ABSTRACT
When the Saridinista Popular Revolution came to power in 1979, its leaders inaugurated a process of agrarian reform in an effort to transform the inherited agrarian structure. This chapter describes the principal features of the agrarian reform and evaluate its impact on women's access to land and employment and on working conditions. It analyzes the revolution's prospects for raising gender awareness and organizing Nicaraguan rural women. The agrarian reform encompasses three basic sectors: state farms, the cooperative sector, and independent producers who have received individual land titles. The Association of Rural Workers, the most important organization of agricultural workers, consistently promotes both participatory management and better working and living conditions for the rural working class. The Law of Agrarian Reform and the Cooperative Law were passed in 1981, two years after the start of the revolution. During its first two years, the agrarian reform focused on the distribution of lands to cooperatives and on the consolidation of the state farms.
