Women & Land Rights Program

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While working on economic empowerment of women and securing sustainable livelihood for rural women in Nagpur, Chandrapur and Akola districts for some years. In Akola district the women with whom Prakriti work are widows from suicide affected farmers families. While working on these issues, Prakriti team realized that Land plays a very crucial role in the lives of women from agrarian households and also from non-agrarian household, as the main source of livelihood for women is farming. So the program on women and land rights was launched with the support of Womanity Foundation, 

The program is implemented in 30 villages of Nagpur rural and has the following objectives:

A) To create awareness about land rights of women

B) To increase access, decision making and control of women over land

Women leaders are identified from the targeted villages. and orientation for women leaders was organized and each leader was oriented about the objective and outcomes of the project. 

Here are some of the salient observation with regard to the status of women and land rights in the identified 30 villages of Nagpur district :

• There is 30 to 40% decrease in farm based livelihood of women ( in terms of days of a work per farming season) This primarily is due to decrease in agriculture , and low agricultural output .
• Most of women feel farming is most sustainable and safe source of livelihood
• Mostly land is owned by male members of the family and women have minimal knowledge about their land rights.
• Only widows were found having land on their names, after the death of their husband 
• Women want to safeguard the land and do not consider it for monetization, however male members consider land as an asset for monetization. 
• Over the years, due to fragmentation the land per household is reduced considerably resulting in low agricultural output per household.
• There is no awareness about common land and at no village any project or activity of land based livelihood activity was found.

The functionaries at the village level, like the Gramsevak, Patwari, etc are not very supportive thus the project also aim at sensitizing the machinery and involving Gramsabhas in support of women’s land right