Women's perceptions of tenure security: Evidence from 140 Countries

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1.4.2 and 5.A.1 refer to the strengthening of women’s land and property rights as a fundamental pathway towards poverty reduction and women’s empowerment. Securing women’s land and property rights can increase agricultural productivity, incentivise the adoption of climate-resilient natural resource management and increase household spending on health and education. Conversely, when women face barriers to accessing, using or controlling land and other productive resources around the world, it not only puts them on an unequal footing in life, but it also restricts these wider positive social, economic and environmental outcomes.

Despite the importance of securing women’s rights to land and property, much of the research on the topic has focused only on a handful of countries, especially those where large-scale land projects are underway. To fill this gap, the Prindex initiative released comparative data in 2019 on how women feel about their land and property rights in 33 countries. Since then, Prindex has expanded its efforts to include a further 107 countries – giving us the first truly global dataset of the perceptions of over 90,000 women and 78,400 men on tenure security in 140 countries worldwide.

This report draws on the full 140-country dataset to analyse land and tenure insecurity through a gender lens.