Women, Culture and Africa’s Land Reform Agenda (original) (raw)
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This contribution is concerned with the challenges of securing women's rights to land in Africa in the context of contemporary land deals through a discussion of three distinct but interrelated problems in the framing of women's land rights discourses. First, this study discusses the interface between rights and "custom" to highlight the inherent distortions of African customary law. Second, it argues that liberal formulations of the law are limited by a set of assumptions regarding women's position in the political economy. And third, this discussion discursively assesses the debates in the literature regarding the efficacy of law in protecting women's rights to land. The discussion proceeds from a critique of two approaches to promoting gender equity in land tenure systems: the institutional approach, which deals with women's formal land rights; and the political economy approach, which deals with the structural nature of women's traditional relations to land.
Land-God-Women: Women, Land and Property in Traditional and Modern Societies – the Case of Africa
This paper is part of a long term comparative study intended to understand the underlying concepts of land and landownership in different societies, and in various periods. This study focuses on the reciprocal relationship between land, God and man/woman, and provides a basis for comprehensive and schematic presentation of this relationship. (Kark, 1992, 63-82). Here I will discuss this topic with special reference to women, presenting case studies of women in Africa. In The State of Women in the World Atlas, (1997, 120-1) Seager asserts that: "Women own about one percent of the world's land. The majority of the world's women do not equally own, inherit, or control property, land and wealth…" I examine the origins and processes which led to this current state of affairs. Integrating the findings of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, historical geographers, and economic historians with my work, I will consider the following themes: mythical and religious concepts, both non-monotheistic and monotheistic (for example women's rights to endow real-estate and enjoy its income); historical background; social and cultural concepts; legal status; and economic status outlined in agrarian countries, countries which had an agrarian reform, and in industrialized countries.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2003
This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub-Saharan Africa and their implications for women's interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so-called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. This consensus, which has arisen out of critiques of past attempts at land titling and registration, particularly in Kenya, is rooted in modernizing discourses and/or evolutionary theories of land tenure and embraces particular and contested understandings of customary law and legal pluralism. It has also fed into a wide-ranging critique of the failures of the post-colonial state in Africa which has been important in the current retreat of the state under structural adjustment programmes. African women lawyers, a minority dissenting voice, are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring instead to look to the State for laws to protect women's interests. We agree that there are considerable problems with so-called customary systems of land tenure and administration for achieving gender justice with respect to women's land claims. Insufficient attention is being paid to power relations in the countryside and their implications for social groups, such as women, who are not well positioned and represented in local level power structures. But considerable changes to political and legal practices and cultures will be needed before African states can begin to deliver gender justice with respect to land.
Diminished access, diverted exclusion: Women and land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa
African Studies Review, 1999
Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change.
Improving Access to Land and strengthening Women's land rights in Africa
2013
The need to improve access to land and strengthen women's land rights in Africa has elicited a lot of discussion with women's rights activists arguing for increased access and control over land and other productive resources. The paper examines inter-relations between women’s land rights and socioeconomic development, peace and security and environmental sustainability in Africa. It goes on to highlight the impacts of the discrimination against women with regard to access, control and ownership of land and identifies promising practices related to strengthening women’s land rights with possible benchmarks and indicators to track progress made in strengthening women’s land rights in the context of the implementation of the AU Declaration on land. It concludes by providing concrete recommendations on how to further promote dialogue, advocacy, partnerships and capacity development in support of women’s land rights in Africa. This paper is as a result of a study commissioned by ...
Oxford Development Studies, 2002
The debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed landholding systems are evolving into individualized systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealized 'households'. This paper argues that gender relations are central to the organization and transformation of landholding systems. Women have faced different forms of tenure insecurity, both as wives and in their relations with wider kin, as landholding systems have been integrated into wider markets. These cannot be addressed while evolutionary models dominate the policy debate. The paper draws out these arguments from experience of tenure reform in Tanzania and asks how policy-makers might address these issues differently.
Gender Inequalities in Ownership and Control of Land in Africa: Myths Versus Reality
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), established in 1975, provides evidence-based policy solutions to sustainably end hunger and malnutrition and reduce poverty. The Institute conducts research, communicates results, optimizes partnerships, and builds capacity to ensure sustainable food production, promote healthy food systems, improve markets and trade, transform agriculture, build resilience, and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is considered in all of the Institute's work. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world, including development implementers, public institutions, the private sector, and farmers' organizations, to ensure that local, national, regional, and global food policies are based on evidence. IFPRI is a member of the CGIAR Consortium.
A Comparative analysis of women’s land rights in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa
2016
The study sought to make a systematic and critical comparative analysis of the distribution of land between men and women in the three regions of Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in order to establish if there was any discrimination against women using a gender approach (or analysis). In the study, the focus was on use rights in state-owned land or resettlement land and a critical evaluation on whether these rights were differentiated and distributed on the basis of sex. The study used archival data and document reviews. The analysis was based on farms or land acquired by governments and later redistributed to smallholder farmers. Studies in the three regions showed that women were considered a marginalised social group in land ownership although slightly better conditions were observed in Latin America. A majority of the studies blamed customary, religious and statutory laws but failed to estimate the relative importance of these variables in explaining the gendered patte...