Development
Gender and Land Reforms: Comparative Perspectives
By , Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University (July 2009)
Section: Development
Subjects: Sociology, Development, Social Movements, Geography.
Key Topics: agriculture, livelihoods, gender, neoliberalism.
Abstract
Concerns about rising food prices, food security and land grabs have focussed attention on land redistribution and land reform in recent years. The majority of the rural people and rural poor are women, but the issue of gender within land reform is rarely discussed. Agrarian reforms redistribute land either to collectives or to individual households; this article surveys the impact of the latter model of land reform for women, based on case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America. A mixed picture emerges, but women have been seriously disadvantaged within most programmes by the granting of land title or permits to men as household heads. Husbands have often gained power at their wives’ expense. The potential benefits of landholding for women are substantial, however, and calls for women’s land rights are increasing. A question concerns what form these should take: customary law often discriminates against women, but individual land titling is likely to result in loss of land, especially among the poor. Redistributionist land reforms that have state backing are more likely to be concerned with equity. In order for such programmes to fulfil their democratic potential, smallholder women must gain rights on the same basis as men, and these must be enforced ‘on the ground’.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00257.x
This article abstract has been viewed 2116 times.
Top 5 related articles
-
Geographies of the Contemporary Informal Sector in the Global South: Gender, Employment Relationships and Social Protection
By , Department of Geography, School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading
(Vol. 3, October 2008)
Geography Compass -
New Possibilities? Shifts in Post-Development Theory and Practice
By , Victoria University of Wellington
(Vol. 4, July 2009)
Geography Compass -
Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in African Cities
By , Department of Geography, University of Kansas
(Vol. 3, April 2008)
Geography Compass -
Gender and Biodiversity: A New Approach to Linking Environment and Development
By , University of California, Davis
(Vol. 2, March 2007)
Geography Compass -
Political Ecology and Land Degradation: How Does the Land Lie 21 Years after Blaikie and Brookfield's Land Degradation and Society?
By , Division of Environmental Management, Northumbria University
(Vol. 3, April 2008)
Geography Compass
Top 5 Related Blackwell Reference Chapters
Development Economics: From Classical to Critical Analysis
Comment on this article When development economics emerged as a sub-discipline of economics in the 1950s ...
By Susan Engel
The Colonial Encounter and Its Legacy
Comment on this article Colonialism is usually defined as the political, economic, and geo-strategic ...
By José da Mota-Lopes
Development/Poverty Issues and Foreign Policy Analysis
Comment on this article More than half a century after its emergence as a coherent field of study, international ...
By Steven W. Hook and Franklin Barr Lebo
Cultural Political Economy
Comment on this article Cultural political economy (CPE) presents a challenge to the positivist orthodoxy ...
By William Biebuyck and Judith Meltzer
Environment and Sustainable Development
Environment has become a major socio-political issue only during the past 40 years. Societal concern ...
By Irene Dankelman