Impact of privatization on gender and property rights in Africa

doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(97)00030-2

World Development

Volume 25, Issue 8, August 1997, Pages 1317-1333

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(97)00030-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper explores the transformation of customary tenure systems and their impact on women's rights to land in Africa. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of land rights within customary tenure systems, the different institutions and structures (e.g., inheritance, marriage) that influence rights to land, and the trend toward uniformity and increasing patrilineal control. With privatization, different rights to land have become concentrated in the hands of those persons (such as community leaders, male household heads) who are able to successfully claim their ownership right to land, while other persons (such as poor rural women, ethnic minorities) lose the few rights they had and generally are not able to participate fully in the land market.

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^∗: The author would like to thank Mark Schoonmaker Freudenberger, John Bruce, Michael Roth, and Kurt McGinnis Brown for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. Partial support for earlier versions came from the United States Agency for International Development, Women in Development Office, Technical Assistance and Women in Development Centers (Project No. 930-0300). All views, interpretations, recommendations, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of the supporting or cooperating organizations.

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Special section: Gender and property rightsImpact of privatization on gender and property rights in Africa

Abstract

World Development

Agricultural Administration

Who sows? Who reaps? Women and land rights in India

Journal of Peasant Studies

Gender, food production and property rights: Constraints on women farmers in Southern Africa

The dynamics of land tenure and agrarian systems in Togo

The development of individual rights to property in tribal Africa

The Journal of Law and Economics

Matriliny and the new intestate succession law of Ghana

Canadian Journal of African Studies

Introduction: The land question and agricultural transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Land tenure and sabala, farming system in the Anlo area of Ghana: A case study

Institute of African Studies Research Review

The dynamics of customary land tenure and agrarian systems in Ghana

Cocoa, Custom and Socio-economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria

Concentration without privatization? Some consequences of changing patterns of rural land control in Africa

Social institutions and access to resources

Africa

Property rights and investment incentives: Theory and microevidence from Ghana

The Dynamics of Land Tenure on the Bakel Small Irrigated Perimeters

Land rights and agricultural development in West Africa: A case study of two Chinese projects

The Journal of Development Areas

Customary land tenure, ‘individualization’ and agricultural development in Uganda

East African Journal of Rural Development

A perspective on indigenous land tenure systems and land concentration

The variety of reform: A review of recent experience with land reform and the reform of land tenure, with particular reference to the African experience

A review of tenure terminology

Individualization, titling, and registration of land rights and national land policy in Tanzania

Women in the family: Cultural change in Avatime, Ghana, 1900–1980

Development and Change

Struggles over land and crops in an irrigated rice scheme: The Gambia

Contract farming and female rice growers in The Gambia

Disciplining women rice, mechanization, and the evolutions of Mandinka gender relations in Senegambia

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Tenure security for whom? Differential impacts of land policy in Kenya

The ideology of “communal” land tenure in Zimbabwe: Mythogenesis enacted?

Africa

Innovation adoption among female-headed households: The case of Malawi

Development and Change

Land tenure reform in Kenya's southern Kilifi district, 1955–1987

Journal of Eastern African Research and Development

Women and landed property in Gondarine Ethiopia

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Who owns what? Land registration and tensions in gender relations of production in Kenya

Land and women's agricultural production: The context

Socio-economic transformations in liberated Eritrea and the impact on peasant women

ISIS International Bulletin

Land rights systems and agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa

World Bank Research Observer

Some consequences of tenure and agrarian reform in Taita, Kenya

Women's role in subsistence forestry

Journal of Forestry

Institutions and natural resource management in The Gambia: A case study of the Foni Jarrol district

Tenure and natural resources in The Gambia: Summary of research findings and policy options

Fields, fallow, and flexibility: Natural resource management in Ndam Mor Fadema, Senegal

Tenure and resource management in The Gambia: A case study of the Kiang West district

Land tenure, agriculture, and gender in Guinea-Bissau

Matrilineages, economic groups and differentiation in West Africa: A note

Development and Change

Land and the household economy: Women farmers of the grassfields today

Land accumulation and local control: The manipulation of symbols and power in Nso, Cameroon

Female intestate succession to land in rural Tanzania-Whither equality?

Food, cocoa, and the division of labour by sex in two West African societies

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Women and the state in Africa: Marriage law, inheritance, and resettlement

Special section: Gender and property rights
Impact of privatization on gender and property rights in Africa