Access to Land in Sundanese Community: A Case Study of Upland Peasant Households in Kemang Village, West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper reports on a case study that explores women's access to land, especially amongpeasant households with a bilateral kinship system in a Sundanese community in anupland village of West Java. Based on values of equity in gender, locally called sanak, theparents treat their sons and daughters equally as children and tend to allocate their landbased on the customary law. This law supports gender equality in land ownership, whichfalls into three categories applicable both for paddy field (sawah) and dry land (pasir). Thethree categories of land ownership are (a) land solely owned by the husband, (b) land solelyowned by the wife, and (c) land with joint ownership (locally called gono-gini). Of the total98.29 ha of the land belonging to households studied, about 50.6% is in gono-gini, while thepercentage owned solely by the husband is 28.4% and solely by the wife is 21.0%.Of the 111 households owning land, about 90.1% of them obtained the land eitherthrough inheritance, grant or by purchasing after their marriage. The facts show that theowners of the household's land are predominantly women, reaching 43% compared to only38% owned by men. The gender equality in land ownership is also evident in theinheritance system that passes through both male and female lines. Based on 20 cases(households), the total land obtained from the mother is 6.389 ha (39.23%), while thatobtained from the father is 7.496 ha (46.04%) and that from both parents is 2.389 ha (14.73%).Both women and men, including widows/widowers, have control over their land, not onlyover their inherited/granted/purchased land, but also over to other land that is usedin sharecropping, rented and mortgaged. This phenomenon has been recognized bythe community and by the external authority at the village level as documented in theLetter C.