Challenges confronting women in land acquisition; 10 years after the Women’s manifesto

Somewhere on the hills of Brekuso in the Eastern Region bends a 60-year-old woman with a hoe clearing the weeds between the crops she is growing to feed her family and for sale.

Known in the community as Ndaa though her real name is Comfort, she has been engaged in this enterprise for 30 years.

With the help of her 10 children, Ndaa grows maize, cocoyam, cassava and plantain on different tracts of land. The land has been the source of family sustenance; providing daily meals and money to buy some basic supplies such as soap, clothing and paying school fees. 

She depends solely on her strength and that of her children to farm, since she can neither afford to buy fertiliser nor hire any machinery to complement the use of manual labour. 

Ndaa also depends on rain water for watering the crops and so in times when the rainfall pattern is disappointing, one can guess the difficulty Ndaa and her family go through. 

The land was hired for her by her husband because she had to be led by a man. She was not privy to the finer details of the arrangement such as the cost and size of the land except to use some trees as borders. 

Though she would like to own land, Ndaa says she does not want to think about that, since she wonders if she could ever have the resources to buy one. 

Her main concern is to acquire a bigger room to house her family and some money to help her buy some farming inputs. She says she wishes the government would come to her aid. 

The case of Alice Dunyoh of a nearby community is not different. Madam Dunyoh who is 50 has been engaged in farming for only two years but says the proceeds are good. She used to sell cooked food but diverted into the cultivation of cassava and corn. 

Like Ndaa, Alice is the breadwinner of her home and prays for the day she would have her own land, since what she was farming on could be taken away from her at any time. She says it belongs to a certain lawyer who is not ready to use the land yet.

Women and land 

Even though a number of women own land or have access to land use, a significant number of women through certain traditional and customary practices do not own land. 

In some communities, women are not even allowed to be present when issues of land are being discussed. 

It is well documented that women have unequal land rights affecting their access to other resources and their economic, social and political status as noted by the Women’s manifesto for Ghana. 

The manifesto is a political document which sets out critical issues of concern to women in Ghana and makes demands for addressing them. 

The manifesto notes that women are an especially vulnerable group when it comes to land users who face problems of access and control. 

For instance, as female family members and wives, women experience discriminatory customary practices. 

In some cases, they are given land which is poor in quality and size. Since the clearing of land is customarily assigned to men, it affords them the use and control of land. And even though women have used agriculture mainly through farming to provide for the family, their interest has been devalued. 

For some women, renting land remains the only way to have access to land but here too this often manifests in sharecropping arrangements with disadvantages for them as tenants.  They pay a third or half the produce as rent which is too expensive as a result of which the tenant is never able to progress. 

The manifesto states clearly that there are constitutional provisions to protect women’s land rights. 

Ten years ago, it made certain demands to address the problems women have with land with the view to creating gender equity. 

Among others, the manifesto demanded that the state ensure that achieving equity in access to and control of land becomes an integral component of a Land Administration Project(LAP) being implemented by the Government. 

In 1999, the Government of Ghana initiated a land reform process to stimulate economic development, reduce poverty and promote social stability. 

In 2003, the first phase of LAP was initiated and ended in 2011 with the objective to develop a decentralised, fair and efficient land administration system. 

Other demands of the manifesto are that: 

1.As part of land tenure reform, customary laws of access to land and inheritance which are discriminatory and unconstitutional be reformed by 2015. 

2.That the LAP should take immediate steps to ensure that disadvantaged social groups have equal and effective representation in consultative and decision– making processes to enable the project to address their concerns. 

3.That customary and other tenancy be reformed to ensure that rents are affordable and accessible to both women and men. 

4.And that measures be put in place by the end of 2006 to ensure that land registration and titling processes promote joint registration of conjugal family farmlands to enhance women’s tenure security. 

The question is have the demands of the manifesto made 10 years ago been addressed? 

Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata of the Institute of Statistical Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) who specialises in research areas including Gender and Development Issues, Gender Equity Policies and Practices, Land Tenure Systems and Agrarian Livelihoods and the Politics of Land Tenure Reforms, says the demands of the manifesto concerning women and land “are as valid today as they were a long time ago when they were made”. 

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, she said there was not even an equal representation of men and women on the new land commission. 

Prof. Tsikata said customary tenancies remained too expensive and needed reform. 

She said the LAP had not strengthened women’s tenure security and had not promoted joint titling of conjugal family land. 

Prof. Tsikata said land was still very much controlled by men in their capacity as chiefs and these chiefs seem to have rather consolidated their positions through some of the attempts made at reforms. 

According to her there was no evidence to suggest that the LAP was paying attention to ensuring the tenure security of social groups such as women, young persons, tenants and pastoralists. 

She said even though unwritten, in many areas, women who wanted to buy land must still be led by a man and the very significant role women were playing in working on fallow lands and community farmlands where fuel wood, medicinal plants, fruits and shea nuts were picked remained undervalued.

LAP reforms 

But Mrs Sarah Antwi-Boasiako, Social Development and Gender specialist on the LAP, has a different view. 

She said there had been a response to national gender initiatives and demands from civil society as indicated in the Women’s Manifesto. 

She said actual implementation of the Gender Strategy began in 2012 under the second phase of the project to mainstream gender in all the project components through five main thrusts of the Gender Strategy (i.e. public education, capacity building, institutional reforms, advocacy and networking with civil society organisations). 

Public Education 

Mrs Antwi-Boasiako said the lack of information on land-related services had created bureaucracies, corruption and lack of transparency and accountability within the formal land sector agencies and at the traditional or customary level. 

Consequently, this had served as a hindrance to the public especially women from assessing land services to secure their interest in the land. 

She said in line with the public education thrust of the gender mainstreaming strategy, the project had embarked on a wider public education drive targeting especially women’s groups, traditional authorities, municipal, metropolitan and district assemblies and other interest groups throughout Ghana . 

She stated that the sensitisation and outreach initiatives had resulted in an increased number of women registering their land from 25 per cent in 2012 to 27 per cent in 2013, based on data gathered from the Deed and Title Registries of the Lands Commission across the 10 regions. 

Mrs Antwi Boasiako said staff of the Lands Commission who had benefited from training were currently not just registering or issuing land titles of jointly acquired property in one spouse’s name but in both couple’s names to ensure equity and tenure security. 

Added to this, Mrs Antwi-Boasiako said capacity building initiatives have also been conducted for women’s groups such as queenmothers’ associations in five regions to strengthen women’s voice, representation and control over decision making relative to their male counterparts in discussions and decision making on land. 

She said some queenmothers were now demanding transparency and accountability in land management and transactions in their traditional areas. 

As part of institutional reforms initiatives, the project, she said,was currently conducting social assessment and gender studies in selected areas earmarked for Customary Boundary Demarcation (CBD) and Rural Parcel Rights Demarcation and Documentation. The objective is to among others improve women’s involvement as active participants in the processes and beneficiaries of the rural parcel right documentation and demarcation activities to ensure that women’s contributions to the development of farms were recognised and compensated at divorce and on the death of their spouses. 

Wirter’s email: doreen.hammond@graphic.com.gh