Record Item Language: English

Starting With Women (SWW) is an approach that centers women in design and implementation. Its starting point is the belief that women’s land rights can be made more secure through an approach that starts with women. The long-term aim of the project was to establish a viable, evidence-backed, women-centered strategy for improving outcomes for women engaging in artisanal mining, by increasing the benefits artisanal miners gained in mining activities and by ensuring that those benefits would be shared equally among women and men. A related long-term goal was increased protection of customary surface land use rights.

Abstract: Property is widely recognized as an important resource for empowering women. Many development policies worldwide therefore call for strengthening women's rights to property, especially to physical assets such as land and livestock. However, the relationship between property and women's empowerment is more complex than generally assumed because of the overlapping and dynamic nature of property rights. In this paper, we explore how property rights affect the empowerment of women at different stages of the life cycle and different social locations, ethnicities, household structures, and social classes, using the lens of intersectionality. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted for the “Evaluation of […]

Abstract:  The aim of this paper is to interrogate and analyse the nature, extent and causes of land conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa taking Botswana as a case study. The paper is based on desk-top surveys and review of literature on land tenure reforms and conflicts in the subcontinent and beyond. Synthesis of the literature shows that, despite international support and a series of tenure reforms undertaken by various post-independence governments, land conflicts – defined as disputes, disagreements and contestations over property rights and interests – appear to have raged on unabated. In some countries, land conflicts appear to have intensified in […]

"This study is a compilation of laws, successful community initiatives and customary practices from our members in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Nepal, who are all involved with the Women's Land Rights Commitment Based Initiative (CBI 4). It raises issues of gender and land at a crisis when a neoliberal economic model is in force, causing vast agricultural land to be diverted into development projects. The study also aims to highlight how rural women in Asia face structural barriers that deprive them of access to, control and use of land and resources. The entrenched patriarchal views of women’s land ownership and weak law […]

International Land Coalition Toolkit No. 5