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Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Leslie Gray  and
Michael Kevane
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Abstract:

Increasing commercialization, population growth, and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases in which rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

Résumé:

Résumé:

La commercialisation croissante, l'accroissement démographique et les accroissements simultanés de la valeur de la terre ont influencé, en Afrique, le droit de la femme à la terre. La plupart des publications mettent l'accent sur l'érosion des droits des femmes en conséquence de ces changements. Notre article examine quelques-uns des processus par lesquels diminuent les droits des femmes à la terre. Tout d'abord nous étudions des cas ou des droits antérieurement utilisés ont perdu de l'importance, c'est-à-dire qu'on les fait prévaloir de moins en moins. Ensuite nous étudions comment le droit des femmes à la terre diminue au fur et à mesure que la signification publique sur laquelle repose la mise en application des droits est sujette à la manipulation. Enfin nous étudions comment diminue l'accès des femmes à la terre en conséquence de changements dans les lois. Cette situation peut paraître grave, mais nous insistons aussi sur les façons dont les femmes ont réagi contre la diminution des leur accès à la terre. Elles se sont prévalu d'arguments juridiques et de la loi coutumière contre les lois sur l'héritage, elles ont utilisé des marchés anonymes de terre, elles ont organisé des groupement coopératifs pour avoir droit à la propriété, et elles ont manipulé les lois usuelles en utilisant des mariages entre femmes et des associations entre mère et fils. Ces actions ont amené les femmes à créer de nouvelles voies d'accès à la terre et dans certains cas elles ont créé de nouveaux droits.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , September 1999 , pp. 15 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1999

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