Rights of Women to the natural resources land and water
NEDA (1997)
(Working paper 2, Women and Development). The Hague, The Netherlands, Department of Rural and Urban Development, Women and Development Division
This document, a literature study exploring women's rights to the natural resources of land and water, sets out to describe the problems surrounding women's rights to natural resources, to devise a conceptual framework to analyse the status of women in terms of their rights to natural resources, and to suggest ways of strengthening these rights and of encouraging the application of law in favour of women.
Women must be granted independent rights to natural resources if they are to achieve autonomy. In order to be able to exercise their rights, women must be given sufficient support in standing up for their rights, including being able to resist strong pressure to relinquish those rights. They must have sufficient authority and influence to elicit decisions and to get these decisions accepted by the relevant authorities. Individual ownership does not always offer the best long-term protection for women; sometimes they can derive more benefit from establishing communal rights on a group basis and by exerting collective pressure through the creation of interest groups. In almost all developing countries, women's rights to arable land are weaker than those of men. In many situations women are granted only use rights to land, and, therefore, it is important for land reform and registration programmes to make more effort to issue titles to the actual users of land.
Successful strategies for strengthening women's rights to natural resources must be based on detailed analyses including a review of local and religious laws. The legal status of women can be strengthened by improving the way existing rights are exercised, by removing obstacles to the enforcement of written and unwritten laws, and by encouraging specific attention to the role and legal status of poor women in projects with legal implications. Women's rights to land and water can be improved by training women in rural areas, as well as training government officials and the staff of development organizations in a proper understanding of the complex legal environment in which their projects are being implemented.
The document suggests several strategies for strengthening the legal status of women. To improve the socio-legal position of women in relation to natural resources, it is important to consult the women themselves and to help local institutions to identify the current status, problems and needs of women in the region concerned. More research, based on the socio-legal gender analysis framework, must be done to study the rights of different categories of men and women to land and water in specific situations. Since most legal inequalities relating to natural resources are found in married property law, inheritance law and land law, including land reform laws, amendments and legislative structure review must be encouraged to adopt a general principle of statutory equality between the genders. Improving women's legal literacy makes women better able to claim their rights on an individual or collective basis. Programmes aimed at increasing awareness and acceptance of women's rights must also try to increase female representation on bodies with decision making powers over land and water rights. Village women's groups establishing social support networks must be assisted so that women have a more secure position to fall back on, are less dependent on male relatives, and have a stronger bargaining position. Communal land management by women can be a valid option, upholding as it does the interests of poor households, and notably those of their female members. It is important for women to organize themselves so that they can collectively apply for support from the various government agencies and NGOs and present a strong front to men and local elites in negotiations to uphold their rights and improve their legal status within their own communities.
