Introduction: Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights

Abstract

Neo–liberal economic agendas are impacting on rural livelihoods and people's attachment to, and functions of, land in rural and non–rural household economies differently in diverse contexts; the present collection of papers explores the gender specificities of these impacts. With the deceleration of more formal forms of employment, the diversification of rural livelihoods, and the intensification of women's unpaid and casual labour in agriculture and the informal sector, the land question has taken on a new urgency and needs to be posed in a new light. Given women's centrality to diversified livelihoods, and their increasing political agency, their interests in land (both as wives/daughters within male–dominated households and as members of vulnerable social classes and communities that face the risk of land alienation and entitlement failure in the context of liberalization) are more politicized today as well as being more contested. The interface between gender and land is contextually specific and cannot be adequately addressed through all–purpose global policy prescriptions.