Webinar: Gender and Land Rights: Don’t Forget Men and Boys
When: December 9, 2014 at 12:00 PM EST
This recorded webinar is open to the public.
Summary:
In many developing countries a sense of identity, particularly for men and boys, is tied to control of land and other natural resources. As a recent International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) study finds, in some countries what it means to “be a man” is associated with property ownership. At the same time, USAID programming is increasingly attentive to the need to secure women’s rights to land and other valuable resources. This may put Agency programming in conflict with deeply held local norms and may, in some cases, strain gender relations and negatively impact women’s access to land. An important challenge to this programming is how to engage men and boys so that they support, rather than hinder, the recognition and documentation of women’s rights to land. With the support of men and boys, USAID’s efforts to empower women with land rights is more likely to be sustainable and impactful. Dr. Cynthia Caron will discuss these challenges and how USAID can address these concerns in its programming.
Speaker bio:
Cynthia Caron, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change at Clark University. Dr. Caron also serves as a gender specialist on the Evaluation Research and Communication program under USAID’s Office of Land Tenure and Resource Managment implemented by Cloudburst Consulting Group. A political and environmental sociologist, she holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a Master’s Degree in Forest Science from Yale University. Dr. Caron has held several professional posts in development programming in India, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka including: managing a team of engineers and social workers to successfully execute a community-based housing construction resettlement program in North East Sri Lanka (i.e., she is handy with a hammer), establishing the Applied Research Unit for the United Nations to coordinate and implement multi-sector assessments following complex emergencies such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2008 floods in Pakistan. As Senior Research and Evaluation Manager at Landesa, she directed a cross-national research portfolio on land tenure security in Rwanda, India, and Ethiopia. Dr. Caron has written on various forestry and environmental issues publishing in Society and Natural Resources, Agroforestry Systems, Land Tenure Journal, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and Energy for Sustainable Development.