Securing land rights for women

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

Notes

1. See Adams and Palmer, eds., Independent Review; on the recent situation see in Kenya Wakhungu, Huggins and Nyukuri, Land Tenure; and Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, “Draft National Land Policy,” for the latest from Uganda.

2. See Manji, “Gender and the Politics,” Manji, The Politics of Land Reform, and Shivji, “Reflections,” on the latter perspective; see Tsikata, “Securing Women's Interests,” for a critique.

3. World Bank, Land Policies.

4. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 7–8. Compare the World Bank's position on land with its “new” policy towards agriculture for development (World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development), in which “the growth fetish remains unquestioned,” suggesting an “inability to focus on agriculture as an arena of (sustainable) development in its own right” (original italics); McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture,” 237.

5. See for example World Bank, Land Policies, xix; Englert, “Changing Land Rights,” 92.

6. World Bank, Land Policies, xxvi–xxvii; Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 9. Note, however, that the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook, published by the World Bank in 2009, especially 125–71, suggests women's land rights are now being discussed within the Bank in a more nuanced way than before.

7. The sharing of experiences and information continued via a listserver which Robin Palmer established – an instrument that has contributed a great deal to establishing a strong network of people with a shared commitment to securing women's land rights in African countries.

8. Englert and Daley, Women's Land Rights and Privatization in Eastern Africa.

9. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 1; see also Englert and Palmer, “Women's Land Rights,” 1.

10. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 3; Daley and Englert et al., “Afterword.”

11. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 2–3.

12. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 3.

13. For more detailed general historical accounts, see Bassett, “Introduction”; Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts; and Englert and Daley, “Introduction.” See also Berry, No Condition, on the social dynamics of land relations in Africa, and Peters, “Inequality,” on processes of increasing social differentiation therein.

14. Adams and Turner, Legal Dualism; McAuslan, “Only the Name.” See also Peters, “Our Daughters Inherit Our Land.”

15. Platteau, Institutions, Social Norms; Peters, “Inequality.”

16. For example see Daley, “Land and Social Change” (1 and 2) on Tanzania. Antwi, Our Common Estate; Benjaminsen and Sjaasted, “Race for the Prize”; and Ubink, “Chiefs, Customary Law” provide West African comparison.

17. For example see Pala, “Daughters of the Lakes,” on Kenya.

18. Englert and Palmer, “Women's Land Rights”; Palmer, “Foreword,” ix; cf. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 1. See also Whitehead and Tsikata, “Policy Discourses” and Razavi, “Liberalisation.”

19. Razavi, “Liberalisation,” 1485–8; Lastarria-Cornhiel, “Impact,” 1326.

20. See Daley, “Gender, Uenyeji,” and “Land and Social Change,” 2.

21. Izumi, “Gender-based Violence”; Izumi, Reclaiming our Lives; Okuro, “Struggling with In-laws.”

22. Aliber et al., “The Impact of HIV/AIDS”; Izumi, Reclaiming our Lives, 4.

23. Palmer, “Securing Women's,” 7. See Overseas Development Institute, “Uncharted Territory”; Pantuliano et al., The Long Road Home, and other work of the ODI's Humanitarian Policy Group on land, refugees and IDPS.

24. Alden Wily, “Land Rights Reform,” 7; Swynnerton, A Plan to Intensify.

25. Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts, 8–13; Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 5–6; Davison, “Without Land”; Mackenzie, “Gender and Land”; Platteau, “The Evolutionary Theory.”

26. Alden, “Land Rights Reform.”

27. See Kanji, Innovation in Securing, on formalising land rights. See also Benjaminsen and Lund, Securing Land Rights, on “informal formalisation.”

28. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 6–7.

29. Razavi, “Agrarian Change, Gender,” 6.

30. de Soto, Mystery of Capital; cf. de Soto, “Listening.”

31. For example, see Nyamu-Musembi, “Breathing Life,” and Von Benda-Beckmann, “Mysteries of Capital.”

32. Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts, 15–17.

33. Englert, “Changing Land Rights,” 95.

34. Collier, “Food Shortages: Think Big”; cf. Collier, “The Politics of Hunger.”

35. Collier, “Food Shortages: Think Big.”

36. For example see Byerlee et al., “Smallholders Unite”; Wiggins, “Are Large Scale Commercial Farms the Answer.”

37. Aal, Jarosz, and Thompson, “Food is a Human Right.”

38. See, among others, Ikdahl, “Go Home.” See Agarwal, A Field, for the more broadly applicable justification of women's land rights that she developed for South Asia. Cf. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 8–9.

39. See Wandia, “Safeguarding Women's Rights.”

40. See Palmer, “Securing Women's,” 8, and Nafula, “No Land.”

41. For example see MINITERE/DFID/HTSPE Ltd, “Results,” for the case of Rwanda.

42. Oya, “Introduction”; McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture”; World Bank, Agriculture for Development. For debate over the relative weight of agriculture within livelihoods in the context of economic liberalisation, and over trends towards livelihood diversification and “de-agrarianisation,” see Ellis, Rural Livelihoods; Bryceson, “The Scramble”; Bryceson, “Multiplex Livelihoods”; Barrett et al, “Nonfarm Income”; Razavi, “Liberalisation”; and Daley, “Land and Social Changer,” 2. Within eastern Africa, however, for the foreseeable future the majority of families will still depend on agriculture.

43. Oya, “Introduction,” 231, 233.

44. See Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, “Land Grabbing”; The Economist, “Outsourcing's Third Wave”; GRAIN, Seized! The 2008 Land Grab.

45. McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture“; GRAIN, Seized! The 2008 Land Grab. See also Cotula et al., Land Grab, 5–7, who argue that while increased investment as a result of land acquisition may bring macro-level benefits and thus some improvement to livelihoods in rural areas, the land acquisition itself may also result in critical land loss by local people.

46. The Economist, “Outsourcing's Third Wave,” 65.

47. On biofuels specifically, see, for example, Cotula, Dyer, and Vermeulen, Fuelling Exclusion?

48. For a detailed account of this case and the findings of research conducted by the Tanzanian Feminist Activist Coalition (FEMACT) see FEMACT, “Loliondo Report.”

49. Sikor and Lund, “Access and Property.”

50. See Daley, “Land Tenure and Social Change,” 28–67, for a review of the literature.

51. The conceptual analysis and arguments in the remainder of this paper originate in various ideas we raised in presentations to launch our edited volume, Women's Land Rights. Palmer wrote a summary account of some of our ideas in “Securing Women's Land Rights in Africa” – the ideas noted therein are thus developed in detail in the present paper.

52. Englert and Daley, Women's Land Rights.

53. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 3.

54. See Daley and Englert, et al., “Afterword,” passim.

55. Cf. Whitehead and Tsikata, “Policy Discourses”; Tsikata, “Securing Women's Interests”; Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts, 34–5; Razavi, “Liberalisation,” 1489–93.

56. Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts, 34–5; Peters, “Inequality”; Woodhouse, “African Enclosures.”

57. World Bank, FAO, and IFAD, Gender in Agriculture, 137.

58. Adoko and Levine, “Falling.”

59. Adoko and Levine, “Falling.” However, by way of comparison see Khadiagala, “The Failure,” on women's disgruntlement with the “rule of persons” that operates within customary insitutions dealing with land disputes in south-western Uganda, and their preference for the “rule of law.”

60. Daley and Englert et al., “Afterword.”

61. Kelsall, “Going with the Grain.”

62. Adoko and Levine, “Falling.” See also Chopra, “Promoting Women's Rights,” for a comparative example from Kenya.

63. LEMU, “Fighting the Wrong Battles?”

64. LEMU, “Fighting the Wrong Battles?” 2.

65. LEMU, “Fighting the Wrong Battles?” 2.

66. There is a vast literature on this based on colonial experience of recording customary law: see, for example, Chanock, “Making Customary Law”; Ranger, “The Invention.”

67. Kelsall, “Going with the Grain,” 648.

68. For example, Rwanda, as discussed by Daley, Dore-Weeks and Umuhoza in this issue, and see also below.

69. See for example, Hanger and Moris, “Women,” on irrigated farming schemes in Kenya; Bernal, “Losing Ground” on irrigated farming schemes in Sudan; Brain, “Less than Second-Class,” on Tanzanian village settlement schemes; and Davison “Without Land,” on land registration in Kenya.

70. This is the case in parts of Southern Sudan. See also Flintan, ‘Siting at the Table’ on the Boran of Ethiopia.

71. Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts, 35; Cf. Whitehead and Tsikata, “Policy Discourses”; Tsikata, “Securing Women's Interests”; Woodhouse, “African Enclosures,” 1718.

72. The World Bank's current thinking is that “Changing the law can be difficult, and sometimes it takes years to win one small battle. Changing people's attitudes toward a new law once it passes can also be difficult. Many examples exist of legal efforts that were ineffective in helping women gain rights to land …. At its best, legal reform is a necessary prerequisite for change.” World Bank, FAO, and IFAD, Gender in Agriculture, 143. We take a less pessimistic view of law reform than this.

73. Boone, “Property and Constitutional Order,” has argued that land law reform cannot be separated from debates about the nature of citizenship and political authority in Africa. This underlines the importance of constitutional provisions as the basis for securing women's rights, on which statutory provisions can then be built. International conventions also play a role (such as CEDAW) as there is international moral pressure for states to support these, and thus scope for activists to push for their provisions to be transmitted downwards into national legislation.

74. See: http://www.unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=736

75. See Daley, Dore-Weeks, and Umuhoza, ‘Ahead of the Game.”

76. See Daley, Dore-Weeks, and Umuhoza, ‘Ahead of the Game.”

77. cf. Daley and Englert et al., “Afterword,” 174.

78. Englert, “Changing Land Rights.”

79. Englert, “Changing Land Rights” 87.

80. Peters, “Our Daughters Inherit Our Land.”

81. “Gender” itself is conceptually problematic. We use it to refer to that aspect of social and political identity which is constructed in some way from, and gives meaning to, an individual's biological sex and physical body. We define “women” as all those individuals who fall into the category of women as it is socially understood in any particular society or culture. We take gender relations to mean the socially constructed (and contestable) relations between people, based on the different social meanings attributed to biological sexes and different bodies. See MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified, and Moore, “The Divisions Within,” from which we derive our position.

82. See Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Chapter 9, especially 227.

83. LEMU's position is flawed in that it promotes inequity by supporting individualised land rights and titling for “urban and educated women” but not for “the rural, the less educated and those who see themselves as family and community members and not only as individuals.” LEMU, “Fighting the Wrong Battles?,” 3.

84. This contrasts with the Tanzanian matrilineal case just discussed.

85. Daley and Hobley, Land: Changing Contexts.

86. Ikdahl, “Go Home,” 53.

87. Ikdahl, “Go Home,” 53.

88. Ikdahl, “Go Home,” 53.

89. For example, see Adoko and Levine, “Falling” for Uganda; see Varley, “Gender,” for problems with titling programmes in urban areas more generally.

90. See Englert and Daley, eds., Women's Land Rights, especially Okuro, “Struggling with In-laws,”133–5, and Daley, “Gender, Uenyeji,” 75–9, for some examples.

91. Daley, “Gender, Uenyeji,” Daley and Englert et al., “Afterword.”

92. cf. Daley and Englert et al., “Afterword,” 174.

93. For example, see Pottier, “Land Reform”; Burnet, “Gender Balance,” 379–80; and compare with Daley, Dore-Weeks, and Umuhoza, “Ahead of the game.”