Rights To Land: A way to empower rural women in agriculture
By Chinyere Ogbonna- Rural households depend on a wide range of natural resource assets for their livelihoods—land, water, trees, and other resources. Among these, land is clearly the most valuable asset in most rural households’ portfolios, and is the foundation for agricultural production. A large literature exists on the relationship between land tenure security, livelihoods, and poverty.
In southeast part of Nigeria women are denied right to inheritance while only the males are beneficiaries of every family property. Outside that, when women are married and lose their spouses, family members in most cases dispossess them of their husband’s houses. In some cases, women have been asked to go remarry because they would want to take over their husband’s property, lands most of the time.
Women make up well over fifty percent of small holder farmers in Nigeria and the southeast yet they account for the poorest of the poor in the Society. I think according women the right to inheritance with certification would go a long way to reducing poverty among women especially those in the rural areas. This is because if all hope is lost and they have rights to their lands adequately documented even after their husbands have passed away, they will lease such lands to generate funds to cater for themselves and families, live good lives and drastically reduce poverty among women because they and children are most vulnerable. Women’s land rights (WLR) and poverty reduction could reduce poverty and increase wellbeing of women and their households in rural areas.
Although not much is known about the relationship between women’s land rights and poverty, not only because data on women’s land rights (WLR) are rare, but also because of the assumption that women belong to households that pool resources completely, and thus household land rights, not those of women in particular, are the key to poverty reduction.
However, a growing body of research demonstrates the importance of women’s ownership of land control over assets for a range of development outcomes.
Participants at the World Bank 2018 Land and Poverty Conference in Washington DC, the United States of America at various sessions agreed that addressing land tenure systems in developing countries and ensuring that women have secure access to land would empower women to be independent of their spouses and other family members especially after their spouses must have passed on. The conference also was of the view that improving access to land ownership for women would help to tackle the challenges posed by poverty and empower the financially, address the problem of food insecurity. Addressing the gender gap between men and women was the focus of deliberations during the women caucus at the 2018 Land and Poverty Conference of the World Bank in Washington DC.
After presentations by various speakers from developed and developing countries, a representative of the African Union at the event told the gathering that he was going to see how African Union would adopt some of the improvements recorded by other countries to reduce poverty in Africa. From various presentations made at the global event, there are correlations between land ownership and poverty.
Food consumption is a priority of rural households, accounting for the bulk of household expenditures among the poor. So, if women have access to lands they will be able to be Independent of their spouses even when they are alive and can meet their needs and enjoy good life.
There would be a need to enact laws across states suggesting that staggered implementation of similar progressive laws could result in more empowerment for women and increase their bargaining powers.
