ABSTRACT
The relation between women's access to land and perceptions of women's contributions to income from land can be argued to be directly linked. This chapter discusses women's work as it affects their claim to land and addresses the second aspect of the 'dichotomy' in constructing women's claim to land – as addressed to peasant women, within the household, affected by their work and contribution to agricultural production. It analyzes the extent to which the legal framework does or does not take account of women's contributions to production from land. The chapter draws out the possible interaction between work contribution and bargaining power over resources, literature drawn from the fields of economics and development policy has been useful. It argues that in addition, law also does not reflect the socio-economic reality of women's lives that they are significant actors in agricultural production. The economic basis for the reforms has been the purported higher productivity of smaller plots of land.
