Women’s right to land: What every woman must know

Land rights refer to the inalienable ability of individuals to freely obtain, utilise and possess land at their discretion as long as their activities on the land do not impede the rights of other individuals.

Although land rights are fundamental in achieving higher standards of living, certain groups of individuals, especially women, are consistently left out of land ownership provisions in Ghana and most developing countries.

Women produce nearly half of the food grown in the country. Often, they do not have secure rights to the land they farm on and are denied equal rights to access, inherit or own it. As a result, these women are at an increased risk of losing their source of food, income and shelter, should they lose their only link to the land they till. Even when women do gain use of small plots, they are usually the plots that are farthest away and the least productive.

Land access

Women’s insecure access to land  hampers their efforts as it limits the crop they can grow and discourages their interest in land conservation and other improvements. These bring about additional hurdles to women empowerment, ranging from their status within the household and community to discriminatory the customary or statutory laws.

There are legal and regulatory systems in place that are designed to provide women access to land rights but in practice they do not do much for the most vulnerable. 

 The 1985 Intestate Succession Law and the Head of Household Accountability Law, for example, are both intended to create greater security for widows and children.

 If a man died without a will, the succession law stipulates that the man’s property would be equally divided and distributed among his widow, children and some members of the extended family. Yet most women do not know about this law and this has left many women without access to land after the death of their partners.

To address this challenge, the Land Administration Project  (LAP-2) of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources is collaborating with land sector and project implementing agencies in the country to undertake specific gender interventions which will ensure that the project’s outcomes have relevance to both men and women. 

LAP-2 is mainstreaming gender into all its activities, bringing on board all aspects of female involvement in the management and administration of land.

Second phase of LAP-2

Currently, in its second phase, LAP-2 has succeeded, to a large extent, in educating a number of women, including peasant farmers, women traders, faith-based organisations, female traditional rulers, including chiefs and queen mothers, as well as female assembly members, on their rights and the need for them to secure land titles to their land, not only to guarantee the continuous use of their parcel of land but also to serve as collateral in seeking financial assistance from financial institutions.

Speaking at a gender mainstreaming workshop at Tarkwa for gender focal persons from the land sector and implementing agencies for the project in the Western Region, the Social Development and Gender Specialist of LAP-2, Mrs Sarah Antwi-Boasiako, noted that structures and mechanisms were being established under the project to advance gender equality, especially in decision-making structures in land administration.

Gender focal persons

The gender focal persons were tasked to educate women they came into contact with, either at their workplaces or other engagements, on the need for women to  not shy away from acquiring and registering lands as their right to equitably accessing land.

The three-day training brought together gender focal persons from the Lands Commission, Town and Country Planning Department, Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands, Staff of Customary Land Secretariat and Coalition of Civil Societies on Land (CICOL), a non-governmental organisation.