Gender, Land and Violence - A Case Study of Three Indian States
by Dr. Govind Kelkar - Landesa, India
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
10:00 am - 11:30 am
at the Heinrich Boell Foundation - North America
1432 K Street, NW, #500
Washington D.C., 20005
Light refreshments will be served
Background: Dr. Kelkar will present the findings of her study, which explores the relationship between women’s ownership of land and gender-based violence; specifically, it focuses on whether land ownership enables women to exercise economic agency, enhances their ability to make decisions on land and its produce. The study was organised in three States (Meghalaya, Karnataka and Telangana) with diversity of gender relations. The study has four conceptual considerations: gender-based violence and its redressal by landowning women in patriarchal institutions; the character of violence perpetrated against landless women in patriarchal states; forms of violence (physical, verbal and sexual) and their redressal by landowning women in Meghalaya; and the character of gender- based violence and its redressal by landless women in a matrilineal state. The findings suggest that women’s vulnerability to violence is related to their general vulnerability in socio-economic systems. Land ownership enables women to exercise economic agency, enhances their ability to make decisions about their own lives, empowers them to individually or collectively act to achieve a desired outcome and thereby ensures a life free of violence in the home and outside.
About Dr. Govind Kelkar: Dr. Kelkar is the Senior Adviser at Landesa, India and a Regional Council Member of Asia and Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Chiang Mai, Thailand. She has previously worked as coordinator of the IFAD-UNIFEM Gender Mainstreaming Program in Asia and later headed the Economic Empowerment of Women Unit at UN Women, South Asia Office, New Delhi. Dr. Kelkar taught at Delhi University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand. At AIT, Dr Kelkar founded the graduate program in Gender Development Studies and also the Gender, Technology and Development Journal, published by SAGE, India. She holds a Distinguished Faculty position at AIT. Dr. Kelkar has extensively worked on the impact of women’s right to land on gender relations in rural Asia, has authored 12 books and contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals with a focus on women’s right to agricultural land in India and China. She has been in close touch with women’s movements in the region and has been a keynote speaker at several international and national conferences.
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