Gender Equity

Citation:

Enarson, Elaine. 2000. "Gender and Natural Disasters." Working Paper 1, International Labour Organization Recovery and Reconstruction Unit, Geneva, Switzerland.

Author: Elaine Enarson

Topics: Economies, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Livelihoods, NGOs

Year: 2000

Citation:

de Waal, Maretha. 2006. “Evaluating Gender Mainstreaming in Development Projects.” Development in Practice 16 (2): 209-14. doi:10.1080/09614520600562454.

Author: Maretha de Waal

Topics: Development, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity

Year: 2006

Citation:

Olsson, Louise. 2001. “Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: The United Nations Transitional Assistance Group in Namibia.” International Peacekeeping 8 (2) 97-110.

Author: Louise Olsson

Abstract:

The process of developing a policy for gender-adapted, or mainstreamed, multidimensional peacekeeping operations has been slow in the UN. By 1989, the UN operation in Namibia, United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG), had already started to develop practices for gender mainstreaming of the civilian sector of the operation. UNTAG's civilian component was fairly gender balanced and some of the UN civilian staff were adapting their work in order to reach both women and men in the Namibian population. This contribution discusses the lessons that could have been learned about gender mainstreaming in the Namibian case and on which a contemporary UN gender mainstreaming policy could have been based. This concerns methods of increasing female UN staff, mobilizing local women to vote, incorporation of issues of equality in the constitution, and the importance of leadership in enhancing equality and equity.

Keywords: gender mainstreaming, Namibia, UNTAG

Topics: Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Governance, Constitutions, International Organizations, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Namibia

Year: 2001

Citation:

Lastarria-Cornhiel, Susana. 2005. "Gender and Property Rights within Postconflict Situations." Working Paper 12, United States Agency for International Development, Washington, DC.

Author: Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel

Abstract:

This paper provides an assessment of the nature of women’s property rights in regions plagued by violent conflict, reviews property rights programs funded by donors in postconflict situations, and attempts to tease out major policy and programmatic lessons. It also examines the importance of land rights and the status of women in societies that have strong customary norms and practices regarding land tenure. After exploring issues around the acquisition of land rights by women, the paper presents case studies of gendered rights to land under different types of postconflict situations, focusing on policies and programs for improving women’s land rights. Policy and programmatic recommendations are offered for improving gender equity in postconflict land tenure systems. 

In many regions of the world, households, communities, and societies are destroyed by civil war, invasions from neighboring countries, and interethnic violence. During periods of violence and conflict, the destruction of material and physical resources is devastating for families and communities, particularly for low-income populations. The destruction, however, goes beyond the material and physical. Community cohesion, governance institutions, community authority structures, and socioeconomic subsistence networks are also destroyed, leaving the most vulnerable—such as women and children—destitute and with minimal recourse for even their daily survival. Often families flee the violence and destruction to other parts of their countries or to other countries, leaving most of their belongings and assets behind.

The process of rebuilding communities’ social structures and institutions is slow and uneven. Nevertheless, the restoration of civil and human rights to all groups—including women—is the basis for rebuilding a democratic postconflict society. Land and housing make up one crucial set of rights. Property rights are recognized as an important factor in the struggle to attain economic development, social equity, and democratic governance (e.g., Herring 1999). As cultural heritage and a productive resource, the value and meaning of land is universally recognized. Its social and psychological values for rural families are also important. The challenge is to improve social equity while working for peace, security, and reconstruction. But peace must be understood as more than the absence of war and violence; reconstruction must be seen as more than bricks, roads, and telephone networks; and security must be defined as more than a strong military force.

The international community has begun to acknowledge the link among women’s lack of rights to landed property and increased levels of poverty among women, particularly in postconflict societies. The UN’s Habitat Centre brought attention to this crucial issue in 1998 by commissioning a number of papers and holding an international conference on Women’s Land and Property Rights under Situations of Conflict (UN Habitat 1999). However, only limited progress has been made in strengthening women’s rights to landed property. Women are consistently excluded from postconflict reconstruction efforts. They are thus unable to ensure that their interests are addressed. Gender-biased laws remain the primary barrier to secure land rights in many countries. Even where women have legal entitlement to ownership, they continue to be denied land rights, primarily for cultural and political reasons. (Executive Summary from original source)

Keywords: Gender, gender equity, post-conflict reconstruction, women's rights, Property Rights

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Americas, Central America, Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Guatemala, Rwanda

Year: 2005

Citation:

Agarwal, Bina. 1994. “Gender and Command Over Property: A Critical Gap in Economic Analysis and Policy in South Asia.” World Development 22 (10): 1455-1478.

Author: Bina Agarwal

Abstract:

This paper focuses on a much neglected issue: the links between gender inequities and command over property. It outlines why in rural South Asia, where arable land is the most important form of property, any significant improvement in women's economic and social situation is crucially tied to their having independent land rights. Better employment opportunities can complement but not substitute for land. But despite progressive legislation few South Asian women own land; even fewer effectively control any. Why? A complex range of factors — social, administrative, and ideological — are found to underlie the persistent gap between women's legal rights and their actual ownership of land, and between ownership and control. The necessity of collective action by women for overcoming these obstacles and the aspects needing a specific focus for policy and action are also discussed.

Keywords: gender inequality, Property Rights, land rights, collective action

Topics: Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia

Year: 1994

Citation:

Peters, Pauline E. 2010. “Our Daughters Inherit our Land, but our Sons Use Their Wives’ Fields: Matrilineal-Matrilocal Land Tenure and the New Land Policy in Malawi.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4 (1): 179-199.

Author: Pauline E. Peters

Abstract:

Renewed efforts in recent years to reform land tenure policy in Sub-Saharan African countries have - in some cases - included provisions aimed at improving women's land rights. The premise of such provisions is that women's land rights under customary tenure are fragile, threatened, and/or in the process of being undermined. The matrilineal-matrilocal areas in Southern Malawi described here present a counter case. Only daughters are the heirs of their matrilineage's land, while sons use their wives' land or, in special circumstances, have temporary use of fields belonging to their female matrikin. This pattern has prevailed in the face of a long and continuing history of prejudice against matriliny. Now, a new land policy, not yet passed into law, includes an explicit aim to protect and improve land rights for women. Yet the means selected by the policy - land inheritance by both sons and daughters and extension of greater authority to traditional leaders in the administration of land - will be likely, if implemented, to have opposite effects in matrilineal-matrilocal areas.

Keywords: matrilineal-matrilocal, land tenure, settlement schemes, gender equity, land policy

Annotation:

• This article is significant in that it confronts the notion that women’s land rights are always “secondary” and “fragile” through examining a matrilineal-matrilocal area where women have the dominant position in land inheritance, instead of the well documented cases of patrilineal-patrilocal areas, where men tend to be in control of land allocation. It highlights the need to consider how land policies intended to strengthen the tenure security of women can, in certain locations, serve to decrease tenure security in areas where women already have a dominant position in land administration. However in arguing that the policy will have a negative impact on women’s control over land rights in matrilineal areas, Peters neglects the positive effects that the new land law will have in improving the tenure security of men in matrilineal areas, increasing gender equity in land rights.
• Peters defines matrilineal and matrilocal principles: “that is, inheritance and succession run through the female line so that children are members of their mother's lineage, the heir to a male authority holder is his sister's son, and, on marriage, husbands move to their wives' village.” (182)
• Impact of policy on matrilineal areas: The policy provides for all children, irrespective of sex, to inherit land from their parents. Paradoxically, if actually implemented, this would greatly reduce women's existing rights in matrilineal-matrilocal areas by including sons as equal heirs, even though it may provide more rights for some women in patrilineal-patrilocal areas.
• Responding to claims that policy would enhance gender equity in land acquisition in both patrilineal and matrilineal social systems, the author says it "appears laudable. However, not only would such changes be a 'departure from existing norms and practices' and hence likely to stimulate 'esistance', but, if put into practice, they would fundamentally reshape kinship and residence patterns and the multiple social relations involved therein.” (191)

Quotes:

“In the many domains of life governed by kinship in this matrilineal-matrilocal area, women exercise considerable authority alongside their brothers. Thus, the brother who is selected as the mwini mbumba is consulted by his sisters in times of important decisions, such as the treatment of an illness, marriage disputes, funeral arrangements, and so on. But he works closely with his sisters in deciding these matters even though he announces the final decision. Beyond these kinship and village domains, however, male authority is the norm in Malawi, and women are largely marginalized.” (184)

“The loss to women which has been documented in other countries undergoing registration and titling of land, would be doubly problematic in Malawi because, in the name of improving women's secure access to land, as currently formulated it will dispossess women in matrilineal-matrilocal areas who currently have highly secure, indeed privileged, rights in comparison with men's.” (194)

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Malawi

Year: 2010

Citation:

Daley, Elizabeth, and Birgit Englert. 2010. “Securing Land Rights for Women.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4 (1): 91-113.

Authors: Elizabeth Daley, Birgit Englert

Abstract:

This collection of papers on Securing Women's Land Rights presents five articles relating to eastern Africa. Four of these illustrate practical approaches to securing land rights for women in distinct situations: law-making for women's land rights (Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda); land tenure reform in practice (Rwanda); women's rights under pastoral land tenure (Ethiopia); and women's rights in areas of matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure (Malawi). This article serves as an overall introduction to the subject, reviewing past issues and highlighting new ones, and setting out the shape of a positive, pragmatic approach to securing women's land rights in eastern Africa. Five key themes emerge: the role of customary institutions; the continuing central role of legislation as a foundation for changing custom; issues of gender equity and equitability, and underlying goals; the challenges of reform implementation and of growing women's confidence to claim their rights; and the importance of encouraging effective collaboration among all those working in the field of women's land rights. The article calls for a stronger focus on gender equity - on securing equal land rights for both women and men - in order to achieve sustainable positive change in broader social and political relations.

Keywords: women, land rights, land tenure reform, Gender, gender equity

Annotation:

• The article provides a comprehensive overview of land policy reforms that have taken place in Eastern Africa over the last two decades, including reforms in Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zamia, Kenya and Uganda. It mentions the need to differentiate, not only between the situations in different African countries, but also between the local variations within most countries. It also stresses the need to consider women’s land tenure security in the broadest sense.
• It confronts the assumption that women’s land rights are always  secondary and “fragile” and suggests that attention must also be paid to the land rights of men.\
• It also outlines the relatively consistent policies of the World Bank in its 2003 publication of Land Policies for Growth and Development, which: “marked a step forward in World Bank thinking on women’s land rights,” (92)
• Land tenure privatisation is now swinging back to the original straightforward narrowing of customary land rights into private –and, in many cases, corporate –hands. The article reviews key land tenure thinkers of past decade (i.e. economists De Soto and Collier) and states that regardless of De Soto’s thesis (suggested formally registered property rights open the way to the collateralisation of land assets, providing the basis for the creation of capital), evidence from the ground suggests that small holders show little interest in mortgaging their land; also disputes Collier, stresses connection between women’s land rights and food security.

Quotes:

“women in eastern Africa are not powerless actors but find creative means to claim and ensure their rights to land.”(104)

“increasing individualization and commoditization of land rights has occurred and private rights of use and occupancy within customary tenure have become increasingly the norm” (94)

“by no means are all women losing out from the increasing commoditisation of land: some manage to take advantage of the opportunities provided by commoditisation to acquire their own land through purchase, while the development of land rental markets creates additional opportunities for women to gain access to land” (94)

“ in many respects the Bank’s ‘‘new’’ land policy remained the same through its emphasis on economic growth as the main justification for land reform and promotion of land titling as a means to make credit available to smallholders the Bank’s former thinking on land.” ( 92)

“particularly [land rights] […]of women among refugee and internally displaced populations and of the women who stay at home while men go off to fight. Humanitarian agencies have only recently begun to grapple with land issues, and the specifics of women’s land rights in immediate post-conflict situations have yet to be seriously addressed.”(94)

“commoditisation, economic and rural-urban change, conflict (and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation), the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the increasing ‘‘privatization’’ of land tenure” (92)

"Impact of privitization: twentieth century in eastern Africa by land tenure reforms which introduced land registration on the basis of formal survey in the pursuit of agricultural development, commencing in Kenya in 1954.24 This private registration of land  the narrowing of broad customary rights to ownership rights (title) in the hands of a single (usually male) person  became the dominant approach to African land law and administration, despite numerous criticisms of its effectiveness in achieving its goals, and of its negative impact on marginalising women’s rights." (94)

“the importance of land markets and individual tenure as the essential ingredients for agricultural productivity and growth’’ (94)

"Gender issues are of course intimately bound up in struggles over power and authority, particularly in relation to land." (97)

“Peters thus fears that equal inheritance combined with future land ownership registration and the practice of men being considered as the head of the household will lead to serious reductions in land tenure security for a great many women in the matrilineal-matrilocal areas of southern Malawi, while simultaneously acknowledging that gains may come for women in other (patrilineal) areas of Malawi. Peters therefore calls for consideration of alternatives to straightforward land titling programmes in matrilineal areas, and more generally for the pursuit of legal protection and registration of the sorts of overlapping claims to land found in existing customary tenure arrangements.” (103)

“The question remains as to whether gender equitable and gender equal legal provisions can actually be implemented in practice” (103)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa

Year: 2010

Citation:

Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, Lynn Brown, Hilary Sims Feldstein, and Agnes Quisumbing. 1997. “Gender, Property Rights and Natural Resources.” World Development 25 (8): 1303–15.

Authors: Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Lynn R. Brown, Hilary Sims Feldstein, Agnes R. Quisumbing

Keywords: natural resources, intrahousehold, land tenure, water resources, trees

Annotation:

Summary: 

Attention to gender differences in property rights can improve the outcomes of natural resource management policies and projects in terms of efficiency, environmental sustainability, equity, and empowerment of resource users. Although it is impossible to generalize across cultures and resources, it is important to identify the nature of rights to land, trees and water held by women and men, and how they are acquired and transmitted from one user to another. The paper particularly examines how the shift from customary tenure systems to private property - in land, trees and water - has affected women, the effect of gender differences in property on collective action, and the implications for project design.

Quotes:

“The maximization of one output from a resource, for example fruits, may be in conflict with the maximization of another, for example logs, and thus hard choices may have to be made... there may be gender differentials if, for example, logs are marketed by men and fruits are gathered by women and provide a source of income and/or food” (p. 1305).

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 1997

Citation:

Mutangadura, Gladys. 2004. “Women and Land Tenure in Southern Africa: A Human Rights-Based Approach.” Paper prepared for Session Two: Gender, Land Rights and Inheritance, Church House, Westminister, London, United Kingdom, November 8-9.

Author: Gladys Mutangadura

Abstract:

Land is considered the most fundamental resource to women's living conditions, economic empowerment and, to some extent, their struggle for equity and equality. More than 60% percent of women in Southern Africa are dependent on land for their livelihoods. Despite the importance of land to women in the sub-region, their land rights are still largely discriminated against. A combination of statutory and customary laws favoring male ownership of property disadvantage women's rights to own land. The traditional exclusion of women from property and land ownership on gender grounds is the most damaging global human rights violation experienced in many developing countries. Without rights to land, women's economic and physical security is compromised. Using evidence from selected countries in Southern Africa, this paper uses a human rights approach to argue that women's equality and land rights are violated if their rights to land are not honored. The paper offers recommendations on strategies that can be adopted by countries to enable women to equitably access, own and control land.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Land Tenure, Livelihoods, Rights, Human Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa

Year: 2004

Citation:

Rangan, Haripriya, and Mary Gilmartin. 2008. “Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa.” Development and Change 33 (4): 633-658.

Authors: Haripriya Rangan, Mary Gilmartin

Abstract:

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women's right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the 'former homelands' through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.

Keywords: women's land rights, customary law, gender inequality, informal access to communal land, New South African Constitution

Annotation:

• Examines the key contradictions emerging from the post-apartheid Constitution's delineation of traditional authority, customary law, gender rights, and democratic governance, and shows how these `constitutional contradictions' have turned former Bantustans (spaces of concentrated settlement for the majority of ethnic African populations) into terrains of contention regarding issues of control over land allocation, the location of competing land-uses, and the validity of customary practices.
• Contradictions: 1) new Constitution has formally abolished homelands and Bantustans, but continues to protect the status of “traditional” authorities who were appointed to exercise control within these jurisdictions; 2) while post-apartheid constitution protects status of traditional authorities, also enshrines Dem. Bill of Rights based on governance through elected officials; 3) while the Constitution accords equal rights to women and men, it simultaneously endorses the exercise of traditional customary law in former Bantustan areas. Rangan et al. argues that gender equity and land reform is viewed too often as a social issue, seen as “a social restructuring in space” rather than a process of reshaping `instituted geographies’. The article emphasizes the “geographic dimensions” of gender equity.
• These geographical dimensions are crucial because they not only reveal the ways in which institutions and institutionalized practices shape class and gendered access to land-based resources, but also indicate how changes to existing modes of access might affect the livelihood abilities and social well-being of women and men in rural communities.The reconstruction and development program initiated in 1994 the RDP identified land and agrarian reform as the most important issue facing the country and sought to address the subject of women's rights to land through intense national debate.

Quotes:

“Despite these efforts with legislation and policy, there appears to have been very little positive advancement of gender rights and land reform in post-apartheid South Africa…Tenure insecurity for women-headed households in rural areas has grown worse since the enactment of interim legislation in 1994 to protect informal land right.”(635)

“The problems emerge in large part because most development theorists and policy-makers are unable to recognize the fact that the process of linking gender equity with land reform involves bringing together two distinctive kinds of geographical agendas to make a single and complex geographic project.” (636)

"Gender equity is fundamentally a geographic initiative that seeks to redefine institutionalized relationships and customary practices of everyday life in communities, but the only way in which the post-apartheid government has dealt with the geographic dimensions of such processes is through the technocratic jargon of `decentralization' and `devolution' to local governments. While such terms may imply support for `community control' or `grassroots democracy', they do not indicate how devolution and decentralization will address issues of gender equity at the regional and local levels alongside the prevalence of traditional authority and customary law.”(654)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Equity, Governance, Constitutions, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2008