Mapping Inequality: The Geospatial Gap in Women’s Land Tenure

Land tenure has been a crucial area of study worldwide. Research in land tenure employs social, descriptive and broad statistics. Unfortunately, a critical sense has ignored the geospatial techniques to describe the land tenure data and gender perspective.

The statistics are staggering: women worldwide are owners of 1%-2% of the lands, but how to prove this with precision? Some of the maps available only provide information at a country level.

Figure 1

Ownership of land (%)

Noted: World Word Bank (2023)

The challenge lies in the archives. Most of the cadaster records and legal documentation do not include a gender variable. Without this data, women’s ownership remains unclear. Cadaster would be the core of the integration legal documentation of land tenure including the gender variable. Going further multipurpose cadaster will provide information about the socio-economical current state of women at a parcel level, providing the evidence needed to create government policies that actually close the gender gap.

To make this possible, geospatial information must be standardised. The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) of International Federation of Surveyors (ISO 19152:2012) provides the necessary framework to ensure this data is consistent and usable across borders.

One example of this integration is occurring in Colombia, The national mapping agency IGAC, adopted a multipurpose cadaster focus in 2019 and officially included the gender variable in 2024. The implementation of the Multipurpose Cadaster in Colombia has been steady, but slower than hoped. Challenges remain, including the lack of coordination between local and national institutions, database integration relating to cadaster information, lands titled by National Land Agency and technical procedures in the field-work.

Figure 2

The urgency of this data becomes clear when we look at regions like Urabá, Colombia. By mapping women’s land tenure at a parcel level, haunting convergence is seen: the small plots of land owned by women versus the locations of paramilitary and guerrilla activity, "death corridors," and high-value banana cropping zones. This reveals a critical reality: women in rural areas are not just fighting for land; they are surviving under the intense pressure of armed conflict.

This is not a new struggle. The historical debt persists. Since 1916, women in Colombia, represented by figures like Juana Julia Guzmán, have been fighting for their rights. As Juana poignantly put it: “We wanted to redeem ourselves, because those women were severely mistreated.”

Figure 3

Noted: Orlando Fals Borda Archive, Banco de la República, reproduced from Revolución Obrera. Retrieved from https://revolucionobrera.com/mujer/juana-julia/

By closing the geospatial gap, we aren't just updating a map; we are validating a century of struggle and ensuring that women's rights are finally visible and protected.

About the Author

Linda García Polanco is a Topographic Engineer with over 15 years of experience in land titling, land governance, and GIS. She holds a specialisation in Geographic Information Systems and an MSc in Geospatial Technologies.