BlogWomen’s Land Rights

Why are tribal women in India still robbed of their land rights?

In Jharkhand, eastern India, women are not entitled to own land and accusations of witchcraft are wielded against them to silence their claims to land.

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March 08, 2021

Eight Breakthroughs for Land Rights in 2020

2020 was a tough year on many fronts, and land rights were no exception. COVID-19 hindered land rights advocates from doing field research, meeting with government officials, prioritizing policy initiatives, and obtaining funding. Despite these headwinds, we have seen important advances, and the field continues to grow. Here are eight breakthroughs in 2020 to celebrate.

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January 21, 2021

OPINION: Why governments should strengthen land rights for women and youth

To mark International Human Rights Day, Landesa's Tizai Mauto and women's land rights & gender expert Grace Ananda explore a few of the most pernicious inequalities to surface from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a common challenge they share: insecure rights to land.

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December 10, 2020

Gender Equality: Women, Land, and Data

Closing a data gap may seem technocratic and boring. But the social and economic empowerment prospects of more than one billion largely poor women who lack secure, legal land and property rights hinges on the success of these efforts.

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November 25, 2020

Rituals of marriage create untold suffering for millions of widows in India

The ideal of a married woman decorated with sindoor, sakha, and bichiya is romanticized through legend and folklore; steeped in this culture, women themselves see value in these rituals. Millions of women in India do not even imagine that these discriminatory and patriarchal rituals are not supernaturally ordained and blind them to the reality that the revered status given to suhagins causes untold suffering to any woman (widow) who does not fit the ideal.

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November 22, 2020