Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

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. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

Gender and Agroforestry in Africa: are women participating

“…This is because land tenure systems in many parts of Africa grant rights to own and dispose of land to adult males (Place, 1994). While there is tremendous variation across the African continent, the bottom line is that in patrilineal societies, women's rights are often through ties to their husbands and these rights according to Gray and Kevane (2008) may cease to exist upon divorce, widowhood or failure to have a son. Among the Luo of western Kenya, a woman who loses her husband is supposed to be inherited by the deceased's elder brother to ensure that the property of the deceased including land remains in the clan.…”

17 Gender and the Distribution of Wealth in Developing Countries

“…Women's rights also depend on land availability. In Sudano-Sahelian West Africa, where women usually have limited rights to cultivate on their own-account, growing land scarcity and concentration are shrinking their allotments (Gray and Kevane 1999). In Tanzania, in colonial times, land, unlike livestock, could pass from parents to daughters or sons; as populations increased, there was less land available, and women could inherit land from their parents only when their brothers 'had enough'.…”

“…Different individuals may have rights over the same animal or piece of land. For example, in some countries women own the crops but not the land on which they are grown (Gray and Kevane 1999). Ownership and control of an asset also may differ (Agarwal 1994;Deere and León 2001a;Fafchamps and Quisumbing 2002).…”

A gendered analysis of land reforms in Zimbabwe

“…As Gray & Kevane (1999) correctly assessed, the position of women in relation to land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa is that of "owners of crops" but not "owners of land. "…”