Violence is a serious impediment to women’s ability to assert rights and control over land. Globally, women undertake large amounts-of agricultural labour, especially on small ‘family’ farms, but hold less than 20% of land. Women may gain rights through several channels: marriage; inheritance; communal rights; state-backed land redistribution; formalisation of titles or through the market. Where they do hold land, women often face challenges in exerting control. The deeply gendered nature of landholding has received increased international attention in the last years. Like men, women may lose existing rights to land and forests through largescale appropriations and dispossession. Defenders of land - including women- often face violence, including homicide. Although underreported, such violence does receive some publicity as community land may be at stake and the violence is by ‘external’ agents. But most negotiations over gendered land rights are more fragmented, taking place at household or lineage levels. Violence as a reaction to women (as wives, divorcees, widows.) attempting to gain or assert new rights is thus little reported. This presentation discusses how gender-based violence operates to discourage claims to land, examining studies from different world regions. A key question is whether formalisation of land rights helps reduce household and community violence against women: do more secure rights strengthen claims?
About the speaker
Susie Jacobs (BA ; PG Dip. Soc. Anth; M.Sc.(Econ); D.Phil.) is an emerita Reader and Hon. Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her D.Phil. (Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex) was an early study of gender and land reform (land resettlement) in Zimbabwe. Since 1983, she has written widely on gender and land issues, including agrarian reform and decollectivisation; gendered insecurity and land titling. In another strand of work, she led two national-studies of ‘race’, ethnicity and racism in British higher education. Other, gender-related publications and research concern the gendered impact of armed struggles; international women’s movements; labour organisation in agribusiness and gender-based violence in land disputes.
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This is Seminar 11 of the 2025/26 Centre for Gender and Violence Research Seminar Series. Please see the 2026 Events page for further events in this series.