Women, Law, and Property in the Developing World: An Overview

Abstract

To varying degrees, legal barriers to land ownership and access by women exist in both industrialized and developing countries. This form of sex discrimination, however, is more extensive in the developing world, and the hardships created by it are particularly great in the nonindustrialized countries where access to land for subsistence agriculture is the only form of livelihood for millions of women and their children. Despite the extensive differences among legal systems throughout the developing world, legal barriers to women's ownership and control of property frequently take similar forms. Laws which discriminate against women as a class by giving them fewer rights than men to real and personal property are most often embodied within customary land tenure systems, land reform legislation, estate, marriage, and family law.