The economic development approach to legal reform for rural women: A methodological alternative

Legislative efforts to promote rural women's economic productivity have focused on strategies for improving access to and control over agricultural resources. Women make up 50 per cent of the world's farmers, but in many developing countries they are unable to hold or manage productive resources in their own name. Most legal proposals recommend family law reform as the entry point for change. This article argues for a broader approach. All the laws that affect rural economic development should be evaluated and linked in ways that promote rural women's integration into the economic mainstream. In agriculture the‐most important legislation is natural resource management, local government development and agricultural development and agricultural investment laws, including research, intellectual property protection, cooperatives, banking and marketing. Each law should be assessed from the perspective of four generic development attributes: how it contributes to women's representation in policymaking; what economic benefits it provides; whether it facilitates the evolution of organisational structures to help women attract capital; and whether there are clear systems for enforcing rights and therefore minimising risk. Next, the process is reversed to determine how the laws collectively support each of the four areas. This methodology allows the researcher to tease out and rearrange essential elements of a comprehensive enabling environment that provide a sufficient level of institutional support in all four areas across the entire spectrum of agricultural development.