Women’s Land Rights and Climate Resilience in Kenya. NGOs Navigating Gendered Inequalities

Sammanfattning

Women play a central role in agricultural production and household survival in Kenya, yet manycontinue to lack secure access to the land they cultivate. Simultaneously, climate changeincreasingly threatens agrarian livelihoods and disproportionately affects women due to existinggendered inequalities. Against this background, this study examines how non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) in Kenya work to strengthen women’s land tenure security and climateresilience, as well as what challenges and opportunities shape these interventions in practice. Thestudy applies a qualitative case study design based on six semi-structured interviews conductedwith representatives from local, national and international NGOs operating in Kenya. Drawingon Andrea Cornwall’s (2016) multidimensional framework of empowerment together withconcepts such as social reproduction, legal pluralism and practical and strategic gender needs,this study analyzes how NGOs navigate in the intersections between legal systems, customarystructures and gendered power relations. The findings demonstrate that NGOs understandwomen’s land rights and climate resilience as deeply interconnected issues, where insecure landtenure limits women’s opportunities to participate in long-term climate adaptation andsustainable livelihood strategies. The study shows that NGOs frequently combine legal aid andpractical support with awareness creation, collective organizing and community-basedinterventions aimed at transforming unequal social relations and strengthening women’sparticipation and agency. Overall, the study argues that women’s climate resilience cannot beseparated from broader inequalities related to land access, governance and patriarchal powerstructures, making long-term structural transformation central for achieving sustainable andgender-equitable development.