EVWA Council Policy Paper 1: Enhancing Access to Land For Women Smallholder Farmers

Policy Recommendations from the Elevating the Voices of
Women in Agriculture (EVWA) Council
Paper 1: Enhancing Access to Land for Women
Smallholder Farmers
Women produce approximately 70% of food in
African countries, despite gender gaps in
access to land, resources, and leadership that
reduce their average output per hectare.
Women are much less likely than men to own
the land they cultivate or have control over
what to plant, whether to purchase inputs and
what to do with their harvests. When women
have their own land outside of family plots, it is
on average of poorer quality than that
controlled by men. For example, women’s land
may have poorer soil or be located farther
away from their residence, markets, roads, and
storage infrastructure. Advancing equitable
access to land is crucial for women’s economic
and political empowerment: in many places,
land ownership is closely tied to influence in
the community and to social, cultural, and
religious practices.
Studies have shown that total agricultural
production and food security increase when
women have secure tenure over and are able
to invest in their land, and even that advancing
women’s rights to land reduces domestic
violence. Ownership of land further
encourages long-term investment, which is
critical for increasing income and building
resilience to climate change. As women’s
incomes increase, so does investment in
children’s education and health.
Women farmers’ access to land has been the
subject of many programs, studies and reports,
a selection of which is presented at the end of
this document. This Policy Brief does not seek
to summarize the findings of these previous
studies, provide a comprehensive overview of
measures and policies, or assess their
effectiveness. Rather, it briefly presents five
‘Seedlings’ – ideas, concepts, or insights –
derived from the discussions held within the
council that merit further exploration so as to
reframe discussions around women’s access to
land in a productive way. It is hoped that these
Seedlings will provide inspiration to
policymakers, development practitioners,
farmer representation groups, and smallholder
farmers.
Seedling 1: undertake genderresponsive
land registration
processes - ensure smallholder
farmers, particularly women,
receive land titles and genderdisaggregated
data is collected
Insecure land tenure forms a major barrier to
advancing the climate change resilience of
African smallholder farmers, as it discourages
long-term investment in soil and ecosystem
health and in agricultural infrastructure and
technology. In recent years, governments and
other actors have started using a wide array of
modern technologies to speed up and
democratize land registration processes,
including drones, mobile phones, and artificial
intelligence tools to map land boundaries, and
blockchain-based applications to register
ownership. These new tools are usually
combined with more traditional
methodologies for community consultation
and consensus building to ensure wide
support.
This accelerating movement towards the
formalization of land tenure creates two
opportunities for advancing women’s access to
land. If these opportunities are not grasped,
land registration processes are at risk of further
entrenching and formalizing gender gaps in
agriculture. The EVWA Council therefore calls
upon those designing these processes to do
the following:
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Firstly, adopt advancing land tenure by women
smallholder farmers as a formal goal of the
registration processes. Instead of assuming
that women will have the same opportunities
to have their land tenure recognized as men,
gender audits of land registration processes
should be performed, and measures adopted
to prevent the perpetuation of inequalities and
systemic gender bias. For example, community
consultations should take place at times and in
locations that suit women’s schedules, and
family land should be registered under both
spouses’ names, not only the husband’s.
Secondly, use the community consultations to
raise awareness of and support for women’s
land tenure and its benefits to society, in terms
of increased food security, economic
prosperity and resilience to climate change
and external market shocks. The teams leading
the consultations should be trained to
understand gender dynamics in local land
ownership and power structures. By expressly
including women and foregrounding their
perspectives in community discussions, these
consultations can also help normalize women’s
participation and leadership in community
decision-making.
These processes will need to be accompanied
by discussions and documentation of
inheritance rights. In most African countries,
land is a key source of familial wealth, and is
passed down from generation to generation.
Under patriarchal customs, women are often
unable to inherit land; since women tend to
marry into the families of their husbands, any
land they inherit is ‘lost’ to their original family.
Widows are also impacted by these customs,
as the land they may have cultivated a lifetime
is often repossessed by the husband's family
after his death. Community-wide discussions
about land tenure provide good opportunities
to consider and formalize reformed systems for
land inheritance.
Seedling 2: grow the pie: unlock and
restore more land for agriculture
Advancing women smallholder farmers’ access
to land is often described as a zero-sum game:
for women to gain access to land, it has to be
taken away from men. While this is sometimes
true, though primarily in cases where women
are already those tending to land owned by
men, there is an additional opportunity to
identify land that is suitable for agriculture but
that is not yet used.
Examples of opportunities to unlock additional
land include restoring empty plots in urban
and peri-urban environments and degraded or
marginal land that can be used for food
production. Urban agriculture has many
positive effects besides enhanced food
security; it also mitigates local pollution,
reduces urban heat island effects, increases
residents’ well-being, and provides a habitat for
pollinators and other species. Modern
technologies such as AI and satellite imagery
can be used to identify suitable plots.
Additionally, innovative practices to optimize
land use and productivity, such as vertical
farming, can be supported and upscaled.
Framing efforts to enhance women’s access to
land at least partly as ‘growing the pie’ for
everyone has the advantage that it allays
concerns by men about being disadvantaged.
However, two key principles must be adhered
to, to prevent harm. Firstly, the aim should be
for men and women to have access to land of
equal quality; newly unlocked land provided to
women should not be of significantly poorer
quality than land already owned by men.
Secondly, efforts to make available additional
land for agriculture should not result in
conversion of natural land or in deforestation.
seedling 3: develop genderresponsive
laws and implement them
In some African countries, women farmers’
equal access to land is hindered by
discriminatory laws and regulations. In others,
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laws and regulations are not outright
discriminatory, but rather ‘gender blind’: they
do not acknowledge existing gender gaps and
therefore perpetuate them, or at least do not
help close them. And other countries still have
excellent gender-responsive laws and
regulations governing land ownership but
have not managed to implement these
effectively, sometimes due to the existence of
a parallel system of discriminatory customary
laws and traditions.
The EVWA Council calls upon governments to
eliminate discriminatory laws and to identify
and amend gender-blind laws, policies, and
programs; conducting a gender audit similar to
the one undertaken by the Kenyan Ministry of
Energy would be a good start.1 The Council
also calls upon governments and donors to
make available the resources to enhance the
implementation of existing gender-responsive
laws. This can be achieved through awareness
raising at all levels and among all relevant
stakeholders, and by strengthening the
capacity of the relevant government agencies
and civil society organizations.
seedling 4: empower existing local
women’s groups and civil society
organizations to liaise between
women farmers and policymakers
Even when women farmers are aware of their
legal rights to land, they often do not manage
to claim them. This can be because they lack
support in the community, or simply because
they do not have the time. In a wellfunctioning
system, women farmers should
not also need to be activists or need to
individually overcome pushback from their
communities to access the support they are
due. Thankfully, throughout Africa, local
women’s groups and civil society organizations
do excellent work as facilitators, organizing and
supporting women farmers to close gender
gaps. The EVWA Council calls upon
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https://energia.org/assets/2023/03/Gender-and-
Energy-Policy-Brief-INTERACTIVE.pdf
governments and their partners to build on
these existing structures to advance women
farmers’ access to land.
Firstly, governments should ensure that
women farmers always have a seat at the table
when land issues are discussed, at any level of
government (local, regional, national, and
international); this may require the
establishment of task forces that women’s
groups are part of. Such task forces, which
should also include all agencies relevant to
land issues (agriculture, trade, food security,
water resources, environment, etc), will also
support more effective integrated land use and
resource planning.
Secondly, local women’s groups and civil
society organizations should be supported to
assist their constituents in their communities:
by raising local awareness of the benefits of
closing gender gaps in agriculture, as well as
by helping women to claim their rights,
informing them of policy changes and helping
them to access resources.
seedling 5: include men as agents
of change
In discussions about gender equality, men
often express that they would like to be better
allies but are not sure whether it is appropriate
for them to insert themselves into the
conversation, or simply do not know where to
start. However, the support of men at all levels
is crucial for closing gender gaps. The EVWA
Council calls on governments and their
partners to actively involve men in their efforts,
stressing that given the potential benefits to
society as a whole, advancing gender equality
should not be viewed as a women’s issue.
Ways to facilitate more effective allyship
include equipping men and women in
relevant positions with the facts and
arguments they need to advocate for gender
equality; raising awareness of the results of
gender audits so people can more readily
recognize and change practices that
perpetuate inequalities; and appointing men
as ‘gender equality champions’.
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The international NGO Farm Africa successfully supported female Ugandan coffee farmers’
access to land by educating entire communities on the benefits of empowering women. The
organization worked with heads of household, primarily men, to develop voluntary land use
agreements through which women gained access to land and more control over their
income from agriculture. By framing discussions in terms of ‘maximizing the benefits of
everybody’s hard work for the benefit of the community’, Farm Africa managed to garner
widespread support for these activities, also among men.2
Key resources on women’s access to land
Care (2022). Food Security and Gender Equality: A synergistic understudied symphony.
https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/resources/food-security-and-gender-equality-a-synergisticunderstudied-symphony
Anne Hennings (2022). Tanzania – Context and Land Governance. Land Portal.
https://landportal.org/book/narratives/2022/tanzania.
Jane Iredale and Jenny Conrad (2023). Gender-based Violence and Food Insecurity: What we know and why
gender equality is the answer. Care. https://www.care.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/GBV-foodsecurity-brief_EN.pdf
Robert Ndugwa, Everlyne Nairesiae and Oumar Sylla (2018). Improving Access to Women’s Land Rights Data for
Policy Decisions: Lessons Learnt and Opportunities linked to SDGs. UN Habitat.
https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/CSW/62/meetings/
Robert%20Ndugwa%20-
%20Improving%20Access%20to%20Womens%20Land%20Rights%20Data%20for%20Policy%20Decisio
ns.pdf
Evelyn F. Nyadwera (2023). Women’s Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. Center for Global Development.
https://www.cgdev.org/event/womens-land-rights-sub-saharan-africa
Oxfam (2020). Uneven Ground: Land Inequality at the Heart of Unequal Societies. Research Findings from the
Land Inequality Initiative. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-
11/uneven-ground-land-inequality-unequal-societies.pdf
Sida. Quick Guide to What and How: increasing women’s access to land. Women’s Economic Empowerment Series.
https://cdn.sida.se/publications/files/sida61534en-quick-guide-to-what-and-how-increasing-womensaccess-to-land.pdf
UN Economic and Social Council (2023). General comment No. 26 (2022) on land and economic, social and
cultural rights. https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G23/000/35/PDF/G2300035.pdf.
UN Human Rights Special Procedures (2017). Insecure land rights for women threaten progress on gender
equality and sustainable development.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WG/Womenslandright.pdf
Evelyn Wamboye (2023). Land Rights, Gender Equality, and Economic Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Center for
Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/land-rights-gender-equality-and-economicoutcomes-sub-saharan-africa.
World Bank (2015). The Voluntary Guidelines and the World Bank: Increasing Women’s Access to Land,
Approaches that Work. /https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/265941444250962923/WB-Good-Practices-
Brief-FINAL.pdf
World Bank (2020). Land Tenure Improvement Project: Project Information Document.
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/934461589985643361/pdf/Project-Information-
Document-Land-Tenure-Improvement-Project-P164906.pdf
2
https://www.farmafrica.org/downloads/fact-sheets/investing-in-ugandas-young-and-female-coffeefarmers.pdf
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