This interview with Patricia Malasha, USAID/REFS, is part of USAID’s Land and Resource Governance Division’s Women’s Land Rights Champions series, which profiles staff across USAID Missions and operating units who are working to advance women’s land rights.
Tell us about yourself
My name is Patricia Malasha, and I am a Gender Specialist whose focus for the past 30 years has been on working with women and men to advance gender equality and ensure women have access to land rights and land ownership. I am currently the Country Coordinator for the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program II (ILRG II) in Zambia, which supports inclusive natural resources management and women’s access to and control of land. I also served as a gender specialist on USAID’s ILRG activity from 2018-2023. My project supports land documentation in customary areas that host 90 percent of land in Zambia, and engages with stakeholders to support inclusive land tenure and resource governance systems.
Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?
A majority of Zambian women depend on agriculture for their livelihood, and yet less than 22 percent of them own land and property in their country. Despite women having the legal right to own land, systemic challenges and cultural biases deny them the opportunity to enjoy the social and economic benefits associated with land ownership. Through ILRG, USAID has advanced gender equality in Zambia, breaking through structural and cultural barriers so that women gain the power to own land and make decisions about the use of their land. Through our programming, we speak to women and men, hear their views, and leverage their perspectives to design the right interventions for promoting women’s land rights. As a result, 50 percent of women that we work with have their names included on a land certificate. Through this work, we are changing the perceptions and realities for women, making them owners or co-owners of the land rather than just workers on it. This positively changes their social and economic status and gives them the confidence to reshape their role in their familial and community development.
What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?
In Zambia, cultural rules dictate that land belongs to men. These norms and rules are hard to shift away from, and challenging these norms often leads to social rejection or gender-based violence for women. Helping women to understand the importance of being included on land certificates and convincing men to accept women as landholders takes a lot of time and resources. Under ILRG I and now ILRG II, we ride on the local context, using positive influence to achieve success. A traditional saying we often use: “umucele ukufina baumfwa kubausendapo,” means that “the weight of salt is known only to those who have carried it.” We apply this to our work by talking to men and women to help them understand harmful norms, their meaning, as well as what we can change and the impact our interventions can have on individual lives. As a first step, we hold dialogues with traditional leaders (as influencers) and families to increase the acceptability of women as land holders. We then identify and work with women and men within the communities to become role models to champion the benefits of women’s land ownership. Eventually, communities realize these benefits, and more people join in the efforts to include women on the land ownership certificates.
What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?
Using a holistic and transformative approach to promote women’s land rights ensures that USAID’s approaches are informed by a complete analysis of the barriers, norms, and the power dynamics in land documentation. ILRG II’s approach also helps to build an understanding of the risks and devise mitigation measures. As a result, USAID succeeded in documenting 40,000 parcels in nine customary areas for 170,000 people, 41 percent of which included women as newly registered landholders. In addition, 50 percent contained names of women on the land certificate as joint landholders.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
ILRG II has developed tools and documents on the work to support women’s land rights. We share our stories to motivate others to learn and build on these efforts.
Our resources are available at: https://www.land-links.org/project/integrated-land-and-resource-governance-ilrg-ii/