Ensuring that women have equal access to land rights, as well as a strong and respected voice in decision making, makes an enormous difference to the prosperity of communities across the world. This episode examines this issue, following the WRI report "On Equal Ground".

Featuring women in Mexico, Cameroon and Indonesia, this episode explains why this issue of women and land rights matter, especially at a time when the Covid pandemic is harming economic life and land is being sold to large-scale commercial agricultural companies.

Celine Salcedo-La Viña, WRI Research Associate

“Despite their roles and the benefits that they provide to the community, only 14% of agricultural land-owners are women. A study of 80 community-based tenure regimes found that less than a third extend community membership rights to women. They do exist, communities where women have land rights, despite those grim statistics.”

Cecile Ndjebet, African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests

“If the security of land where they want to invest is not guaranteed they cannot get technology, they cannot get access to the market, they cannot get access to finance, even capacity building, they cannot get access to good production materials. If they do not have secure access to land, nobody can help them in improving their investments, because they cannot recover what it is they will be investing on. That is the problem.”

Septrina Frisca Tobing, Researcher

“When we talk about land rights it is not only about the land itself as an object, but it extends to a bigger picture of a livelihood of the women and also their families. For many communities, and especially those who depend on forests, land is a very important aspect of their lives where they grow their plants, where they harvest their produce. It’s also about selling it, using that to manage their financial resources.”