I’m glad that you drew attention to this issue, esp. to the importance of the commons, which are especially vulnerable to expropriation.
But the posting (and apparently the report) falls into the all-too-common trap of using flawed numbers in the set-up of why it is important to pay attention to women. For example,
“ And according to Oxfam, “women produce more than half of all the food grown in the world.” “
Cheryl Doss has done a careful analysis that shows that such numbers can’t be supported (see https://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am309e/am309e00.pdf )
We’re also working to identify what can be said about how much land women own—most of the statements on this have no empirical basis.
My concern is that if arguments for attention to women are based on bad data, it could discredit the overall case. Getting better data on this is not simple, but that is the role for research.
I’m glad that you drew attention to this issue, esp. to the importance of the commons, which are especially vulnerable to expropriation.
But the posting (and apparently the report) falls into the all-too-common trap of using flawed numbers in the set-up of why it is important to pay attention to women. For example,
“ And according to Oxfam, “women produce more than half of all the food grown in the world.” “
Cheryl Doss has done a careful analysis that shows that such numbers can’t be supported (see https://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am309e/am309e00.pdf )
We’re also working to identify what can be said about how much land women own—most of the statements on this have no empirical basis.
I don’t want to undermine attention to the impact of land grabs on women—in fact, we’ve also done work to show that women as disproportionately disadvantaged by most such deals (see https://www.ifpri.org/publication/gender-implications-large-scale-land-deals and https://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01136.pdf)
My concern is that if arguments for attention to women are based on bad data, it could discredit the overall case. Getting better data on this is not simple, but that is the role for research.
-Ruth Meinzen-Dick, IFPRI