1. Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty
The Policy Response to Women’s Entitlement to Land: Women Testing the Limits of Social Change
Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty
Washington DC, March 20-24, 2017
Govind Kelkar
Landesa

2. Relevance of this Study: Policy Change
This study explores policy changes for women’s entitlement to agricultural land in the diverse socio-political context of India since the 1940s.
Once the policies are formulated, why is their implementation put aside?
For fear of change in gendered social norms?
Social norms produce and shape economic and political development by two major factors:
women’s marginal representation in politics of decision making organizations and the state institutional structures.
women’s lack of rights to unmediated ownership and control of land and other productive assets.

3. Social Norms and Attitudes
Shaping policy-making actions, resulting in gradual implementation.
Letting society and state define what is appropriate for women’s actions and legal rights.
Affecting women’s ability to participate in formal institutions including land administration and leadership positions.
Internalizing patriarchal systems of power in women.
Causing fear of transgressing gender norms and challenging male authority.
Systematically instilling in them “what you cannot do” or risking the consequences of male violence for any infraction.

4. Gender Regimes: Women’s Agency and Resistance
Changes in rural India slow breakdown of caste hierarchies and associated occupations.
Declining importance of agriculture in its association with power and prestige linked to land ownership.
Women’s organizing in Self Help Groups; thereby acquiring more visible roles.
Large-scale involvement of women in agricultural work; though the ownership of land has continued with men.
Nevertheless, social norms and formal institutional structures tend to deny women both the identity of a farmer and of ownership rights to land.

5. Policy Change for Women’s Right to Land
Historically women’s demand for land and property since 1940s
Tebhaga Movement
Telangana Movement
Committee on the Status of Women
India’s Sixth Five Year Plan ( )
India’s Eleventh Five Year Plan ( )
India’s Twelfth Fiver Year Plan ( ): attention to women’s unmediated right to land
The Draft National Policy for Women (2016): with financial incentives for women’s right to land
Recent campaign for women’s right to land in north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh

6. What Drives Policy Change?
Global Concern for Women’s Land and Property Rights
Civil society’s engagement with the state: the role of MAKAAM
Relevance of Feminist Research and Advocacy
Media’s Role against the Masculine Ideology
Women’s Organizing for Land and Productive Assets: since 1986
Women’s individual and collective voices from the fields
We work on land 70 percent, therefore we claim 70 percent of our rights to land’
Women have achieved miracles, we are no longer confined to the kitchen, now we are at choupal’ (village decision making platform)

7. Rural Women Define the Meaning of Land Rights
Now women have savings and can withdraw money from the banks
Increased control over money through Self Help Groups.
Manage land, livestock and work on vermicomposting. In the presence of her husband, a woman added, “I work so much, he only talks”.
Started selling their vegetables in the market.
Constructed or repaired houses, despite the resistance from their husband in some cases.
Have successfully bargained for better education of children, as well as for their employability.
Diminished male violence against women, within home and outside. “Men listen to us because we control our land, cash and assets”

8. Towards a Multi-stream Approach
Strengthen policies for building countervailing power of women through policies addressing social norms and gender-asymmetrical relationship in ownership and control of assets
Strengthen state and civil society efforts at popularizing norms of gender equality
Create and strengthen women’s networks of sociability
Women’s safety and freedom from violence
Challenges: Despite legal frameworks, policies have remained largely ineffective in changing institutions trapped in gendered norms and women’s economic dependency.
There has been no significant withdrawal of male power over land and productive assets.

9. Thank You Questions and comments