ActionAid in your country
Women SPEAK OUT
Access & control over land
On Women's Day, ActionAid in Cambodia organised a photo exhibition showing the impact of the food crisis and hunger on women, with a specific focus on women's access to and control over land.
This Women's Day could draw the attention of participants from partner organisations, women organisations, like-minded organisations, students and volunteers as well as the media.
One of the participants Kim Sreychan, 57, from rural Cambodia village as a woman demands the right of women to full control over land. She said that women suffer a lot externally and internally. Internally, women cook, wash clothes for the husbands who will not wear them if they are not ironed.
"Women are miserable. If land titling is made under men's name, it is difficult for women in general. Not only me," Sreychan said.
"If the husband has a younger mistress, he will give the land to her. And the wife loses all the land. We have a few children. The woman will hug her children crying. He will hug a new woman and get all the land," she added.
"We have provision that women and men have equal rights. But we haven't had yet. So I demand that women have full access and control over land as men do. Equal rights to do anything men can do," Sreychan appealed to all women.
ActionAid believes that women could do more if their legal rights to access and control land were protected and promoted. On International Women's Day, poor women farmers around the world have protested as part of ActionAid's HungerFREE campaign and are demanding their rights to own or access land, and end hunger.
Women produce 60-80% of food in developing countries, yet they are entitled to only 1% of the land. In Cambodia, 34 percent of female-headed households own less than half a hectare of agricultural land, compared to 18 percent of male-headed households. Conversely, almost one third of households headed by men own more than 2 hectares compared to only 17 percent of households headed by women (Cambodia Development Resource Institute, Cambodia land titling rural baseline survey report, 2007).