Ensuring that women have independent and secure rights to farmland is an important component of eliminating poverty and increasing economic productivity. This is true for three general reasons. First, women are often the primary food producers for a household, working their household farm plots while their husbands work for collective farms or in industry. Secure tenure of the land they work provides women with the incentives they need to make the best investment and management decisions with their land and production inputs.  Second, women often bear the brunt of poverty; increasing women’s access to resources goes directly to relieving poverty’s effects. Third, women are often responsible for the nutrition and primary health care needs of children; increasing women’s productivity facilitates a distribution of income to meeting children’s basic needs.