المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

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    • Hello,

      I am writing from the OECD Development Centre where we are currently working on the update of the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), a cross-country measure of discriminatory social institutions that hold back women and girls’ from realising their rights. One important area covered in the SIGI is women’s access to resources and assets including land. Results from 2014 found that in 102 countries women still face discriminatory laws and customs in accessing land and non-land assets. Although it is widely acknowledged that legal equality does not automatically translate into equality of outcomes, the SIGI confirms this: of the 102 countries where discrimination was found, only 7 countries had legal discrimination, the remaining 94 countries granted women and men the same legal rights to access land, but customary, traditional and religious practices curtail women’s rights in practice.

      Discriminatory inheritance laws are another significant barrier women and girls face when accessing family land and property: in over 100 countries there is evidence of discriminatory inheritance laws or practices limiting women’s ability to inherit equally as daughters and spouses. This ranges from negative social norms that beleive only men should own land to acts of property grabbing.

      When we think about how we can best achieve gender transformative impacts, it is important to see how we can improve on the enormous amount of work already being done. Over USD 3 billion of Official Development Assistance was committed to rural and agriculture projects targeted gender equality and women’s empowerment; however only around 5% of this aid targeted gender equality as a principle objective (approximately USD 187 million). Thus, projects with the ability to transform negative gender roles and empower rural women and girls remain a small part of rural and agricultural development aid. Harnessing this aid and improving on the existing work already being done through the application of a social norms lens to the design and implementation process is one way to ensure that it benefits rural women and girls.

      In addition there is a need to invest in data that captures not just outcomes but also social norms that drive the gender gaps in outcomes. The SIGI Uganda country study, launched in 2015, was the first nationally representative survey measuring discriminatory social imitations. The results from the report highlight how discriminatory practices such as unequal inheritance or land ownership are often grounded in discriminatory attitudes. Indeed, the survey found that there is widespread support for gender inequality in land ownership: 27% of the population supports unequal land rights, reaching as high as 54% in the Mid-Northern sub-region. This is reflected in women’s lower levels of land ownership: only one-third of land is owned or co-owned by women. This any policy that wishes to support women’s land ownership will need to address these discriminatory attitudes.