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- Women's Access to Land as Owners and Farm Workers: Some Implications...
Women's Access to Land as Owners and Farm Workers: Some Implications for Extension Planning
Dissertation Abstract:
The study, which examined factors associated with women's access to agricultural resource, was conducted in two villages in the district of Kuala Langat, Selangor, Malaysia. Interviews with 143 household spouses from the two villages were administered. In-depth interviews with selected women on their life history were carried. The analysis comprised two components. The first component involved hypothesis analysis and answering research questions related to women's access to land as owners. This component used quantitative tools such as t-test, chi-square test, and regression analyses. Tobit and multiple regression analyses were used to determine the relationship between the selected independent variables and the size ofland owned by women and men as the dependent variables.
The second component of the analysis using qualitative data was on the associated situations leading to women's access to land as farm workers. Results of the statistical analysis showed that there was a significant difference between land size owned by women and men, which averaged 0.461 and 3.787 acres, respectively. Women acquired land mainly through inheritance. In addition to inheritance, men also acquired land effectively through government land allocation programs and purchases.
The Tobit analysis showed that older women were more likely to own land than the young ones. Women from male-headed families had better access to land ownership than those from female-headed families and so were the non-uxorilocal compared to uxorilocal. Family income, family size, types of family phase, and length of residence did not contribute toward explaining the dependent variables. Among men, there was a significant positive relationship between family income and their land's size. Other variables did not appear to contribute to land size owned by men.
The qualitative data showed that women had continual access to land as farm workers since they settled in the village. Some of the factors that led to their continual access to farm work were family-related: women had been very important family labor in farm production; they had to play the role as family income earners; they were from the female-headed households; and they were involved in making decisions about the farm. The structural-related factors, on the other hand, were availabiIity of employment opportunities in the viIIages, the multiplicity of crop cultivation, and usage of less labor-saving technologies in most of the farming operation.
Recommendations were provided for both extension and future research. The recommendations for extension were based on generated findings useful to extension policy and program planning for rural women. A comparative study on women's access to land between those in mixed farming with oil palm as the major cash crop and mixed farming characterized by crops other than oil palm was recommended.