Property rights indispensable to brighter future for women in Africa – IRR
25 November 2020
Women in Africa remain excluded from the benefits of property ownership, and this must receive the attention of African policy makers and society at large.
This is the message from a new study by the Institute of Race Relations entitled Property Rights Belong to All: Women and Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. The institute is releasing it to coincide with the beginning of 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children.
‘Property rights are human rights’, says IRR project manager Terence Corrigan, the author of the report, ‘and denying them to any group is not only a serious transgression in itself, but has numerous subsidiary effects. Where women find it difficult to own their means of sustenance and livelihood, they are denied opportunities for mobility, and are vulnerable to abuse.’
For too long, the curtailment of women’s rights has reinforced their subordinate position in society.