1. Security for Girls
Through Land
Gracykutty Middey, State Director for West Bengal
Diana Fletschner, Sr. Land Tenure & Gender Expert
November 2010
With funding from the NIKE Foundation
The Global Center for Women’s Land Rights
Rural Development Institute

2. Background:
 Law permits equal inheritance for boys and girls
 Girls are raised to think that the dowry is their share
of inheritance and that boys inherit land
 The dowry goes to their in-laws

3. Problem:
 Dowry is illegal, but by and large it is the only way to
ensure marriage
 For poor rural families, dowry rises with age
 Poor rural families have incentives to marry their
daughters early
Early marriage has health and social consequences:
- It leaves daughters in a vulnerable position
- It leads to trafficking (disguised as early marriage)

4. Goal: To improve the economic and social
situation and prospects for adolescent girls
Strategy combines:
 Selective allocation of parcels of land
 Interventions to change attitudes to increase the
status of girls in their families and communities
 Linkage with Government programs that foster
girls’ growth and economic development

6. Selective allocation of land:
 Builds on the West Bengal’s Cultivation and Dwelling
Plot Allocation Program (CDPA)
 With BMGF funding, RDI is assisting the West Bengal
Land and Land Reforms Dept. in a project meant to:
- Identify willing sellers and purchase land
- Identify beneficiaries and provide them a small plot
(for modest house, trees and vegetables, poultry and small livestock)
- Issue land documentation jointly (wives and husbands)
- Connect beneficiaries with public programs to improve
livelihoods

7. Selective allocation of land:
In addition, for the Girls’ Project, RDI is working to
ensure that:
 Families with daughters and no sons are given
priority (Girls in these families are even more vulnerable)
 Land documents list all sons and daughters as
co-inheritors

8. Community conversations
 Implemented by local NGOs
 To help communities understand how existing norms
harm girls
 To facilitate bottom-up actions that promote:
- Dowry-free marriages
- Delay of marriages
- Girls inheritance of land and the exercise of
their right to it as a fall-back position
Community conversations have been successfully used
in Sub-Saharan Africa to induce behavioral change
related to female genital mutilation

9. Boys and girls groups
 For children from families who receive CDPA land
and neighboring families with homestead land
 Form long lasting groups that foster girls’ and boys’
equal rights
 Curriculum designed to help them see the connection
between the value of girls and:
- dowry
- early marriage
- domestic violence
- trafficking
- land ownership
- economic capabilities including life skills

11. By the end of the project we expect to see:
 2,500 daughter-only families who have received CDPA land
with document that mentions all children as co-inheritors
 Community conversations held in 70 villages
 320 boys and girls groups
 An increase in daughters’ age of marriage
 A reduction in the proportion of families that pay cash
dowry
 A reduction in the average amount paid as dowry

12. By the end of the project we expect to see:
 A higher proportion of parents who state their
daughters can return if they have problems after
they marry
 An increase in the proportion of girls who finished
8 years of education
 Government Partners adopt our model and scale it
in the state

13. Evaluation Strategy:
 Qualitative interviews of men, women, girls, and
boys in villages where community conversations
are held and where boys and girls groups are
organized
 Girls’ diaries
 Psychometrics, Ethnographic Research

14. Evaluation Strategy:
 Household-level quantitative baseline survey
in 2010 and endline survey at the end of 2013
 Sample of households considers the 3
treatments and their respective control
groups:
- Did the family receive land?
- If the family received land, are any of the children
in boys and girls groups?
- Regardless, has the family participated in
community conversations?

15. Challenges
 Families’ fear including daughters as co-inheritors
will increase fragmentation of their land
 Strong cultural norms and customary practices
 Short time frame of the project

16. Thank you!
Photos by: Deena Ledger