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Gender, land and water

Land and water are essential for rural people who depend on agriculture to ensure food security, nutrition and sustainable livelihoods. FAO works on the development of coherent and inclusive approaches to sustainable land and water management by addressing several dimensions of sustainable development.

Through projects, studies and information-sharing, FAO looks at the biophysical and socioeconomic relationships between land and water resources at the landscape scale, providing countries with policy options and innovations for the sustainable management of natural resources, governance and tenure.

To increase rural women’s productive capacity, it is important to endow them with equal land ownership and access to other productive resources, infrastructure and services (such as advisory services, training, finance and information), and to reduce their excessive workloads (such as water and fuel collection). Addressing gender equalities and women’s empowerment are crucial for sustainable land and water management, as well as governance.

Gender disparities in the distribution, tenure, governance and management of natural resources represent a major constraint to achieving sustainable production. Weak land tenure rights hinder women’s access to credit and extension and lessen their incentives to adopt soil and water conservation measures or uptake climate-smart agricultural practices. Moreover, institutions responsible for water management, such as water users associations or district water authorities, often marginalize or exclude women.

Despite the adoption of gender-sensitive policy and legal frameworks over the last three decades, women’s control and/or ownership of land remained limited, often due to unfavourable marital and inheritance laws, family and community norms, and unequal access to markets. In addition, policies and laws were often not enacted due to the lack of political will, poor institutional capacities and persistent sociocultural discriminatory norms and practices against women.

FAO supports the adoption of gender-responsive and inclusive governance of land and water resources and assists countries with the implementation of the Voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forestry in the context of food security (VGGT), which include specific provisions to improve gender equality in formal and customary systems by amending discriminatory inheritance and property laws.

FAO is the custodian agency for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 5.a on women land rights, and also contributed to the development of Indicator 5.a.1, which measures land rights and tenure security disaggregated by sex, with a focus on agricultural lands.  The Indicator 5.a.2  assesses the extent to which the national legal frameworks guarantee women’s equal rights to land ownership and/or control.

The work of FAO focuses on ensuring that women have equal access to innovative, water- and labour-saving technologies and infrastructure; their engagement in water users’ associations and producers’ organizations is increased; and they receive the legal literacy and paralegal training related to their land and water rights. FAO also strengthens local governance structures to improve women’s access to water and water services.

  • Despite women’s valuable contribution to agriculture and rural economies, they tend to be excluded from decision-making and the allocation of resources for domestic and productive purposes. This limits their productivity.
  • Local institutions responsible for land and water management and governance need to consider and address women’s perspectives and priorities in order to be equitable, inclusive and efficient.
  • To reduce hunger and poverty and ensure sustainable agriculture and rural development, women and men need to have the same rights in accessing natural resources.  

  • Collect, analyze and use sex-disaggregated data and gender-sensitive indicators to assess men’s and women’s access to and control over land and water resources, services, education, local institutions and decent employment opportunities.
  • Design and implement gender-responsive policies, strategies and programmes for sustainable land and water management.
  • Invest in women’s leadership and negotiation skills to increase their access to planning and decision-making and their engagement in territorial/landscape development.
  • Raise gender awareness among national and local institutions and strengthen their capacity to better identify and address gender equality issues and empower rural women and girls.
  • Develop and disseminate innovative and water-saving technologies as well as climate-smart agricultural and sustainable soil management practices to increase women’s productivity and reduce existing inequalities.

Under the programme Governing land for women and men in Colombia, Kenya, Liberia, Mongolia, Nepal, Sierra Leone and South Africa, FAO enhanced the gender capacities of 400 land experts. The trainees replicated the training in their respective countries, and in the cases of Colombia and Sierra Leone, radio programmes were established to share practical information for rural communities.

FAO supported the Government of Sierra Leone in reforming its 2015 land policy, the Land Commission Bill 2020 and Customary Land Bill 2020, in compliance with the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT).

FAO assisted 40 countries to report on the SDG Indicator 5.a.2 and provided training to government representatives from 45 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia to enhance their capacities on women´s land rights and facilitate their monitoring and reporting processes on this indicator.

As part of the activities related to the global water information system, AQUASTAT, FAO organized gender awareness-raising and training sessions on sex-disaggregated data to support the design of gender-responsive policies and programmes. FAO also collaborated with the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme in developing sex-disaggregated indicators for water resources in agriculture.