Accountability
Gender, land rights and democratic governance
Implications for gender relations and property rights
Authors:
A. Manji
Publisher:
UNDP Democratic Governance Group, 2008
The issue of gender and land rights has tended to be overlooked when national governments embark on reviews of land policies and land laws. This paper discusses the relationship between law and development, exploring the implications for gender relations of the proposed formalisation of property rights. It provides a theoretical and evidence-based critique. The document is concerned both with the achievement of formal gender equality and more broadly with the socio-economic empowerment of women in accordance with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, specifically MDG 3 in which it was agreed ‘to promote gender equality and empower women’. The author advocates paying attention to intra-household inequality, the relative bargaining positions of men and women and the gender asset gap in order to study governance as a gender issue. It also draws attention to the gender and labour implications of using land as collateral.
The paper recommends that policy-makers need to be alert to the risks involved in promoting family farms as business units and in encouraging commercial lending when women and children are dependents or when men and women are co-users of land. Finally, it focuses on the importance of employing international conventions and recommends that regional networks of progressive groups resist the privatisations and financialisation of land relations.The following policy recommendations include:
- close attention will have to be paid to the impact of commercial lenders on gender equity
- it will be important to recognise the emergence of new risks as the law develops in the area of credit markets using land as collateral
- in relation to lending practices by commercial banks, it must be asked whether banks can be relied upon to make adequate inquiries at the time of agreeing mortgages as to the presence and position of dependents such as wife and children
- if the pledges contained in the Millenium Develoment Goals in relation to gender equity and empowerment are to be meaningful, gender progressive groups will have to respond to formalisation of property and the promotion of credit by engaging with the legal system to develop adequate protections for women
- there is a need to develop skills and networks in order actively to foresee change and then attempt to set the policy agenda.
