Unmediated Land Rights: Well-being for Women

Besides the standing and dignity in the family that owning land in their own names gives them, women also acknowledge the voice it gives them in household and community decision-making, and the financial security it affords them against eviction from the marital home.

Women’s Voice

“When the land is in my husband’s name, I am only a worker. When it is in my name, I have some position in society and my children and my husband respect me. So my responsibility is much greater to own my land and I take care of my fields like I would my children,” said a woman farmer of Banskhera village, Solapur district, Maharashtra, in August 2010 in a collective meeting of 50 women and 20 men. A number of women nodded in agreement and the men did not protest or question her.

I n the early 1970s, the Committee on the Status of Women in India received many representations from women of different states regarding the discriminatory features of the new land reform acts of the 1950s. In a meeting of women agricultural workers in May 1980 in Bankura, West Bengal, similar home truths were pointed out by a number of poor farming women. During my field work in 1984–85 in a village in Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh, Devi, a dalit woman, remarked sharply, “No, women never control any assets, not even the children they bear. Children are known as their father’s children. This has been going on for generations.” Raj Kumari, another dalit woman, added, “Land is passed on from father to son. Even the jewellery that is a gift to a woman on her marriage is not given to her but is kept by her parents-in-law. If a man dies or remarries, the woman is completely dependent on others for her survival. A man can gamble or drink away his land but a woman is always concerned about her children. She cannot see them starve. She will do everything in her power to raise them to the best of her ability. Land should, therefore, be owned jointly by husband and wife.”