“To deprive women of the land is to deprive Côte d’Ivoire of food.” This was one of the arguments advanced by the Director of Rural Land Tenure of the Ministry of Agriculture, during the two 3-days gender sensitivity training sessions targeting government officials involved in land management and regional directors of the Ministry of Women, Families, and Children (MFFE).
Most of the participants – ranging from territorial administrators and court officials to regional directors – were convinced of this statement by the end of the 3-days gender sensitivity trainings conducted for 52 officials in Yamoussoukro from September 13-15 and 20-23, 2022. The trainings were organized by the USAID Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) project, implemented in Western and Northern regions of Côte d’Ivoire from 2021 to 2024.
“The quality of the presentations, the quality of the trainers and the relevance of the themes have enabled us to see the gender issue from another angle,” said the sub-prefect from Guehibly. “Before, we heard about gender, but we often thought it was just about the number of women in meetings. Now we understand that gender is a development approach that is about social inclusion.”
During the training sessions, participants shared cases from their day-to-day work. These included women who were excluded from inheritance by their brothers, widows who lost access to plantations following their husbands’ deaths, and women involved in village disputes that led to women losing access to lowland areas generally devoted to food crops production.