• Local report finds ownership, control and use impacted by laws and conflicting cultural norms

Land is an important component in any Sri Lankan household. Apart from its economic significance, land has an important connection to a person’s identity and idea of rootedness. Ancestral land of a household is also a symbol of the continuation of kinship ties and citizenship. Despite its significance, it is estimated that only 16% of all land owned in Sri Lanka belongs to women.

Discussing women’s ownership and control of land, a recent study report on the same noted that the multiple customary laws prevalent in the country, certain State laws, and the internal conflict have contributed to women’s access to, ownership of and control over land. Even if women own land, the report added, they may not always have control over their property, while certain laws or circumstances may inhibit their efficient use of the land.

The report, titled ‘Understanding Women’s Land Ownership in Sri Lanka: Impacts on Agency, Empowerment and Wellbeing’, was published by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. It was authored by V. Gunasekera, N. Weeratunge and P. Menike.

State of women’s ownership 

The study showed that land ownership is a necessary but insufficient condition for women’s empowerment and social wellbeing. This, the report added, is due to the colonial transformation of customary laws favourable to women, legal constraints, and underlying social norms that are still in place.

As per other studies, regional populations of the three major ethnic groups in Sri Lanka come under three forms of customary laws with regard to the inheritance of land. Kandyan customary laws of the interior, hill country Sinhalese are bilateral, but conditional upon the post-marital residence of the sons or daughters. Under the Thesawalamai law, which applies to Northern Tamils, land is passed along the female line as dowry, but the wife needs the written approval of the husband to sell her land, a clause introduced under the colonial formalisation of the traditional law. The report added that this is a major issue for war widows. Noting that Muslims in the Batticaloa District used to have matrilineal inheritance practices where property was passed to daughters along the female line, the report added that after the introduction of Islamic law, the daughter now stands to get only half of what the son receives. 

“The general law of the country is gender neutral and ensures equal inheritance rights to men and women, but, the actual practice and implementation of these laws are a different matter,” the report underscored.

It added: “While there are notable constraints, both the qualitative and the quantitative findings also point to significant instances where women’s traditional gender norms, especially in the household, enable them to make independent or collective decisions. Women’s knowledge of their role as principal caregivers means that they have the capacity to make decisions about household budgets and chores, children’s education, resettlement, the use of home gardens, and so on. Landlessness does not impact their social relations and close ties with their immediate family and neighbours. At the same time, it does not seem to be the case that women consciously use their land owning rights to address power relations or enhance their bargaining capacities.”

When it comes to gendered land ownership and use-related patterns explored, the findings suggest that women’s ownership of land is the highest in Jaffna and Batticaloa with land and house titles in the name of the wife or a female relative or held jointly by the wife and husband. As per the study findings, considerably fewer women owned land in the Kandy District, while women’s ownership was the lowest in the Matara District. 

“The average size of a landholding is larger for the majority of Sinhalese women in the study locations in the Matara and Kandy Districts. However, the majority of Tamil women research participants in one study location in the Jaffna District and the estate study location in the Kandy District, owned smaller plots of lands.”

Customary matrilineal inheritance patterns continue to some extent in the Batticaloa and Jaffna Districts. As per the report however, there were two noticeable trends on the rise, i.e. joint ownership at marriage in both Districts and the transfer of ownership to the husband at marriage in the Batticaloa District. Patrilineal inheritance patterns and land acquisition through purchase is prevalent in the Matara District, and to a lesser extent in the Kandy District. Landless women accessed land in all study sites mainly through their spouses or other family members.

As per the study findings, having or not having land does not seem to impact agency to marriage and post-marital employment decisions for most female research participants in the study locations. Male members in the family influence these decisions even if women own land. This, the report added, is more common for Tamil women in the Jaffna and Batticaloa Districts and Muslim women in the Batticaloa District, in contrast to Sinhalese women in the Kandy and Matara Districts. 

“Women’s labour contribution in agriculture emerged as significant. Compared to the Jaffna and Batticaloa Districts, more women generate income from land in the Kandy and Matara Districts. This could be due to several reasons – the Sinhalese women in these study locations own larger portions of land compared to Tamil women and therefore have more opportunities to engage in land-based economic activities; Landewatta in the Kandy District is a tea estate, where the majority of women are employed as tea pluckers but are also engaged in home gardening, although they lack access to land titles; and the majority of women respondents in the Matara District are retired and engaged in small-scale farming or home gardening activities.”

The study findings indicated that while socio-cultural norms are continuously at play in every aspect of women’s lives, other factors such as poverty and education also have a major impact on their empowerment.

They further said that general notions of wellbeing differed across and within the study districts, in terms of the importance placed on material, relational and subjective dimensions: “While owning land or a house was considered an indicator of well-being in all the study Districts to different degrees, this was largely in the subjective sense of owning one’s own land and house, rather than in the material sense of having an economic asset. This was especially true in the war-affected Batticaloa and Jaffna Districts, where returning to one’s own house and land in one’s home village following displacement recurred as an important notion of household wellbeing.”

The way forward

In its recommendations, the report explained that the study points to the critical need for initiating a consultative process that brings together representatives of ethno-religious and women’s groups, historians and other scholars as well as lawyers to discuss what is required in terms of ensuring land ownership and control of land for women. It added that such a consultative process could help in identifying and strengthening existing laws which are not gender discriminatory, and also in removing certain discriminatory clauses introduced during the colonial period. Further, the report recommended that political interventions in land reform and resettlement processes be constrained to ensure that the existing laws are fully implemented.

“While both men and women respondents perceive land ownership for women to be important for economic strength, social security, self-worth and food security, legal constraints and social norms continue to pose challenges. Therefore, it is recommended that existing laws are further amended to allow women to have greater access to and full control of land. Even though the Land Development Ordinance’s gender discriminatory laws were amended recently (after decades of upholding gender discriminatory practices), the administrators should ensure that these amendments are honoured in practice and that women are given more space for decision-making in matters of land utilisation. Authorities need to be more aware of the ground realities of women and contemporary evidence based research on land issues to take efficient and swift action to ensure women’s rights.”

Along with these steps towards repealing gender discriminatory laws, the report noted, discriminatory and patriarchal attitudes towards women also need to change. It recommended that women be fully acknowledged and respected as ‘heads of the household’ and farmers where applicable, so that they can receive other socioeconomic benefits as well. The implementation of the new legal amendments to ensure that the ‘head of the household’ is no longer equated with a man or husband and that land titles be granted to both spouses by the State needs to be closely monitored in administrative practice. In areas where matrilineal inheritance is still prevalent, the recommendations further read, it is important that the State re-grants land titles to women in the case of land acquisition, rather than granting titles to males as the heads of the households.

Even if women own land or have access to land, the study findings have shown that their control over land seems limited. Noting that this is mainly due to the lack of knowledge of their land rights and poor awareness of the utilisation of land, it was explained that women’s agency to land use is predominantly seen in home gardening, mostly for their own consumption, while men have more control over agricultural land use for the market. 

“Therefore, more capacity building for women, raising awareness on agricultural land utilisation, education on women’s rights and bargaining power within the household and society need to be adequately provided for land ownership to be truly beneficial to women,” the report recommended.

As per the study, land ownership on its own is not sufficient to challenge gender issues and achieve social wellbeing for women.