Strengthening rural women’s livelihood opportunities through empowerment in agricultural investments in Ghana

Land is an important socio-economic asset for many people across the globe.  It is essential in sustaining livelihoods and wealth generation. Its importance also shows in the fact that it gives security and voice to people who have it. However, women and men do not have the same degree of access, control and ownership to land despite belonging to same communities from which they derive their productive and reproductive livelihoods.

Women play various roles in land development and natural resource management due to their involvement in agriculture, home gardening, food gathering or wood harvesting.

Yet, they have been entangled in different forms of tenure insecurity, both as wives and in their relations with wider kin. In addition, women and other vulnerable groups are frequently excluded from day-to-day land administration and governance at all levels, local through national as landholding systems have been integrated into wider markets. Women’s exclusion is often linked to economic, socio-cultural, religious and also very practical issues that affect their participation.

But the equitable representation and participation in land administration requires the interests of all segments of the population.

The project “Strengthening rural women’s livelihood opportunities through empowerment in community land stewardship and accountability in agricultural investments in Ghana” was, therefore, commissioned by NETRIGHT, and funded by IIED to deepen knowledge and understanding of the problems of gender equitable land governance in order to contribute to the transformation of gender relations through greater voice, ownership and control of lives, assets and livelihoods.  

It also aimed at providing evidence on entry points and approaches to promote gender-inclusive equitable community land stewardship and downwards accountability in agricultural investments. 

Primary data was collected in four communities - Apemenim (Ashanti Region), Bawjiase (Central Region), Dodowa (Greater Accra Region) and Wamale (Northern Region)

Strengthening Women’s Voice in Land Governance

Socio-cultural norms have played major roles in how women and men relate to land. Many cultures see girls as transient beings who at a point would leave the family and, therefore, do not ascribe permanent land rights to them.

Women’s land access is, therefore, based on consanguinity (family) and affinity (marriage). This sense of transiency is deeply rooted in cultures such that there are proverbs which speak to the fact that when a woman gives birth to a girl, she perpetuates the lineage of another family rather than the family into which she gets married.

The interplay between marriage and children is also important to note in how it manifests in property relations.

Marriage entitles women to land resources but death of partner or dissolution of marriage many a time invalidates the entitlement. Male children are also considered a very critical means of entitlement for women’s access to land, especially after the death of husbands in addition to the legitimacy of the marriage and also the children. Above all, good behaviour on the part of the woman is also considered for entitlements.

Other socio-cultural norms include protocols which ask women to bring men when seeking  land and beliefs that women should not own landed property which forces women to put male names and signatures on their property.  Religious beliefs have equally played important roles in shaping the comportment of women and men and how this circumscribes their participation in land governance platforms.

The claim that women have no track record in decision making platforms and, therefore, could not be part of land governance platforms and the fear of threats - real or superficial- from male contenders have also become a major impediment.

Interventions

Various projects and programmes to facilitate women’s participation in land governance platforms have been instituted by state and non-state actors.

At the national level, the Phase 2 of the Land Administration Project has integrated gender strategy in its activities which includes gender sensitive data gathering, ensuring inclusive participation at sensitisation and dialogue sessions, ensuring gender sensitivity in the design and monitoring of the project, organising consultative forum for traditional female leaders and the training of personnel of land institutions in gender issues.

At the community level, NGOs have designed interventions to address some of the constraints women face such as the Colandef/MiDA systematic land titling aimed at enhancing tenure security for various land users in the Awutu-Senya District of the Central Region, Grassroots Sisterhood Foundation’s (GSF) sensitisation on women’s land rights in the Nantong Traditional Area in the Northern Region, WiLDAF’s legal literacy programme for women and community leaders at Suhum in the Eastern Region, the Land Resource Management Centre’s (LRMC) land tools developed to help spouses and other land users have secured land transfer agreements and Civil Society Coalition on Land’s (CICOL) engagement with traditional leaders on land issues.

It is important to note that all these programmes have integrated inclusive participation in their designs thereby enhancing women’s participation. 

The study found that these projects yielded tremendous benefits to women, men and the project communities at large.  However, since the projects have different foci, they could complement one another in terms of replication with a key emphasis on the context.

Participatory land governance and administration are important for livelihood sustenance of all who rely on land. But, socio-cultural norms have remained the pillar on which participation in local level land governance practices are derived. Women are mainly the ones who are deemed to be culturally unworthy of taking part in land-related interactive platforms.

Therefore, a multifaceted approach is needed to enhance women’s participation in land governance platforms at the local and national levels. These include women equipping themselves with information and knowledge on land rights, governance, administration and management, female leaders building networks across the country to help in information sharing, NGO project strategies making youth inclusion in sensitisation programmes a priority to enhance intergenerational knowledge transfer.