Gender evaluation criteria for large-scale land tools

How can we judge if a land tool is responsive to both women and men’s needs?

Despite progress on women’s rights, rights to land and security of tenure are not enjoyed equally by women and men in many parts of the world. This goes against international human rights, and also impacts negatively on households and the economy. Gender issues related to land are complicated. They involve sensitive social and cultural territories and challenge deeply rooted power structures. At the same time, we know that for a land tool to be effective, it needs to go beyond a technical lens and also consider social dimensions such as gender.

The Global Land Tool Network’s work to date on criteria for designing new, or evaluating existing, land tools from a gender perspective is presented in this brochure. The gender evaluation criteria framework explores how to judge whether a large-scale land tool is sufficiently gender-responsive, to identify where more work needs to be done, and possible entry-points to make a tool equally beneficial to women and men.