The document discusses the challenges of land access and gender in the context of environmental changes in Sahelian countries, highlighting the historical shifts in the value and ownership of land, particularly for women. It explores issues of land grabbing, gender exclusion, and the interplay of customary, religious, and statutory laws that affect women's rights and access to land. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need for data-driven policies and research to address gender disparities, promote sustainable practices, and empower women in agricultural contexts.

1. Land, gender & environmental
change
Challenges of defeminisation or
feminisation of agriculture
Case of Sahelian countries

2. Rural Land, mother resource
• Land : mother resource for family farming :
livelihoods depending on access to land for
men women and youth
• Land is a complex resource : farmland,
bush/commons, irrigated perimeters, with
different values...
• Land is a changing/ evolving resource, with a
trend for growing scarcity in sub saharan
Africa and especially Sahel

3. Land, an asset ? Women, an asset?
• Traditional/ customary : land was not OWNED by
men (mainly – cases of mammy queens in Sierra
Leone) ; they were custodians, managers, from
ancestors to the future generations ; land was
sacred; now: a commodity
• Women’s access was ruled by men according a
principle of equity and availability ; they were
“given” what they could farm ; as a result security
was not depending on ownership

4. Climate & environmental change boost
scarcity and upset the rules
• A vicious circle started 40 years ago (the 70s
droughts) and accelerated from 30 years on:
• demographic growth (Niger 7.8 children per woman) +
• restriction of rainfall agriculture space to south
(droughts + practice) = hard competition on land,
and more for irrigated land
• Multiple and growing forms of land grabbing
• Multiple changes in the environment : global
economy, religions, commoditisation of land
insecurity, policies, legislation, technologies

5. Gender and land grabbings:
growing risks of exclusion
• Female farmers & land: mother resource for
accumulation of assets; nearly no alternatives
• External (international) land grabbing more and
more known, but few research and data on
gender impacts (is women only labour force a problem ?
• National /local grabbing (well off urban, military,
politicians, traders vs poor farmers, less
vulnerable farmers vs poorer : idem
• Ignored or denied : land grabbing inside the
household : men vs women ; gender war...

6. Assets and rights are not static:
an entry point for gender
• Access to land was a right for women and a
duty/requirement for men to ensure it
• Scarcity, greediness, religions of the Book
(christianity, Islam) have changed the rules
• Challenge is : who says the law, the rights ?
Women, youth, allochtones are confronted to
3 systems of law : customary, religious,
statutory

7. Right based approach: yes but which
rights for women?
• Tectonic of the 3 systems of law often detrimental to
women and not knowing people (definition of poverty=
rights always denied against a rich)
• Religion: (Islam here) ambiguous use or
instrumentation by men vs women’s vigilence
– Seclusion from fields, confinement at home, forced field
rest : justification for women’s land grabbing inside HH and
growing conflictual gender relations
– Women claim their heritage, including land : unequal (50%
or less) but effective and ensuring ownership / control;
• From religion to statutory law : women go to justice to
claim their religion-based rights to land

8. Policies, donors, legislation :
challenge : implementation
• Slowly growing interest for gender issues in land
legislation, but many biases & myths:
• Ownership & title as the panacea to secure land as an
asset(WB) : for whom ? For which type of women ?
Which type ofland (irrigated?) Is gender to support the
less vulnerable (this not visible in data/statistics)
• Equality is assessed in constitution and statutory law,
including land (Code rural) but implementation is far
away from this
• New institutions are hardly a gender friendly
environment (quotas of 10% in land commissions)

9. Beyond land : survival, welfare,
security, power ???
• Land: basis for w’s accumulation: field -goat-sheep-
cow-savings & credit-other assets-field-redistribution
to daughters and sons
• Narrow link between defeminisation of agriculture and
feminisation of poverty : case of Haïti, Niger, Sahel and
exposure to disaster risks (Haïti, a forgotten issue as
well) but ; research and accurate data cruelly missing
• Narrow link between w’s status and access to and
assets : see “femmes jardin” in Haïti, landless women/
hopeless women in Niger
• Narrow link with food security : gender and food
sovereignty not enough explored : research, data

10. Strategies : coping-immediate-poor
vs sustainable - resilience
• The landless (women & men) and the poorest are
cornered and may accelerate environmental
degradation
• Individual strategies and collective strategies:
agency/empowerment for land : womens groups
& associations, traditional or modern, new
farmers’ organisations (men & women), new
alliances of landless or poor rural : case of IFETE:
gender as an eye opener, booster of initiatives
and added value

11. Innovative solutions
• Gender fatigue ? Donors’fatigue ? Gender
sceptics, gender blockers ? Do not cry, be bold
• Transformation /changes at local level : from
women seen as an asset by husbands, mothers in
law and families, to new generation, new
couples, new visions : build on this
• New organisational dynamics, female only or
mixed, up to rural trade unions
• New technologies, cell phones, smart phones,
web: this is not to morrow, it is to day

12. Gender & IIED
• Build on IIED strong points (see Strategy) and “engender”
them for added value and not constraint (cf. Land tenure,
differential vulnerability to CC & DDR, pastoralism etc.)
• Partnership is viewed as a strong point : build on this for a
gender/environment/CC networking with priority to southern
voices
• Agenda of research, designing datas to be produced, sex
disaggregated, interpreted through gender analysis and
perspectives, in relation to domains above : produce evidence
to influence policies and donors
• Address language and geographic barriers : diversity of
souths, sharing experiences between anglophone, hispano-
lusophone and francophone countries : web, newsletter,
briefing, workshops ..