Resource information
Women’s land ownership and control have important connections with their empowerment in Pakistan’s agricultural context. However, the link between these has largely remained unexplored; and there has been only a few research to determine how many women own or control land in Pakistan. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) carried out a multiple pronged research in 2007-09 to fill this knowledge gap and to examine the reason behind women’s land ownership and empowerment. The research focused on women’s rights vis-à-vis the inheritance of private agrarian land and did not include private residential or commercial property and other possible means of land acquisition by women like through purchase or as gifts.
This paper which is a report on the findings of the above research indicates that women’s ownership and control of land have positive linkages with sustainable development, reduction of poverty, food security and environmental concerns. the question of land rights is often assumed to be related to an undifferentiated homogenous category of landless poor peasants, ignoring the power relations and hierarchies within the poor andwomen’s empowerment is mostly perceived to be limited to welfare in terms of theirimproved access to education, health and non-farm assets; and their economic status is only measured in terms of employment.
in conclusion, some of the recommendations incuse comprehensive land reforms, revisiting Islam and women’s land rights, encouraging the right to forego rights, provision of land to the landless, provision of training and other support to women with land, inclusion of agricultural labour in the formal economy, provision of extension services to women, preserve and build upon existing traditional agricultural knowledge, engagement of local councillors, provision of Social Protection systems and strengthening state service delivery institutions and urgent need to update birth and marriage registration and land record.
