**1. Introduction**

The dearth of employment and industrial activity in most rural areas make agriculture a predominant economic activity particularly for rural peoples, especially women and the poor. Women in Cameroon provide the backbone of the agricultural sector as a greater majority of economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture [1–6]. Extensive evidence shows that rural women in Cameroon make up a majority of the active labour force in the food crop sector producing about 90% of food crops in the country [7, 8]. As food crop producers and processors, women play a crucial role in ensuring family survival and safeguarding national food security. Women grow food to feed their families, making subsistence food production one of

the major agricultural and livelihood activities of women. While men may migrate to urban areas in search of work and other income earning opportunities, women who are compelled to be heads of households rely on subsistence food crop production for household survival [9].

The place of women's subsistence agricultural production also calls to mind the significance of women's access, use and control over production resources particularly land, for agricultural production. This has met with increased efforts to enhance small holder (women) farmer's access to and control over land. The efforts to increase subsistence agricultural productivity however fall short of meeting the growing needs and demands of agricultural producers in general and rural and female subsistence producers in particular. Despite the predominant role of women in food crop production, they have limited access to and control over land. They lack ownership and inheritance rights though they can acquire use rights to cultivable land through male relatives. This limitation of increasing women's access to and control over land is exacerbated by land grabbing that has been observed in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa including Cameroon [10]. The social construction of gender that gives women traditional roles within African families as house-keepers only deprive women's access and control over community land making them more vulnerable and most affected by land grabbing [11–13].

In the process, women and the poor are more vulnerable and become landless with limited livelihood options and bear disproportionate costs of large-scale land deals. While displacement of community members often ignores women's role of subsistence food crop production, the process also increases pressure on women's tenure. On the other hand, women are often left out and are not equally represented in decisions concerning land transactions; either because of women's low levels of education and their lack of information for any informed decision or their lack of legal resources to defend land claims [14, 15]. Also, women are usually marginalized and ignored with respect to the sharing of benefits associated to large scale land deals. Benefits, which can either be in the form of compensation, income generation opportunities or employment, target title holders who are usually men, hence leaving out women who may only benefit as casual labourers in precarious part time work with low wages.

Despite women's role in food crop production and household subsistence, customary and cultural limitations and negative practices related to property ownership and equal rights to land most often hinder women's agrarian activities [16]. Similarly, other factors including growing large scale land acquisition (LSLA) also tend to make land a very scarce resource particularly for women and the poor. The LSLA phenomenon, which involves different groups of actors (investors/MNC/TNC, state/governments, communities and community leaders, men, women, etc) has greatly affected the livelihoods of the populations involved.

It has been observed that the effects of these land deals are different on different communities as well as different members of the community. The process usually has differential impacts on members of the community and while some may benefit from the process, it is likely that others do lose. Most often, ignoring the gender impacts of large-scale land transactions is a common practice that overlooks the impact of land deals on women and other vulnerable members of the community. The process and involvement in LSLA including the impact and benefit of these transactions is defined by several factors including how land is acquired and tenure rights, the composition of the teams responsible for or executing the transaction, and the impact of land deals on community members [17–19].

Another major criticism of large scale land deals is the issue of poor land governance and corrupt and unaccountable decision making including the weak protection *Taking Stock of Local Land Rush and Their Development Benefits for Women Farmers… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108939*

and sidelining of the poor and vulnerable members of the community. Research on LSLA confirms that decisions on land transactions rarely involve those who use the land but are made by and large by community leaders including state and government officials [16, 20]. The process of decision making related to land deals consequently raises concerns about the impact (gendered) of land acquisition processes on the livelihood options of members of the community in general and women in particular.
