Sustainable Development Policy Institute

Women/Gender Issues

Women’s Land rights in Pakistan

• Introduction
• Justification
• Context
• Scope

Introduction
SDPI, in collaboration with ActionAid, Pakistan and IDRC is conducting a multiple part research on women’s right to and access to land in Pakistan.

There has been negligible research to determine how many women own land and how many control land. With the understanding that deprivation from and unequal opportunity to land ownership is a structural and systemic gender barrier, that is both, the cause and effect of women’s marginalization, this research is being undertaken to address this knowledge gap and draw inferences and examine causality behind women’s landlessness, poverty and status of women. It aims provide an informed base and strong case for policy makers, state institutions, development organization and practitioners to redress the historic and contemporary marginalization of women from power equations. The analysis and conclusion would also be communicated to a wider audience by developing advocacy booklets in local languages, so the outreach would be country wide, spanning provinces, rural communities, and gender and class segregation.

The study would be the first of its kind on the issue, in depth and extensive, multi phased to cover all facets of the debate. It would contain research and analysis, broadly through a policy and law review and an examination of the current position regarding women’s ownership and control over land. It will examine the land administration structures and judicial precedents, reflecting the implicit trends. It will also assess the role of the State in according women land rights through land reform. The research would holistically explore women’s landlessness, both the process and the outcome, and systemic barriers in place. It would ‘test’ its findings through also analyzing cases where women have ownership of land and explore the possibilities that could emerge if this right is accorded, assessing different models proposed for ensuring women’s right to land.

Justification
Land is the single most important source of security against poverty in rural Pakistan. In the country, agriculture accounts for 42 % of full time employment and 23% of GDP. 60% of population lives in rural areas and 67.5% o rural population depends on agriculture for sustenance.
(source: Pakistan Economic Survey 2004-5, Government of Pakistan)

Land defines social status and political power in the village, and it structures relationships both within and outside the household. Land is a productive, wealth creating and a livelihood sustaining asset. Command over property, arguably, is the most severe form of inequality between men and women today.

Without secure access to land and means of production, the paradigm of daily survival compels the poor, due to circumstances beyond their control or influence, to live within short term horizons that degrade resources and fuel a downward spiral of poverty.

In face of overwhelming evidence of the power of land in agrarian countries like Pakistan, the right to and control of land by women has not merited attention. Despite the investments made for ‘gender balancing’ and women’s ‘empowerment’, employment is taken as ‘the’ principle measure of women’s economic status, ignoring that economic status of men and households is measured through property ownership and control. Development focus for women seems to have been primarily on employment, education and health. It’s obviously not enough. Because of divorce, widowhood etc., insecurity of tenure for women is separate and in addition to what they experience as members of families whose housing lacks secure tenure and who are therefore subject to eviction.

There are convincing arguments to build a case to strengthen women’s access and control of land: it provides them a security they cannot derive from elsewhere and allows independence; it will empower women by increasing bargaining and market power and enhancing status; it will challenge political expediency that allows women’s marginalization; it will increase children’s and familial welfare as a plethora of research indicates that women work more for collective gain than men and their work is more far sighted and oriented to family’s well being; and that the kind of work they engage land in is crucial for ecological balance, for example, resisting cash cropping. Beyond all, it is their fundamental human right – the right to liberty, independence and property.

An IFAD report notes that it is easier to shift education, health and non-farm assets to women rather than give them land rights, because giving these will improve well being and welfare, whereas giving land would mean giving power. The impact on social, economic and political power can be almost immediate. Benefits of land are direct such as control of produce, indirect like access to credit and structural like change in gender relations within families.

Agarwal, in her seminal work on land rights for women in South Asia posits that supporting women’s legitimate share in landed property can prove to be the single most critical entry point for women’s empowerment in South Asia.

Context
Historically, in subsistence production systems, land was not formally owned, but usage rights were vested in men and women who produced food for their kin. With formal land ownership, especially titling of land, the predominant pattern of men controlling the allocation of land and this right being passed from father to son led to the current ownership pattern.

With the decline of subsistence farming and increased cash cropping and larger land holdings, the emotional and spiritual connection to land (that allowed communal ownership) has been outstripped by its monetized value, and has increasingly become to be seen as capital. There is a plethora of research that shows poverty to be inversely correlated to land ownership , so it could be inferred that women’s lack of equal property rights could be a cause of feminization of poverty. Whereas there are significant variations between regions, it can be generally observed that women’s access to land is mediated by men - tied with her role as a daughter, sister, wife or mother. Because of the derivative character of these rights, access to land depends on a woman’s fulfilling or negotiating a constantly changing set of obligations and expectations defined by the men who hold the rights.

Islamic Law, Shariah, stipulates women be accorded share in inheritance, albeit lower than that of male heirs, though this remains, predictably, a portion of Islam relegated to oblivion. The State sees it as a ‘private concern’ vis-à-vis inheritance, seeing no bearing on its land reforms and redistribution policies; religious parties that undertake implementing Shariat throughout Pakistan ignore this aspect, and in the past have declared land reforms ‘UnIslamic’; ethnic groups invoke cultural relativity and claim women’s land rights threaten family and kinship structures; the landed class counters with arguments of land fragmentation and inefficiency, and other national and local power wielders ensure that such claims are denied moral legitimacy, and when made, are met with violence.

Women need to be accorded this basic right to own and control land – the value is intrinsic. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to own property alone, as well as in association with others. No one shall arbitrarily be deprived of property.”

Article 16 of CEDAW provides that State Parties must take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination and ensure same rights for both spouses in respect of the ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposition of property. Article 14 of CEDAW protects the rights of rural women to equal treatment in land and agrarian reform as well as in land resettlement schemes.

The International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, in Article 11 guarantees to all persons an adequate standard of living, including housing. Notably, in its General Comment on the right to adequate food, the Committee has called on States to ensure women have guarantees of full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and the ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technology.

The International Covenant of Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, under Article 5, requires State Parties to guarantee the right of everyone, to equality before law, notably in the enjoyment of the right to own property alone as well as in association with others, and the right to inherit.

Scope
The research would span rural areas across all four provinces of Pakistan, drawing on both; national laws, existing policies, statistics, literature review and analyzing land related institutions and structures, as well as field work; qualitative data gathered through interviews, surveys, focus group discussions, life histories, narratives and case studies.

The study would ensure that it encapsulates all significant dimensions by factoring

• Arable and arid land, to assess if value of land impacts premium placed on ownership
• Topographic differences to see if coastal and mountainous zones have critical variations
• Dynamics of subsistence, micro level, small and large landholdings
• Land dynamics and inheritance patterns in ethnic communities and religious minorities within these areas

The study would cover all four provinces of Pakistan, focusing on two areas per province.
These would be

In Sindh

• Hyderabad: The main city is a central point for the province, whereas the larger district is agricultural, though this has suffered in the past decade because of reduced water flow in Indus river. It has the largest concentration of freed ‘haris’, the bonded laborers of feudal lords, most of who have escaped from lower Sindh, and hail originally from Thar desert. It has a sizeable Hindu community as well.
• Khairpur: Part of agricultural belt of the province with high productivity, feudal structure.

In Balochistan

• Makran: Would cover coastal communities as it is located on the sea. Low livelihood options and also high out-migration for employment.
• Noshki: Arid zone close to Afghan border, mountainous region.

In NWFP

• Swabi: Fertile zone that provides tobacco to country. Rigid hierarchical structure, for example, bans placed on women’s political participations.
• Abbotabad: Mountainous zone that is fertile, and extends to Mansehra region, known for its orthodox conservatism.

In Punjab

• Sialkot: The district is indicative of rural agricultural Punjab, while the main city is industrial.
• Bhawalpur: Lies in Southern Punjab, culturally, linguistically and ethnically varied from Central Punjab, it is feudal in structure, yet Sufi in outlook. It also spans agricultural heartland on one end, and spills into Cholistan desert on the other.

The evaluation and analysis would be made for the entire identified district but the field research (land records, court case verdicts, surveys, focus groups) would be restricted to two union councils per district, to keep it manageable.Urban cities are deliberately kept beyond the purview of the research.