The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has vowed to create opportunities for women agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) while ensuring gender equality.

In a news release on Wednesday, DAR Undersecretary Rowena Niña Taduran said the department’s goal is to create an inclusive community to serve its employees and ARBs.

“We hope to serve our women in conflict-stricken areas and ensure their access to our programs. We can only achieve this by having inclusive policies and programs,” she said.

Taduran said the DAR would institutionalize the GAD (Gender and Development) Focal Point System from the central, regional, provincial, and municipal offices.

This would also include institutionalizing DAR Women’s Desks and Women’s Desk Officers.

“We would also include the names of the women ARBs in land titling and land distribution, which we hope to create significant change and trust in empowering our women ARBs,” she added.

Together with the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project coordinators, she said, this would support and recognize gender perspective and issues in the design and implementation of the DAR’s plans and programs.

Based on the DAR’s database, as of December 2023, there were about 96,283 women holders of emancipation patents or titles of land issued to a tenant upon paying completely her amortization of the land she tilled and upon compliance with all other government requirements, while about 637,215 women have been granted with Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA).

The Philippine Institute for Development Studies said women occupy merely 26 percent of the agricultural employment in the country. (PNA)