A brief which takes on the myth that large mega farms are more modern and productive than smallholder farms. Concludes that by boosting the productivity of smallholders, governments and donors can increase food production and rural employment; reduce rural poverty through the commercialization of subsistence agriculture; and more effectively empower women. With secure rights to their land, access to markets, and credit and technology, smallholders can drive the growth of rural economies throughout the developing world.

Stresses the growing body of evidence illustrating the positive correlation between secure land rights and food security and nutrition. Also looks at constraints to secure land rights for women. Enforcement of laws can be challenging. Women’s access to land through the state or the market is often limited.

Examines MCC projects in Benin, Lesotho, Mali and Namibia to understand how each project applied gender to its design and implementation and how that approach impacted on results. Aims to help practitioners understand what concrete steps might be taken towards closing the gender gap in land projects.

Includes addressing land related challenges in post-conflict reconstruction; women and land rights in Uganda; women and land in Acholi culture; the war and its effects on land in the return process; peace, recovery and development plan; opportunities for women’s land rights.

Includes views of land registration in Omahalya Village in the Omusati Region of Namibia, connection to the land, value of registration, protection from land grabbing and conflicts, investing in their land, women’s empowerment, the commonage. Concludes that the village is a promising example of the benefits of Communal Land rights registration. The villagers feel safer on their land, invest more, have fewer conflicts and more equitable inheritance.

Seeks to answer the question, where collective tenure arrangements are either being formalized or supported for the sake of securing the community’s rights to land, what steps are required to strengthen women’s land rights in the process? Synthesizes findings from case studies in China, Ghana, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Namibia, and Peru that assess interventions to strengthen collective tenure and ensure that both women and men benefit from improved land tenure security.

Contains sections on the effects on women of Rwanda’s civil war, the legal system, the gap between customary law and land legislation, research findings about Rwandan women’s rights, a number of dispute case studies, including methods of dispute settlement. Argues that a gap exists between customary and modern legal systems, creating both land access opportunities and constraints for women. Demonstrates the creativity with which women are bridging that gap in a state of legal uncertainty.

Case study identifies good practices and lessons learned about including gender in a project designed to sensitize communities about the importance of securing land rights, build capacity of customary land secretariats, and provide alternative dispute resolution training to traditional authorities in the Northern Region of Ghana.

Nuanetsi Ranch had been invaded by villagers from different parts of Mwenezi, Chiredzi and Chivi communal areas since 2000. In February 2010, the government announced that the settlers had to be removed and resettled in other ’uncontested lands’ in the area, compromising their rights to sustainable livelihoods, human development and land acquisition. The perceptions of the men and women resident at Chigwizi has had a bearing on understanding the nature of gendered land and rural livelihoods in the context of biofuel production in Zimbabwe, after fast track land reform.

A call to action including: securing women’s rights to land and natural resources, including within communities; ensuring women’s meaningful participation in decision-making and dispute resolution related to access, use, control, and management of land and natural resources; identifying and supporting research and sex-disaggregated data collection related to climate change and women’s land rights.

This paper looks at how married women and children are vulnerable to becoming landless. Should something be done? What can be done?

Critical shifts are affecting rural resource rights in Africa through widespread reform in land, forestry and other laws. The cutting edge of transformation affecting women is in emerging new provision for wives to hold family property as co-owners with their husbands, which could play a main role in revitalising smallholder agriculture. Recognition that equity in domestic land relations may ultimately be a prerequisite to the modernisation of subsistence agriculture in agrarian economies is the thesis underlying the analysis of legal texts in this paper.