CHAPTER 1: THE GENDER-ENVIRONMENT NEXUS Figure 1.4: Proportion of countries falling under the three tiers of women’s secure access to land


Equal land rights: The law guarantees the same rights to own, use and control land to both women and men.


37% 4%


Unequal land rights: The law does not guarantee the same rights to own, use and control land to women and men, or women have no legal rights to own, use and control land.


59%


Legal land rights are not followed in practice: The law guarantees the same rights to own, use and control land to women and men, but there are some customary, traditional or religious practices that discriminate against women.


Source: OECD (2014)


ship and inheritance, movable and immovable proper- ty, joint titling, and disposal of marital property (Yebo- ah 2014; Hallward-Driemeier et al. 2013).


According to the OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (OECD 2014), in only 37% of the 160 countries on which data were collected do women and men have equal rights to own, use and control land (Figure 1.4). In more than half, while the law guarantees women and men the same rights to own, use and control land, customary, traditional and religious practices prevent access for women. In 4% of these countries women explicitly have no legal right to own, use and control land.


It is difficult to identify trends in women’s access to land and assets, or in related changes in decision-mak- ing power and the capacity to, for example, open bank accounts and obtain credit. However, a World Bank database on women’s property rights and legal capac- ity, covering 100 countries over 50 years (1960-2010), indicates that over half of key constraints on women’s and girls’ equal rights to property in existence in the 1960s had been removed by 2010 (although progress was uneven across regions). Between 1960 and 2010 the number of constraints on land rights decreased sig- nificantly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and East Asia and the Pacific; they did not shift significantly in the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia (Hallward-Driemeier et al. 2013).


The nature of these constraints is significant. While most constraints on women’s “permission to act” have been resolved, or barriers have decreased considera- bly, some key rights related to inheritance, economic activity, and designation as head of household remain difficult to shift. Even in Latin America and the Carib- bean, where there has been considerable progress, the level of land ownership by women in some countries (including Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru) is still negligible; out of six countries in the region, only in Ecuador has the share of women agricultural landowners reached parity (Figure 1.5).


With respect to biodiversity, and in terms of agrobiodi- versity, different roles are played by women and men. Women often take on roles as custodians, users and adapters of traditional knowledge, thus contributing to food security and conserving a stock of plant material and seeds for on-going and future production.


The increasing global trend towards privatization of biological resources, sometimes in an effort to better define rights but also for economic gain, can cause long-term shifts in these roles and patterns (Bechtel 2010; Momsen 2007; Shiva 2016a; Zilberman et al. 2005; Gari 1999). Emerging global intellectual property right and trade regimes tend to favour intensive high-input agricultural value chains and neglect small-scale subsistence farming. The costs to most small farmers in poor rural communities, including women, of the shift away from being able to


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