Secure tenure rights and control over land for women and men farmers are key to boosting smallholder productivity, rural development and food security. However, in many parts of the world, men and women have inadequate access to secure property rights over land.
Women are particularly disadvantaged: even though they constitute on average 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, women’s ownership of agricultural land remains significantly lower than that of men. Women’s lack of secure rights over land translates into lower productivity, perpetuating food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty.
Land statistics can provide a sense of women’s economic empowerment in agriculture. Reliable sexdisaggregated data on land are essential to highlight the disparities in land rights between women and men, improve policy formulations and monitor the progress towards gender equality in agriculture and land tenure.