The Working Group for Women and Land Ownership (WGWLO) is taking the lead in organizing five parallel sessions in collaboration with, ILC Asia, Womanity Foundation and Landesa at the India Land & Development Conference, 2025 being held from 18-20th November 2025 at Ahmedabad Management Association in Ahmedabad. These sessions aim to critically reflect on the journey of women’s land rights (WLR) in India, by examining the intersections of gender, caste, class, religion, ethnicity, occupation and age. This reflection will help to address the gaps in feminist land right discourses. WGWLO, ActionAid Association and Ekal Nari Shakti Sangathan are taking the lead in organising this parallel session, “Her Name on the Land: Realising Rights of Single Women”, to bring together the voices of single women from across India. Context In India, single women—whether widowed, unmarried, separated, or abandoned—form a significant yet often invisible group facing multiple layers of exclusion. Despite progressive laws, data reflects deep gender gaps in land ownership and control. Reasons include weak enforcement of inheritance rights, challenges of digitalisation of processes and records, limited information and awareness and continued bias against women’s owning land/resources across social and governance structures. For single women, social stigma makes the experience of marginalisation severe, further exacerbated for single women from socially and excluded communities. Limited access, ownership, control and governance over land and natural resources further alienates single women from land and commons, heightens economic insecurity, limits access to credit, schemes and social protection, increases vulnerability to climate impact - impinging on their equal rights as citizens as also undermining their dignity. Strengthening land rights for single women is therefore not just a matter of justice but a key pathway to enhance livelihood resilience, social status, and voice in governance and community spaces.

Objectives 

The key objectives of these sessions are to: 

1. Explore the relationship of single women esp. from excluded communities with land and commons 

2. Understand the factors that strengthen or weaken their right to land and commons. 

3. Listen to their challenges, how they face them and their hopes for the future 

4. Learn how ecosystem actors (government, civil society, donors, and researchers) can better support their land rights. 

Expected Outcomes

This session will provide a space to listen to single women themselves and various actors who have been associated with issues of single women. It will bring out grounded insights on how single women in India—widows, unmarried, separated, or abandoned—access, use, and control land and commons, and the socio-cultural and institutional barriers that shape these experiences. Through voices of women themselves, supported by perspectives from researchers, civil society, and donors, the discussion aims to identify enabling factors and promising practices that strengthen single women’s land and usufruct rights. The dialogue is expected to generate recommendations for policy, programme, and investment strategies that recognise single women as right-holders, promote gender-responsive land governance, and encourage collaboration among ecosystem actors to secure their land, dignity, and livelihoods. The dialogues will be compiled into a Collective Outcome Document for ILDC 2025, outlining key insights and recommendations to support the land rights of these communities. This document will serve as a guide for policymakers, donors, researchers, and civil society actors to develop a clear plan for the next decade.