Saddening Facts About women:(
Ensuring secure women’s land rights is crucial in achieving Agenda 2030 and other gender-specific goals in Africa. Did you Know women contribute to up to 70% in Africa’s food production? Additionally, the provide half all farm labour, and 80–90% of food processing, storage and transport. Despite all these women account for about 13% of agricultural landholders in the world. Further, women constrained by their lack of involvement in decision-making and access to finances.
If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million. Lastly, women are less likely than men to have access to financial institutions or have a bank account. This denies them access to modern technology for intensive and extensive agriculture
Land is a major factor of production. In this case, land includes wetlands, pastures, graze lands, forests, hunting ground, fisheries and harvesting grounds. Land is an important source of security against poverty across the developing world. (Eileen Alma, 2011).
Land rights include but are not limited to their ability to own, access, control, transfer, and inherit and making decisions related to land. These rights are necessary to ensure human rights to equality and provide good living standards.
Barriers to Secure Land Rights
Barriers to these rights hover around the inadequate legal standard and ineffective implementation of legal standards. Some of the cultural practices within the continent have conflicting provisions with both constitutional and international law. Discriminative practices have denied women, education, inheritance and right to own property or land. Patriarchal customs, governance challenges, corruption are among other barriers to secure land rights for women
In early 2019, there was a culture shock in Kenya due to a judge ruling in favour of married women to inherit their fathers land.https://bit.ly/3gfT65V.Some customary practices do not agree with that. In extreme ones, a wife can not inherit her husband land in the event of death. They are subjected to wife inheritance in the belief that the new husband will provide.
Towards the Goals
There is a direct relationship between women’s right to land, economic empowerment, food security and poverty reduction” (Sida, 2015). Women make great contributions to the economy whether in business, farms, entrepreneurs, employees or doing unpaid care work at home. However, they are disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination and exploitation.
Therefore to achieve the Sustainable development goals (5,8 ) these gender gaps have to be closed. Securing women’s rights to land is an economic empowerment plan. The latter grow their economies and reduces their representation in informal and vulnerable jobs. Decent work and economic empowerment for all Goal 8.https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg8
Above all land rights are fundamental to achieving human rights. Economic empowerment is a step towards eliminating poverty in all its forms. Women are more likely to be unemployed than men. Providing a secure resource to earn a living reduces their chances to live in poverty. Consequently, this improves the groups social status and can lead to inclusion in the decision-making process for the land they work on.
Advocating for women’s rights to land is crucial in achieving gender equality as ensures equal chances of land rights.https://landpages.co.ke/how-did-we-land-here/