July, 2012

“Spotlight on Gender: Ensuring Poor Women Benefit from Forestland Reform in China,” is a paper written by Xiaobei Wang, China Gender Specialist  for the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights. The paper is part of the publication called The Challenges of Securing Women’s Tenure and Leadership for Forest Management, published by Rights and Resources Initiative, which includes other articles on the status of forest tenure rights and gender rights across South and Southeast Asia. The publication can be found here on the Rights and Resources website.

July, 2012

“Indigenous women’s land rights: case studies from Africa” is a chapter published by Minority Rights Group in their publication, State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012. The chapter was written by Elisa Scalise, Director of the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights, and appears on page 53 of the full text, downloadable here on the Minority Rights Group website.

January, 2012

Making Equal Rights Real is a collection of insights from leaders around the world describing effective approaches to creating greater social and economic equality. The Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights’ executive director, Renée Giovarelli, and director Elisa Scalise, authored the chapter Promoting equity in economic rights: the case of gender and land rights.

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2006

A study by the The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Landesa’s partner in India, the Rural Development Institute, to examine the effectiveness of laws in the state of Karnataka in empowering women with property titles in their names. | Download PDF

1999

Report on a conference in Bonn, Germany, whose central themes included: women’s access to productive resources such as land, capital, and training; effects of women’s access to productive resources on child nutrition and distribution of household income; the effects of male migration on rural women’s role in production; successful approaches to grassroots organization of women in rural areas; and possible national and international actions that can be taken to enhance rural women’s rights and productivity. Report drafted by conference participant attending on behalf of Landesa (then called the Rural Development Institute). | Download PDF

1999

A study by Landesa (then called the Rural Development Institute) of legal impediments to women’s access to land in Eastern European and Central Asian (ECA) countries, and potential solutions. The report includes country-specific examples of both problematic laws and laws that attempt to address the problem; discusses legal institutions adopted by developed market economies to help ensure women’s access to land; and includes a checklist to match legal impediments to women’s access to land in the ECA with potential solutions. | Download PDF

2002

This report summarizes findings on women’s access to land ownership in West Bengal, India based on three rounds of research conducted in 2001 and 2002. It provides recommendations for changes in government policy and law to increase the number of women landowners and to strengthen the security of women’s access to land owned by their households. | download PDF

2006

How can they be protected and strengthened as the Land Law is implemented?
The report provides research findings of women’s current land rights, including the rights of women widowed from HIV/AIDS and the Rwandan genocide. The report also discusses Rwanda’s new body of land legislation, Landesa’s efforts to develop complementary land legislation to ensure that women’s land rights are taken into careful account, and suggested next steps. | download PDF

2008

This report explores both the formal and customary laws that affect women’s property rights, examines issues of widowhood, divorce, polygamy and girl’s inheritance and provides recommendations for strengthening women’s rights to land. | download PDF

2009

This study was undertaken by the Rural Development Institute for the World Justice Project. The study reviews the formal and customary laws and practices governing the rights of women to inherit land in six South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). The study includes an analysis of existing laws and customs and their impact on inheritance and land rights in all six countries.  It also provides recommendations for how to design interventions that can attempt to improve women’s inheritance rights. | download PDF