A/HRC/16/63 42 million hectares of land, of which 75 per cent was in Africa.45 Such practices, which only existed at a comparable level during the colonial era, will further increase the vulnerability of and discrimination against local peasants. B. Gender discrimination 25. Women living and working in rural areas often face discrimination in their access to and control over other productive resources, such as land, water and credit. In many countries, they suffer multiple discriminations: because they are women, poor, rural residents and indigenous, and rarely own land or other assets. De jure discrimination against women remains for example institutionalized in Guatemala, where article 139 of the Labour Code describes rural women as “helpers” of male agricultural workers rather than as workers entitled to receive their own salary. As a consequence, it is reported that many landowners do not even pay women for their work, since they are considered “helpers” of their husbands.46 26. Family law (which restricts a married women's capacity to inherit equally) and succession law (which has been shown to restrict women's inheritance rights) have been regarded as the two sets of laws with practices that have discriminatory effects in excluding women from claiming land rights. In many countries, discrimination persists in customary laws, despite strong constitutional and legislative frameworks. In Ethiopia, for example, women are formally entitled by the Constitution to affirmative action and equal rights (art. 35 (3)). These include equal rights over property and land, including inheritance, and rights to equality in employment (art. 35 (7 and 8)). Federal legislation, including the 1997 Rural Land Administration Proclamation and the 2001 Family Code, and official policy outlines the de jure and de facto equality between men and women. These formal rights, however, are not enforced in practice and peasant women are the most vulnerable to hunger and poverty as a result of discrimination.47 Women make up 50 per cent of the agricultural workforce in Ethiopia, yet traditionally have no right to inherit the land they work on, and little access to credit, agricultural inputs or extension training. In the words of Meaza Ashenafi, Executive Director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, “almost in all regions, women do not have any access to land whatsoever. They don’t have the right to inherit, and the only option is to get married and have a husband. But when the husband dies, they are also kicked off their land.”48 27. A similar situation persists in Bangladesh, where women are protected and guaranteed equality by the law, but existing social values, reinforced by religion, permit discrimination against women. Under Islamic law, women have a right to only half the land to which their male siblings are entitled; the Hindu tradition accords no land to women in inheritance custom. As a result of discrimination, malnutrition levels show a marked gender disparity, with women most profoundly affected in rural areas.49 45 46 47 48 49 10 World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland. Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?, September 2010, p. xiv. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (see footnote 7). UNICEF, The Situation of Ethiopian Children and Women: A Rights-Based Analysis (Addis Ababa, 2002). E/CN.4/2005/47/Add.1, para.22. International Monetary Fund, Bangladesh: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, No. 03/177 (Washington, D.C., 2003).