Gender equality in land governance: new e-learning course supports implementation of Voluntary Guidelines

As one of the ten essential principles of the VGGT, the requirement for gender equality calls on states to ensure that women and girls have equal tenure rights and access to land, fisheries and forests independent of their civil and marital status. As such, gender equality lies at the core of all processes and aspects of tenure governance, including policy formulation, institutional set up for administration, service provisioning, administration programmes, and access to justice and information.

Developed with the support of the Government of Germany and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), the new course, “Governing Land for Women and men,” serves as a complement to the technical guide of the same name, published by FAO in 2013. It supports development practitioners, policy-makers and administrators, as well as private sector and civil society organizations in identifying and addressing gender concerns when implementing the VGGT in the context of land.

The course provides a clear understanding of why it is important to take into account gender and social issues when dealing with land tenure, and what actions must be adopted so that women and men from different social groups can participate in and equally benefit from land tenure governance processes.

The course consists of six interactive lessons. The first four lessons cover “Gender-equitable governance of land tenure,” “Gender-equitable participation in land policy-making,” “Legal issues for gender-equitable governance of land tenure,” and “Building gender-equitable land institutions.”  A fifth lesson considers the challenges and requirements for achieving gender equity in technical activities of land administration and management, and a sixth considers strategies and methods for awareness raising, gender sensitization, advocacy work and legal literacy to promote gender-equitable land tenure governance.

Click here to access the course.

See also:

Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security