asiapacific.unwomen.org - Durdana is a young widower from Pakistan’s Dadu District in Sindh Province. She is one of 1,214 landless women farmers and sharecroppers who have received land tenancy rights for the first time in their life. Speaking of her new status, Durdana shares that farming is her life: “I do not know anything else but working in the fields. Who could think a poor female widower like me would be given land! For the first time in my life I can say something is mine. This land, as far as the eye can see is mine - this paper says so. This is my land and I am its queen,” she says beamingly.

UN Women Pakistan in collaboration with local partners, Baanhn Beli and Gorakh Foundation, in Mirpur Khas and Dadu Districts, respectively, is working with 1,214 vulnerable rural women farmers, like Durdana, to acquire land tenancy rights from their feudal and tribal landholders. These landless women farmers were trained and mentored to prepare tenancy agreements and landholding maps with their male landlords.

In the process, they have been provided with a viable livelihood option that could take them out of poverty and enable their upward social mobility.