Magdalena León

Empowering women: land and property rights in Latin America.

The expansion of married womens property rights was a main achievement of the first wave of feminism in Latin America. As Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena Leon reveal, however, the disjuncture between rights and actual ownership remains vast. This is particularly true in rural areas, where the distribution of land between men and women is highly unequal. In their pioneering, twelve-country comparative study, the authors argue that property ownership is directly related to womens bargaining power within the household and community, point out changes resulting from recent gender-progressive legislation, and identify additional areas for future reform, including inheritance rights of wives.

The Gender Asset Gap: Land in Latin America

Summary. — The gender asset gap in Latin America with respect to ownership of land is significant. In few countries do women constitute even one-quarter of the landowners. Gender inequality in land ownership is related to male preference in inheritance, male privilege in marriage, male bias in community and state programs of land distribution as well as gender bias in the land market, with women less likely than men to be successful buyers. But there are also important di!erences by gender in how land is acquired. Inheritance is the primary means by which most women become landowners; men are much more likely than women to acquire land through its distribution by communities or the state and via the market. Factors contributing toward a trend toward greater gender equity in land inheritance and in recent state programs are highlighted. ! 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Who Owns the Land? Gender and Land‐Titling Programmes in Latin America

The main focus of state intervention in Latin American agriculture in the 1990s was on land-titling programs, designed to promote security of tenure and enliven land markets. A review of seven of these projects suggests that they were often designed without sufficient attention to civil codes and marital regimes that protect womens property rights. They often ignored that a households endowment of land may consist of three forms of property: the wifes, the husbands and jointly owned property. By assuming that the family farm is owned by the male household head, these projects trampled upon womens ownership rights. Nonetheless, the share of female beneficiaries of land-titling projects has been much higher than the share of women adjudicated land under the agrarian reforms of previous decades. This is partly because the primary way that women acquire land is through inheritance, and inheritance appears to be more gender equitable than other manners of acquiring land. It is also due to the impact of the more gender-equitable agrarian legislation of the current period, itself a product of the impact of womens movements on the state.

Gender, land, and water: from reform to counter-reform in Latin America

Rural women did not fare very well inthe land reforms carried out during the Latin American“reformist period” of the 1960s and 1970s, with womenbeing under-represented among the beneficiaries. It isargued that women have been excluded from access toand control over water for similar reasons that theywere excluded from access to land during thesereforms. The paper also investigates the extent towhich women have gained or lost access to land duringthe “counter-reforms” of the 1980s and 1990s. Underthe neo-liberal agenda, production cooperatives aswell as communal access to land have largely beenundermined in favor of privatization and theindividual parcelization of collectives. Significantland titling efforts are also being carried outthroughout the region to promote the development of avigorous land market. This latter period has also beencharacterized by the growth of the feminist movementthroughout Latin America and a growing commitment bystates to gender equity. The paper reviews the extentto which rural women‘s access to land and, thus, waterhas potentially been enhanced by recent changes inagrarian and legal codes.

Derechos de propiedad, herencia de las esposas e igualdad de género: aspectos comparativos entre Brasil e Hispanoamérica

Considerable gains were made in Latin America over the course of the twentieth century in strengthening the property rights of married women. Insufficient attention, nonetheless, has been given to the inheritance rights of wives. Reviewing the legal norms for twelve countries, it is argued that widows are often in a disadvantaged position compared to the children of a couple. Inheritance norms were not designed to give widows the possibility for economic autonomy, such as through control of the family farm or business. Moreover, given the gender gap favoring women in the lengthening of life spans and the low coverage of social security (particularly in rural areas) in most countries, they are particularly vulnerable when they are widowed. The womens movement is urged to take on the issue of inheritance rights since strengthening these are necessary to achieve a redistribution of property and real gender equality.

Rural Women and State Policy: Feminist Perspectives on Latin American Agricultural Development.@@@The Invisible Resource: Women and Work in Rural Bangladesh.

In this book women are examined as a part of the complex natural and social fabric characterizing the countryside of Bangladesh. The first few chapters are devoted to a general examination of the villages of Choto Kalampur and Jalsha Borohissa. Chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to a detailed description of the jobs that women do and to an analysis of the amount of time women spend doing their many jobs. Chapter 6 describes and analyzes some of the life experiences or rural Bangladeshi women. The research had 3 primary goals: 1) to identify the economic and non-economic activities of rural women 2) to identify the amount of time women devote to these activities and 3) to identify womens contributions in agricultural activity. 34 households were selected from each village on a random basis from the farm class categories of landless persons small farm households medium farm households and large farm households. Field research was conducted for over a year (1984-1985) and involved members of the research team either residing in or visiting the 2 villages daily. Gathering the data involved various field techniques ranging from administering questionnaires and participant observation to working closely with keyinformants. The authors conclude that Bangladeshi women are economically invisible. Women constitute 48% of the total population of predominantly rural Bangladesh; 92% live in country villages. Both men and women work in a farming economy in cooperative activities usually shared between husbands and wives. However the activities of women are hidden or disregarded because the society perceives their work more as wifely duties than as economic contributions. The number of hours a woman spends in direct and indirect economic activity is affected by farm size class the season of the year and by village. Women from landless households work more hours/year than any other farm size class of women. In Kalamour these women work 4275 hours/year and in Jalsha the women work 4138 hours/year. Women from medium farm households work the least number of hours at 3772 hours/year in Kalampur and 3784 hours/year in Jalsha.