WUNRN
Also Via Women's Livelihoods -
PWESCR
Pakistan - Women's Land Ownership Project
By Zofeen Ebrahim
BADIN,
Pakistan, Jul 13, 2010 (IPS) - "I told my husband if he ever hits me
(again), I’ll pack up and go to my parents who live just round the corner, and
he will lose the land I got," says Jannat Gul of Tando Bagho village here
in this southern Pakistani district. Her husband has not hit her for the past
six months – since Gul became the owner of some 1.6 hectares of land.
Gul is one
of the beneficiaries of a project of
Indeed,
President Asif Ali Zardari has decreed that the 21,000 hectares of land for
distribution during the project’s second year be reserved for women, who are
traditionally left out of land reform schemes and have less opportunities to
own land.
The
coordinator of the land distribution programme, Faisal Ahmed Uqaili, says it
aims to "empower the rural women of Sindh", the country’s
southernmost province.
Latest
reports, released in November 2009, say that over 17,400 hectares of land, in
17 of the 23 Sindh districts, have been distributed to some 4,200 beneficiaries.
More importantly, 70 percent of these were the most impoverished women. Each
receives between 1.6 and 10 hectares of land, depending on availability.
To many
rural women, land ownership in this South Asian country has empowered them in
various ways.
To many, it
has opened the door to improvements in livelihood. To others, it has brought
respect in an agricultural setting where women wanting or demanding land
ownership can be seen as "weakening" the position of brothers and
fathers, as a 2008 study by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)
describes it.
"I paid
off the grocer’s loan, bought new clothes for myself and my grandchildren, and
re-invested the rest into the land," says Zar Bibi, a 60-year-old widow,
who made a profit of 45,000 rupees (525 U.S. dollars) off the first crop of
rice she harvested from her new plot of land.
"I
would never, even in my wildest of dreams, been owner of 1.6 hectares of
land," exclaims Hema Mai, 42, a former farmhand from the minority Hindu
community in Begna Mori, a village of 4,000 people in the Jaati district in
Sindh. "Our fortunes have turned."
With
agriculture accounting for 42 percent of full-time employment and 23 percent of
the country’s Gross Domestic Product, land ownership is considered the most
important safeguard against poverty in rural
But land
ownership is, as the SDPI report describes, "highly skewed" – with
women receiving the shortest end of the stick.
Women can legally
own land, but state land allotment has always excluded women, explains Haris
Gazdar, a
"It is
not easy for a woman to control, access and manage her land. The revenue
department which maintains land records or the agriculture markets is heavily
male- dominated," Uqaili adds.
This
initiative to level the playing field is the "Benazir effect", says
Gazdar, in reference to former Pakistani prime minister and champion for
women’s rights, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. "This thrust
for women's land ownership came from the political leadership and not from the
bureaucracy," he adds.
But old ways
of thinking are not easy to change - and some men are voicing their displeasure
over the programme. "They (disgruntled men he meets during field visits)
say women will become rebellious, will find a tongue (if they own land),"
explains Jalil Khokhar, coordinator of the non- government National Rural
Support Programme, which supports the Sindh scheme.
"Socially,
it is considered a norm for women to forego inheritance rights, and if they own
title, they will allow husbands, sons, brothers etc to take charge,"
Gazdar says. "Social norms are based on the notion that a woman will leave
her parents' home and her husband's family will acquire control over her
property, hence the reluctance to allow her to inherit fixed assets."
It is also
common for men to assert claims over land held by female relatives. Thus, the
Sindh programme tries to ensure that the land allotted to women will remain
with them. "The land cannot be sold for at least 15 years and the heirs
can only be female next-of-kin," says Khokhar.
But despite
its gains, the programme faces a gamut of problems.
A study
conducted after the first year of the programme by the non-government group
Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) reported that 50 percent of the
women beneficiaries did not receive their corresponding legal ownership
documents.
Uqaili
questions these allegations: "There were such cases, but 50 percent is a
gross exaggeration. Of the 4,200 people who got land, only 150 women did not
get legal ownership documents."
But, he
admits: "Despite our best intentions, we met with huge issues at every
step."
"At
times, the land was illegally occupied by influential individuals, which meant
long-drawn litigation as delaying tactics. Then, in some places, land was
allotted but there was no water as had been promised," Uqaili says.
In some
cases, land was also found to have been allotted to relatives of influential
persons.
According to
the PDI, hundreds of cases are under litigation because there were multiple
claimants to the allocated state land.
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