Women’s Land Use Right Policy and Household Food Security in Ethiopia: Review

Abstract

The issue of land and women’s land rights in rural Africa is at the heart of scholarly literature written by African and non-African scholars in recent years. This appears to be a common practice especially in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Women play a critical role in agricultural production in developing countries, where they usually make up the majority of the agricultural workforce. Thus, secure access to productive land is critical to the millions of poor people living in rural areas and depending on agriculture, livestock or forests for their livelihood. Women‘s access to land, in particular, is widely recognized as important both for ensuring equality of basic rights and for reducing poverty and ensuring household food security. This would makes it more critical to review a literature on women’s land use right and household food security to look at whether women enjoy equal rights to land, property and natural resources in practice, rather than only under statutory law, to achieve food security at household level. Women’s insecure land tenure and property rights in Africa can be linked to a mix of economic and social pressures that have profoundly transformed social structures and land tenure systems. When deprived of access to, ownership and use of land, women are left without the means to create stable and sustainable livelihoods in the aftermath of the war. As a result many of the women may be compelled to seek alternative livelihoods outside agriculture wherein they are prone to exploitation such as working as maids, waitresses or sex workers. In order for land to play a key role in socio-economic growth and poverty alleviation, a functioning land administration system must support secure, easily transferable land rights and be capable of maintaining comprehensive aspects; the land reforms must consider the social as well as legal legitimacy of the change they seek; meaningful representation and participation of women, and training of community members and organizations are an important step towards helping women gain access to established rights. Therefore, improving women's access to and control over land is crucial to socio-economic development of Africa in general, and Ethiopia in particular.

Keywords: Gender, Land, Access, Control Over