UN website eyes gender gap in land rights

Feb 17, 2010, 11:20 GMT

Rome - Up-to-date information on how men and women in 78 countries differ in their legal rights and access to land can now be viewed on the internet, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said Wednesday.

The Rome-based FAO which launched the database, said it wants to put the spotlight the 'widespread inequalities,' that form one of the 'major stumbling blocks,' to rural development worldwide.

'In most of the world, women lag well behind men in ownership of agricultural land and access to income from land, even though women are major producers of food crops and play crucial roles in providing and caring for their households,' FAO said.

The Gender and Land Rights Database, was produced in consultation with national statistics authorities, universities, civil society organizations and other sources worldwide, FAO said.

By searching country profiles, users can find out the answers to specific questions on topics like the total number of land holders, the total number of women land holders and the number of rural households headed by women.

They can also call up comparisons on a given topic between two or more countries.

FAO aims to expand the data base to include all its more than 170 member states.

'Disparity in land access is one of the major causes for social and economic inequalities between males and females in rural areas. It jeopardizes food security at the household and community levels, and has an impact on national food security and development,' said FAO's Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division Director, Marcela Villarreal.

'But until now, finding information on this phenomenon in one place has been difficult to come by,' she added.

One of the key patterns seen in the database, according to FAO Gender and Development Research Officer Zoraida Garcia, is the great gulf between formal rights and practice.

In many cases, national constitutions acknowledge men and women have equal rights to land, but the day-to-day reality is very different.

Often, those rights are jeopardized by conflicting laws or long-standing traditional and institutional practices which assign land titles and inheritance to males or the man's side of the family.

On the Internet: http://www.fao.org/gender/landrights