Land Tenure Reform and Beyond: Ensuring Women’s Access to Assets
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Date
2007
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Abstract
Recent land reforms in Africa demonstrate that legislation alone does not create property rights.
While substantive and procedural reforms of the law are necessary, they are not sufficient to guarantee secure tenure. The formal legal system of a country interacts with customary systems and social norms in ways that can impact the security of property rights.
Even where women have legal access to land and are aware of their legal rights, for example, they may choose not to claim that asset, preferring instead to conform to social norms that suggest that women are not property owners. In many cases too, it has been shown that conventional titling programs do not recognize the rights to land women had under customary systems, thus decreasing women’s tenure security.