Studies have shown that a key factor associated with rural poverty is access to land. Yet in many parts of India there remains a huge gender gap in land ownership and control - with significant implications for women's economic and social status.

This global survey examines the impact of current trends and policies on the overall social and economic situation of women. It starts by describing the main economic trends produced by globalisation: trade liberalisation; increased globalised production due to direct investment of multinational corporations; and financial liberalisation. The gender impact of those trends are then analysed in detail beginning with employment and displacement effects, including their influence on women's position within the household and the labour markets around the world.

The Women Advancement Trust (WAT) in Tanzania carries out various initiatives related to land rights, affordable housing, and inheritance rights. This report presents lessons learned from a housing and shelter development initiative. The goals of the initiative were to empower low-income communities, particularly women, to participate fully and actively in all aspects of human settlements development, including the improvement of their living and housing conditions.

Across Africa, land is integral to identity and existence. Access to, and ownership of land for women is often problematic – particularly when laws and culture collide. Land issues, including family property matters, are often determined within entrenched cultural norms, resulting in the application of a hybrid legal interpretation of both customary and national law that leaves many women at a disadvantage. Under the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015, the Commonwealth Secretariat has spearheaded efforts to secure women’s rights to land in Africa.

While the majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly Eastern Africa provide a living for their families on land, they largely do not own it. This comprises one part of a study on women and land in five countries in Eastern Africa - and was commissioned by the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).

In a globalising world where the role of the local, the national and the global is shifting, the meanings of citizenship are also changing. This article presents some new theoretical discussions on gender and citizenship. It argues that, rather than something which sees everyone as "the same", citizenship should be understood as multi-tiered and formed through many different positions according to gender, ethnicity and urban/rural location.

How have Egyptian feminists promoted women's rights? This paper looks at the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) in the fight for women's right to vote in Egypt in the early twentieth century. The EFU had much in common with the international women's movement then mobilising around women's right to vote. The IWSA represented the basis for an 'international sisterhood', where the EFU's goals were in line with other feminist organisations that came together under the IWSA.

This study aims to identify how women's capacity to become more involved in decision-making at the local level can be strengthened, particularly in terms of access to natural resources. It also aims to identify the structures through which women secure their systems of production. It focuses on the situation in Niger, where women are increasingly excluded from dominant systems of production: in agricultural areas, they are increasingly excluded from agricultural production and in pastoralist areas, they have lost their herds and had to resort to agriculture.

Women's employment in transition countries, notably Central and Eastern Europe has become increasingly informal and flexible. The first growing trend is that women are more involved in cross-border trade, known as 'suitcase' trade, often keeping women away from home for days or months. They buy mainly consumer and household goods usually unavailable in their home countries, to sell to street vendors on their return home. The second growing trend is women's involvement in sub-contracting, particularly work such as hand sewing for the textile and shoe industries.

Are women's equal rights to land, housing and property implemented in East Africa? How are land rights translated into national legislation in the Region? This books explores land, housing and property rights in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, and looks at how relevant international treaties are transformed into national legislation and policies in these three countries. A detailed analysis of constitutions and laws on land, housing, inheritance, marriage and divorce laws is also offered.

The Integrated Drylands Development Programme (IDDP) is a global UNDP initiative to promote sustainable development in the drylands, and advance the implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. This topic brief highlights the important role that gender plays in this context of sustainable development, in particular the role of women in the Arab States and Africa. In these regions, inequality and stereotypical gender norms often prevent women from contributing to the sustainable development of drylands, despite possessing a wealth of traditional knowledge and skills.

How does the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) affect the livelihoods of rural women in Asia? This paper, prepared on the occasion of the WTO-AOA review in 2003, analyzes the impact of the new trading rules imposed by the WTO on Asian peasants. It illustrates the inherent imbalances in the WTO-AOA's trade liberalisation policies which, among other things, flood local markets with highly subsidized agricultural imports from developed countries to the detriment of domestic agriculture.