Biden Administration: How Can Women Benefit From Land Technology?

Yuliya Panfil, in collaboration with Ailey Hughes and Stephanie Sampson from Medici Land Governance, wrote for Thomson Reuters Foundation News about the challenges that women face in accessing and utilizing land technology.

The last decade has revolutionized land technology. All over the world, governments, NGOs, and private companies are using drones, GPS, self-sovereign identity and blockchain to help millions of people map, document and defend the rights to their land and homes. These advances make it easier, faster and cheaper for people to document the rights to their most valuable asset, and decrease government corruption by making land administration more transparent.

But these exciting advances suffer a significant shortcoming: they are leaving women behind. Research shows that women lag in both their access to and uptake of  land tenure technologies, from cutting edge advances like blockchain and drones to every-day tools like smartphones.

Not only do women have poorer access to technology, but lower literacy rates and digital skills, along with less empowerment more generally, mean they can’t use it as effectively. A study of internet users in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa found that going online was seen as taking a woman’s time away from her family responsibilities, and in some instances male heads of household prohibited women from going online or using social media.

Read how the Biden administration, with Samantha Power nominated to head USAID, can address these pressing issues here.