FAO brings regions together to advance women’s land tenure rights

Women farmers often cultivate land for years without having the power to own it, decide how it is used or benefit from the resources and income it generates.

That gap between working the land and controlling it was at the centre of a interregional exchange convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 29 September. The event brought together nearly 90 participants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East and North Africa, and Europe and Central Asia to exchange experiences and examine what it takes to close the gap between rights recognized in law and rights women can exercise in practice.

The webinar was jointly organized by the FAO Regional Offices for Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and Near East and North Africa. It was the second in an interregional series on the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition, held in the context of the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026. The CFS Voluntary Guidelines provide a globally agreed framework for advancing gender equality, including women’s access to and control over productive resources.

“Women may work the same land every day, keep the farm running and sustain the household, yet still be seen as merely helping,” said Viorel Gutu, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia, opening the webinar. “The work is shared, but the recognition is not.”

Despite progress in legal and policy frameworks, Gutu noted that having rights does not necessarily mean being able to exercise them.

“The challenge, therefore, is not simply to put rights on paper,” he said. “It is to ensure those rights are real, accessible and enforceable in women’s everyday lives.”

Across regions, women often have equal rights under the law, but in rural areas customary practices may prevail.

Women may work the family land without having real rights or decision-making power over it. Their work as farmers is often seen as an extension of their household chores. Yet in rural societies, land ownership often gives people status and recognition as farmers. Without land ownership, women are often seen as helpers rather than as farmers in their own right, and they have limited access to training, inputs and finance. As a result, they often don’t develop their full potential as farmers, and agriculture underperforms.

In Africa, Malawi has addressed these challenges by passing legislation to strengthen women’s tenure rights – while also adopting measures to ensure its practical implementation. Davie Chilonga, former Principal Secretary for the Ministry of Lands, outlined reforms that combine recognition and registration of customary land rights, governed by traditional or community-based rules, with community-level governance and women’s participation in local institutions.

Where customary tenure plays a major role, legislation alone cannot determine what happens on the ground. Traditional leaders, communities and local institutions also shape whether women can exercise and defend their rights, make decisions over land and use it to improve their livelihoods and food security. Thus, these community leaders have been engaged to support and foster gender equality and women’s land rights.

In Egypt and the wider Near East and North Africa region, the question is often whether social norms allow women to exercise rights they may already hold. Noura Abdelwahab, a social economist and gender expert, focused on approaches that work with communities, households and the people who influence local decisions.

In one example, restrictions on women’s mobility were limiting their participation in an agricultural value chain. The work was redesigned so women could participate from home, alongside training and access to finance. Abdelwahab also stressed the need to engage men, elders and other community actors and to look beyond land titles to whether women actually control resources, retain income and exercise agency.

In Azerbaijan, self-help groups have helped rural women develop skills, pool savings, build businesses and strengthen their collective voice.

Gulbaniz Ganbarova, Chairperson of the Azerbaijan Rural Women’s Association, explained how the model grew into a wider network of women producers and entrepreneurs. The association now works with 50 women’s groups, bringing together 780 women, including 16 women’s cooperatives, managing 248 on-farm, off-farm and non-farm businesses.

An FAO-supported women’s economic empowerment project also reached more than 270 women in 12 districts with access to knowledge, information, inputs and markets. Eight groups established through the initiative continued beyond the project and became legally registered women’s cooperatives.

Closing the webinar, Abdulhakim Elwaer, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa, called for stronger implementation and enforcement of legal frameworks, better data and greater participation by women in land and natural resource governance.

The value of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines, he said, “lies not in the guidance itself, but in how effectively it informs policies, programmes, partnerships and investments that improve outcomes for rural women.”