Executive Summary

Women living in rural areas make up a quarter of the world’s population and experience the harshest forms of poverty and marginalization. Land is their most basic and life-giving asset, providing food, income, and housing. But in many countries, women are still denied equal rights to land in law and practice.

When women have land rights, they have more decision-making authority, children’s nutrition and education improves, and family incomes increase. Land rights also support women’s crucial role in addressing climate change.

Landesa will strengthen land rights for at least 400 million women globally by 2027 through: working to reform and implement law and policy and transform discriminatory social norms; centering women’s land rights in climate change, human rights, and sustainable development agendas; and leading the Stand for Her Land global advocacy initiative, strengthening land rights for women in practice and elevating the leadership of grassroots women activists and organizations.

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2023 Swift Grant Awardee

With the Pastoral Women's Council Tanzania, Landesa will conduct a research project that will increase understanding of the communal land rights challenges and limitations faced by Tanzanian pastoralist women in Embaash and Enkikaret villages. The research will examine land access and ownership and explore potential benefits and outcomes that arise from securing and strengthening women's land rights and participation in decision-making within land management structures.

Accomplishments

Landesa is part of the leadership of the UN Women’s Generation Equality Forum, accelerating the achievement of gender equality by 2026. We also support the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s Secretariat to strengthen gender equality and social inclusion in land tenure work globally. These efforts build broad political will and momentum for governments and civil society to implement women’s land rights.  

Via the Stand for Her Land initiative, we support gender transformative implementation for land registration in Senegal and Uganda; implementation of women’s land rights at the municipal level in Colombia and access to agricultural land in Bangladesh; and gender-equal land restoration and tenure rights programming in Ethiopia.  

In the state of West Bengal in India, Landesa works with the government to train women to update land records, increasing women’s empowerment in land issues and allows women to register land more easily. Over 700 women have been trained.