Land: A foundation for women’s economic empowerment

Around the world, land is identity, heritage, a source of pride, and of course, a sustainable economic resource. Land is crucial in sustaining livelihoods, ensuring stability and security, and alleviating poverty. However, today, less than one in five landholders worldwide are women, despite comprising nearly half of the world’s agricultural workforce and producing up to 80 percent of food in developing countries.

Discriminatory laws and social norms impose barriers to women’s rights and access to land in more than half the world. Customary and formal land and property laws and regulations discriminate against women, and even when the laws guarantee women’s rights to land, the implementation and enforcement of these laws are complicated and insufficient.

Beginning on International Women’s Day and continuing through UN CSW68, the Stand for Her Land (S4HL) Campaign is calling attention to the critical link between women’s land rights (WLR) and economic empowerment for women and girls. By strengthening women’s land rights, we can shift the balance of power and help women enjoy greater dignity and economic justice.

Women’s ownership and control over land can also build resilience to climate impacts, with positive outcomes for climate mitigation and adaptation through land investments that promote carbon sequestration, enhanced adaptive capacities, soil and water conservation measures, and other sustainable practices. Conversely, gender inequalities in control and access to land increase women’s vulnerability to climate impacts.

Closing the gap on women’s land rights

The benefits are impossible to deny, and the cost of inaction is too great if we are to make progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. So, what can be done to ensure women and girls enjoy the full benefits of stronger land rights?

  1. Challenge discriminatory social norms
  2. Empower grassroots women to lead
  3. Finance solutions from the ground up

Read the full article about women’s economic empowerment by Ayman Soliman at Global Washington.