 So before I'm to use myself, let's just remind everyone that the reason to this webinar has interpretation. So please click on the globe icon at the bottom of your zoom screen and select the language that you prefer interpretation to French to Spanish and to Bahasa for Bahasa please click on Indonesia. Okay, great. Yes, thank you Neil for putting also on the screen. So my name is Laura Mediolaro I'm team leader at the land portal foundation. And again welcome to this webinar on showcasing transformative approaches for women and rights. The webinar is part of a series of webinars that we the land portal foundation is creating with both ends. The series is called who's land inclusive pathways to land governance. And there are four webinars in total this is the third of the series so there is one more to go. And probably towards the end of the year so stay tuned for more discussions. The series has the objective to generate discussions and dialogue around the importance of inclusivity and meaningful participation and land governance processes, former and former processes. So inclusion and participation of all stakeholders. So today we're talking about gender transformative approaches to women rights and in preparation for the webinar. We asked ourselves for what is gender transformative approach or gender transformative work or programming. And how do we know that transformative changes are taking place women land rights. So when the development community has started to use this approach and what are the key questions, and we should ask ourselves if we really want to achieve address transformational change. So we the land portal foundation the research team has prepared a research note and investigate a little bit about the principles and the values of this approach and also on the availability of gender disaggregated data that we all think that are super important. If we really want to measure. Transformer approach gender approaches and in particular transformative approaches. So, I invite you to read the note, but basically, which is published in the land portal in the webinar page. And our research team came to the conclusion that is basically impossible to overcome gender inequalities without really looking at the structural barriers not the architecture of power within societies and institutions. And really, the focus should really be on looking at women as active agent of change. Regarding the gender disaggregated data. Again, the research team came to the conclusion that although there is a multitude of studies and reports that's been published on gender land rights. And the recognition that disaggregated statistics on women land ownership or women land holding are still largely insufficient and inconsistent across many countries. I invite you to read the notes. And to point you to another important resource. The lamp water has organized another webinar on this topic in the frame of the land scale program. A few months ago, and we invited Naomi Shandrak, who's a gender expert at Oxford to deliver a keynote on on this topic. So, Oxfam refers to gender transformative leadership as an approach for women land rights. And this approach in transforming power relation and architecture of power within institutions and really is an approach that focuses at unveiling the leadership potential of women in taking decision that relate to access control and ownership of land and natural sources. So it's really an approach that look at transforming the personal attitudes and the relations to address the social change. Again, I invite you to look at these resources in the webinar page. I hope you will get a little bit more nuances and understanding of this important issue. Let me share a few additional logistical notes before we start the discussion. The webinar is live stream on multiple platforms. If you also wanted there is also live tweeting occurring so if you also want to take parts and share your tweets please use the hashtag whose land. We have created a social media kit is available. My colleagues are showing the link on the chat. So please make use of these resources. And at the end of this discussion, we will invite you to share your questions and for that please use the Q&A button at the bottom of the window of the zoom screen and share your questions and to the panelists. Finally, this webinar is this session is being recorded and the video link will be shared with all of you afterwards and available on land portal pages and also an article will capture the main key messages and takes away and again this will be available on the land portal page. So now let me introduce our terrific panel of experts that are here today will join me in this very interesting discussion. So we have Frida Jituku the executive director of Goose Kenya National movement of grassroots women. Frida is also the global culture at the international coalition and she's a passionate advocate for women and rights welcome Frida. We also have Judy Pasino coordinator of the purple action for indigenous women's rights in the Philippines. Judy has been actively involved in many struggles that's involved that affected indigenous communities in the Philippines in relation to their ancestral domain and their rights to self determination. Judy is an activist, a feminist and a mother. Welcome Judy. We also have Banu Mati Kalluri executive director of battery trust in women land NGO working on India in the intersection of environmental justice and women rights. Banu has been also involved in several community struggles for the last 30 years, and particular struggles that involve indigenous communities and forest communities. Welcome Banu. And last but not least we have Ruth Menzenbeck. Ruth is a senior research fellow for the International Food and Policy Research Institute in Washington. And Ruth is a development sociologist with decades of experiencing research related to women's land rights and rights to collective resources particular. Ruth has also been awarded in 2019 the Eleanor Ostrom Award and Collective Government of the Commons. Welcome Ruth. So the webinar, the discussion will be structured in two main parts. The first part where we will investigate the meaning of gender transformative change, and also we'll ask the panelists to share some examples from their field experience for their projects on gender transformative approaches. And the second part of the webinar we will discuss about gender disaggregated data and the role that this data can have in contributing to gender transformative change. Let me start with you Ruth, and ask the question what does gender transformative change means to you Ruth? And why is it important for women land rights? Over to you Ruth. Thanks. A lot of the attention to gender transformative change focuses on changing social norms to enhance gender equity. That's important. For example in land rights you need to address the norms that say women can't own property. In some places there's even norms that women are property. Addressing norms is important, but it's not enough. You also have to address the structures to change the structures that exclude women. And that means looking at the whole system. Are there issues that prevent women from enjoying full land rights, like the land registration system? For example, do the registration systems routinely include the names of both husband and wife? So first of all is the form designed for that? Then are the staff trained on why and how to register women as well as men? Are the registry offices physically and socially acceptable, accessible to women? So you need to look at the norms and the structures for transformative change. Thank you so much Ruth. This was extremely clear and really an approach that's looked at the core of the architecture of societies and social norms. Can you also explain us how gender transformative leadership might influence social relations, in particular power relations, power architectures, and at what level in societies? So I think the example that comes most readily to mind for a lot of people and is often cited is the need to work with men. And that's usually dealing with local power relations. Things like male chiefs who have authority over land or elders who have social influence on this. And get them on board so that they use their power to support women's land rights. But in terms of women's agency, I think we also need to look at the women who challenge the lack of land rights for women and therefore thereby create new power constellations. And then beyond the community at these higher levels, political leadership can play an important role, not only in changing the laws and the policies, but in shaping the social norms. And from outside, projects can play a role in reshaping structural power arrangements. Things like requiring women to be represented on land boards and such. And the challenge there is that outside projects need to really understand the power relations as they exist, if they're going to be effective in making changes. Thank you so much. This was again very clear. And I wanted to ask to, well, first of all, let me thank all the participants and please feel free to introduce yourself using the chat and tell us where you are connecting from, from a Jewish organization in country. We're very much looking forward to, to know who you are. And now I wanted to ask the next question to, to banu. Banu, do you recognize what Ruth just explained about power architectures, relations, power relations, and particularly in your context, you know, and working with indigenous peoples and forest communities, you know, empowering women, building leadership. What does gender transformative change mean in that context, you know, for you in your projects. Over to you, Banu. And you're muted, Banu. Can you unmute yourself? Oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you, Laura. I'm joining from a city called Hyderabad in South India. And I thank all of you for inviting me onto this panel. I want to speak more from, as Laura mentioned from the indigenous women's perspective. Having worked with them for many years, what I feel is that transformation happens only when there is decision making and resource rights for women, and it is more gender equal. There needs to be a strong political will to ensure that women get formal legal rights to their lands and to their common resources, and also that there is no environment of fear of either state or corporate or even domestic violence. So therefore I feel a gender transformative change is a very political issue. Firstly, because the discourse around gender transformation is restricted largely to the domestic domain and to the customary. What we see increasingly happening is that this transformation is being prevented by a lot of corporate and IFI led models on gender transformation, which are influencing our laws and policies in India. And these are increasing the structural and corporate violence. For example, in the indigenous women's context, land ownership has been patrolling in and the state has been quite orthodox. But now it is increasingly acquiring lands of indigenous people for large private entities. Hence, women are now today losing both formal and informal rights to land. So transformation is not just about giving some incentives or some cash benefits and taking away their land rights and handing these over to corporates. So we really need to reverse this form of privatization models and promote more formal entitlements to women, promote more community, conserved and managed ownership forms of collective agencies where women are able to participate in real decision making and not just in numbers. So there's really no substitute to legal rights and therefore we have been finding it quite a problem that this guidelines model and do good practice models of promoting gender transformative change is not going to really bring a real change to women but we need more policy and practice, promoting women's knowledge practices, both collective agencies and formal entitlements. Thank you for providing these examples and to better understand the India context, this is really informative. And in particular, can I ask a follow on question on how does this approach, how do you go on building this agency, you know, and how this then influence the power of transformation, the power dynamics within groups, families, communities in your context. The dynamics within, I mean for gender equality would require, like, as I said before, not transformation just in terms of intent and goodwill, but more in giving rights and entitlements, there is enough, you know, experiential evidence that where women have greater control over their resources, I mean land, forest, national resources, they have better negotiating power and more equal or better status economic and social status. So when we really focus on entitlements, there is enormous scope for equalizing and bringing changes, not just at the domestic level but also at the structural vertices. For example, if state perspectives on gender transformative policies change and move from just giving program inputs to women and more focus on women getting land rights and putting into place executive institutions that will work towards bringing these formal rights to women and not really, again, taking back the lands grabbing the lands from the women for privatization, then the power dynamics are definitely going to be more level playing for the women within the household and in the public sphere. So we have found that whether it's domestic violence, whether it's education or skill building or other political opportunities are possible where women are having a better power over their resources. So land dispossession and corporatization of indigenous peoples lands is definitely not going to lead to transformative change, rather it would be a more regressive process of achieving any kind of equal gender equality. So, I would definitely feel that there is more need for providing formal legal entitlements to women. Thank you, Bhanu. Thank you so much for explaining that and the fact that the women have access, formal access to land resources, their status has been changes and the relationship as a consequence of course is affected in the power relationship within families and society and groups and communities also changes positively and transformational way. I wanted now to ask Frida to take the floor and tell us, do you recognize Frida, these challenges also in your communities now in the groups you work with in Kenya and in particular in your work empowering women groups in Kenya and building leadership. What do you think that we should do in practice now to embark on a project that aims at achieving gender transformative change? Thank you, Laura. I think for us, when we talk about gender transformative change, we look at three, four realms and one is on the individual consciousness and abilities and I think that's what Bhanu is referring to as agency and I'll come back to it. Access to resources, the policy and institutional framework that of course enable women to gain control over more land but also the social environment. So we seek that social transformation. Let me go back to the issue of agency. As an organization, as groups, we found that the most effective way to grow people's ability to grow people's consciousness is through building movements and these are grassroots movements of the people most impacted by the injustice that we are talking about here. The injustice of lack of women land rights and we don't look at it in isolation because there is a very strong nexus between women land rights, gender based violence, political participation. Women rights as a whole but the core to the transformation there is impacting their personal transformation as individuals so that they believe that actually they deserve those rights and they have a right to these natural resources. But also bringing them together into collectives so that they can share the wealth that they have the most which is their numbers and their voice because they may not have the money that other people in different social hierarchies have. For us building movement is very important, both as a process of transforming the person, you know the personal transformation, but also bringing the community that is most impacted by these injustices together to raise their voice. And we've seen that when they organize the movement they are able to shift the power from those traditional power holders to themselves or rebalance that power because they are using their numbers constantly to negotiate. Some of the injustices that we see, even when the law is in place like injustice around land disinheritance, the law in itself cannot adequately address that injustice because it's about practice. And because we need to achieve scale in terms of transformation for us that's where community led movements, whether they take the designs of women groups or what people call the people based organization that's why they become very, very key. To ensure that those laws have meanings and they are having effect on a daily basis in the lives of people. Then the other thing is around the access to resources and this access to resources of courses identifying what kind of opportunities exist for women to accumulate more resources to develop the lands that we are putting into their hands and to have controls to make a decision over those lands. Sometimes we push so much for the land to be registered in the name of women or jointly, but that's not an end by itself that in itself will not cause transformation because land must be put into use for each to transform household to result to income even to rebalance the power issues at the household. So access to resources, whether it is from the private sector or it is a from public program is also a key area, a key contributor to gender transformation. Those two are very much at the personal level. If you come to the environment now, we are talking about social transformation, which is of course something that a lot of organizations of all kind have stayed on for a long time. And Ruth mentioned the main champion model that is working very well because you have people who can relate to each other, trying to influence and persuade and transform others. Then of course the other thing at a collective level is on the transformation of law. And I liked what Ruth mentioned that it's not just about the policy, it's also the institutions that implement those policies and the people who sit in those institutions. And that's why it's important to get as many women as possible or feminist or advocate of land rights to be part of the surveyors registrar and so on and so on. Thank you, Frida. This was absolutely enriching. And thank you for mentioning the collective thinking on the building this collective thinking and collective decision making and the importance of movement, which is an aspect that also Naomi has in her video. This is very, and as well as the consultation and the continuous participation in the process. And thank you also for mentioning that this tension between is important, the formalizations versus the use of the resources to really reinforce more agency and leadership. Do you have any example, Frida, that you want to share with the audience today on what approach has shown, now to work, some concrete examples from the work in Kenya? I do. And one of the example of the movements we've built is around the community land and watchdog groups are also the Paravigos. And these are people in the villages who come together to make sure that while when there are cases of dispossession and disinheritance, the victims first of all have the courage to report those cases, but also that they are accompanied and they are able to pursue justice using the institutions that exist, whether those institution be customary institution or state institution to get back their land rights. And through this kind of localized movement, we've been able to restore so many widows and orphans who are, you know, often disinherited when they lose their spouses or who are constantly under threat of losing their property. You're breaking a little bit. You want to switch off the video. Ruth has really done since I joined the organization. Of course, working together brings together a collective in the village, but these are people who are trained effectively, they understand what the law says around women land rights, but they serve as a watchdog to ensure that when there are injustices such as land disinheritance and dispossession, then they are the first one to encourage the victims to report these cases, but they also accompany them to pursue the justice system up to the end so that they can regain their land rights. And we've seen so many widows and orphans being restored to their homes through this kind of movement. Of course, they are more effective if they exist in a big scale. The Ogiek community, we've seen them organize as a people based organization, and they've been engaging in this, of course, fight with the Kenya government of their territories in the Mount Forest, and we've seen how them being organized in people organization has supported them to stay on into what they believe is their territory up to now. So there are different kinds of success stories that prove that movements do work. Thank you so much Frida. And I invite everyone to visit groups website and read more watchdog the women groups, community land art working group and the fantastic work that you are doing in Kenya. And let me now talk to Judy and listen a little bit about the Philippines, and some good examples of gender transformative practices and approaches there in the context where you work, Judy, and approaches that have again shown to work effectively in in reinforcing women leadership and agency in your context in the Philippines, particularly with indigenous communities indigenous groups and yes and also particularly in the context of influencing policies and and and local or national policies of women and rights. Over to you. Judy. Yes, hi. Hi. Good evening Laura. Good evening everyone. Gender transformative practices are work in progress. But what is critical is the breaking of the isolation and extinction of indigenous communities, particularly women. Not just geographically but politically. Most of the indigenous communities in the Philippines are in what government calls geographically isolated in disadvantaged areas. Up until now there's no accurate official count of how many indigenous peoples are in the Philippines until now the number that is being used is 12% to 20% of the overall national population. Without the actual count, the indigenous women remain invisible if not marginalized. And this isolation and marginalization are highlighted during disaster times especially so with typhoon one of the strongest typhoons which hit our country in 2013. Our organization lead up immediately tried to reach out to indigenous women leaders who were on the path of the typhoon. They could not be reached for weeks, because all the lines are cut off when you were able to reach one of them, we immediately arranged for relief operations. We went to the local government unit of the said province and sought support for transportation, given that it was very difficult to reach in mountainous areas. The government's disaster response unit accompanied us and they were so surprised to see that the indigenous women were so organized. They were so surprised that in this very far flung area, there's a group of indigenous women who have organized themselves and who have actually have networks at the national level. It was the first time for this government unit to reach the area. So since then they initiated more communication and coordination between the indigenous women and the local government unit for the rehabilitation work that followed including relocating the community to less hazardous areas. The indigenous women were even able to negotiate for access to agricultural lands for their food production. There are multi-level, multi-pronged, I should say approaches that we like ventures into. And this has been already discussed by Banu and Frida, but yeah, it's good to know that this is a common approach that women organizations do, the approach of focusing on the self and indigenous women themselves, increasing their confidence to be able to find their voice and to use their voice in the assertion of their rights through skill sharing, community learning sessions and connecting with other indigenous women through different gatherings as well as linking them up with other networks of women groups and formations. At the government level, there's a facilitation between the indigenous women and the government officials for dialogues for either policy change at the local level or push for direct access to resources and support from the government. And this has been mentioned by Frida, the movement building. This is one area that we put emphasis to ensuring that the indigenous women's representation and their presence are actually in the different campaign formations and national alliances and being part of the vibrant movement building. We also engage media work where we try to pierce through the mainstream media with their stories of struggles, stories of being in the frontline in the defense of their land. We're promoting their statements and take on relevant national issues such as impacts of the national mining policy, the anti-terror law in their defense work, and the human crisis that we are in. With these, the indigenous women break the stereotype that indigenous women are mere victims of disasters, discrimination, and violence. They are able to show their wisdom, their courage, their power. We also support indigenous women's agenda building. A good example of this is the recently held national elections in the Philippines. The indigenous women mostly, most of them for the first time, took a stand knowing that there was a lot at stake for the human rights situation, environmental and climate crisis, and the dire poverty that the communities are in. LILAC supported the convening of the indigenous women to have electoral discussions, and thereafter they developed the indigenous women electoral agenda. This they brought to the candidates, progressive candidates, to be included in their electoral platform. They also brought this agenda to the women's, to the broader women's groups and to the broader indigenous peoples. At the local level within the indigenous political structures, indigenous women are slowly occupying spaces of leadership. This takes them to being part of decision making processes on their ancestral domain management, development, and defense. Now, are these enough? Of course not, but we hope that as we continue these approaches, we may cause some cracks on the glass ceilings and glass walls and torn barricades surrounding the indigenous women. Thank you so much for this nice testimony, Judy, and also to share with us these important examples, you know, and that shows that building agency leadership and negotiation skills, you know, with indigenous women's help, even in remote areas, and with remote groups really is shown to be transformational, you know, and let these women sit in the decision making table and really make their voice heard. And let me ask a last question, Judy, before we go to the second part of the webinar and start talking about gender disaggregated data. And you also work a lot with land rights and environmental defenders. And can you share with us what it means now building women leadership and agency in a context where land rights environmental defenders play critical role in different human rights and sometimes their life at risk. Yeah. Yeah. Building and increasing or strengthening indigenous women's leadership is a two-edged sword. While it strengthens their position to be able to negotiate, and transform power relations within their communities, and even with the state. It is the same reason why they earned the ire of the vanguards of patriarchy. Their families would look at the indigenous women leaders, activists, women, human rights defenders as betraying their roles as beautiful mothers, wives, daughters. On the other hand, there's the indigenous leadership who are still generally male lead who feel threatened that their power will diminish. And then the state, of course, which considers indigenous women, human rights defenders as mere obstruction to their profit-oriented development within their ancestral domain. And the corporation, so find them as annoyance as they expect that indigenous women would just throw the line of the decisions made by male leaders who the corporations have more direct and influence on. All these lead to different forms of violence against indigenous women, human rights defenders, defending their ancestral domain from mining, dams, plantations. We have a case of an indigenous woman waking up to his husband with a knife being trusted at her out of jealousy for being active in political meetings and always being out of the house. Another case that of a young indigenous woman being threatened by the tribal chieftain himself, accusing her of not following customs and traditions by being active in organizing young women in their community. Then of course we have the government red tagging them or labeling them as a communist insurgents, terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. Under the past regime, Duterte, there were 92 documented extrajudicial killings of indigenous leaders. Under this new slash old Marcus government, we expect the numbers to rise. There's no gender disaggregated data of the number of land rights defenders killed in the Philippines, but our country has been topping the list unfortunately of the most dangerous places for land rights defenders in recent years competing with Brazil. Well, of course, this causes fear among indigenous women. Most of the indigenous women that we work with, with fear in their hearts, would continue their assertion of their rights to their lands and ancestral domains. And let me just quote one of our beloved leaders Bayeiros Onda who said, we have no choice. This is our obligation to protect and to fight our land. I think it is a powerful statement to conclude this first part of this session, Judy. Thank you for sharing with us. This has been really terrific discussion and very informative and lighting with from your different domain of expertise and from different corners of the world where you are operating in such a challenging context. As I said in the beginning, we now switch to a slightly or to a complimentary discussion and talk about gender and land data. The land portal has paid special attention to land data and the importance of ensuring understanding and to land data and also access to data and how data can be a means to solve important lands, struggles and land issues such as women access to land. As I said in the beginning, there are numerous studies and reports for still gender disaggregated statistics of women and ownership and holdings are still largely insufficient and inconsistent across many countries. And let me now ask our panelists what their opinion and the perspective is they're different. They're different from the different perspectives. I wanted to start with you again, Ruth. You are a researcher. You're working with data, collecting data, carrying out surveys. So what is the current state of women and rights data? What are the major gaps that we should be aware of, Ruth? So the good news is that the data are improving. Unfortunately, we're still a very long way from knowing what proportion of women own land, what proportion of land owners are women, and what proportion of land is owned or co-owned by women. For example, the FAO Gender and Land Rights Database covers 83 countries, so far from universal coverage. Even within those countries, none of those countries have complete coverage of the critical measures that we would want on women's land rights. Efforts to cover the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs have helped expand the coverage of information on land rights and prompted governments to include data on this in some of their major surveys. Remember, almost all of that data on what's called land ownership is survey data on self-reported land ownership, which doesn't necessarily correspond with what is legally recognized land ownership. And most of the indicators are whether or not a woman or a man is a land owner. There's little data on how much land they own. And furthermore, much of the data that we have, almost all of it, it covers private lands, not the shared lands that are under communal tenure, like for most Indigenous groups, or common properties. So for example, I'm in India right now, and the range lands, the forests that are within a community that women rely on very heavily, that's almost totally not covered in this data. So there's a long way to go. Thank you, Ruth. Indeed, a lot of attention to data now is driven by the Sustainable Development Goals, of course, and you are right that there is still a long way to go. Not only the coverage, but also how up-to-date this data is also an important issue. But one follow-on question to you, Ruth. What data do you think we need to monitor and document gender transformative change, and what is missing there again? Where is the gap? That's actually a really good point, because all of what I talked about a minute ago, that's the data on the outcomes, the sort of endpoints. But if we're talking about transformative change, we need to think about not just the outcomes, the proportion of women owning land, or proportion of land owned by women, but also some of the process indicators. For example, the number of women in land administration bodies, or forest user groups, and the attitudes of land administrators towards women having land rights. And I think it's also, we often talk about data, but we need good analyses that show how that data actually is understood and how that relates to the reality on the ground. To things like women's tenure security, because we know that women have different sources of tenure insecurity than men do. Sometimes they're worried that whether or not they have their name on a certificate, that they maybe lose access to that land. So I think we need the improvement of the data, but we also need studies of the processes through which these changes happen, or do not happen, and what that really means for women and men of different backgrounds in terms of their land tenure security. Thank you so much, Ruth. Thank you also for reminding us that most of the data available, the survey data, whereas government should really take on the responsibility to collect this data more systematically. And while carrying out their functions in the land administration regular functions, and that's why it's important to also have women sitting there. And also it's important to now explain, investigate what transformational leadership means by analyzing the data and offering interpretation of this data. Let me now ask Banu to take the floor and explain, you work directly with grassroot communities, and get their insights and understanding of the gender data gap. And also wanted to ask, have you ever used data for for your advocacy work on women's land rights in India? And in doing your work, where are the main gaps? Where do you see data missing? And what data could strengthen your work when you work with these communities? Yes, Laura. As an advocacy support organization to grassroots women's campaigns on land rights, we use data both at the primary level and also at the secondary level, because women have no access to any kind of data which is secondary research sources. And their knowledge of the primary level realities is not converted into data or research sufficiently enough to support their arguments or to protect their land rights. So most often, there is a huge gap in between experience and what is being generated as data. For example, we have been fighting a case of a tourism project where the government states that this is a wasteland and it's good to set up a resort here. But the women say we don't define this as wasteland. So we helped women generate their own data about the biodiversity of this so-called wasteland to submit it in the court to argue their case that this is our data. But there is no access to micro 11 data on that micro forest space to show that this is not a wasteland. This is one example. Another example of a conservation project. There is a lot of data generated on, say for example, how tigers have, population has increased and this form of fortress conservation has helped protect the tigers. But there is no data available on what happens to the women who have been thrown out of these protected areas or who have lost their access to the forest when a tiger reserve is declared. So these stories and this data on how much of impoverishment, how much of migration, how much of malnutrition that women have been put to as a result of these kind of policies and programs and investments. So we help women come up with their own tools and come up with their own data on one side because there is a huge gap in academic non-academic data on this front. And we also find that there is a need for support in terms of, for example, there is a mining project and women have their experiential and observational tools that their water body is polluted by a mind-taining spawn or there is air pollution or that has impacts on their health, on their crops, on their agriculture. But the data is very false when it comes from the state and corporate bodies. So an environment clearance is given without proper authentic study of the impacts of environmental pollution of an extractive projects. So who will help the women conduct authentic research to bring out the ground realities? That is something that we are really struggling with. There is also a lot of times communities, indigenous communities losing out because there is no clear land data related not just data but maps related to land. It's very difficult for them to prove whether it is forest land or non-forest land and then it becomes very easy for, say, forest authorities to just throw them out of their land. And data is both gender unequal and also social unequal. Communities have no access to, say, satellite imagery or catastate maps where a satellite map may show that there is thick forest to disprove the claims of communities that they are farming here for generations, whereas it could be a coffee plantations, it could be a tea estate. So data can be very false and it can be very skewed in the way we present these. So these are the kind of gaps we feel and I also feel that women are very creative. So a women's song can give more data and can give more scientific evidence of a biodiversity than a research or a quantitative data. So how do we value this form of data and evidence and build it into women's knowledge based data that can be supported by other empirical forms of data. So these are some examples from the ground, the challenges that we are facing in terms of the gender injustice and access to data and the way data is interpreted. Thank you for these examples, Banu, and also to these data collections, community data collections experiences and how they can be important, it's not critical to build skills, build agency and build awareness on the issues and sometimes be used to challenge the so-called official data as that you said rightly that sometimes they can be really misleading, outdated, not complete and not measuring the right aspect. So it's very important that and we hear it also from other experiences in Mozambique, for instance, how powerful can be involved in engaging women and communities in data collection experiences. And I wanted also to hear from Frida about your experience and using data for advocating women and rights in Kenya but also engaging with data collection, increasing data literacy, the ability to use data community level as an engine for empowerment and transformation. I know Groot is doing a fantastic job in that regard. Can you show some examples with us? Thank you, Laura. Kenya hasn't made a lot of progress in terms of producing data on land, ownership, access and all, and not just for women, you know, land data is a whole. And for that reason, we've seen that there is an opportunity then to fill in that vacuum because even the data that exists, administrative data from the land registry, the access to that data is also not quite easy. It's not even for political reason for other reasons that we don't understand. So as an organization, one of the things we've invested in is training communities to generate their own data. What we call citizen generated data or community generated data. Now we are very happy because at least the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics just launched guidelines for citizen generated data. And that's quite a mark of progress for the country because it means other institutions can produce data as long as they meet a certain quality criteria or standards. So Groot has an interest in public land, all land, but public land and I will explain why because of course women form the majority of them. They are the poorest of all our population, the women population, and that means they also rely heavily on public services, whether it is cool or it is hospitals or it's a water point. They really make more sense for them and they really need them. So how public facilities are managed is very important and quite directly related to women empowerment. So for us we feel that it is strategic for the constituency that we lead to play the role of safeguarding what we call as public lands. And these are lands that have really been under threat historically in our country, being grabbed and put in the hands of a private individual for personal use. So one of the model that we develop several years ago is the public land mapping model, where organized groups of community go out and identify the parcels of public land that exists within their geographical jurisdiction and create manual and digital inventories of those lands. So why is that important? One, because that the community there needs to know that this is their common property and they have a role in safeguarding it. They also need to understand that it is impact how they access basic services, water school health, and others, and also they need to understand that they are the best shot in the recovery and repossession of land that may be in the hands of individual owners. We've done that in two counties so far. And what we've seen is that with these inventories, when people go out for public participation or to engage duty bearers, then they are authoritatively able to say that as a people, as a community, as a county, we own these parcels of land which exist either as reserve or unused, and we want them to be secured. We also want the upcoming project of the government to be erected in these public facilities. They've also gone further ahead to get back some of the land, public land properties that actually had been grabbed. And these are things that governments have tried before and they didn't succeed. But the power of the people is stronger. And of course people who are occupying this public land, when they see community members creating inventories, printing digital maps and putting, you know, a trail of evidence, then even some of them relinquish or release these properties willingly. So we've seen data being very instrumental in empowering communities to safeguard land, to advocate that governments invest in those lands to increase access to basic facilities. We've also audited registers for community land. And in that audit, of course, we always use a community-led model. We realize that the number of women who are recognized as owners or as shareholders of those land are very few. Yet the law empowers every adult who is above 18 to be a member of the community land register. And that's how you are recognized as a member of that community and has a say on how that land is used but also has an opportunity to be elected to be part of the governing body. And through that kind of data we are able to build the conscience of women until they are now competing to be in those committees and they also demand of the executive to update their registers and includes their name so that they are part of the shareholders on their own rights. Thank you so much for that. This is very informative. Thank you for sharing these examples somehow. The approaches that you've been using at Groups Kenya have really helped building agency, building leadership and capacity for women to really sit in the decision-making table and how this can really be transformational. I've been very cognizant of time. It's two o'clock and there are so many questions that you are posing in the Q&A box and I really want to give space for the panelists to answer your questions. More than 200 people connected. I really want to ask the last question, give the chance also to Judy to talk about data and how you use data for advocating for women and rights in the Philippines. Please share some of your approaches and examples and what you see is missing and how data can strength your work in the Philippines. Judy, over to you. Yeah, thank you Laura. First of all, I'm very happy to hear how Bano and Frida have been discussing ways of getting data concretely from the ground and that's something that really inspires me. But for us in Lila, what we are trying to do are to find the faces of women behind the statistics that are being released. For example, government would say hunger rate. The national government would say that in the first quarter that they found that 12.2% of Filipino families or an estimated 3.1 million experienced involuntary hunger. And that's the difference in the past three months involuntary meaning being hungry not have anything to eat. But we know that women are hungrier in our small research that we did on the impacts of pandemic among indigenous women. They said that they tend to give up their neither share of food to their husband or children, or would be the last person in the family to eat whatever is left as food was never enough. And that has to be highlighted. The faces of women has the have to be alongside these data that are being released. Another example is that the number of hectares of ancestral lands distributed by the government they would say already 5.7 5.7 million hectares in a total of 1.3 million in the indigenous peoples as right holders when they issued what they call the certificate of ancestral domain title. Now this is a very powerful data and caddy or the certificate of ancestral domain title is a powerful tool for the communities to assert their right to self determination. However, the question that you are problematizing is this, are the women within these communities with a caddy so the titles are able to assert their own right to self determination. For example, they're right to reproductive self determination. Leela conducted an initial study in in some years ago among so banning women and our findings are they are not. They are not able to assert their own right to self determination. We're also trying to fight the deliberate distortion of data and the interpretation of these. Banu mentioned something and Banu mentioned an example and mining and this is also a quick example from us. They would report high employment rate in their operation. This information will be used by the government to peddle more mining projects, but what kind of work is involved who are employed. Again, we tried to look at the face. We tried to look for the women's faces in the ocean gold mining data when it said that it generated work for 1500 people. We are currently compiling stories of indigenous women who work for the company. And so far based on their stories, the kind of work that women get are non tenured six months contract to be renewed for another six months. The kind of work that they do cleaning the miners bunkers doing laundry for the miners cooking basically the domestic role of women was simply extended to a larger community of men. They were exposed to different vulnerabilities including sexual harassment. These these details of the numbers of employment rate that the mining company talks about are invisible. Yet these are the real information that we need to talk about. In our experience women's stories are dismissed as non scientific therefore unimportant, but women stories experiences clearly depict the realities that we live in and these have to be recognized with these indigenous women are seeking to deal with it from the government and the corporations. We say that the gathering in the processing of data should also be transformative that while scientific data are necessary lived experiences of women are equally critical. Now I have a long list when Laura asked me what are the data that you need in our work. I have a long list because I got excited when you ask that question but in the interest of time let me just say that in while there are sex or gender disaggregated data already in the Philippines. I don't know if I'm calling it correctly but indigeneity disaggregated data are absent so you have a number of when there's a gender disaggregated data of migrant workers but how many of these are from indigenous communities that's absent. Traffic people how many are from the indigenous communities absent. Identifying whether the women come from indigenous communities are very difficult to come by from government data but also from civil society and we feel that these are very good to have in order to push for more account to push for the depiction of the real situation of indigenous women. I think I would like to add on the list of what data we need more inspiring data I was listening to Rosemont maybe we should look at how many women are actually in the structures of the government or decision making structures. It would be good to have inspiring data on how many indigenous women have occupied leadership positions and actually served the indigenous women's interest and how many indigenous women like land rights defenders have successfully led land take back or reoccupation from corporations that is something that I'm really excited to have. Thank you so much Judy. Again very inspiring and I hope will inspire for the questions from our audience today but let me just start addressing some of the questions you can read yourself in the box in the Q&A box. So, but let me just read for you some of the questions that the panelists are, that the audience is asking, maybe if we want to remain in the discussion related to data, let me ask, does the citizen-generated data speak to public data system? This is a very nice question, there are a lot of tools and programs involving communities and grassroots groups in data collections and this is very powerful in building capacities but then how can these data speak to public data system, how to convince the government to really take this data into serious, into consideration and make legitimization. Also, a question for Bhanu, is there any community level tool to generate gender-disabligated data? I think Bhanu has already expressed that but if you want to elaborate further on tools for generating gender-disabligated data in India. And third question, what global platform can be set up to centralize reliable data indicators on land access if there is a need for such a platform first and of course if there is, what can that be? So, can citizen data speak to public data systems? Again, if you can elaborate on the tools for community level, data-generated, not-sabligated data in particular, and also what platform can be used as a reliable and trusted platform to share land data indicator on land access. Who want to take the which question? Feel free to take any of the questions, so the three just decided to read a few of them in the interest of time. Are you asking me? Yeah, Laura. Maybe, yes, you can start Bhanu and respond to any of the three questions and then switch to other panelists. In terms of tools, our organization, we are developing, we constantly develop tools based on different kinds of conflicts. So, we are a great focus of our research is evidence-based research through gender impact assessment and gender audits. So, we do a lot of assessment in relation to extractors projects in relation to climate change action mitigation adaptation projects. So, we do work with the women on the ground in developing these tools and also link it to their oral practices and practical activities. Then in terms of citizen generation of data, most of the data that we generate is converted into complaints and grievances representations to the government, to the ministries. Or to submit as legal argument in the courts. So, that is a form of engagement and the third way is that we try to access alternate media to present this data to the public, so that there is some kind of a sensitization and probably the concerned ministries would pick them up. So, this is how we try to use the data we generate to engage with the policymakers. And yes, we do have tools, I mean they can always be improved and they are modified to different contexts. Thank you so much for this for the examples, Bhanu. Anyone else want to respond to the question? Yes, I can talk about citizen generated data and public information system, and I want to share the Kenyan experience how we've gotten the audience of the government. So, for us, when we started investing in citizen generated data, institutions that were doing the same at the national level, tried to come together and we formed what I can call a pro citizen generated data movement or consortium at national level that brought in grassroots organization, Kenyan organization but also international organization that are pro citizen generated data. And unfortunately, we would meet the Kenya Bureau of statistics or our government in international meetings and when they are presenting their data. We also have our own citizen generated data which sometimes does not speak to what they are presenting or sometimes it's the same but in most cases we invest in areas where official statistic does not exist and I think that persuaded the government to want to listen to them to ask what is it that we are doing and they started opening up spaces. They formed committees, I was personally appointed to be part of the gender statistical committee of the Kenyan national Bureau of statistics where I and SDG Kenya forum represent the civil society. And once that's those kind of spaces opened up within the national statistical agency. Then we continued championing for citizen generated data and I think the demand for from the government has been that yes you're producing data you're non traditional producers of data but it has to meet a certain threshold and follow certain steps. And that's how we came into the idea of developing frankly developing guidelines for citizen generated data that has now of course been launched. We've also constantly asked the Bureau to build the capacity of non state actors in production of data, some of it which has happened but of course it's a it's a long shot but now that partnership exists even of knowledge towards non state actors on issues of data. So people use different strategies depending on the countries they are in but that has been the experience in Kenya. Thank you so much for that this is very informative. Ruth, do you also want to answer any of the questions and then Judy perhaps. Sorry. Yes, I think these are really good examples. Preda gave just that example of the work it takes to convince official statistics to endorse. Now, there is a parallel citizen reporting initiative on SDGs. But I think it does need to get it may not get as much attention. So I think the process that Preda talks about is really important. Another really important aspect of this is getting getting official recognition of the land rights. And so somebody asked how can customary tenure be documented or how can women's rights under customary tenure be documented. And this does require documenting the land rights of communities. If these are not officially recognized from the outside, they are going to be more vulnerable to takeovers from land grabs from mining interests or whatever else. But then it's not enough to just formalize and get recognition of the community's land rights, but to really look at the extent to which women have voice in within the governance arrangements for that. And so there, I think there are opportunities when whenever land rights are being documented, whether it's individually or household level or collective level, we always need to be to be looking at the extent to which women's rights are documented within that. So I realize that's not just data, but the getting the outsiders to be able to understand those arrangements that are on the ground, or like Preda talked earlier about registering public lands. These are really important as well. Thanks. Thanks so much, Ruth. Judy, you want also to take a step and speak about citizen generated data and get the know how they can get into the public system or elaborate more on any community level tools that generate gender desegregated data, or another one. Yes, these questions. We want to address any of these. Yeah. I think that was something I was trying to say previously that the data, at least from our experience in the data that we get are actually from the stories that we collect. I was just reminded when Banu was talking about using these stories and these community generated data as part of their legal argument against a mining corporation, that's actually what we did to as part of a bigger network. But what is interesting is that, as such, for example, when we showed the stories of women, even photos of how their skins have been affected by the river that there was a mind-tailing spill, which affected the rivers. And we showed stories of women who usually use this river, how their skin was affected, how their hair was falling. The mining company and the government was just dismissing these, but when we approached doctors and other scientists with these stories, they themselves took on the stories and packaged it as part of the data that they did in that particular river. And so it was sent, it was packaged in a scientific way, and therefore, merited the attention of the government. While it was a good strategy, again, I would like to gripe about the fact that the stories of women are never enough. It has to be endorsed by scientists and doctors to be able to be listened to. And so that's also one of the things that we keep pushing to be recognized the stories. And one last thing. There is always, how do I say this? There is always a need for us to question and be critical about the data that are supposed to be scientific and supposed to be academic. We have seen how scientists and academics have been used and co-opted by the corporations and therefore their data are already tainted. And so I'm really very interested and I hope that's something we can work together as a result of this webinar. How we have not been using community-generated data, how we can learn from Frida, from Banu, so that we can enrich the data that we will have to counter the lies and this information that these corporations have and the government also use. Thank you, Judy. You raised a few very important issues here. First of all, the importance of anecdotal data. There's not just the statistics and administrative data, but what about the stories that you connect. Sometimes they can really be convincing or important means to really engage in a dialogue, in a conversation with government officials and really convince them of what is really happening in the ground and how to better document. And also the relationship and the collaboration that we need to establish between the research community and our statistical experts and the practitioners that are really in touch with these groups and work directly with these groups. Of course, the research needs to be made more usable for you to inform your advocacy efforts, but at the same time, your stories need to feed back to the official research and to offer different lenses and different entry points to really is worth investigating. Thank you for raising this very important aspect, Judy. There's also one question for you, one more question for you, particularly because you work with the human rights and environmental defenders and one person is asking how do you safeguard data providers in this critical and positive environment and this information regarding women and gender leaders that sometimes can put a risk people. I think collective and community protection is very critical. We're safeguarding every individual's rights. Because at the end of the day, we can only turn to our community and the movement that we're part of. The Philippines has been experiencing a lot of harassment and threats against especially land rights defenders. What we're really wanting to do, and that's also our appeal is that we should profile these stories of harassment and threats to make visible. One, to make visible the threats but also second to make visible the reason why they are being threatened and that is because they're fighting for their land. They're fighting for their ancestral domains and the third is to make visible who the perpetrators are and that's the government and the corporations. If we remain silent and really which we are really pushed to be because of fear, then we cannot, the culture of impunity would continue and then no one would be put into justice. And so yeah, how do we safeguard? We always come as a collective and we become a strong part of the movement that seeks accountability and breaks the impunity. Thank you so much. There are so many more questions and we don't have enough time to address all of them unfortunately we will try to ask the panelists to address those questions in writing hopefully and we can reach out to you. But now we would like to wrap up this webinar and hearing from our partners some concluding remarks, some takeaway messages that can be done to bring this agenda of gender transformative change really forward. And so you are such a passionate and transformational leaders also kind of how can you really influence other women, other passionate women working on transformative change for women land rights. Do you want to share some final remarks with your audience today and some takeaway messages that people can really take with them. Ruth, what are your final remarks and take away messages. I think this webinar has been really great for highlighting that it is important to have data, official statistics, official recognition of women's land rights and rights of indigenous groups. But data often sounds really dry. Big numbers, numbers on the gaps can be very important and persuasive, but we also need these stories that show why it matters. Because so often there's this notion that, oh, men will take care of the women. We don't need to worry about women's land rights separately or, you know, and these stories that you have that the other panelists have been talking about are so powerful about why this matters for the lives and livelihoods of literally millions of people, women. And I think we need to care, get the stories and the examples that will make people care, along with the data that gets official recognition. So I really appreciate the other panelists for, for highlighting how this can come together and how we can, I think, maybe to the extent we can bring these together. That's what we need to do. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you. Great message. How can we support the great work you are doing, what directions you're going towards your message to your final message for the audience today. Today we are going through a very dangerous situation because women human rights defenders are facing very serious risks. And there are very few spaces within even the so-called democracies for expression of dissent. So both in terms of direct, you know, people's resistance or support from media, we have the media which is really shrinking. So we really need to find first, our first priority is how do we find support for women human rights defenders to be able to defend their lands in a safer environment. So both research as well as disseminating the data and the stories of women is very urgently required. The second urgency we find is that climate change is not the crisis, but the climate change related actions are a bigger crisis, especially in indigenous peoples areas because the lands are being grabbed from people more for the green projects for climate change adaptation mitigation projects. So how do we build data, not only building data, but therefore we have greater focus on impact assessment based data, evidence based data that will tell the stories of women with much more grounded context. So we really hope that there is a need for confluence of both academic and women's stories narratives to be combined to come up with more forceful data to counter these false solutions. And we need more innovative ways of disseminating this data that can create safer spaces for women to fight. Thank you so much, Banu. Judy, what is your advice, what advice that you can give to other passionate women than one really to work on women and rights, how can they really become transformational leaders as you are. As we know, gender relations transformation is a long political and cultural process. It's a lifetime project. So what can I say to my sisters in struggle, but patience and courage and always make sure that each step that we take individually and collectively, no matter how small should be a step towards meaningful and liberating changes in our lives as women. But now in the Philippines, let me just take this moment to say that even these small steps we take are met with a lot of challenge. So I enjoy each of you to echo our call, stop the attacks, stop the attacks against rural indigenous women leaders fighting for their rights, their lands, their lives. Stop the attacks against us women human rights defenders as we stand up against violence misogyny and corporate control of our lives. And we know this is not just happening in the Philippines. As part of resistors dialogues, a regional formation of women human rights defenders where Banu is a core member of. We know that this is happening in communities where there are corporation investments and government projects, and especially so, where there are rural indigenous women and men asserting their rights. So for those who can in this forum, help us amplify the stories of struggle of indigenous women and us women human rights defenders together let us break their isolation and collectively seek accountability for the continuing attacks and break the culture of impunity that surround us. Sisterhood as a last remark sisterhood and solidarity are much needed now more than ever. Thank you so much. Thank you Judy we will certainly amplify your work and your voice as much as we can free that your last message the direction towards gender transformative change from your work in Kenya. I think for me Laura it's a let's let us know where the action is happening and what are the right moments. It's a, it's a strategic time right now the world is really investing in discussions around climate change, and we've seen an investment increase investment in climate change I think as women movements as feminist movements as land movement. In the present in that conversation we need to know which are the key moments in COP 27 is one of them. We cannot achieve climate justice without gender justice and without securing land rights and it is our responsibility to sustain that calls through continuous engagement to our policy makers but also through those conversations at the international level. The other thing that I like to tell land activists or to share is that you know the call or the advocacy for land rights is not removed from political governance and electoral politics by itself so every day African countries and countries in the global south we are changing governments we are conducting elections now and then let us ourselves. These new governments that we are bringing on board what is their position as far as land reforms are concerned are they here to advance the barrier or are they serious in introducing land reforms and tie our decision for the vote or how we relate and engage with that government on our climate for land rights and of course the other thing is bringing the land agenda back to the you know global top of the global agenda. I think that we haven't figured out how to do it yet but. The fact that it is not a global agenda the level of political will towards land rights is very low and even in terms of investments of resources by donors. But I know there have been a conversation among international partners including the international coalition to see how we can bring it top to the world agenda. That support from other institutions at local level across the level is very important all of us we should join hands and bring it back to the top agenda. Thank you so much for that thank you to this super nice panel terrific, you are so passionate and transformational leaders you have really inspired all of us. Thank you for our audience a big group that has joined us today. I hope you have learned a lot from our panelists I certainly did. And I'm so glad that we have covered a lot of grants and a lot of terrain on showing transformative approaches for women land rights. Thank you so much for your attention for the next lands webinar together with both ends. And please take also the survey we want to hear from you if you like enjoy the webinar, how we can really improve next time so click on the link that my colleagues are sharing through the chat. I hope you have a good rest of your day wherever you are. And thank you. Thank you everyone. Goodbye.