Women play important roles in food security and in the sustainable management of resources. Unfortunately, in most countries in Asia, women are deprived of land ownership rights, especially in inheritance. Our partners from four countries (Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan) studied women’s inheritance rights in the content of Muslim populations, as part of the Women’s Land Rights Program of the International Land Coalition (ILC). ILC and the Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) jointly organized a workshop last 13-15 August in Dhaka, Bangladesh to share the preliminary findings of the studies to ILC members and partners in the region.

The findings: the administrative practices and biases curtail women’s equal property rights. While property laws in most Asian countries provide for equal land rights between women and men, women rarely have their names on land titles, certificates, leases and contracts. In most countries, men are considered as the head of the family, either implicitly or through designation, and this status consequently gives them authority over decisions on property and land.

In moving forward for possible collaboration with ANGOC and the Land Watch Asia campaign, we are looking at the following areas:

• Women’s Empowerment (organize women’s groups, promote leadership development, conduct policy analysis, provide legal education)
• Research and Dissemination (impact of climate change, land grab, good practices on advancing women’s land ownership)
• CSO Land Reform Monitoring (focusing on indicators on policies promoting women’s ownership of land, budget for women’s programs, number of women effectively owning land, and number of hectares of land owned)
• Joint campaign and advocacy (addressing data gaps, lobby for land and agrarian reforms with emphasis on joint ownership, equal inheritance rights, provision of support services; conduct dialogue with various stakeholders, including religious leaders).

For more information on women’s land rights, you may wish to read the proceedings from our Regional Workshop on Women and Land Rights, held in Dhaka in October 2010.