In more than a decade of working on women’s land rights, I have often been asked the question “where is the evidence?” While we have more and more insight into how secure land rights benefit women, men, and communities, the question remains “how to get there?”: we don’t know as much as we should (or would like!) about what works, or does not, to improve land rights for women.
That’s one of the most important objectives of the Research Consortium by Resource Equity: to start to fill in some of the gaps in evidence so that policy-makers, programmers, donors, and practitioners can rely on evidence-backed information to make the most informed decisions possible. Our hope is that this evidence will help make the case that secure land and resource rights for women are achievable and will help to show what strategies can work to achieve stronger land rights for women in practice.
The grant-making program is an important part of the Research Consortium. For our inaugural Request for Proposal we invited applicants to submit proposals that asked new questions of existing data sets, on the topic of the effectiveness of land and resource tenure interventions to improve the lives of women. We also asked applicants to link the research to the Women’s Land Rights Conceptual Framework to help validate, refine, or even challenge it.
We received around 40 very compelling proposals and had the tough choice to select only three, through a rigorous, independent review process.
The Grantees
We are very excited to announce the recipients of our first three grants:
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Iliana Monterosso Ibarra and Anne M. Larson
“Mobilizing change for women and vulnerable groups within collective tenure regimes”
This research will contribute to the analysis of gender differentiated results of ongoing forest tenure reform processes in Peru, Uganda, and Indonesia, providing lessons and identification of implementation practices and action resources that mobilize change, in order to improve women’s and vulnerable groups’ access to land and resources under collective tenure regimes.
Associates Research Trust – Uganda
Herbert Kamusiime and Paul Ntegeka Mwesige
“Do certificates of customary ownership as currently issued/delivered translate into more secure land rights for women and men involved?”
This research is a case study from Nwoya district in Uganda, using quantitative data from beneficiary and non-beneficiary households to assess whether and how current processes for issuing customary ownership certificates are working to achieve more secure land rights for women and men.
Land Investment for Transformation Programme (LIFT) (Development Associates International – DAI)
Workhowa Mekonen, Gladys Savolainen, and John Leckie
“Challenges facing Ethiopian women in realizing their land rights during second level land certification”
LIFT is a program that is systematically issuing land certificates to people in Ethiopia. The purpose of this research is to synthesize the LIFT program’s knowledge and experience of land certification in Ethiopia and to answer the question: how have these practices positively or negatively impacted the land use rights of women and vulnerable groups in Ethiopia?
Results and Findings
We’re excited to share their results and findings with you on the Research Consortium website in the coming months. You will also learn more about the grantees and their work, and see how their research helps to start to fill some of the gaps in knowledge in this field.