Women represent the majority of Brazil’s population (51.6% in 2017). However, only 12% of the landowners are women and just 5.5% own agricultural land in Brazil (IBGE, Agricultural Census, 2006).  This gender disparity is just part of the immense problem women face in terms of land rights in Brazil. A major issue is the persistent gap between what is in the law and what happens in practice.

A Q&A with Patricia Chaves from Espaço Feminista, Brazil, explains the discrepancies in accessing property and inheritance rights for women in Brazil as well as data that helps to inform grassroots women about their rights.  The piece also provides powerful accounts of women's personal experiences.  

By Jim Grabham (Mokoro Ltd, UK) with Ezekiel Kereri (HakiMadini, Tanzania), team members of the global Women’s Land Tenure Security (WOLTS) project.

After years of efforts, land rights are finally getting global attention. With several land-related indicators included in the Sustainable Development Goals, the land sector now has the unique opportunity to create an unprecedented momentum around land tenure issues and bring it to a higher level on the development agenda. Our goal is, of course, to contribute to the success of the SDGs, but also to be part of sustainable development in its real and practical sense!

Addressing gender disparities in the context of land reforms is not easy. Effectively addressing gender issues takes time and effort, which can sometimes make it more expensive in the initial stages of a project or program. However, evidence shows that integrating gender throughout land reform interventions not only increases benefits for women, but strengthens the intervention overall. Meaningfully including gender into land reform approaches often requires a change in behavior among decision-makers and program participants that, in some cases, may take years, even decades.

Kuluthum Mbwana remembers the day that biofuel investors arrived in her village Vilabwa, just 70 kilometers west of Tanzania's capital. In exchange for more than 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of land across 11 villages, including Vilabwa in Kisarawe District, she said they promised to bring much-needed jobs, schools and health clinics to her community.

This month marks women’s month and now, more than ever, women and men alike are coming together in abundant numbers, encouraging and rallying for the strength of women everywhere.  We took a few moments to sit down with but a few of the inspiring women who attended the Arab Land Conference from the 26-28 of February in Dubai. Scroll down to hear their inspiring thoughts.

Momentum is building behind a land rights revolution. Last year, just prior to the World Bank’s Annual Land and Poverty Conference, I wrote about the many factors pushing land to the top of the global agenda.  To maintain this momentum we must pay greater attention to gender and women’s land rights.

“How can “property” own property?” It means how can a woman own property like land or housing if she is considered as a man’s property herself. I learned of this “phrase” from Tanzanian colleagues during a global team workshop in Oxford, UK, last autumn with the WOLTS project. They shared with me about how women in Tanzania are sometimes viewed by men as belonging to them – as their property! Something I thought was quite different to Mongolia.

WOLTS stands for Women’s Land Tenure Security.

Liberia in the 1990s was a place of turmoil, host to a brutal civil war that would kill at least 250,000 people and leave many thousands more displaced.

The war uprooted Martha* from her farm in Lofa County. Her husband, Joseph, was a rebel fighter aligned with one of the factions vying for control, and had taken her and the couple’s four children away from the family’s land, to a city closer to the rebels’ base.

On the day in 1996 that he was killed, Martha felt her own life slipping away.

It would be an understatement to say that the first Arab Land Conference was a busy one.  The afternoon of the conference’s last day, however, featured the Land Portal’s very own masterclass on Women, Social media and Their Access to Land in the Arab World.  Never has women’s use of social media been more pertinent.  In the past year alone, we have seen the rise of the #metoo movement, spearheaded by and for women globally, as well as Saudi women taking their rightful place on social networks, with the explosion of various famous hashtags including #women2drive, #Idrivemyself, #sto

There is broad global agreement that secure property rights help eradicate poverty and that securing women’s land rights reduces gender inequality. But our understanding remains strikingly limited when it comes to the extent to which women’s land rights are – or are not – secure and the impact of women’s tenure security (or lack thereof) on women’s empowerment.

This is true even in Africa, where the most studies have been published, due to shortcomings in both the quality and quantity of research on these questions.