Masaai pastoralists preparing their maize harvest in Narok, Kenya. (Photo Courtesy Ami Vitale/FAO)

Women in Senegal face immense obstacles to individual land acquisition and control. Land inaccessibility is a problem that leads to limitations on women's economic productivity and food security. Women in Senegal can access land through associations and groups of women, but this is not sufficient for guaranteeing continuity and independence of land control.

Local and international organizations highlight the positive effects of women's communal land use. Yet Fatou Diop Sall, sociologist and coordinator of a research project on gender and society at the University of Gaston Berger in Senegal, emphasizes that having access only through groups limits women's capacity as large-scale producers. Through this model, many women are limited to small-scale production and so only incrementally increase their economic growth and independence.

Sall explained to MediaGlobal the positive and negative aspects of women's communal land use. "It is good to allow women to access land through groups. This type of access has allowed many rural women who do not have the possibility of individual access to use a shared plot and work in several sectors: gardening, aviculture, and arboriculture.

But we must now take into consideration the limits of this access which does not always allow women to attain the status of a producer in her own right, as this status requires access to large areas for greater production." Women accessing land through groups and associations is an incremental step towards empowerment and economic independence, but Sall emphasizes that the long term goals of women's land tenure should go beyond simply access to individual legal control.

Sall presented initial findings of a two-year study she has been conducting on women and land rights to a panel at the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York on 11 March. She explained that women in Senegal are blocked from land control by cultural, sociological, and economic factors. Technically men and women have equal access under Senegalese law. However, historically women have not been landowners, so it takes effort to change communities' perspectives on women's potential to be landowners.

Furthermore, in Senegal, an individual can choose whether to use Islamic law or French-inspired laws for their inheritance before they die. Islamic law has more stringent rules about female inheritance and is the widespread choice, therefore women often only receive a fraction of the inheritance, which further limits women's sustainable land control. Women also have less economic power to buy their own land, thus making it difficult for them to stand up to the social and cultural barriers.

Another member of the CSW panel, Ritu Verma, senior researcher of development, natural resource management and agriculture at the University of Sussex, explained the significance of land control. "Land is everything... It's the basis of farming for agriculture, rice cultivation, and pastoralism.

It's critical for environmental sustainability, it's important as collateral for accessing credit. But what you see is that a lot of the development projects, policies, and discourses focus on the productivity issue, rather than the human rights perspective. It's not just about women having the rights to increase their productivity. Land is key to survival, to human dignity and food security. And women have rights to land on their own." For all of these reasons, it is important that women not only have land to cultivate, but that they can claim legal rights to their land.

Sall's research spanned all the regions of Senegal. She found that in general when women do have access to land, the plots are in poorer, more remote areas. She also found that there is significant disparity of awareness of legal access rights between men and women. Sall emphasized that an important step towards advancing women's land access is education. Women who are more aware of their rights are more likely to defend and uphold them.

The research project primarily aims to collect and disseminate data about land access issues in Senegal. The information is made available to religious and political leaders, as well as to the general public through radio announcements. The information can be used to inform future advocacy efforts to change women's situations.

It is important to note, though, that women have varying degrees of land access. While in general women can be considered a marginalized group, Sall did come across some female landowners in her study. Women with political, social or economic power are more likely to have access to land. Sall said, "class matters, economic issues matter, social issues matter about access to land." Women's increased access to land and increased social capital work in tandem: land access empowers women in all aspects of her life and empowered women are more likely to control their own land.