-in-law. Indeed, widows and the elderly often recognize that entitlement to family care and support can depend critically on whether or not they have property to bequeath (Basu 1999).

In contrast, direct land transfers to women are likely to benefit not just women but also children in greater degree. Evidence from many regions shows that women, especially in poor households, spend most of their earnings on basic household needs, while men spend a significant percentage of theirs on personal goods, such as alcohol, tobacco, etc (Dwyer and Bruce 1988). Studies reviewed by Strauss and Beegle (1996) indicate that in some African countries, in given contexts, the prevalence of child malnutrition is lower among female-headed households compared with male-headed households, even though the latter have higher incomes. In urban Brazil, the effect on child survival probabilities is many times greater from asset income that accrues to the mother than that which accrues to the father (Thomas 1990). Children in rural India are found more likely to attend school and receive medical attention if the mother has more assets (Strauss and Beegle 1996). In other words, women’s and children’s risk of poverty would be reduced and their welfare enhanced if women had direct access to land, and not just access mediated through male family members.

Land can provide women both direct and indirect benefits. Direct advantages stem from the possibilities of growing not just crops, but trees, a vegetable garden, or grass for cattle. Indirect advantages arise from land serving as collateral for credit or as a mortgagable or saleable asset during a crisis; increasing the probability of women finding wage employment; providing an asset base for rural nonfarm enterprises, and so on. Those with land tend to have substantially greater rural nonfarm earnings from self-employment than the totally landless. In other words, owning even a small plot can be a critical element in a diversified livelihood system, and can improve women’s and the family’s welfare significantly, even if the plot is not large enough to provide full family subsistence.

These factors are likely to become increasingly important as marital and kin support erodes, and female-headed households multiply.

2.2 Efficiency Implications

Secure and more gender-equal land rights would also have implications for productive efficiency. First there is the incentive effect. Although it is widely recognized that security of tenure can be critical for motivating farmers to make productivity enhancing investments in their fields, the need for incentives within the family has received little attention. Some studies suggest that incentives could be as important within families. In Kenya, for example, the introduction of weeding technology in maize production raised yields on women’s plots by 56 percent where women controlled the output, and only by 15 percent on their husbands’ plots where too women weeded but men got the proceeds (Elson 1995). Secure land rights for women farmers and their control over the produce could thus prove to be an important element in enhancing production. Second, titles (which serve as collateral in many regions) could help increase output by improving women’s access to production credit. This can prove especially critical where women are the principal farmers, as where male outmigration is high, or where widows (or wives) are cultivating separate plots still formally owned by kin. Third, research from Africa suggests that women might use land more efficiently than men in certain contexts. In Burkina Faso, for instance, due to their choice of cropping patterns women achieved much higher values of output per hectare on their own plots than did their husbands on theirs (Udry et al. 1995). Although women’s yields for given crops were lower than men’s, this was due to their lesser access to inputs such as fertilizers which were concentrated on the men’s plots. The study estimated that output could be increased by as much as 10–20 percent if such inputs were reallocated from plots controlled by men to those controlled by women in the same household. In other words, allocative efficiency could improve with more gender equal distribution of inputs. A literature review of the effect of gender on agricultural productivity in several countries of Africa and Asia also concludes that output could be increased notably if women farmers had the same access to inputs and education as male farmers (Quisumbing 1996). Fourth, women are often better informed about traditional seed varieties and the attributes of trees and grasses. This knowledge could be put to better use if they had greater control over farming. Fifth, titles can empower women to assert themselves better with agencies that provide inputs and extension services.

Some oppose women’s land claims on the grounds that it will reduce output by reducing farm size or increasing fragmentation. However, there is no consistent evidence of an adverse size effect. In fact, in many regions smaller farms have higher productivity (Lipton and Longhurst 1989, Berry and Cline 1979); and fragmentation can arise equally with male inheritance. Also, where necessary, farmers have dealt with fragmentation in various ways: consolidation through purchase and sale; land leasing arrangements to bring together cultivation units even where ownership units are scattered; joint investment and cultivation by small groups, etc.

While welfare arguments for women’s land rights have received some policy attention, there is yet little recognition of the efficiency implications. These are likely to be especially important in regions of high female headedness, or where feminization of agriculture is moving apace as more men than women enter nonfarm occupations. Over time, we can thus expect an increasing proportion of farmers to be female, and women would need special targeting in policies for increasing production and improving food security.

2.3 Equality And Empowerment Implications

In the equality argument for land rights, two aspects have been especially emphasized. Gender equality as a measure of a just society, and equality in land rights as a measure of women’s economic empowerment. The word ‘empowerment’ is now used widely in the literature, usually without being defined. One way to define it is would be ‘as a process that enhances the ability of disadvantaged (‘‘powerless’’) individuals or groups to challenge and change (in their favor) existing power relationships that place them in subordinate economic, social and political positions’ (Agarwal 1994).

Endowing women with land would empower them economically as well as strengthen their ability to challenge social and political gender inequities. An illustrative example is women’s experience in the state of Bihar (eastern India). Here, in the 1970s, after a peasant struggle in which both men and women participated, when women in two villages received land, they said: ‘We had tongues but could not speak, we had feet but could not walk. Now that we have the land, we have the strength to speak and walk’ (Agarwal 1994). This sense of empowerment accompanying improved land rights also enhances women’s ability to assert themselves within the home, in the community, and with the State (the latter for demanding their due in various government schemes, infrastructure, and services). The effect of land access on women’s ‘bargaining power’ within and outside the household has also been theorized (Agarwal 1997).

3. Sources Of Arable Land For Women

Given its importance, to what extent do women have effective land rights? Consider the three major ways by which women can gain land: inheritance, State transfers, and the market.

3.1 Land Via Inheritance

In most countries land is largely privatized: in India, for instance, 86 percent is privatized. Inheritance is thus the most important source of land. Typically inheritance is post-mortem, with some rare examples (e.g., from Sri Lanka) of premortem transfers via dowry. Traditionally, three types of inheritance systems prevailed: patrilineal (where ancestral property passed through the male line), matrilineal (where ancestral property passed through the female line), and bilateral (where ancestral property passed to and through both sons and daughters). Patrilineal inheritance was the most common.

During the twentieth century, in some regions, inheritance laws underwent significant transformation and moved toward gender equality. In other regions age-old and highly gender-unequal inheritance customs continue, or the laws, despite improvement, have yet to provide full gender equality. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, most women’s land access is mediated by marriage. Women usually receive separate plots for cultivation through their husbands, but tend to lose those usufruct rights on divorce. Only rarely do women have claims through natal kin such as fathers, or through matrilineal inheritance systems (Davidson 1988). In most Latin American countries, by contrast, inheritance laws are relatively gender equal (Deere and Leon 1999). In between come countries such as those of South Asia (where inheritance laws vary by both region and religion): here women can legally inherit from both fathers and husbands, but in most communities their rights are not equal to men’s (Agarwal 1994). In addition, there are the transition economies, many of which are still formulating private property laws.

Even where women enjoy legal equality, however, there is a large gap between law and practice. The exact extent of this gap is not known due to the noted dearth of gender-disaggregated data on property, but small-scale surveys and village studies indicate that most women do not inherit what is their legal due. In rural India, for instance, a recent sample study found that only 13 percent of women whose fathers owned land inherited any as daughters, and only 51 percent of those whose husbands owned land inherited as widows (Chen 2000). In Latin America, despite legal equality, daughters are less likely to inherit land, and when they do, they inherit less and poorer quality land (Deere and Leon 1999).

Several social and administrative factors underlie the gap between law and practice. A significant constraint is postmarital residence. Where women are married to strangers in distant villages parents tend to disinherit daughters from fear of losing control over the land. Many women, especially in South Asia, also give up their shares in favor of brothers whom they see as potential sources of economic and social security in case of marital breakup, in the absence of a state social security system. Where women do not voluntarily give up their claims, male relatives may file court cases, forge wills, use threats, and even resort to violence. These constraints are compounded by the approach of many government functionaries who often share the prevalent social biases and obstruct the implementation of laws in women’s favor.

The gap between legal rights and actual ownership is often matched by that between ownership and effective control. Marriages in distant villages can make direct cultivation by women difficult. Constraints also stem from illiteracy, high fertility, and social restrictions on women’s mobility (as in regions of high female seclusion). These difficulties are compounded by women’s limited control over cash and credit for purchasing inputs, and male bias in agricultural extension services.

However, many of the social constraints vary by region. Distant marriages to strangers are more a feature of some groups (e.g., Hindu communities in northern South Asia), than others. Where in-village marriages with close kin are allowed, there is less opposition to women inheriting land. Again female seclusion is not universal and is more a feature of Muslim societies and small pockets of north Indian Hindu communities. More subtle and widespread is the cultural construction of women’s behavior and the gendering of social space which restricts women’s public participation indirectly.

3.2 Government Land Transfers

A second potential source of land is through State transfers. Typically, however, government land reform and resettlement programs tend to allot land almost exclusively to males. Underlying this is usually the assumption that men are the primary cultivators and breadwinners and women the helpers and dependents. For instance, in the Latin American agrarian reforms carried out between the 1960s and late 1980s, a study of eight countries found that women beneficiaries ranged from negligible in Chile and Peru to 15 percent in Mexico, other countries coming in between (Deere and Leon 1999). Although the allocation criteria appeared gender-neutral, they embodied gendered norms and perceptions that effectively excluded most women. For instance, most schemes required beneficiaries to be household heads (presumed to be male, excepting widows or single mothers); or be permanent wage agricultural workers (who were usually men, women typically being seasonal workers); or to be well educated (where again women were disadvantaged).

In South Asia, similarly, land transfers by governments, whether under land reform or irrigation resettlement schemes, have been almost entirely to men, even in communities that traditionally practiced bilateral or matrilineal inheritance.

Recent policy shifts in most countries have typically taken the form of granting joint titles to both spouses. While this is a step forward in reducing existing gender inequalities, joint titles can also restrict women in gaining control over the produce, or claiming their shares in case of marital conflict or divorce, or exercising freedom in bequeathing the land as they wish.

Gendered assumptions have also guided land transfers following peasant movements. Women have usually been significant participants in such movements but have seldom been recognized as independent claimants. Exceptions are few and far between, such as the earlier-mentioned 1970s Bodhgaya struggle in eastern India, in which women demanded and received independent land shares in two villages (Manimala 1983).

3.3 Lease Or Purchase

The third source of land for women is through lease or purchase. This is a limited option, in that individual women usually have much less access than men to monetary resources. Also, rural land markets are often constrained and land is not always available for sale. This option therefore cannot compensate for the gender inequalities in inheritance or government transfers. It can, however, supplement those means, especially if done through collective endeavor. For instance, in parts of South Asia, groups of landless women have been using state-provided subsidized credit for leasing in or purchasing land in groups, and cultivating it jointly. A collective approach to cultivation and management has several advantages over an individual approach. It helps women mobilize funds for capital investment (which they are less able to do individually); provides economies of scale in input use, labor sharing, and marketing; and increases women’s self-confidence in demanding technical information and inputs from public agencies (Agarwal 1998).

4. Conclusion

Research on the potential positive impact of effective land rights on rural women and children’s well-being, women’s social and political empowerment, gender equality, and productive efficiency, suggests that concerted efforts by policy makers and grassroots activists are warranted to promote women’s land rights. Among the aspects that would need attention are the following: promoting gender-equal inheritance in law and practice; formulating public policies which recognise women as significant farmers, with claims both to land and to infrastructural services such as inputs, credit, and information; initiating gender disaggregated data collection to monitor shifts in command over landed property; and so on.

Many of these aspects would be relevant for women’s property rights in general, even where the importance of arable land as property is declining (or has declined) with industrialization and urbanization. Equally, efforts will be needed to ensure that existing biases are not replicated in new land reform initiatives and property rights formulations. For instance, agrarian reform is a major policy issue in post-apartheid South Africa; and new private property rights in land and other assets are now being constituted in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Here there are dangers of creating new gender inequalities, as is already happening to some degree (Verdery 1996). But there is also a window of opportunity for turning the tide and taking steps to ensure gender equality in both land and other property.

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