Implementing land rights for women in India : revitalizing rural communities through just agrarian reforms and rural development
Plus: the outcome report and th eproceedings of the thematic dialogue held on december 15-16, 2005 India.
The India case study is to assert community womenns claim to land and resource as a right at ICARRD. The key demand is to increase rural women's ownership of land, resources and productive assets through radical agrarian reforms. The key to the agrarian and land reform agenda is a gender-just redistribution of land along with transforming anti- women laws, policies and unequal social and economic relations. Land, along with forest and water, are major sources of livelihood for the rural poor and women represent the majority of the rural poor. The percentage of women agricultural workers has grown to 40% of overall agricultural workers, and continues to grow. Of all rural women in the workforce, 85% are in agriculture.1 Further, women, as a result of their gender roles, are vital catalysts for food security and agrarian productivity. Despite these, rural women remain neglected in policy discourse. The revisions on land legislation in India did not address the entitlement of women to land as citizens and individuals, except in the case of West Bengal and Kerala. The invisibility of womenns representation is mainly because Indian women, like women elsewhere in the world, are at the bottom end of society and the work force. As a result of patriarchal socio-economic and political institutions women also bear intra-household inequalities in terms of access and control of resources and workload. What makes things more complex in India is that along with gender, caste, class, community, disability, HIV and AIDS status also structures womenns access to and control over resources.
Event: A vision for the future : International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development
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