This chapter presents an overview of women’s restricted access to productive and financial resources. It examines discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, social norms and practices – that restrict women’s access to and control over critical productive and economic resources and assets across 180 countries, covering areas such as secure access to land, secure access to non-land assets, secure access to formal financial services and workplace rights. The chapter also seeks to provide policy makers with the necessary tools and evidence to design effective gender-responsive policies in order to improve women’s economic empowerment.
Secure access to land assets

What can we do to ensure women have the same opportunities to grow their personal & professional assets - as men Share of land owned by women worldwide now: Africa 12% ; Asia 12% ; Americas 16% ; Europe 20%

Key messages

Despite important advances in legislation to strengthen women’s land rights, significant gaps between countries and regions remain. To date, 164 countries explicitly recognise women’s rights to own, use, make decisions and use land as collateral on equal terms with men. However, only 52 countries guarantee these rights both in law and practice because of discriminatory customary laws. Whereas there are very low levels of discrimination in Europe (26 countries), Africa stands out as the poorest-performing region on this indicator, despite the fact that access to agricultural land is even more important for women’s empowerment opportunities in most African countries.

A major element of the remaining challenge is weak law enforcement and implementation, often contributed to by women’s limited legal awareness. Even with theoretical equal rights, women rarely exercise them. They tend to have limited knowledge of their statutory rights and customary laws often define land tenure as a male privilege. Under customary and traditional inheritance systems, for example, women are often required to give up their rights in favour of male relatives when they become divorced, widowed or orphaned.

Deeply entrenched norms and customary land-tenure laws confine women to subordinate and dependent status. While women contribute significantly to agricultural production, their status gives them very low decision-making power, restricting their opportunities for economic empowerment. Women represent 43% of the agricultural labour force, but 65% of unpaid family workers in developing countries but only 15% of agricultural landholders (FAO, 2011[1]).

Reducing extreme poverty, hunger and creating resilient societies requires securing women’s access to and ownership of land. Among the SDGs 132 Goals and 59 targets are unlikely to be met without progress towards securing and protecting women’s land rights. Providing women’s equal access to productive resources could increase the production of female-operated farms by 20% to 30% in developing countries (FAO, 2011[1]). Moreover, women’s land ownership is linked to income growth, greater bargaining power within their households, better child nutrition and higher educational attainment for girls (Markham, 2015[2]).

The best score in this indicator is shared by 53 countries. In these countries, women enjoy the same rights and secure access to land assets as men in law and in practice. However, despite the fact that the proportion of female agricultural landholders (19%) exceeds the global average (15%), it is far from equality (50%).

Key policy recommendations

Improve women’s land rights through the harmonisation of customary laws with statutory laws, in line with international and regional commitments to human rights’ (Box 5.1). In many countries, land tenure is closely linked to customary laws and practices that prevent women from enjoying secure access to land either by blocking their right to inherit land or to hold nominative title to it. As a result, discriminatory customary laws related to marriage and inheritance lead to the perpetuation of gender imbalances in land ownership across generations.

Design awareness-raising campaigns about women’s land rights and foster dialogue with community and religious leaders to ensure real harmonisation between customary and statutory laws. For instance, an audit conducted by the Kenya Land Alliance revealed that, despite the adoption of Kenya’s progressive Constitution in 2010, women’s land ownership continues to lag behind that of men. The audit examined about one-third of the 3.2 million title deeds issued between 2013 to 2017 and found that Kenyan women received some 10% of land titles issued by the government, representing only 1.60% of land by area (Kenya Land Alliance, 2018[3]).

Develop legal literacy programmes to help women, families and communities understand their statutory rights to land. While legal frameworks guarantee women’s land rights on equal terms with men, they are largely thwarted by women’s general lack of awareness of their rights. To combat such ignorance, the Land Centre for Human Rights in Egypt, for example, supports farmers and rural communities, including rural women, to improve knowledge and understanding of their legal rights.

Provide women with affordable access to land rights enforcement mechanisms to guarantee their recourse to adequate justice structures (courts, customary and dispute-resolution bodies and relevant authorities) without discrimination.

Promote women’s participation and leadership in global, national and local institutions, in governance mechanisms in rural areas and in bodies concerned with the ownership and use of land, in order to increase women’s autonomy, voice, agency and decision-making power.

Collect sex-disaggregated data at the individual level to gain a better understanding of women’s barriers to accessing and owning land. The collection of data needs to be coupled with qualitative research methods to take local conditions into account.

Promote joint land titling in order to increase the registration of women’s land rights. The government in Uganda made efforts including subsidised land titles that are conditional on co-registration and targeted information campaigns, to encourage joint registration of land held by married couples in rural areas. A World Bank evaluation of the schemes found that 40% of couples were willing to register their land jointly without incentives but up to 70% would do so with incentives (Cherchi, 2018[4]).

Undertake small innovative practices in land registration systems that can have a big impact on women’s land rights. In Tanzania, women’s land certification increased from 0% to over 50% in the villages where USAID’s Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST) was set up (USAID, 2016[5]). In India, Landesa partnered with the government of West Bengal to modify the number of spaces for names on land registration documents from one to two and educate registers about the advantages of women’s land rights. As a result, women’s names were included in land titles in a greater number of cities (Markham, 2015[2]).

Box 5.1. International standards concerning women’s land rights

Women’s equal access, use and control over land is grounded in core international human rights instruments, including:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which recognises the right to property (Art. 2);

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) that guarantees equality between women and men (Art. 3);

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) calls on State parties to “undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights” (Art.3);

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) acknowledges that “State parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, that they participate in and benefit from rural development” (Art. 14.2);

The Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) (1989) states that “the rights of ownership and possession of the peoples concerned over the lands which they traditionally occupy shall be recognized” (Art. 14.1);

The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) calls on Governments to “ensure women’s equal access to economic resources, including land” and “to formulate and implement policies and programmes that provide access to and control of land” (para. 58(n));

The Habitat Agenda (1996) commits Governments to providing “legal security of tenure and equal access to land to all people, including women and those living in poverty; and undertaking legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land” (para. 40 (b));

The CEDAW Committee considers “women’s rights to land, natural resources, as well as fisheries as fundamental human rights” (CEDAW Committee, 2016[6]);

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework (2015) recognises women’s secure access to land as a key pillar of women’s economic empowerment. The international community has committed to secure, enforce and monitor progress on women’s land rights in order to achieve the 2030 Agenda by including land-specific SDG indicators (1.4.23 and 5.a.14).