GENDERED RESOURCE RELATIONS AND CHANGING LAND VALUES:

IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN'S ACCESS, CONTROL, AND DECISION MAKING OVER NATURAL RESOURCES

JULIANA NNOKO-MEWANU1, ROBERT MAZUR1, SHARON R. BIRD1, RUTH MIENZEN-DICK2

1 Iowa State University – Department of Sociology2 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Introduction• While most developing countries have ‘progressive’ land

rights laws on paper, in practice they lack legal and procedural mechanisms to protect local rights and interests, livelihoods and welfare (Cotula et al. 2009:7).

• Insecure use rights over land; inaccessible land titling procedures based on constraints related to information, finance, and logistics; legislative gaps; legal overlap between customary and statutory systems; and inadequate compensation limited to loss of improvements on land (excluding loss of land) all undermine bargaining endowment of local negotiators.

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Research Questions

This paper examines the processes through which women are excluded from the negotiation process over the transfer of land use rights from local communities in Cameroon to a transnational investor.

• How do local cultural beliefs & institutions interact with traditional gender hierarchies to limit access to decision making processes at the village level?

• What are the daily interactional mechanisms that continue to reinforce exclusion of women from participating in decision-making processes about land transactions?

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Gender, Land Transfer and Women’s Land Rights

• Few studies have examined processes vis. women’s inclusion or exclusion from consultations, or implications of their involvement in these processes (Chu 2011; Daley 2011; Julia & White 2012; Behrman et al. 2012; Piacenza 2012).

• Four factors contribute to women’s vulnerability during large-scale land transactions (Daley 2011):• systematic discrimination• gendered socio-cultural & political relations• women’s relative cash poverty• physical vulnerability

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Local Belief Systems & Exclusionary Forms of Governance

• Why are women not included in decision making processes, and why do they not resist disruptions in their access to land? Understand how belief systems institute structures of power based on secrecy and mysticism, and are inherently gendered.

• These belief systems prevent acting in a manner that

contradicts laws of local governance established by Chief. Women may not believe that questioning their exclusion from community decision-making processes is viable.

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Social Relational Structures and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality through Social Interaction

Kabeer (1999) • Social relational approach

• Institutionalized nature of gender inequality • Gender relations as based on power

Rocheleau and Edmunds (1997) • Gendered resource tenure regimes

• Gendered spaces and places

Schwalbe et al. (2000)• Othering• Boundary Maintenance• Subordinate adaptation• Emotion management

Women and Changing Value of Land

Two arguments concerning women’s land rights that are important in structuring our discussion. • ‘Bundle of rights’ over natural resources• Rights are hierarchically organized – men (primary) and

women (secondary) (Agarwal 1994; Rocheleau et al. 1995; Lastarria-Cornhiel 1997; Kevane 2004).

• Therefore, changes in land value results in women’s lesser rights being interrupted and loss of access to land.

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Women and Changing Value of Land (cont.)

• No hierarchical structure in organization of rights over natural resource management (Gray & Kevane 1999; Razani 2003; Whitehead & Tsikata 2003; Ribot & Peluso 2003).

• Women and men hold similar rights for land use, but women’s rights to land are redefined based on fluid rules and norms within local communities during periods of transformation.

“The question of who gains access to land and on what terms can only be understood by seeing how control over land is embedded within the broader patterns of social relations” (Toulmin and Quan 2000:6).

Methods

• Individual and group interviews, participant observation, and documents related to the land transfer.

• Processes guided by feminist political ecological approaches - how micro-politics of gender interact with meso- and macro-level agroecological and political economic processes (Rocheleau et al. 1996; Kabeer 1999; Razavi 1999; Whitehead & Lockwood 1999:549-552).

• Data analysis involved deductive logic – coding based on the concepts identified by Schwalbe et al. (2000).

• Inductive, allowing for identification of new categories and mechanisms derived from the data.

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Results and Discussion – Mechanisms of Gender Subordination

“There are a lot of women whose farms are found in this area that the company wants, land that women got after their husbands died and left cocoa farms. They [SGSOC] said they would pay cash. We have a lot of land around [the designated area] and they have taken it. I don't know who gave them. There is nobody who has come to talk to me about the land. We don't have a lot of land. There are other people who have larger farms. The SDO [Senior Divisional Officer] and DO [Divisional Officer] … are aware that we do not want to give our farmland.”

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“Othering”

• Men’s ‘othering’ practices involved the redefinition of personal rights and social identity for locals• ‘natives’ or ‘strangers’.

• Othering entails invention of categories & systems of meaning about what mark people as belonging to these categories.

• Meanings are created that shape consciousness and behavior, such that inequality is directly or indirectly reproduced (Schwalbe et al. 2000:423).

“Us” “Them”

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Othering Cont.

• “How could they say that I am not an indigene of […….]? Just because of money? So they think they can say I am not a [native] woman and give my land away? …“Since they say I am not a [native] woman, my father was Douala [non-native], and he ran the estate [PAMOL] here. My mother was [native]. Because my grandfather gave a piece of land for the estate [PAMOL] to build…, now they think they can go back there and build a camp [SGSOC] without asking me? And call me a stranger?”

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Boundary Maintenance

• Controlling network access

• Threat and use of violence

“The meetings are strictly on invitation. If you are not invited you can't go there. The meeting of today [resource mapping meeting] we were not invited. They have never said that ‘there is a meeting - if any one has something to say, they should attend.’ They will say the DO [District Officer] has called a meeting and it is strictly on invitation. If they don't invite you, how would you go there?”

Subordinate Adaptation

• Instead of challenging exclusionary processes, women often accept less involvement in exchange for satisfaction of being called once in a while – subordinate adaptation.

• Powerful women can gain additional benefits by agreeing to ‘rules of the game’ that disadvantage all women. Hegemonic bargain between powerful men and women circumvents opposition, which perpetuates role of dominant and subordinate (Kandiyoti 1988).

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Emotion Management

• “When men have decided, we just follow their decision. Who am I to say that I do not like the decision? When a man says it is correct, I do not oppose. If not for the fact that women have been educated now, and are involved in some issues, it is the men who know good and bad things for us. Who am I? You cannot oppose someone who is above you. You can not oppose the ‘big’ man, even when you know that he is wrong. If someone wants to take your land by force you pray to God, what can you do?”

• Discourse becomes a powerful tool for reproducing inequality – serves to regulate thought and emotion, identify ‘Others’ and thus maintain boundaries.

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Conclusion

A. Systemic overt forms of gender discrimination as well as unintentional gender subordination operate in a complementary manner.

B. Subtle mechanisms of othering, boundary maintenance, emotion management, and subordinate adaptation reinforce gendered hierarchies of power while also minimizing perceived options for resisting own subordination.

C. Basis for identifying steps that could be taken to help communities to understand how women’s direct participation in land transaction negotiations would benefit the community as a whole.