WOMEN AND DISCRIMINATION IN LAND AND HOUSING:

Women throughout Africa face an age old enemy- entrenched discrimination. Women in Africa, and most of the world, have been relegated to second class citizens, despite the fact that women provide care for children, families, households and communities, contribute substantially to nation’s economies, act as political and community leaders, produce in some countries up to 80% of the food. With all of these contributions to communities and entire societies, women remain victimized by patriarchal traditions and beliefs which manifest themselves in discriminatory practices.
 
Discrimination prevent women from gaining and keeping property, receiving proper education, being given equal pay for equal work, from breaking the chains of violence against them. Women, simply because they are women, are prevented from realizing the rights and benefits to which they are entitled.
  
A woman’s hand on the plough will create a bad harvest.  - A Swazi saying
  
In no realm of life is this so clearly seen as in land and housing. Women are rarely able to own, manage or even access land and housing in their own right, for they are not regarded as worthy, or able, or in need of their own land and housing, and are prevented from doing so through use of laws, practices, traditions and often violence. Even when they are married, they are relegated to the worst plots of land for cultivating their own food stuffs, yet made to farm the rest of the land and give all the proceeds to the husband – who will spend it for himself, not the family.
 
Women simply because they are women, are treated differently than men, given a lesser place in society, and prevented from advancing any further. They are discriminated against in law, social practices, customs, traditions. They are discriminated against by men- and also by women.  
 
This reality persists despite the fact that women’s human rights to non discrimination and equality are enshrined in dozens of international and regional human rights instruments, as well as every Constitution in the world, particularly in Africa.
 
Non discrimination is the right to freedom from any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on gender, race, color, national or ethnic origin, language, religion, political or other opinion, age, or any other status, which prevents the full enjoyment of other human rights as well as other fundamental freedoms.  
 
Related to non-discrimination is the concept of equality- that all human beings are entitled to all human rights on an equal basis with one another. In particular, equality is most often used in the realm of equality between the sexes, often called gender equality, meaning that men and women have all rights equally and should realize them in equally.
 
There are two different types of equality, equality in fact and equality in law. Many constitutions, if not all, deem men and women equal- by law, they are equal in rights.
 
Discrimination against women in relation to land and housing can be a result of gender biased laws which at their best only protect married women and at their worst do not protect women at all. Some legal systems are not accessible to women or grants customary law pre eminence over statutory law and this affects women’s rights to land and housing. Also, land and house titling systems which grant title to men rather than women or which require payment for land/houses which women cannot afford are all discriminatory against women and these have to be remedied.

Other Cross-cutting Links:
Poverty | Housing Rights |  HIV/AIDS  | Inheritance  |  Domestic Violence