THEME: Women’s land rights are hard to obtain and may be equally difficult to retain.

IFAD’s 1998 evaluation of the Upper-East Region Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) highlights the difficulties of enhancing women’s land rights. Farming is the main productive activity in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Women supply 80% of the labour in the harvesting, storing, processing and marketing of agricultural produce. They also contribute to weeding and other farm activities. Women’s crops play an important role in household food security and generate cash for buying oil, vegetables, meat and, increasingly, extra staple foods.

Nevertheless, women have limited access to and control over resources such as water and land. Decision-making on land at the community level tends to be dominated by male village chiefs, tindanas (landowners) and elders or heads of clans. At best, a woman can expect to obtain temporary use of a plot of land from her husband, if the latter feels he can spare the woman’s labour. Unmarried women seldom have access to land. Widows tend to lose access to land unless they have male children. When women do gain use of small plots, they are usually the plots that are farthest away and the least productive.

The basic idea behind landholding is that the size of the land should be in line with the capacity of people to work it. Women, of course, can control only the labour of their children and sometimes that of younger brothers or sisters. In a sense, they do not control even their own labour, since they are first obliged to devote it to working on the man’s plot. Thus labour access places constraints on women’s access to land, which in turn restricts women’s access to credit from formal sources.

Women’s insecure land access hampers them in a number of ways:

Irrigated land is the most prized. LACOSREP tried to promote women’s access to irrigated land in order to provide:

• household food security (since women have a higher propensity to allocate their income for this purpose);
• access to water for some domestic uses (such as laundry, food preparation, watering small ruminants); and
• women’s empowerment.

A 1998 mid-term evaluation report provided some useful information. Since the project goals ran counter to traditional patterns of land use and ownership, they posed a threat to the traditional power structure and shared culture. The project staff therefore tried to win over the traditional leaders to support women’s land rights. Agreements were negotiated with tindanas and traditional chiefs. Negotiations also took place with husbands and male leaders.

Before the IFAD-financed LACOSREP I, few women had access to irrigated land. The project achieved a notable change. But an analysis of water user association (WUA) members’ land showed that women’s plots were about a quarter of the size of those of the male farmers. And, in spite of having smaller plots, the women were required to pay the same price for irrigation water. The IFAD evaluation notes that the project was only partly successful in that it slightly improved women’s access to land but not their ownership of it.

The experience of LACOSREP I underlines how difficult it is to modify traditional patterns of land allocation and the need to gain the support of the existing authorities, both at the community and family levels. In addition, fair treatment of women needs to be monitored constantly, to prevent situations that may eventually force women to give up their hard-earned land rights.

Adapted from:

IFAD - Office of Evaluation and Studies. 1998. Ghana: LACOSREP I, Mid-Term Evaluation Report. Rome. July.