* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Tuesday, March 8, marked the one hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD). IWD is a day when we recognize and celebrate all that women around the world have accomplished, both individually and collectively. But IWD is also a time to take stock of the work that still remains to be done for women’s rights. As the brainchild of socialist and feminist activists who were advocating for greater equality in the industrial-era workplace, IWD has always stood as a symbol of the need for greater social, economic, and political equity for women.
Land rights—the ability to use, access, own, transfer, or profit from land—remains one area where women are still significantly disadvantaged compared to men. Land is quite literally at the foundation of our lives. It is where we work, raise our families, build our homes, grow our food, bury our loved ones, and locate ourselves within a broader community. For this reason, the ability to control and manage land is intimately tied up with issues of respect, identity, power, economics, and socio-cultural history.
Yet, in many countries around the world, men control land and the income from that land. Women are prohibited by law or by custom from owning, managing, or inheriting the land on which they work, live, and raise their families. Typically, it is a woman’s status relative to men—as daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, ex-wives, and widows—that determines her ability to use and access land.
Interestingly, when promoting women’s land rights, we often utilize similar concepts of women’s social and familial roles to argue in favor of equitable land rights. We note that secure land rights for women can mean better health and nutrition for the family and better education for children.
But we have seen in our work that economic gains are only part of the story. When women have legal and social rights to the land they farm, they are no longer farm laborers—they are independent economic and social actors; they have dignity and confidence. IWD is a day when we celebrate everything that women have contributed around the world—what a perfect time to honor a woman’s right to claim a piece of land as her own.
