Land Rights and Women’s Claims

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Are W e Not Peasants Too?Land Rights and Women’s Claimsin India

by Bina Agarwal



Are W e N ot Peasants Too?Land Right s and W omen’sClaims in India

by Bina Agarwal

About the AuthorBina Agarwal is Professor of Economics at theInstitut e of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, andauthor of the award-winning book A Field of One’sOwn: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia.

Herwork has had national and international impact, withinboth academic and policy circles, on the neglectedissue of women’s rights in propert y, especially land.



is a pam-phlet seriesd e v e l o p e dto meet re-

quests from all over the world for infor-mation about innovative and practicalprogram ideas developed to address theeconomic roles and needs of low-incomewomen. The pamphlets are designed as ameans to share information and spark new initiatives based on the positiveexper iences of projects that are workingto help women generate livelihoods andto improve their economic status. Theprojects described in this and otherissues of SEEDS have been selected be-cause they have served not only tostrength en women’s productive roles,but also to integrat e women into varioussectors of development, both social andeconomic. All projects documented in

the SEEDS series involve women in deci-sionmaking, organize women locally, andaddress broader policy issues t hat affectthe economic roles of women.

These reports are not meant to be pre-scriptive, since every development effortwill face somewhat different problemsand possibilities. Rather, they have beenwritt en to describe the history of an ideaand its implementation in the hope thatthe lessons learned can be useful in avariety of settings. They are also beingwritten t o bring to t he at tent ion of thosein decisionmaking positions the vitalroles that women play not only in theeconomies of their individual householdsbut also in the economic life of everynation.

This edition of SEEDS is made possi-ble by support of the Ford Foundation,the Rockefeller Foundation, and thePopulation Council.

The Population Council is an international, nonprofit, nongovernmental institution thatseeks to improve the well-being and reproductive health of current and future generationsaround the world and to help achieve a humane, equitable, and sustainable balance betweenpeople and resources. The Council conducts biomedical, social science, and public health

research and helps build research capacities in developing count ries. Established in 1952,the Council is governed by an international board of trust ees . Its New York headquar terssupports a global network of regional and country offices.

Populat ion Council, One Dag Hammarskjold P laza, New York, New York 10017 USAtel: (212) 339-0500, fax: (212) 755-6052, e-mail: [email protected]://www.popcouncil.org.

Statement s made and views expressed in this publication are solely the responsibility of theauthor and not of any organization providing support for SEEDS. Any part of this documentmay be reproduced without permission of the author so long as it is not sold for profit.

Number 21, 2002 ISSN: 073-6833

Copyright © 2002 The Populat ion Council, Inc.

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Number 21, 2002 • 1

ForewordSEEDS is pleased to publish our twenty-

first issue, Professor Bina Agarwal’s AreWe Not Peasants Too? , exploring thecritical elements in securing effectiveand independent land rights for women.Although t he author’s pr imary focus isSouth Asia, the analytical framework andproposed action plan are of relevance toLatin America, Africa, the Caribbean,and eastern Europe—indeed whereverwomen’s use and cont rol of arable land

are crucial to their economic well-beingand livelihoods. SEEDS issues 10, 14, and16 provide readers with additional back-ground to several topics discussed here,with part icular reference to Nepal, Zambia,and India.

Are We Not Peasan ts Too? documentsthe substant ial and enduring barriers andbiases obstructing efforts to strengthenwomen’s re lationship to the resource -

generating asset of land. Despite the cen-trality of this issue to reducing ruralwomen’s povert y and improving theireconomic status, the author shows whywomen’s independ ent claims to landhave been difficult to achieve, even

where progressive social movements

and legal reforms have recognized them,such as in India.

To tackle such obstacles, ProfessorAgarwal presents a range of cooperativestrategies for enabling women to retainand cultivate the land and shows howmicro-credit and other programs can beredirected to increase the amount andproductivity of land women control.Recognizing that new policies and politi-

cal will are required to foster and sustainsuch experiments, the aut hor ends witha summary of how women are organizingto place women’s access t o land at t hecenter of national and global agendas.

In this spirit, SEEDS hopes that AreWe Not Peasan ts Too? will inspire grass-root s women’s groups, NGOs, innovat ivedonors, policymakers, and others fromaround the world to share examples of

how they have established strategies thatincrease women’s access to this crucialasset. Let us hear from you!

— Sandy Schilen, SEEDS Editor



IntroductionIn 1979, over two decades ago, a groupof poor women from West Bengal madethe following demand of their e lected vil-

lage council: “Please go and ask the gov-ernment why, when it distributes land, wedon’t get a t itle. Are we not peasants? If my husband throws me out, what is mysecurity?” (personal communication, VinaMazumdar, 1992). This demand under-lined these women’s clear recognitionthat their families alone could not guar-antee them economic security. What theyalso needed were fields of their own.

A N eglect ed IssueIn largely agrarian economies, arable landis the most valued form of property andproductive resource. It is a wealth-creat-ing and livelihood-sustaining asset . For asignificant majority of rural households itis the single most important source of secu rity against poverty. Traditionally, ithas been the basis of political power and

social stat us. For many, it provides a senseof identity and rootedness. It is an assetthat has a permanence that few otherassets possess. In some communities,ancestral land also symbolically standsfor continuity of kinship and citizenship.

While many of these links ar e well rec-ognized at the household level, their im-portance specifically for women has re-ceived little attention. Indeed, the issue

of women’s rights in land ( and more gen-erally in proper ty) has been, unt il recent -ly, largely neglected in both research andpolicy. In fact, in almost all developing

countries, large-scale surveys and agri-cultural censuses collect property-relat-ed informat ion only by households, with-

out disaggregating by gender. Nepal is arecent exception where such data willnow be collected in its census. In most of South Asia, including India, therefore,we still have to depend on small-scalesurveys and village studies to assesswomen’s access to land. These sourcesreveal that typically few women ownarable land and even fewer effectivelycontrol some.

The social and economic implicationsof this are wide-ranging. Millions of women in Asia, Africa, and Latin Americadepend cr itically on land for a livelihood.The t ypical process of agrarian transfor-mation under which labor shifts fromagriculture to nonagriculture has beenslow and gender-biased. In many coun-tr ies, those who have moved to nonfarmwork are largely men, while women have

remained substantially in agriculture.Hence a disproportionate number of those still dependent on land are wom-en. In India, for instance, 58 percent of all male workers but 78 percent of allfemale workers, and 86 percent of allrural female workers, are in agriculture .Indeed the gender gap has been grow-in g . Women’s domest ic work burden ,lower mobility, lesser education, and

fewer investable assets limit their entryinto nonagriculture, and also their rangeof nonfarm options. Moreover, the na-ture of women’s agricultural work is, to a

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Number 21, 2002 • 3

greater extent than for men, casual innature. Relative to men, women also con-tinue to have lower real wage rates andlower average real wage earnings in bothagriculture and nonagriculture.

As more men shift to urban or ruralnonfarm livelihoods, a growing numberof households will become dependen t onwomen managing farms and bearing themajor burden of family subsistence. Thepercentage of de facto female-headedhouseholds is already large and growing.Estimates for India range from 20 to 35percent. These include not just widowsand deserted and separated women, butalso women in households where themen have migrated out and women areeffectively farming the land. These wom-en will shoulder (and many are alreadyshouldering) growing responsibilities inagricultural production but will be con-strained seriously by their lack of landtitles.

Moreover, the male biases in landownership and tr ansfers t hat have beennoted in many developing countries arein danger of being replicated in new landreform initiatives and property rightsformulations. For instance, agrarianreform is a major policy issue in post-apartheid South Africa; and new privateproperty rights in land and other assetsare now being constituted in EasternEurope and the former USSR. Here newgender inequalities are already beingcreat ed (Meer 1997; Verdery 1996).

It is therefore timely and essential toexamine in more detail why it is impor-tant for women to have effective andindependent land rights, what obstructstheir realizing their claims, and whatcould be done to improve the situation.While these issues are discussed herelargely in the Indian or the South Asiancontext, many are also relevant to other

developing regions and to the transitioneconomies. And although the focus hereis on arable land, since that is such a cru-cial form of property and means of liveli-

hood in South Asia, many of the argu-ments and concerns could be extendedto cover women’s r ights in a dwellinghouse or in other forms of property.

Defining Land RightsRights (in any form of property) are de-fined here as claims that are legally andsocially recognized and enforceable byan external legitimized authority, be it avillage-level institution or some higher-level body of the State. Land rights canstem from inheritance, transfers from theState, tenancy arrangements, land pur-chase, and so on. They can be in the formof ownership or usufruct ( rights of use) ,and can encompass differing degrees of freedom to lease out, mortgage, bequeath ,or se ll.

Three additional distinctions are rele-vant here. First, there is a differencebetween the legal recognition of a claimand its social recognition, and betweenrecognition and enforcement. A womanmay have a legal right t o inherit proper-ty, but t his may remain merely on paperif the claim is not recognized as sociallylegitimate or if the law is not enforced.Second, there is a distinction betweenownership and effective control. It issometimes assumed incorrectly thatlegal ownership carries with it the rightof control in all its senses. In fact, legalownership may be accompanied byrestrictions on disposal, as among theJaffna Tamils of Sri Lanka and severalcommunities in Latin America, where amarried woman needs her husband’sconsent to alienate the land she legallyowns. Third, we need to distinguishbetween rights vested in individuals andthose vested in groups.

Our concern here is with women hav-ing effective and independent rights inland, effective rights being rights not

just in law but also in pract ice; and inde-pendent rights being rights that womenenjoy in t heir own capacity and indepen-dent of those enjoyed by men.



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W hy Land I s Impor t antfor W omen

My bangles are broken,m y d ays of sham e are gone.

I have on e small son , on e calf, one field. A calf to feed, a son to nurturebut the field, baiji [sister] this half acre of earthto feed m e, to rest m y h ead.—Malli, a Rajasthani widow(author’s interviews, 1987)

Effective and independent land rightsfor women are importan t on at least fourcounts: welfare, efficiency, equality, and

empowerment.

WelfareIt is well accepted that land access cannotably reduce a household’s risk of pov-erty, but for several reasons land solelyin men’s hands need not guarantee fe-male welfare.

First, there are persistent gender in-equalities and a bias favoring males in

the distribution of resources within house-holds, including allocations for basic nec-essities such as health care, education,and, in some regions, even food. Biasesin food and health care are revealed es-pecially in anthropometr ic measures (e.g.,

weight and height for age, weight forheight, etc.), morbidity rates, and moststarkly in female-adverse sex rat ios.

In contrast, direct land transfers towomen are likely to benefit not just wom-en but also children . Evidence both fromIndia and from many other parts of theworld shows that women, especially inpoor households, spend most of theearnings they control on basic householdneeds, while men spend a significantpart of the irs on personal goods, such asalcohol, tobacco, etc. ( Dwyer and Bruce1988). This, in turn, affects child wel-fare. Children in rural India are found

more likely to at tend school and r eceivemedical attent ion if the mother has moreassets (Duraisamy 1992). Among mar-ginal farmer households in Kerala ( southIndia), the mother’s cultivation of a homegarden (the output of which she con-trolled) was found to have a consistent-ly high positive effect on child nutrition(Kumar 1978) . In urban Brazil, the effecton ch ild survival probabilities was found

to be several times greater when assetincome accrued to the mother, comparedwith when it accrued to the father, andthe positive effect on the health of daugh-ters was especially high (Thomas 1990) .Apart from differences in spending pat-

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terns, women with assets such as landhave greater bargaining power, which canlead to more gender-equal allocations of benefits even from male incomes. Inshort, women’s and children’s r isk of poverty would be reduced and the ir wel-fare enhanced if women had direct ac-cess to land, and not just access med iat-ed through male family members.

Second, women without independentresources are highly vulnerable to pover-ty and destitution in case of desertion,divorce, or widowhood. In parts of west-ern and northwestern India, not uncom-monly, rural women even from rich par-

ental and marital families, deprived of their property shares when widowed,can be found working as agriculturallaborers on the farms of their well-off brothers or brothers-in-law. The fate of deserted and divorced women is worse.

Relatives, including sons and broth-ers, often do not provide the expectedeconomic security to women who arewidowed or whose marriages break down.

Many of them end up living on their own.In fact, mortality risks among widowstend to be higher among those living asdependents of male relatives comparedwith t hose who are heads of households,and who presumably have some inde-pendent means of subsistence (Rahmanand Menken 1990). Indeed, for widowsand the elderly entitlement to familycare can depend critically on whether

they have property to bequeath. As theelderly often say: “Without propertychildren don’t look after their parentswell” (Caldwell et al. 1988: 191).

Land can provide women both directand indirect benefits. Direct advantagescan stem from growing not just crops,but trees, a vegetable garden, or grassfor cattle. Indirect advantages arise invarious ways: owned land can serve as

collateral for cr edit or as a mortgageableor saleable asset during a crisis. Land(whether owned or controlled by wom-en) also increases t he probability of wom-

en finding supplement ary wage employ-ment, and serves as an important assetbase for rural nonfarm enterprises. Forinstance, those with land are found to

generate much higher rural nonfarmearn ings from self-employment t han t hetotally landless (Chadha 1992). In short,wom en ’s access to even a sm all plot

can be a critical elemen t in a div ersi- fied livelihood system , an d can sign if-icantly im prove women ’s and the fam -ily ’s welfare, even if the p lot is n ot largeenough to provide full family subsis-tence. And independent access to landwill become increasingly important forwomen as marital and kin support erodes,and female-headed households multiply.

EfficiencyIn addition to welfare gains, more gen-der-equal land r ights could also enhanceproductive efficiency. First there is anincentive effect. Although it is widelyrecognized that security of tenure can becritical for motivating farmers to makeproductivity-enhancing investments intheir fields, the need for sim ilar in cen -

tives within the fam ily has been large-ly ign ored . Some recent studies suggestthat incentives could be as importantwithin families. In Kenya, for example,

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where men and women often cultivateseparate p lots, the introduct ion of weed-ing technology in maize product ion raisedyields on women’s plots by 56 percentwhere women controlled the output, andonly by 15 percent on their husbands’plots, where women also weeded but mengot the proceeds (Elson 1995). Whethersimilar results will obtain in India andother countries will require field testingand analysis. But the Kenya results pro-vide an important pointer to the output-enhancing potential of secure land rightsfor women and of their control over produce.

Second, where land access is in theform of titles ( which serve as collateral inmany regions) , secure rights for womenwould help increase output by improv-ing women’s access to credit. This canprove especially crucial in situationswhere women are the principal farmers,as where male out-migration is high, orwhere widows (or wives) are cultivatingseparate plots st ill formally owned by kin.

Third, research from some other part sof the world suggests that women mightuse land more efficiently than men incertain contexts. In Burkina Faso, forinstance, due to their choice of croppingpatterns women achieved much highervalues of output per hectare on their ownplots than their husbands did on theirs(Udry et al. 1995). Although women’syields for given crops were lower thanmen’s, this was due to t heir lesser accessto inputs such as fertilizers which wereconcent rated on the men’s plots. Thestudy estimated that output could beincreased by as much as 10–20 per-cent if such inputs were reallocated

from plots controlled by men to thosecontrolled by women in the samehousehold . A literature review of theeffect of gender on agricultural produc-tivity in several countries of Africa andAsia also concludes that output could beincreased notably if women farmers hadthe same access to inputs and educat ionas male farmers ( Quisumbing 1996).

Fourth, women in many parts of South Asia are often better informedthan men about traditional seed vari-eties and the attributes of trees andgrasses. If they had greater control overland and farming, this knowledge couldbe put to better use.

Fifth, tenure security, and especiallytitles can empower women to assertthemselves better with agencies thatprovide inputs and extension services.

While welfare arguments for women’sland rights have received some policyattention, there is yet little recognition

of the potential positive effects on effi-ciency. In fact, some argue that landtransfers to women will have a negativeefficiency effect, in that such transferswill reduce out put by reducing farm sizeand increasing fragmentation. However,there is no noteworthy evidence of anadverse size effect on output . In fact, in

India and other parts of South Asia,small farms are found to have a highervalue of output per cultivated unit thanlarge farms (Banerjee 2000); and frag-

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mentation can arise equally with maleinheritance. Also, where necessary,farmers have dealt with fragmentation invarious ways: consolidation through pur-chase and sale; land leasing arrange-ments to bring together cultivation unitseven where ownership units are scat-tered; and joint investment and cultiva-tion by small groups. In India, as a resultof these measures, the number of frag-ment s per farm has declined from 5.7 in1961 to 2.7 in 1991.

It is thus important t o contest a priorinegative efficiency arguments, such asthe fragmentation argument, which are

typically put forward only in relation towomen’s claims to inheritance , but not inrelation to men’s claims. Equally, the pos-itive product ivity effects of more gender-equal land access, and of greater tenuresecurity and access to inputs for womenfarmers, found in some existing studies,need emphasis, even while expanding thebase of empirical analysis. As noted, thesepositive effects could be especially im-

portant in regions of high female head-edness, or where the feminization of agri-culture is moving apace as more menthan women ent er nonfarm occupations.

Equality and Empowerm entThe equality argument is an importantone in and of itself, since gender equali-ty is a measure of a just and progressivesociety. But, in addition, equality in landrights is a critical element in women’seconomic empowerment. The word“empowerment” is now widely used inthe literature, usually without beingdefined. Here empowerment is defined“as a process that enhances the ability of disadvantaged (‘powerless’) individualsor groups to challenge and change (inthe ir favor) existing power relationshipsthat place them in subordinate econom-

ic, social and political positions”(Agarwal 1994: 39) .

Endowin g women with lan d would em power them econom ically as well as

strengthen their ability to challengesocial and political gend er in equ ities .An illust rat ive example is women’s expe-rience in the Bodhgaya struggle in Bihar(eastern India). Here, in the late-1970s,women and men of landless households

jointly agitated for ownership rights inthe land they cultivated, which wasunde r t he illegal possession of a Math ( atemple–monastery complex) . During themovement, women demanded indepen-dent land rights, and received them intwo villages, with marked implications.In the villages where men alone receivedtitles, women’s insecurity grew, with anincrease in men’s tendency to th reat enwives with eviction in situations of do-mestic conflict: “Get out of the house, theland is mine now” (Manimala 1983: 15).But where women got t itles they graphi-cally descr ibed their feeling of being em-powered: “We had t ongues but could notspeak, we had feet but could not walk.Now that we have the land, we have thestrength to speak and walk” (Alaka andChetna 1987: 26). ( Also see Box 1.)

This sense of empowerment accom-panying improved land rights alsoenh ance s women’s ability t o asser tthemselves with in the home, in the com-munity, and with the State.

From the preceding discussion it isclear that land ri ghts can serve m u ltiple

fu n ctions in ru ral women ’s lives whi chare n ot easy to replicate throu gh other means . This is important t o keep in mindsince the present thrust of most nation-al and international agencies is not onland rights but on micro-credit programswhich are being promoted as a panacea,especially (but not only) for poor ruralwomen. Although cred it is clear ly an im-portant need for poor women, many indi-vidual women not only face problems inretaining control over such loans, but the

privileging of this one form of supportover all other livelihood sources canprove problematic and diversionary. Anumber of evaluations show that such



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The Bodhgaya movement , initiated in 1978 in

the Gaya district of Bihar, was a struggle bylandless laborers and sharecroppers to gainrights in land which they had cultivated fordecades. The land, some 9,575 acres spreadover 138 villages, was held by a Math (amonastery-cum-temple complex) , much of itin violation of land ceiling laws. Math officialsexploited the peasants and also sexuallyabused the women. The struggle emergedunder t he leadership of the Chat ra Yuva Sang-harsh Vahini, a Gandhian-socialist yout h or-ganization founded in 1975 by JayaprakashNarayan (a contemporary of Mahatma Gan-dhi) and committed to improving the lot of the disadvantaged. Vahini membership wasrestricted t o those u nder thirty, and includ-ed women in every tier of the organization.

The movement lasted several years. Itsprimary slogan was Jo zameen ko boye jote,voh zameen ka m alik hai (t hose who sow andplough the land are the owners of the land).Women played a crucial role in the move-ment. In 1980, for instance, the activists

decided to seize the land and cultivate itindependently of the Math. About 3,000acres were captured and ploughed. Despitepolice attacks , sowing was completed . At har-vest time, the att acks were renewed. Sincewomen usually harvested the crops, it wasthey who faced the brunt. As the repressionintensified, women’s involvement increased .Women also par ticipat ed in the movement ’snonviolent protests, despite threats of beat-ings and rape by the Math’s hired ruffians.Over time, women began participating inequal numbers with the men and also court-ing arrest with accompanying children.

In addition, women organized shivirs(camps) to discuss their concerns within thest ruggle. They focused on women ’s exploita-tion, th eir exclusive r esponsibility for house-work, discrimination against girl children,men’s verbal and physical violence againstthe m, and (most importantly) women’s needfor independent land rights. Resolutionswere passed, including one against wife-beating and another demanding land inwomen’s own names.

Finally in 1981, the government identified1,000 acres of the Math’s land for red istribu-

tion t o th e agitating farmers. The Vahini

drew up a list, giving priority to landlesslaborers, the disabled, widows, and smallpeasant s. Women other t han widows did notfigure in the list, and they protested theirexclusion: “We were in the forefront of thefight, carrying our children in our wombsand in our arms. We went to jail andfaced the lathis [sticks]; we also did all thehousework. But when the land was distrib-uted, we were pushed back, we didn’t evencome to know by what rules t he land was dis-tributed” (Manimala 1983: 15).

After a prolonged debate on why womenshould have indep endent land rights, in 1982it was decided that women t oo would receiveland in their own names in future distribu-tion. In two villages the villagers unanimous-ly approved lists for giving land only towomen and widowers. But the District Offi-cer in charge of registering the titles strong-ly opposed this, arguing that there was noprecedent for giving land to persons otherthan heads of households, who were typical-

ly men. The villagers, however, refused totake any land unless it was given t o women.Almost three years passed before women

were finally allocated land. In time, all theMath ’s illegal holdings were distr ibuted andwomen received land in various ways: indi-vidual titles, joint titles with husbands, aswidows, destitute and disabled persons, and(without precedent) in some cases asunmarried adult daughters. Although suchwomen were few since most girls t here weremarried before they were eighteen, the ideathat unmarried daughters were eligible wasan important step forward. Each personreceived about one acre.

How did all this come about? Initially,women encountered opposition at three lev-els: from husbands, from the Vahini activists,and from governmen t officials. Women’s abil-ity to overcome these layers of oppositiondepended on several factors: men’s recogni-tion over t ime that women’s cont ributionswere crucial to t he movement ’s succes s; thegrowing solidarity among women and theirarticulation of their gende r-specific inte rest sas distinct from those of the men of theirclass and community; the support of some

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credit programs do not reach the pooresthouseholds, let alone change the genderbalance in property ownership and con-

trol. In fact a recent study for Bangla-desh (cited in IFAD 2001) identified alack of access to land and homest eads asmajor factors in the exclusion of thepoorest from credit NGOs.

An alternative t o the existing approachof promoting micro-credit for non-land-related micro-enterprises is to link landand micro-credit by providing rural wom-en who depend on land-based livelihoods

with credit for leasing in or purchasingland in groups ( as discussed later) . Heremicro-credit would complement ratherthan substitute for efforts to enhance

women’s land r ights. But t his wouldrequire a significant shift from the exist-ing focus of most micro-credit programs.

W om en’s Land Accessin Practice

To what extent do women have effect iveland rights in practice? Consider thethree major ways by which women cangain land: inheritance, State transfers,and the market. Of these, inheritance is

the most important, since in most coun-tries arable land is largely privatized. InIndia, 86 percent of arable land is pri-vately held. Moreover, efforts to pro-

middle-class female Vahini activists with afeminist perspective; and the process of debate in which women persuasively coun-tered opposition.

For instance, when t he women protested

against their exclusion from t he Vahini’s ini-tial list of land recipients, the men argued:“What difference does it make in whose namethe land is register ed?” The women respond-ed: “If it doesn’t make a difference, then putit down in t he woman ’s name . Why argueabout it?” To the suggest ion tha t women’sdemand would weaken class unity, the wom-en replied: “Equality can only strengthen,not weaken an organization, but if it doesweaken our un ity, that will mean that our realcommitment is not to equality or justice butto the transfer of power, both economic andsocial, from the hands of one set of men tothe hands of another set of men.” When themen asked : “How can you cultivate t he landon your own? Who will plough it for you?”they replied: “Well, who will harvest yourcrop in that case? We are ready to cultivatethe land with h oes instead of ploughs, but wewant it in our n ames” (Manimala 1983).

Indeed the significance of the Bodhgayast ruggle from women’s per spective lies not

just in its be ing South Asia’s first land st rug-gle where wom en ’s land interests receivedexplicit attention. It also lies in the processby which t his was achieved. It is note worthythat a largely illiterate peasant community

discussed at length issues such as women’sindependent rights in economic resources,domestic violence, female education, andpostmarital residence, and on several countsresolved t hem in women’s favor. The debat e,

although arduous, brought significant re-wards. The question of gender equality beganto be seen by many not as divisive but asintegral to the movement ’s success. As aresult, women’s part icipat ion in dec ision-making also increased, wife-beating and ver-bal abuse against women was deemed shame-ful, and male villagers began to take care of cooking and childcare in the women’s shivirs ,while the women participated in discussions.

The Bodhgaya women were also indirect-ly helped by a growing women’s movementand a spreading feminist consciousness inthe country in the late 1970s and early 1980s,when issues concerning women’s rights werebeing raised in various forums. In contrast,women in the Tebhaga movement of the 1940s(see Box 2) had not demanded independentland rights. At that time, there was an ab-sence of cohesiveness among women on gen-der questions; a lack of spokespersons amongthem who could articulate a feminist perspec-tive; and th e absence of a widespread wom-

en’s movement in the count ry. For the Bodh-gaya women, the situation was favorable onall these count s. They were t hus able to art ic-ulate their interests overtly. However, theBodhgaya experience still awaits replication.



mote gender equality in inheritance areimportant for ensuring that the landobtained t hrough the government or themarket does not pass solely to maleheirs in t he next generation.

InheritanceIt is not easy to determine how manywomen inherit land in practice, giventhe noted absence of gender-disaggre-gated land ownership data at the all-Indialevel. To assess ownership patterns, wetherefore have to depend on small-scalestudies. These can nevertheless be reveal-ing, such as a 1991 sample survey of ruralwidows by Martha Chen covering sevenstates (Table 1; see also Chen 2000).Chen found that of the 470 women withlandowning fathers, only 13 percent in-herited any land as daughters. (Region-ally, the figure ranged from 18 percent insouth India to 8 percent in north India.)For all-India this means that 87 percentof the surveyed women did not receivetheir legal due as daughters.

Women as widows fared somewhatbetter. Of the 280 widows whose de-ceased husbands owned land, 51 per-cent inherited some. But th is still means

10 • S E E D S

that half the widows with legal claims didnot inherit anything. And of those thatdid, typically their shares were notrecorded formally in the village landrecords. Other studies have shown thatwhere t he land is so recorded, invariablythe widow’s name is entered jointly withadult sons, who effectively control theland. The popular perception is that thewidow’s share is for her maintenance andnot for her direct control or use. Widowswithout sons rarely inherit. Moreover,widows in India const itute only about 11percent of rural women, 76 percent of whom are over 50 years old, many of them too old to effect ively work the land.Hence inheritance as widows does notcompensat e women for their being disin-herited as daughters.

Gover nment TransfersA second potential source of land for wom-en is State transfers. These transfers canbe part of land reform programs, resettle-

ment schemes for those displaced by largedams and other projects, or antipovertyprograms. Irrespect ive of the program un-der which the transfers occur, typically

A s s o c i a t i o n

f o r L a n

d R e f o r m

a n d D e v e l o p m e n

t , B a n g l a d e s h



Number 21, 2002 • 11

the land is allotted almost exclusively tomales, even in communities which t radi-tionally practiced matrilineal inheritance,such as the Garos of northeast India.

Also this bias is found no mat te r whichpolitical party is in power. In West Ben-gal, for instance, in the late 1970s andearly 1980s the Communist Part y of India(Marxist) , which was then in power, car-ried out “Operat ion Barga”—a major landreform initiative which sought to securethe rights of tenants by systematicallyregistering them. However, it primarilyregistered men. Land distributed to thelandless also went almost entirely to men.Although an exception was supposed tobe made for single-women households—those divorced, deserted, and withoutadults sons—few qualifying single wom-en received land in practice. A village inMidnapur district studied by Gupta(1993) is indicative. She found that 98percent of the 107 holdings distributedwent to men. In nine out of ten female-headed households the land went to thewomen’s sons; and only eight of the eigh-teen single women received land. Mar-ried women did not receive even jointtitles.

This male bias has a long history. His-torically, even in peasant movements inwhich women were significant partici-pants, they were not recognized as inde-

pendent claimants to land. The Tebhagaand Telangana movements of the 1940sare cases in point (see Box 2 on the for-mer) . Exceptions to this pattern are fewand far between, one being the earlier-mentioned 1970s Bodhgaya struggle, inwhich women demanded and receivedindependent land shares in two villages.

In the more recent period, a few of India’s Five Year P lans have given somerecognition to women’s land claims. Forinstance , the E ight h Five Year P lan(1992–97) directed st ate governments toallot 40 percent of ceiling surplus land towomen alone and the rest jointly to bothspouses. (This was land acquired by thegovernment from those owning morethan a permissible ceiling.) The NinthFive Year Plan ( 1997–2000) went fur-ther in terms of policy formulation. In itschapter on poverty alleviation it incorpo-rated many of the aut hor’s recommenda-tions on promoting group rights and col-lective farm management for women,along with providing infrast ructural sup-port. It also recognized the need for col-lecting gender-disaggregated informa-tion on land ownership and use.

The crunch, however, lies in whether

state governments are willing to imple-ment these recommendations. Also theceiling surp lus land available for distribu-tion is extremely limited : it came t o only

Table 1 Rural Widows Who Inherited Land as Daughters and as WidowsTotal Father Women who inher- Husband Women who inher-

sample a owned land ited as daughters owned land ited as widowsRegion/ State No. No. No. % No. No. %Northern India 262 229 18 8 193 98 51Bijar 71 70 2 3 57 16 28

Rajasthan 49 42 2 5 39 27 69Uttar Pradesh (hills) 50 50 1 2 45 23 51West Bengal 92 67 13 19 52 32 62

Southern India 283 241 43 18 87 45 52Andhra Pradesh 79 77 12 16 37 18 49Kerala 104 65 28 43 15 10 67Tamil Nadu 100 99 3 3 35 17 49

All regions 545 b 470 61 13 280 143 51

Source: Martha Chen (personal communication of results f rom her 1991 survey).a For all states, other than Kerala, the sample consists only of Hindu widows. In Kerala, it also includes some Muslim matrilineal households.b This is a subsample consisting of curr ently widowed women. The original sample had 562 ever-widowed women spread over 14 villages, twoeach in the seven states listed.



12 • S E E D S

The Tebhaga movement emerged in 1946–47in undivided Bengal, in the footsteps of thegreat Bengal famine of 1943. Sharecroppersin the region had no occupancy rights andfaced a constant thr eat of eviction. The land-lords took half the produce while bearing nopart of the production costs, levied illegaltaxes, and sexually abused the women. Themovement, spearheaded by the BengalProvincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS), under theleadership of the Communist Party of India,demanded a reduction of land rents and anend to other forms of exploitation. The

women’s self-defense league p layed a crit icalmobilizing role among women .Prior to the movement, sexual exploita-

tion was closely linked to caste and econom-ic oppression:

Like the m an goes of the [sharecropper’s] trees, like the ban an as of hisgarden , like the gourd s of his thatched roof, like the eggplant from his gar-den, his daughters and daughters-in -law were th e [lan dlord’s] proper-ty…. If the [landlord] expresses hiswish, the daughter or the wife of the[sharecropper] will be sent to the[lan dlord’s] h ouse. (a woman activist,quoted in Cooper 1988: 102)

Both Hindu and Muslim women partici-pated in the movement in large numbers:

Women who remai ned in the villagesdu rin g the day…[warn ed] people of

police arrivals by sou n din g alarm s,blowing conch shells, for example.They provided shelter and food for activi sts. Women who frequ ently wen t to market became responsible insome areas for communication and carrying messages between organiz-ers. In som e villages there were spe-cial [wom en ’s corps] wh ich gu arded villages. Poor p easant w omen partic-ipated in m eetings and demonstra-tions, joined delegations to land-lords, and occasionally members of Tebhaga committees, although not holdin g particular positions.

However, wom en ’s m ilitan cy w as re-membered mostly because of their

actions to resist arrests, when theydisplayed incredible courage, initia-tive and heroism in rescuin g people.(Cooper 1988: 270–271)

Women ’s weapon s of resist ance werehousehold implements, the commonplace ob-

jects of their daily existence, with which they(often successfully) confronted the police:

As the police entered the v illages, bellsand conch shells used to be blownan d the echo could be heard from oneend to the other.... It was the peasant women folk who organi zed this n ovel

form of warn in g. Almost im m ediate-ly on hearing this, all the women-

folk w ould take h old of broom sticks,lathis and their husking pestles...an d form a barricade on the villageroad, so that the police could not enter. (Chakravart ty 1980: 90)

In disarming police parties, in resistingarre sts , and in rescu ing people, women’s ini-tiatives assumed he roic proportions. On sev-eral occasions, attempts by landlords to

appropriate the harvested paddy from thepeasants’ fields with police help were alsothwarted by the women. For instance, inKendemari village:

... they least expected that a m ilitant group of [peasant] women... would advance with daos, choppers and broomsticks. Tied to their saree-end s they carried a han dful of du st,mixed with chilli powder. As theyapproached the police, they threwthis powder in their eyes and the

police ran for their lives. (Chakra-vartty 1980: 94).

Often, however, the confrontations wereviolent, and many courageous women wereinjured or killed in police firings.

During the campaign, several gende r con-cerns were voiced, such as wife-beating. Asone woman graphically put it: “[When] thehusband and wife together are dying in thefield, in t he bat tle for Tebhaga; when the twotogether are fighting against the enemy, how

then was it possible for one soldier to beatthe other after returning home?” (cited inCusters 1987: 177). In some areas the cam-

Box 2The Tebhaga Stor y



Number 21, 2002 • 13

0.56 percent of India’s arable land at t hetime of the Eighth Plan and today it comesto less than 0.2 percen t of the country’sarable land . Even in West Bengal, a statewith t he largest amount of area declaredsurplus to date, the total ceiling surplusland came to only 8.7 percent of the

state ’s arable land, and today virtuallynone is left for distribution.

Hence while it is importan t t o reducebiases in government land t ransfers, andthereby also to send the message thatwomen’s claims deserve attention, interms of actual land area such transferscan go but a small way in improvingIndian women’s land statu s.

T hrough the M arketThe third source of land for women isthrough lease or purchase. The weight of this option will depend on financial, insti-tutional, and infrastructural support towomen. In itself, this is a limited optionsince individual rural women seldomhave access to adequate financial re-sources for this purpose. Also, in termsof purchase , rural land markets are oftenconstrained and land is not always avail-able for sale. For instance, an all-Indiastudy of land sales among a sample of

landowning households in the early1970s found that only 1.75 percent hadsold any land during the survey year(Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1985). Anothe rstudy, for Uttar Pradesh (northwest In-dia) that examined land sales over athirty-year period from the 1950s to the

1980s, found that only 4.1 percent of owned agricultural land had been sold(Shankar 1990). Hence for both sexes,the possibilities of purchasing land arelimited, with women being especiallyconstrained. Land purchase t hrough themarket thus cannot compensate for gen-der inequalities in inher itance or govern-ment transfers. There is somewhat great-er potential for obtaining land on lease,since this is more readily available.

For both lease and purchase, howev-er, external support t o women would im-prove access. For instance, in parts of South Asia, groups of landless womenhave been using subsidized credit pro-vided by the State, for leasing in or pur-chasing land in groups, and cultivating it

jointly (as elaborated further below).Through such collective endeavor, landthrough the market could well prove animportant supplementary means forwomen to acquire land, even if not theprimary means.

paign against domestic violence made astrong impact, but in others the culprits gotoff lightly. Especially in Muslim areas whenmale peasants objected to women attendingthe peasant committee meetings, some of

the women retorted: “It does not hurt yoursense of propriety when we sow or harvest inthe fields along with you. How does it becomeobjectionable when we want to attend kisansamiti meetings?” (cited in Custers 1987:172). Objections nevertheless continued,and the issue was never resolved.

Despite women’s part icipation, unequalgender relations persisted both within andoutside the movement. Whatever gainswomen made were ad hoc. Their objectionsto domestic violence led to the boycott of

some of the male activists responsible, butthe issue was not seen as integral to the larg-er p olitical stru ggle to ch ange economic andsocial relations that the movement wasaddressing. In part icular, women’s rights in

land were not discussed. Women also playedlittle role in decisionmaking. And while dur-ing the most intense periods of the agitationwomen emerged from their domestic roles,they were forced t o return to housework andlargely unchanged gender relations withinthe family when the struggle ended. It wasnot until several decades later, during theBodhgaya movement , that oppress ion withinth e family and women’s r ight s in landemerged as significant concerns within apeasant movement in South Asia.



14 • S E E D S

O bst acles t o W omen’sLand AccessWhat obstructs women from gaininggreater land access? While the difficul-ties that individual women face in get-ting land through the market were indi-cated above, those relating to privateand government land are more complex.

Privat ized Land: Legal, Social,and Administrative Biases

To m y brother belong y our green fieldsO father, wh ile I am bani shed afar…

— (Hindi folksong) Always you said Your brother and you are the sam eO Father. But today y ou betray m e…

My doli leaves y our hou se.—(folksong, personal communicationVeena Das)

Inheritance lawsIn most of India, inheritance was tradi-tionally patrilineal ( that is ancestral prop-erty passed through the male line), withsome limited mat rilineal pockets ( whereancestral property passed through thefemale line), as in northern and centralKerala in the sout h and Meghalaya in thenortheast (Agarwal 1994, 1995). Amongthe majority Hindu community, for in-stance, the common pattern was forwomen to inherit only in the absence of male heirs, typically in the absence of four generat ions of men in t he male lineof descent. Widows had the first claimand daughters followed. What womenreceived, however, was only a limited in-terest , that is, they enjoyed the propert ydur ing their lifet ime afte r which it revert-ed to t he original source. Also women’srights of disposal were restricted: theycould not mortgage, give, or sell the land,except in exceptional circumstances. In

most cases, the rights of Muslim womenin customary practice were very similarto t hose of Hindu women in the ir regionsof location.

During the twent ieth century, howev-er, through the concert ed e fforts of wom-en’s organizations, liberal lawyers, andsocial reformers, inheritance laws shift-ed significantly toward gender equality.Although these e fforts met with stiff re-sistance from many opinionmakers andpoliticians ( including India’s first Pre si-dent), the changes were facilitated bythe historic moment. It was a t ime whenthe idea of building a modern forward-looking nation was becoming part of thepopular imagination. Also the first elect-ed government of Independent India hada notable body of progressive profession-

als in Parliament, who supported theidea of gender-equal laws. As a result,most Indian women were able to negoti-ate much greater rights in postindepen-dence law than they had had a centuryago. For instance, t he Hindu SuccessionAct ( HSA) of 1956 made sons, daughters,and widows equal claimants in a man’sseparate property and in his share in the

joint family property. It also gave women

full control over what they inherited, touse and dispose of as they wished. Simi-larly, the Muslim Personal Law Shariat(Application) Act of 1937 substantiallyenh ance d Muslim women’s prop ert yrights compared with those prevailingunder custom.

Yet , in both communities some notableinequalities r emain. Both Hindu and Mus-lim inheritance laws, for instance, treat

agricultural land differently from otherproperty. The HSA exempted tenancyrights in agricultural land from its pur-view. Hindu women’s inheritance in t en-ancy land thus depends on state-leveltenurial laws, which in most northwest-ern stat es specify an order of devolutionthat strongly favors male agnatic heirs.Women come very low in the order of heirs, as was the case unde r age-old cus-

toms. Furthermore, these inequalitiescannot be challenged on constitutionalgrounds because land re form laws comeunder the Ninth Schedule of the Consti-



Number 21, 2002 • 15

tution. This constitutional provision wasmeant to protect land reform laws frombeing challenged by ent renched class inter-ests, but in the process ( albeit unwitt ing-ly) it also ent renched gender inequality.

Likewise, the Shariat Act of 1937,applicable to Muslims in India, excludedall agricultural land (both tenanted andowned) from its purview. Subsequently,some of the southern states extendedthe provisions of this Act to also coveragricultural land. In all other regions,however, agricultural land, unlike otherproper ty, continues t o devolve accordingto customs, tenurial laws, or other pre-

existing laws. In most of northwest India,such laws and customs give women’sproperty rights very low priority.

A second source of inequality lies inthe differential inheritance shares for menand women. In the HSA, for instance, al-though sons and daughters have equalshares in a man’s separate p roperty,the re is also the continued r ecognition of

joint family property in which sons but

not daughte rs have rights by birth . Againwhile three of the southern states (AndhraPradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka) andMaharashtra have amended this by in-cluding daughters as coparceners, andKerala has abolished joint family proper-ty altogether, all the other states remainhighly unequal. In the case of Muslimlaw, differential shares arise becausedaughte rs are allowed only half the share

of sons in any proper ty.In both Hindu and Muslim legal sys-

tems the regional contrast is also strik-ing. Gender inequality increases as wemove from south India northward. AmongHindus, for instance, northwest India isthe most gender unequal in relation towomen’s claims in both agricultural landand joint family property, while thesouthern states provide relative legal

equality on both counts. Central Indiafalls in-between. The map of women’slegal rights under Muslim law looksrather similar, with a distinct contrast

between northwest India and the rest of the country.

The enormity of women’s disinheri-tance ( such as that noted in Chen’s sur-vey, with only 13 percent of daughtersinheriting), however, cannot be explainedby unequal laws alone. Rather, amongthe critical factors underlying both thelaw and the gap between law and prac-tice are social and administrat ive biases.

Social biasConsider first the gap between legalrights and actual ownership. In most com-munities that were trad itionally patr ilin-

eal there is strong male resistance toendowing daughters with land. Apartfrom a reluctance to admit more claim-ants to the most valuable form of rural

property, resistance also stems from so-cial pract ices which de termine marriagechoices and postmarital residence. Tra-ditionally among matrilineal communi-ties where daughters had strong claimsin land (as in Kerala and Meghalaya),postmarital residence was in or near the

natal home. This kept t he land under t heoverall purview of the natal family, as d idclose-kin marriage. In cont rast, in trad i-tionally patrilineal communities, post-

A s h o k

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16 • S E E D S

marital residence was patrilocal (thewoman joined her husband in his natalhome) and often in another village. Inaddition, in northern India close-kin mar-riage was forbidden among most com-munities, and there were social taboosagainst parents asking married daugh-ter s for help dur ing economic crises.

Many of these customs continue to-day, and obstruct women’s claims espe-cially among upper-caste Hindus of thenorthwest who are the strictest in for-bidding in-village and close-kin mar-riages, and in socially rest ricting parent sfrom seeking help from married daugh-ters. Here endowing a daughter withland is seen as bringing virtually no re-ciprocal benefit, and any land inheritedby her is seen as lost to the family.Daughters face the greatest oppositionto their inheritance claims among suchcommunities. Opposition is less in southand northeast India where in-village andclose-kin marriages are allowed, andparents can, if they need to, seek sup-

port from married daughters.Many women also forgo their shares

in parental land in favor of brothers. Inthe absence of an effective state socialsecurity system, women see brothers asan important source of security, espe-cially in case of marital breakup, even if in practice brothers are seldom willingto support sisters for extended periods.Cultural constructions of gender, such

as how a “good sister” would behave,and practices such as female seclusion insome areas also discourage women fromasserting their rights. Where women donot “voluntarily” forgo their inheritanceclaims, male relatives have been knownto file court cases, forge wills, or resortto threat s and even physical violence .

The gender gap between the owner-ship and effective control of land is as

striking as that between law and prac-tice. Here too social practices andnotions of male entitlements play an

important role. For instance, marriagesin distant villages make direct cultiva-tion by women difficult. In many areasthis is compounded by illiteracy, highfertility, and social restrictions onwomen’s mobility and public int eract ion.While the pract ice of veiling is geograph-ically restricted, the ideology of femaleseclusion is more widespread and oper-ates in complex ways. Effectively, itrest ricts women’s contact with men bygendering forms of behavior, and gen-dering public and private space. Indeedin many north Indian villages, there areidentifiable spaces where men congre-

gate which women are expected toavoid, such as the market place.

This territorial gendering of spacereduces a woman’s mobility and part ici-pation in activities outside the home,especially market interact ion; limits herknowledge of the physical environment ;and disadvantages her in seeking infor-mation on new agricultural technologiesand practices, in purchasing inputs, and

in selling the product. These restr ictionsare strongest in northwest India (andespecially in the plains) and virtuallyabsent in the south and northeast. Of course, the cultural construction of gen-der, which defines appropriate femalebehavior, is not confined to northwestIndia; it also rest ricts women in southernIndia. But the strong ideology of purdahin the northwest circumscribes women

in particular ways.This regional difference in the social

rest rictions women face is also reflectedin women’s labor force participation rates,which are among the lowest in the north-west. Although th is does not imply lesserworkloads for women in aggregate terms,it does indicate lesser work mobility,lower economic visibility, and somet imeslesser exposure to the range of agricul-

tural tasks.Other difficulties facing women farm-

ers include their limited control over



Number 21, 2002 • 17

cash and credit for purchasing inputs,gender biases in ext ension services, ritu-al taboos against women ploughing, anddemands of advance cash payments bytractor or bullock owners for ploughingwomen’s fields. (No such demand is usu-ally made of male farmers, who, even if they are small owners, are assumed to becreditworthy.) Taboos against ploughingincrease women’s dependence on malehelp and reduce yields if ploughing is notdone in time.

Adm inist rat ive biasCommunity- and family-related social

constraints are compounded by the un-helpful approach of many governmentfunctionaries who typically share t he pre-vailing social biases and often obstruct theimplementat ion of laws favoring women.The bias is especially prevalent in t he r e-cording of daughters’ inheritance sharesby village officials. In the northwesternstate of Rajasthan, for instance, a num-ber of village officials told the author

that although they encouraged widows

to claim their shares, they discourageddaughters from doing so. Village coun-cils also tend to favor men on th is count.

*

At one level, all these constraints—legal, social, and administrative—appearformidable. Yet , as noted t hroughout ,there is a striking regional variability inthe strength of the constraints ( Agarwal1994). This provides potential entrypoints for change. South India has thefewest obstacles. Here legal rights arerelatively more equal, in-village andclose-kin marriage is allowed, there is

virtually no purdah, and female laborforce participation is medium to high.Northwest India is the area of most diffi-culty on all these fronts. Northeast andcent ral India come in-between. South In-dia could thus provide an important st art -ing point for further ing the goal of gen-der equality in effective proper ty rights.Demonstrated achievements in one re-gion could help subsequent attempts in

other regions.

Government TransfersWhile male bias within families can tosome extent be explained in terms of conflicting interests and social attitudesin relation to private land, why do gov-ernment s also transfer public land most-ly to men? There appear to be severalreasons for t his bias.

To begin with, there is the commonassumption that men are the primarycultivators and breadwinners and womenare the helpers and dependents. Thereis also a widespread social perceptionregard ing women’s appropriate roles andcapabilities. Here patrilineal biases haveinfluenced even mat rilineal communities.In Meghalaya, for instance, when govern-ment officials were asked by the author

in 1989 why, even in a traditionally ma-tr ilineal society, they did not allot land towomen, they responded: “Women can-

P h o t o

D i v i s i o n

, U n

i t e d N a t i o n s ,

N e w

Y o r k



18 • S E E D S

not come to our office to fill out paper s.”Yet in nearby streets t here were numer-ous women traders se lling their wares.

More generally, land-related policycontinues to be formulated largely on theassumpt ion of a unitary household with-in which resources transferred to menare seen as benefiting the whole family.However, the substantial evidence of unequal intrafamily resource allocations,noted earlier, indicates otherwise. Inter-estingly those who most vociferously op-pose such resource transfers to womenoften implicitly recognize that familiesare far from harmonious or altruistic

institutions. Rather they fear that wom-en will leave the family if they have thefallback option that property ownershipwould provide. For example, during theConstituent Assembly debate on the re-form of inheritance and marriage lawssuggested in t he Hindu Code Bill in 1949,one Congress legislator from West Bengalargued: “[If the daughter inherits,] ulti-mately the family will break up” and

queried: “Are you going to enact a codewhich will facilitate the breaking up of our households?” (GOI 1949: 1011). For-ty years later, in 1989, following my pre -sentation on gender and land rights at aland reform seminar at the IndianPlanning Commission, the then Ministerof Agriculture from northwest India ex-claimed: “Are you suggesting that womenshould be given rights in land? What do

women want? To break up the family?”Ironically, neither legislator need havefeared this if indeed households weremodels of harmony and altruism, or if itsmembers had the same interests andpreferences.

A concern with family unity also limitsthe nature of transfers to women in therare cases when such transfers do takeplace. For instance, there is a long-

standing assumption in public policy thatfarms will be cu ltivated on a family basis.As a result, the emphasis has been most-ly on giving women joint titles with hus-

bands, and allotting titles to widows onlyin the absence of adult men in the family.

In fact, it is fallacious to assume thatimproving women’s economic situation willlead t o family break-up. The likelihood isthat greater economic equality betweenmen and women with in the Indian fami-ly will help improve intrahouseholdresource allocation and gender relationsand strengthen family relationships. Forinstance, husbands will be less likely todesert or divorce wives who own proper-ty or have other means of access toassets such as land or homesteads.

W hat Should Be Done?

Given their entrenched nature, how canthe noted obstacles to women’s landrights be overcome? To enhance genderequality in land and livelihoods, changesappear necessary on at least five counts:conceptual, legal, social, institutional,and infrastructu ral (see Box 3).

Conceptual and EmpiricalFor a start , it appears necessary to chal-lenge the conventional model of a har-monious male-headed family in analysisas well as policy, and to recognize thefamily for what it is: a unit of both coop-erat ion and conflict, of both sharing andselfishness, where women and men canhave different inte rests, preferences, and

motivations, where self-interest alsoenters, and where allocations are oftenunequal and affected by different ial bar-gaining power. Indeed, there is anemerging consensus among gender-aware economists about the validity of the bargaining approach to underst and-ing intrahousehold dynamics. But ideo-logically the unitary household modelholds strong. If we are to think of radical

and effective interventions, it appearscritical to sh ift to more realistic assump-tions about intrafamily behavior whenformulating policy.



Number 21, 2002 • 19

It is also important to gather system-atic gender-disaggregated informationon land ownership and use, both for bet-

Box 3W hat Needs to Be Done?

For I mpr oving W omen’s Claim s

in Private Land1. Gender equality in inheritance laws2. Legal literacy and legal support serv-

ices3. Village-level r ecord ing of women ’s

shares4. Social and economic support for wom-

en from outside the family, includingthrough an effective social securitysystem

5. Changing social attitudes

For Improving W om en’s Accesst o Public LandGender equality in public land distribu-tion in:1. Land reform schemes2. Resettlement schemes

3 Other schemes, such as those initiatedunder poverty-alleviation programs

For Improving W om en’s Accessto Land Via t he Mar ket1. Subsidized credit for land purchase or

lease2. Land purchase or lease via group forma-

tion, and group cultivation of such land

For Improving the Viability ofW omen’s Farm ing Effor t s1. Agricultural extension services and

other infrastructural support for

women farmers2. Resource pooling and group invest-

ment in capital equipment; coopera-tive marketing

3. Women’s effect ive presence in villagedecisionmaking bodies

4. Gender sensitizing th rough the media,educat ional institutions, etc., for chang-ing social norms and social perceptions.

ter understanding the existing situationand for effective monitoring. The Agri-cultural Census of India and the NationalSample Surveys ( NSS), which both carryout per iodic data collection on land own-ership and use, collect only household-level information. There is a case herefor incorporating, in the next NSS round,a special module of quest ions for obtain-ing gender-disaggregated intrahouse-hold information. If necessary, th is couldinitially be t ried on a p ilot basis, and sub-sequently extended to the full survey.Nepal, as noted, has already redesignedits census to gather such information.

Researchers collecting land-related datain other projects could also be encour-aged to collect gender-disaggregated in-format ion on land ownership and use.

LegalThe legal aspect s should include at leastthree elements.

Amending the inheritance laws: Thesewould include a number of changes, suchas bringing agricultural land on par withother forms of property in the laws ap-plicable to Hindus as well as those ap-plicable to Muslims; abolishing the jointfamily property provision in the HSA, asdone in Kerala; and so on. Even thoughlegal changes are not a sufficient condi-tion for ensuring women’s ownership andcontrol over property, legal equality pro-vides an essential tool in the hands of

gender-progressive groups, who could thenwork for de facto equality. Progressive leg-islat ion also underlines t he State ’s com-mitment to the idea of gender equality.

Legal literacy: This is essential tomake laws effective and needs to reachboth adults and near-adults. For the lat-ter, legal literacy could be made part of the curriculum in the senior years of school.

Record ing women’s shares: Villagewomen need support t o ensure that theirland shares are correct ly recorded by therelevant village official, and need legal



20 • S E E D S

advice and help if they wish to contestthe ir claims with either the family or theadministration.

In all these efforts, gender-progres-sive groups could play a significant role.

SocialUnless and until women’s claims begin tobe seen as socially legitimate, parentswho have a male bias are likely to usethe right of making wills to disinheritdaughters, even if the laws are madefully gender-equal. Similarly, efforts areneeded to change conservative or nega-tive percep tions about women’s appro-priate roles and abilities, and to chal-lenge social norms that rest rict women’spublic mobility and interaction.

For instance, the problem posed bywomen’s marriage outside the natal vil-lage arises only partly from the distancesinvolved and mostly from social strictureson women’s mobility, and social percep-tions about women’s lesser abilities anddeservedness. Men are seldom deniedtheir property rights even if they migrateto distant parts (as many men, especiallyyounger ones, do to seek jobs in cities) .

Although social att itudes, norms, andperceptions are not easy to alter, certaintypes of interventions could further theprocess. For instance, government initia-tives to t ransfer land titles and infrastruc-tural support to women farmers wouldhave a notable demonstration effect. In-terventions to strengthen extrafamilyeconomic support for women, includingthrough a government social securityscheme, would help r educe women’s de-pendence on relatives and especially onbrothers in whose favor women oftenforgo their claims. Overall, economic sup-port would also enhance women’s abilityto challenge inequalities in the familyand community. In so far as t he popularmedia is one of the arenas where genderroles and relations are both projectedand constructed, media interventions in

a gender-progressive direction wouldalso help t ransform social attitudes.

Institutional

Reforms in this area need to be holisticand innovative. For instance, policymak-ers generally assume that farms will becultivated on a family basis. Hence t o theextent that the government is beginningto recognize that women farmers toohave legitimate claims in land, joint titles(titles held jointly by husbands andwives) are mostly favored. Such titleshave both positive and negative implica-tions. On the positive side, clearly get-ting some land is better for women thanhaving none. But on the negative side,

joint titles also presen t women with sev-eral potential problems. Women oftenfind it difficult to gain control over theproduce, or to bequeath the land as theywant, or to claim their shares in case of marital conflict. As some rural womenexplained: “By being tied to the land wewould be t ied to the man, even if he beatus” ( author’s int erviews, 1989). Alsowith joint t itles wives cannot easily exer-cise their priorities in land use if thesepriorities happen to differ from those of their husbands. Most importantly, jointtitles constrain women from exploringalternative institutional arrangementsfor cultivation and management.

Individual titles, by contrast, givewomen greater flexibility and controlover the land. At the same t ime, individ-ual women often lack funds for equip-ment or inputs, and where holdings arevery small individual investment inequipment can prove uneconomical.Individual women also face considerablepressure from male relatives who wantto acquire or control the land.

However, institutional solutions tothese problem s can be foun d , providedwomen’s land claims are not tied t o the irspouses, and if the unit of investment and cultivation is not limited to the



Number 21, 2002 • 21

household, indeed is n ot defined by thehousehold at all. Table 2 summarizesthese alternat ives.

One alternative would be to helpwomen who own individual holdings(whether obtained through inheritance,

purchase, or from the government) toinvest in capital inputs jointly with otherwomen, while managing product ion indi-vidually. Male farmers have done this inseveral regions, by joint ly invest ing, say,in a tubewell where t hey have contiguousplots. This reduces the individual cost of major investments. Women owners of plots could be encouraged to do thesame. In fact, in Bodhgaya, a governmentscheme provided funds to groups of fivefarmers each to invest in pumpsets. Twosuch groups were constituted of womenfarmers alone. Although there are no fol-low-up reports on how well this worked,it was a step in the right direction.

A second type of arrangement couldbe for women to purchase land jointlywhile owning it individually and farmingit collectively. One of the most interest-ing examples of this is the DeccanDevelopment Society (DDS), an NGOworking with poor women’s collect ivesin some 75 villages in Medak district—a

drought-prone tract of Andhra Pradesh(AP) in southern India. DDS has helpedwomen from landless families establishclaims on land, through purchase andlease, using various government schemes(for a detailed discussion, see Menon

1996; Satheesh 1997; and Agarwal 2001).One such scheme of the ScheduledCaste Development Corporation in APprovides subsidized loans to landlessschedu led caste women for buying agri-cultural land. Catalyzed by DDS, womenform a group, apply for the loan afteridentifying the land they want to buy,and divide the purchased land amongthemselves, each woman being registeredas the owner of about an acre. Cultiva-tion, however, is done jointly by eachgroup. Today 24 women’s groups in 14villages are jointly cultivating 474 acresof purchased land. In the process of working together, they have learned tosurvey and measure land, hire tractors,travel to distant towns to meet govern-ment officials, obtain input s, and marketthe produce . Moreover, DDS has system-atically promoted organic farming in allits crop cultivation schemes. Women alsogrow a combination of crops ( rather thana single crop) , which reduces the risk of

Table 2 Women Managing Land Under Various Institutional ArrangementsExamples of actual

Form of control Source of land Investment Cultivation Use practice

Conventional approach

Individual women Inherited or purchased Individual Individual Crops Typical

Alternatives 1. Individual Inherited, purchased, Joint (with Individual Crops Bodhgaya (Bihar)

women or government transfer other women) (government promoted)

2. Individual ownership, Group purchase of Joint (with Joint Crops Deccan Developmentgroup management private land by women, other women) Society (DDS) inby women divided into individually Andhra Pradesh

owned plots

3. Group of Group lease of private Joint Joint Crops DDS, BRACwomen land Vegetables Kerala

4. Group of Male owners; cultivation Individual Individual Crops DDS’s Communitywomen overseen by women’s Grain Fund Scheme

groups

5. Group of Government transfer Joint Joint Crops Untried so farwomen to women’s groups



22 • S E E D S

total crop failure and provides a morebalanced diet.

Joint purchase and cultivation of landby women’s groups could now be encour-aged in other states as well, on the basisof other government schemes. For in-stance, a 1995–96 central governmentscheme in India provides loans to thepoor for land purchase as part of the In-tegrated Rural Development Programme.

A th ird possibility lies in women leas-ing land as a group and cultivating it

joint ly. Under one of DDS’s programs,women in AP lease in land from privateowners. Initiated in 1989, the program isnow said to cover 623 acres across 52villages. Under anot her of DDS’s effort s,women’s groups have used loan moneyavailable via the government ’s povert yalleviation scheme, DWACRA (Develop-ment of Women and Children in RuralAreas), for leasing in land. Committeesof women examine the lease proposals,assess land quality, keep r ecords of eachwoman’s work input, and ensure equi-table distribution of wages and produce.Women who fail to turn up for collect ivelabor are subject to fines (such as twodays’ wage equivalent) decided by thewomen in their weekly group meeting.Persistent default can lead to exclusionfrom the group ( author’s int erviews,September 1998). Several women’s groupshave used the revolving fund providedunder this scheme to collectively leasein and cultivate land. An assessment in1995 showed that each woman partici-pant received enough cereal and pulsesto feed the whole family for a month, inaddition to receiving harvest wages.DWACRA loans have seldom been usedin such innovative ways.

DDS is not t he only NGO encouragingland leasing by women’s groups. In Ker-ala, some women’s groups are leasingland during the off-season for vegetablecultivation. In Bangladesh, women’sgroups belonging to t he Bangladesh Ru-

ral Advancement Committee (BRAC)grow crops on leased-in land.

A fourth t ype of institutional arrange-ment is of women’s groups managing andoverseeing cultivation on land owned bymen. Again DDS provides an illustrativeexample. Here women are jointly over-seeing the cultivation of privately ownedland that had been lying mostly fallow.Most of this was ceiling surplus land of poor quality distributed by the govern-ment to landless men. The land remainedlargely uncultivated, while the familiesdepended heavily on the public distribu-tion system ( PDS), which was woefully in-adequate for providing food security. Sup-ported by the Ministry of Rural Develop-ment, DDS initiated this program to bringfallow land under the plough, by extend-ing subsidized loans to the owners. Un-der t he scheme, each part icipating farm-er can enter two acres, and get loans ininstallments over three years. In return,over five years, the farmer gives a speci-fied percentage of the grain he harveststo a Community Grain Fund (CGF) . Com-mittees of women make sure that thefarmers use the loans for cu ltivation andcollect the harvest share for the CGF.This grain is sold at a low price to thepoorest households in each village. TheCGF t hus serves as a form of alternativePDS. This project is now working in 43villages, covering 3,263 acres and 2,247marginal and small farmers, and is esti-mated to have produced enough extragrain to provide 3 million total extrameals or 1,000 extra meals per family.

A fifth type of arrangement, untriedto date, is one where poor rural womencould hold group rights over land dis-tributed by the government, or otherwiseacquired by women (Agarwal 1994). Ef-fectively, the women would be stakehold-ers in a kind of land tru st. Each womanin the group would have use rights butnot the right to alienate the land. Thedaughters-in-law and daughters of such



Number 21, 2002 • 23

households who are resident in the vil-lage would share these use r ights. Daugh-te rs leaving the village on marriage wouldlose such rights but could re-establishthem by rejoining the production efforts,should they return, say on divorce orwidowhood. In other words, land accesswould be linked formally with residenceand working on the land, as was the caseunder some traditional systems whenland was held collectively by a clan.

In these various institutional alterna-tives, women are not just adjunct work-ers on family farms; they have directcontrol over production and distribu-tion. Cooperation is between womenwith common interests, and not be-tween hou seholds . The arrangements en-able women to gain access to landthrough the market or through the com-munity—access that women rarely haveas individuals. Where linked with landpooling, joint investment, and collectivemanagement, these arrangements canalso help overcome any problems of small size and fragmentation.

Moreover, a collective approach toland management helps women mobilizefunds for capital investment on the farm,

take advantage of economies of scale,and cooperate in labor sharing and pro-duct market ing. In addition, if the land isheld under a system of group rights (asin the fifth alternative) it would st rength-en women’s ability to withstand pressurefrom relatives and retain control over theland; and it would circumvent the prob-lem of inheritance, since the women wouldnot have rights of alienat ion ( see Box 4) .It would also circumvent the issue of outside-village marr iages, since women’srights would be based on residence. In1995, when the author asked a numberof women elected to village panchayatsin Madhya Pradesh which arrangementthey felt might be of most advantage towomen—individual titles, joint titleswith husbands, or group rights withother women—most strongly supportedthe idea of group rights (MadhyaPradesh Chief Ministe r’s consulta tionmeet ing in 1995 on the st ate’s proposedPolicy for Women).

Some policymakers and scholars ar-gue against cooperat ive farming by point-ing to India’s failed effort s of the 1950sand early 1960s. However, the focus thenwas on households, and on male heads as

V i k s a t , G u

j a r a t



24 • S E E D S

efforts from disparate village householdsto disadvantaged individuals with com-mon interest s. Focusing on the effects onpoor women could open an important win-dow of opport unity to revive land reform,

community cooperat ion, and joint farm-ing in a rad ically new form.

For trying out some of these institu-tional arrangements the southern st ates

representatives of households. Not onlydid gender receive no ment ion, but inad-equate attention was paid also to socio-economic inequalities between house-holds, with the result that cooperatives

were often large-farmer dominated. Acrucial difference in the approaches out-lined here is that the institutional formsdiscussed shift the focus of cooperative

The following quotes cap tur e the changeswomen have experienced:

Our hu sbands u sed to drink an d beat us. Now the buffaloes are ours, theland is ours and they are workingtoo. Nobody is takin g advan tage of u swomen. (Ratnamma, Algole village, citedin Hall 1999)

Now [wi th land] w e have the cou ragean d con fidence to com e ou t and d ealwith people and property by our-

selves. (Chilkamma, Krishnapur village,cited in Hall 1999)

Now we are self-sufficient. [We are]able to get food an d clothin g…. Pre-viously we had nothing and had tosay yes to everything; now we have sta-tus because we have the lan d. ( Pasta-pur women’s group , cited in Hall 1999)

In itially the m en said: If wom en go tom eetings, what shou ld we m en d o—wash the dishes? We said, men and women should work equally… Arewe the only persons born to work?

Earlier we ate half a roti, now we eat one. (Sharifabi to aut hor 1998)

[With group cultivation] wom en canshare the profit an d the responsibili-ty. In individual cultivation, differ-ent women have different levels of agricultural knowledge and re-sources for in pu ts. In collective cu lti-vation they can make unequal con-tributions. Those with less can com-

pensate the others by taking a re-duced share of the harvest, or byrepayi ng them in in stallmen ts. Differ-

ent levels of contribution are fine, be-cause the wom en all know w hat eachother’s resou rces are. (Chinanarsamma,Past apur village, cited in Hall 1999)

They [the high-caste people] u sed tocall us with the caste name whichwas very derogatory. They would also call us in the singular form.

Now they put the motherly [respect- fu l] suffix an d give u s equ al seats…. It is only because we have an orga-

nization that they [the landlords]won ’t tou ch u s—that they a re scared to cross us. (Ratnamma, Algole village,cited in Hall 1999)

[We] fou n d that du rin g the cou rse of m eeting, we becam e a kin d of m utu -al su pport group. If an y w oman fellill or had a problem , the others wou ld try an d h elp. So it became a habit tom eet, and we w ere not afraid of fam -ily disapproval. Gradu ally the fami-ly realized the importance of our m eetin gs to us a n d fell silent. (Singlewomen’s group to au thor, 1998)

The first sense of em powerm ent cam eto women and m en in the com m un i-ty wh en the wom en started leasing inland. Men, and especially powerfulmen in the villages, had the percep-tion that w omen were u seless, that asagricultural labourers they could onlywork under supervision. This per-ception was slightly internalized by

the wom en. The lan d leases comp lete-ly debun ked this view. (P.V. Satheesh ,Director of DDS, cited in Hall 1999)

Box 4The Deccan Development Society: Impact ofWomen Acquiring Land and Farming Collectively



Number 21, 2002 • 25

could be start ing points, since here bothlaws and the social context (as noted)are relatively less gender-biased than inthe northern states.

InfrastructuralThe success of women’s farming effort s,whether as individuals or groups, candepend crucially on their access to infra-structure. As noted earlier, there are sig-nificant gender (in addition to class) in-equalities in access to credit, labor, otherproduction input s (including hired equip-ment), and information on new agri-

cultural t echnologies. Poor women culti-vating very small plots have the most dif-ficult t ime in t his regard.

Prevailing gender biases in the deliveryof government infrastructu re t hus needto be removed. To some degree, this couldbe done by employing more women inagricultural input and information del-ivery systems (women extension agentsare often recommended for this purpose) ,

but such systems also need a reorien-tation of male functionaries so that theytoo contact and assist women farmers.

Also, dependence on the State alonemay not be enough, or have the samepoten tial for success in reaching womenas nongovernmental initiatives. For in-stance , in credit delivery to poor women,NGOs such as the Grameen Bank in Ban-gladesh and the Self Employed Women’s

Association (SEWA) in India have beenmore successful than government agen-cies. The role of NGOs could similarly beimportant in providing technical infor-mation, production inputs, and market-ing facilities to groups of women farmers.BRAC in Bangladesh is a case in point:although it does not focus only on wom-en, it p rovides a range of relevant infor-mational, technical, and market support

services to its members. A systematicpromotion of women’s cooperatives forproduction inputs and marketing couldalso be considered .

Collect ive A ct ion If today … [they ] who fought for the In -dependence of India are to be denied their just rights, then ou r hard-earned

freedom is n o more than a h an dful of dust.—Padmaja Naidu, Congress Legislator(Parliamentary debates over the HinduCode Bill, 1951)

For initiating and sustaining thecomplexity of changes required tostren gthen wom en’s lan d claim s in

India, the committed involvement of aran ge of actors, and especially of a widespectrum of women, will be necessary .It will requ ire various forms of collectiveaction by women, both in relation toState policy and its implement ation, andin relation to land access via the market ,the community, and the family. Such col-lective action should also seek to bringinto its fold gender-progressive e lements(men and women) within the State,political part ies, and civil society groups.

After over two decades of the wom-en’s movement in India, many now rec-ognize the importance of collective action.But much of the effort to enhance wom-en’s economic empowerment has beenconcentrated on issues other than land(or property), such as better wages,group credit schemes, micro-enterprisedevelopment , and so on. Group act ion isnow needed for women to gain access t oland, in recognition of its central impor-tance in most rural women’s livelihoods,whether as t he primary or a supp lemen-tary income source.

The local bureaucracy would be morelikely to regist er individual women’sclaims in family land if there were collec-tive pressure from gender-progressivegroups. Such organizations could alsoprovide women with vital informationabout t he laws and legal suppor t, if nec-

essary. In fact, a woman’s group in t heSantal Parganas is providing both legalsupport and financial help to women whowish to contest their claims (personal



26 • S E E D S

communication from social act ivist NityaRao, Bombay, 1997). Similarly, SEWA inGujarat gives women loans t o help t hemregister their names as joint owners intheir husbands’ land (personal commu-nication, Renana Jhabvala, 1997).

Gender-progressive organizations couldalso stre ngth en women’s bargainingposition through economic and socialsupport st ructures that reduce women’sdependence on male relatives, especial-ly their brothers in whose favor womenoften forfeit their claims As a womanmember of BRAC tellingly asserted:“Well the organization is [now] my ‘brot h-

er’ ” (Hunt 1983: 38) . Such organizationscould also help women demand that thegovernment put in place a well-struc-tured social security system.

Equally, a collective challenge by wom-en can facilitate some change in restric-tive social norms. Even female seclusionpractices can be subject to changethrough group challenge. In fact women’satt empt s to collect ively challenge purdah

go back a long way. In India in the 1920sand 1930s, for instance, many individualsand organizations, both Hindu and Mus-lim, highlighted the burden and con-straints imposed on women by purdah;and re solutions against t he practice werealso passed by a number of groups. In thecity of Calcutta, an anti-purdah day be-came an annual event in the 1930s, orga-nized by the Hindu Marwari business

community (which prescribed strictpurdah). In 1940, some 5,000 womenattended an anti-purdah conference.The woman president of the conferencearrived in a car driven through the cityby a Marwari woman, followed by a pro-cession of Marwari women on foot led bygirls riding on horseback (Forbes 1981)!

Today the challenge to purdah con-tinues both in India and in othe r part s of

South Asia. In Bangladesh, for instance,while economic exigency has created theneed to challenge purdah, group solidar-ity has st rengthened women’s ability to

sustain the challenge. As a women’s grouporganized by BRAC noted in the 1980s:

They said... [we] are ruining the prestige of the village and breaking purd ah.... Now n obody talks ill of u s.They say: “They hav e form ed a groupand now they earn money, i t isgood.” (cited in Chen 1983: 177, 165)

In fact, the experiences of theGrameen Bank, BRAC, SEWA, and manyother NGOs working with poor women,using a group approach, suggest thatsome restrictive social norms could bechallenged successfully as a by-productof forming groups for the more effective

delivery of economic programs.Group support for village women can

be provided both by separat ely constitut-ed groups which give women specializedhelp, and by organizations compr ised of village women t hemselves. The presenceof more women in the village panchay-ats, as a result of the one-third reserva-tion for women provided by the 73rdConstitutional Amendment in India in

1992, can also strengthen rural women’shands. Although simply having morewomen in such bodies cannot guaranteegender-progressive programs, the recordof elected all-women village panchayatspreceding the Amendment, as in Maha-rashtra and Madhya Pradesh, leavesroom for optimism: women in these bod-ies were found to be more sensitive towomen’s concerns and t o give priority to

the ir needs in ways that male panchayatmembers typically did not (Gandhi andShah 1991) . Women’s presence in posi-tions of authority also has a favorabledemonstration effect and can changesocial attitudes and perceptions aboutwomen’s roles. Moreover, village womenare more likely to take their grievancesto women representatives than to all-male bodies.

However, su pp ort for wom en ’s lan d claims on a large scale, and beyond localized experim ents, will n eed m u chm ore broad -based collectiv e action by



Number 21, 2002 • 27

women . For building such cooperation,economic and social differences betweenwomen might prove to be obstacles oncertain counts. But there are still signif-icant areas of mutual benefit that cutacross class/caste lines, around whichsuccessful cooperation would be possi-ble, and which could serve as startingpoints. One is legal reform. Women of both rich and poor peasant householdswith a stake in family land stand to gainfrom gender-equal inheritance laws.Many people mistakenly assume t hat thepercentage of such women is small. Infact it is substantial: despite the highlyskewed distribution of land, some 89percent of rural Indian households ownsome land, even if most own only smallplots. Equally, challenging rest rictive so-cial norms will bring benefits for womenof both well-off and poor households.

The experience of the women’s move-ment in India also indicates that womenof different socioeconomic backgroundscan cooperate strategically for legal re-

form, as they did in campaigns t o amenddowry and rape laws, despite differencesin ideologies, agendas, and social com-position. Moreover, many urban middle-class women activists have played andcontinue to play important roles in pro-moting poor rural women’s economic andsocial concerns, such as suppor ting theircampaigns for higher wages, and theirprograms for wasteland management,

credit, and small-enterprise development .In more recent years, there have beenalso some significant cases of middle-class act ivists promot ing poor women’sland claims, as in the Bodhgaya move-ment in Bihar, the Shetkari Sanghatanain Maharashtra, and the DDS in AndhraPradesh. These experiences again indi-cate that cooperation between women,which cuts across economic and social

het erogeneity, is possible on a number of issues and in varied contexts.

All said, there now appears to be afavorable climate for raising the quest ion

of women’s independen t claims to landand livelihood, and it is imperative to doso, given t he noted importance of land inwomen’s lives. Some NGOs which ear lierconcentrated on other issues are nowbeginning to focus on women’s propert yissues, including agricultural land andhomestead plots in rural areas, anddwelling houses in urban areas. Cases inpoint are SEWA in Gujarat, Action Indiain Delhi, and the Association for LandReform and Development in Bangladesh.Several grassroots groups and develop-ment organizations in South Asia haveheld workshops on the question of wom-

en and land in recent years. In Nepal amovement has been ongoing for severalyears spearheaded by feminist lawyersfor reforming gender-unequal inheri-tance laws. A number of South Asianwomen’s groups also have been arguingfor gender equality in inheritance lawsby emphasizing that their constitutionspromise equal treatment of women andmen. Moreover, women’s groups t hat

have not raised the issue of women’sland and property claims directly havestill, over the years, spread an aware-ness of gender concerns. This has creat-ed an environment within which wom-en’s claims to land can be p laced morecentrally in the arena of public con-cerns—something that was not easy todo twent y years ago.

A window of opportunity is also pro-

vided by the growing attention beinggiven to watershed development andlocalized irrigation schemes by a numberof NGOs and some government agen-cies, in several parts of South Asia. Butonce land becomes more valuable withthe availability of irrigat ion, women’sland claims are unlikely to be recog-nized. The opportune time to establishwomen’s claims is during the process of

developing the watershed or irrigationfacility, not afterward.

Moreover, as noted, there needs t o bea shift away from the overwhelming pre -



28 • S E E D S

occupation of most rural NGOs, donoragencies, and governments with micro-credit delivery toward the creation of productive assets, especially landed as-set s, in women’s own hands, and towardenhancing women’s capacities as farm-ers. In this context , women’s rights inarable land and homesteads need tobecome a central part of the developmentdiscourse. Here development agenciesthat fund research or grassroots actioncould also play a significant positive role.

In seeking change, the aforementionedregional variations in women’s social po-sition and hence in the extent of opposi-

tion to women’s land claims could be putto useful effect, for instance by initiallybuilding a momentum for change in re-gions of less opposition (such as in thesouthern states of India) , and then work-ing for change in the more resistantregions.

Finally, given that th is issue is signifi-cant and relevant for women in manycountries, there is scope here for sharing

experiences and strategies for change;for building horizontal linkages betweengroups with similar goals; and for inter-national coalitions both between SouthAsian countr ies and be tween South Asiaand other part s of the globe. This would

be facilitated by emerging internationalsupport for women’s claims in proper ty.The Convent ion on the Elimination of AllForms of Discriminat ion Against Women(CEDAW) has focused on equality in

property as one of its important direc-tives. The United Nations Conference onHuman Settlements at its Istanbul meet-ing in 1996 also focused centrally onwomen and land. Since then the HuairouCommission in conjunction with theUNDP, Habitat , WEDO, and the Women’sCaucus of the UN Commission on Sus-tainable Development has held severaldiscussions with women’s groups world-

wide, to examine regional progress in en-hancing women’s access to land and prop-erty. The Huairou Commission is also re-quest ing support for a global campaign topromote women’s claims in land and prop-erty, and in housing rights for t he urbanpoor under the auspices of the UnitedNations Center for Human Settlements.

All these national, regional, and inter-national efforts that are beginning to

emerge suggest that today the climate iscert ainly more favorable than it was twodecades ago, for responding positively tothe concerns raised by poor women inWest Bengal: “Why don’t we get a title?Are we not peasants?”

I n d i a n A g r i c u

l t u r a l

R e s e a r c h I n s t i t u

t e , D e l h

i



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Verdery, K. (1996): What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (P rinceton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press).

Number 21, 2002 • 29


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/land-rights-and-womens-claims 33/3530 • S E E D S

Editor: Sandy SchilenEditorial and Production Coordinator: Monica RochaDesigner: Mike VosikaCover Photo: Preeti Schaden

SEEDS Advisory CommitteeJudith Bruce (Population Council)Marty Chen (Harvard University)Monique Cohen (USAID)Caren Grown ( Internat ional Center for Research on Women)

Ann Leona rd (Consultant)Joyce Malombe (New Hampshire College)Katharine McKee (USAID)Aruna Rao (Consultant)Mildre d Warner (Cornell University)Corinne Whitaker ( Interna tional Women’s Health Coalition)

No. 11 Port Sudan Small Scale E nterpriseProgram—Sudan (English)

No. 12 The Muek-Lek Women’s Dairy Proj-ect in Thailand (English)

No. 13 Child Care: Meet ing the Needs of Working Mothers and Their Children(English, Spanish)

No. 14 Breaking New Ground: Reaching Outto Women Farmers in Western Zam-bia (En glish, Spanish, Fren ch)

No. 15 Self-Employment as a Means toWomen’s E conomic Self-Sufficiency:Women Venture’s Business Develop-ment Program (English)

No. 16 Wasteland Development and the Em-powerment of Women: The SARTHIExperience ( French, Hindi)

No. 17 Supporting Women Farmers in th e

Green Zones of Mozambique (English)No. 18 Out of the Shadows: Homebased

Workers Organize for InternationalRecognition (English)

No. 19 Empowering the Next Generation:Girls of the Maqattam Garbage Set-tlement (English, Arabic)

No. 20 Women Str eet Vendors: The Road toRecognition (English)

No. 2 Hanover Street: An Experiment toTrain Women in Welding and Car-pent ry—Jamaica ( English, Spanish)

No. 3 Market Women’s Cooperat ives: Giv-ing Women Credit—Nicaragua (Span-ish, French)

No. 4 Women and Handicrafts: Myth andReality—International (English, Span-

ish, French)No. 5 The Markala Cooperative: A New Ap-

proach to Traditional EconomicRoles—Mali (Fr ench )

No. 6 The Working Women’s Forum: Organ-izing for Credit and Change—India(French)

No. 7 Developing Non-Craft Employmentfor Women in Bangladesh (English,French, Spanish)

No. 8 Community Management of Waste Re-cycling: The SIRDO—Mexico (Eng-lish, Spanish)

No. 9 The Women’s Construct ion Collective:Building for the Future—Jamaica(English, Spanish)

No. 10 Forest Conservation in Nepal: En-cour aging Women ’s Par ticipa tion(English, Spanish, French, Nepali)

Other Editions of SEEDS Currently Available

If you would like additional copies of this issue or any of the editions of SEEDS listed above, send an

e-mail to: [email protected]. Copies of selected SEEDS issues in local languages have been pub-lished by organizations in the following countries: Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan,Thailand, and Vietnam. Please write to us for more information if you are interest ed in t hese mat eri-als. Most past editions of SEEDS are also available online a t: www.popcoun cil.org/publications.





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Land Rights and Women’s Claims