Document Type: Success Stories

Changing long-held beliefs and traditions around gender and land can be challenging, but using a community-based approach, families and communities in Côte d’Ivoire are already experiencing tangible changes in women’s access to land.

Mr. DOUÉ Michaël had never questioned the traditional attitudes around women’s land rights—and gender roles more broadly—that were prevalent in his community in Western Côte d’Ivoire. “Before, I thought that only men could inherit from their parents,” he shared. “I considered men to be superior to women.”

Thus, when their father died, Michaël and his sister, Lydie, faced a dispute: Michaël espoused the belief that he and his brothers were the sole heirs to their father’s property. But this didn’t sit well with Lydie, who wanted full land rights and recognition of her value as a member of the family.

It wasn’t until attending a training provided by USAID’s Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) project that Michaël began to see the other side of the issue. Through the training, he heard his sister recount in a video how her inability to access the family land caused her economic and emotional hardship. Michael also learned about the benefits of sharing property with female family members, who are often in charge of household expenses.

With this new perspective, Michaël consulted with his brothers and decided to give Lydie a portion of the family land. The decision not only gave Lydie greater means for survival, but it also strengthened their relationship.

“Things are changing,” said a young man from Litiangolo, northern Côte d’Ivoire, during a recent social dialogue session on women’s participation in land-based decision-making.

“The women who negotiated their new agricultural site, they did so directly with the chief,” he explained. “Before they would have had to find a man intermediary to advocate for them. But I think it’s better that they can negotiate directly.”

Indeed, women’s agricultural groups supported by the USAID Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) in northern and western Côte d’Ivoire are key to helping reduce land inequality and discrimination.

The project’s baseline political economy analysis found that restrictive social norms made it difficult for women to speak up for their land rights. However, when organized as agricultural groups—that produce food for the benefit of the whole community—they feel “safety in numbers” and are viewed more positively by male community leaders.

USAID ILAW has been supporting women’s agricultural groups to develop vision maps using the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) that include specific objectives related to land. Combined with other communication activities, many groups are now successfully negotiating more land.

Urbanization can threaten women’s land access by swallowing up their farmland, pricing them out due to speculation and generating conflict.

This was among the conclusions from the baseline Political Economy Assessment (PEA) conducted by the USAID Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) project in 2021.

But two years later, ILAW is seeing new opportunities for women to access urban land thanks to the project’s focus on changing social norms among customary and government land administrators in both urban and peri-urban contexts.

Following gender sensitivity trainings and over 200 social dialogue sessions, many of these leaders are actively lifting structural barriers and seizing opportunities for women to become landowners.

At a recent forum organized by ILAW, regional directors of urban land described how they convince landowning families to reserve plots for women during the creation of new urban subdivisions.