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Titling and Registration Updates
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Six studies have been curated and added to the Titling and Registration topic section of the Research Consortium website. The studies are from 2017 and 2018 and look at titling and registration interventions in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda. The outcomes measured are agricultural investment (one new study); inclusivity (three new studies); and increased bargaining power (two new studies). These additional studies add to our knowledge of the benefit of ensuring that women’s names as well as men’s names are included on land documents. They also indicate that even with positive law and sincere effort, women within male-headed households do not always […]

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What’s “Me Too” Got to do with it?
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As I reflect back on my eight years of experience working in the field of women’s land rights, I am struck most by the similarities I’ve found—not just among the women I’ve worked with and spoken to in the developing world, but among all the women I have met, everywhere. In my work, I have the opportunity and privilege to speak with women, mostly from rural areas, in groups and individually. Whether in Kenya, India, or Ghana, women want basic, simple things: good nutrition, education, healthcare, and peace, for their families and for themselves. Frequently that means they need help […]

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Three Cheers for the Gender-Inclusive Prindex Report
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I have talked to women in at least 15 countries—in their homes, their gardens, their fields, their pastures, their universities, their community organizations, their government and executive offices, and their courtrooms. When asked about rural women’s land use or rights or ownership or livelihood, the thing that usually stands out to me is that most women say, in one form or another, that rural women are generally able to use land, and sometimes even control land, when they are in an intact family. But when the family breaks down—because of divorce, death, abuse, or even polygamy—women often are the ones […]

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Our Thoughts on the International Day of Rural Women
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There is not just one story for rural women—whether they are farmers, miners, mothers, or daughters. On October 15th it was the International Day of Rural Women, a day to reflect on the diversity of rural women, and to shine a spotlight on women who are part of the agrarian community. Talking with female miners in Uganda recently, I learned how the lives of women who live in rural areas are impacted by so many different factors beyond their control—climate, weather, health, men, local markets, outside investors and speculators, laws, and government programs. These women, facing insecurity in their rights […]

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“Sécurité Foncière des Femmes : un Cadre Conceptuel” est Maintenant Disponible en Français
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C’est avec plaisir que nous accueillons notre blogueuse invitée, Philippine Sutz. Outre à nous avoir aidé à traduire notre Cadre Conceptuel, Philippine est basée à Londres où elle travaille en tant que ‘Senior Researcher’ auprès de l’International Institute for Environment and Development. Ses domaines de recherche principaux sont l’émancipation des femmes et l’accès des femmes au foncier. Le Consortium de Recherche, par Resource Equity, vient de publier la version française de ‘Sécurité Foncière des Femmes : un Cadre Conceptuel. Ce document, co-écrit par Cheryl Doss et Ruth Meinzen-Dick, est le premier outil du genre permettant une analyse systématique et cohérente de […]

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As We Turn Four We Want to Say Thank You!
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As Resource Equity turns four, we are reflecting on what motivated us to begin, and why we continue: ensuring women’s rights to land and natural resources are at the center of our work. We founded Resource Equity four years ago in order to center women in our work, and to ensure that women’s experiences, needs, and desires drive what we do. We know that secure land and resource rights are a critical building block that provide women, and their families and communities, the opportunity to prosper. However, for a long time, women’s voices have been excluded from land and resource […]

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Equal Inheritance Shares on the Horizon in the Arab World?
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A bit of good women’s rights news has greeted us to end 2018. The Tunisian Cabinet recently approved a bill that will require male and female heirs be given equal inheritance shares. This is a first for the country, and is one of the first proposed bills of its kind in the Arab world. While the bill must now go to the Tunisian parliament for debate, this is still a victory for women’s land rights. We have seen in our work that equal inheritance rights on paper do not always translate to equal rights in practice, but good laws in […]

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Big Changes to Your LandWise Library
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We are excited to announce the newly updated LandWise Library website. LandWise is Resource Equity’s online library for primary legal materials, articles, and other practical resources. These resources are organized by country, topic, language, and document type. To see a quick overview of the library’s contents you can visit the browse page. In addition, LandWise houses a number of women’s land rights and land tenure security practice guides and tools that were created specifically to assist practitioners working in the field of women’s land rights. These guides include general frameworks for understanding land rights and inheritance and country-specific guides for […]

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Got Questions?
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In my line of work I think a good deal about women’s land rights—every day in fact. After working for over 20 years on helping women gain legal and social rights to the land they use, I am frustrated by the slow progress of the work being done. There has been progress, of course, but I am impatient—even a little bit exasperated. I know others in the field feel the same way and we all wonder why progress seems to happen so slowly. There are many complicating factors, and I could write a book on the nuances of the truly […]

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Announcing the Recipients of the Research Consortium’s Inaugural Research Grants
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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 […]

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