Security for Girls Through Land

Gracykutty Middey, State Director for West Bengal Diana Fletschner, Sr. Land Tenure & Gender Expert

November 2010

With funding from the NIKE Foundation

The Global Center for Women’s Land RightsRural Development Institute

Background:

Law permits equal inheritance for boys and girls

Girls are raised to think that the dowry is their share of inheritance and that boys inherit land

The dowry goes to their in-laws

Problem:

Dowry is illegal, but by and large it is the only way to ensure marriage

For poor rural families, dowry rises with age

Poor rural families have incentives to marry their daughters early

Early marriage has health and social consequences:

- It leaves daughters in a vulnerable position

- It leads to trafficking (disguised as early marriage)

Goal: To improve the economic and social

situation and prospects for adolescent girls

Strategy combines:

Selective allocation of parcels of land

Interventions to change attitudes to increase the status of girls in their families and communities

Linkage with Government programs that foster girls’ growth and economic development

Selective allocation of land:

Builds on the West Bengal’s Cultivation and Dwelling Plot Allocation Program (CDPA)

With BMGF funding, RDI is assisting the West Bengal Land and Land Reforms Dept. in a project meant to:

- Identify willing sellers and purchase land

- Identify beneficiaries and provide them a small plot (for modest house, trees and vegetables, poultry and small livestock)

- Issue land documentation jointly (wives and husbands)

- Connect beneficiaries with public programs to improve livelihoods

Selective allocation of land:

In addition, for the Girls’ Project, RDI is working to ensure that:

Families with daughters and no sons are givenpriority (Girls in these families are even more vulnerable)

Land documents list all sons and daughters as co-inheritors

Community conversations

Implemented by local NGOs

To help communities understand how existing norms harm girls

To facilitate bottom-up actions that promote:

- Dowry-free marriages

- Delay of marriages

- Girls inheritance of land and the exercise of

their right to it as a fall-back position

Community conversations have been successfully usedin Sub-Saharan Africa to induce behavioral changerelated to female genital mutilation

Boys and girls groups

For children from families who receive CDPA land and neighboring families with homestead land

Form long lasting groups that foster girls’ and boys’ equal rights

Curriculum designed to help them see the connection between the value of girls and:

- dowry

- early marriage

- domestic violence

- trafficking

- land ownership

- economic capabilities including life skills

By the end of the project we expect to see:

2,500 daughter-only families who have received CDPA land with document that mentions all children as co-inheritors

Community conversations held in 70 villages

320 boys and girls groups

An increase in daughters’ age of marriage

A reduction in the proportion of families that pay cash dowry

A reduction in the average amount paid as dowry

By the end of the project we expect to see:

A higher proportion of parents who state their daughters can return if they have problems after they marry

An increase in the proportion of girls who finished 8 years of education

Government Partners adopt our model and scale it in the state

Evaluation Strategy:

Qualitative interviews of men, women, girls, and boys in villages where community conversations are held and where boys and girls groups are organized

Girls’ diaries

Psychometrics, Ethnographic Research

Evaluation Strategy:

Household-level quantitative baseline survey in 2010 and endline survey at the end of 2013

Sample of households considers the 3 treatments and their respective control groups:

- Did the family receive land?

- If the family received land, are any of the children in boys and girls groups?

- Regardless, has the family participated in community conversations?

Challenges

Families’ fear including daughters as co-inheritors will increase fragmentation of their land

Strong cultural norms and customary practices

Short time frame of the project

Thank you!

Photos by: Deena Ledger