Despite Law, Women Still Don't Own Property

Saturday, 02 April 2011 00:02 BY MERCY NJOROGE

Most women in Kenya today are not aware that there are laws that protect their right to property ownership. This is because these laws are overshadowed by customary practices. Their entitlement to own, inherit and dispose of property is under constant attack by customary laws and government administrators such chiefs and village elders who believe that women cannot be trusted with managing property, or should not own it in the first place.
But what does the constitution say? Today, women’s rights to property ownership are equal to those of men in Kenya as enshrined in the constitution. Article 60 (f) states that: Land in Kenya shall be held, used and managed in a manner that is equitable, efficient, productive and sustainable and in accordance with the principle that eliminate gender discrimination in law, customs and practices related to land and property in land.
In addition, according to Article 27, women and men have the right to equal treatment, including the right to equal opportunities in political, economic, cultural and social spheres. It further adds that the state shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth.
Despite this, women still find their hands tied when the issue of property ownership arises especially when their husbands die, whether they left a will or not. Furthermore, the patriarchal mindset dictates the nature of the will. Most of these legal documents do not favour women yet they constitute the highest percentage of those dispossessed of property and are often disadvantaged by the tensions created in the fight for property ownership. And as much as the law protects women’s right to own property, the patriarchal society far overrides the effectiveness of the law.
In the long run, the devastating effects of property rights violation on women lead to homelessness, violence, disease and poverty. The ripple effect is a strain on development and the economy in the sense that their positive contribution on development is destabilised.
Wife inheritance also plays a key role in the battles women have to face to inherit their husband’s property. The concept of wife inheritance was started to enable the extended family of the man protect the widow and her children but over time, it has been exploited, commercialised and most in-laws use the practice to disinherit the widow. Yet such widows have every right to protect the property their husbands left behind, considering the non-monetary contribution they have made to the acquisition of this property.
Recently, wife inheritance has been distorted by in-laws who hire an ‘inheritor’ to perform the cleansing ritual. If the widow rejects the arrangement, she antagonises her relationship with her in-laws, is forced to leave her home and is disinherited. Instead of going back to her parents’ home, she ends up in a low-income urban settlement and may resort to prostitution to make a living.
Agnes Kabajuni of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions notes that, “almost 80 per cent of women live in the rural areas where wife inheritance practices are rife. This explains the influx of women in urban slums. Statistics show that only two per cent of women in Kenya own land, explaining the extent to which the patriarchal mind-set has disadvantaged women’s ability to own and control land.”
In societies where women are economically empowered, they can acquire land on their own, take mortgages and afford to rent a decent house. And the gender imbalance in property ownership is not just a matter of the rights that are granted in legislation. To bring about a more fair and just system, we have to educate women and girls on their rights too.
Women need to know that they too are entitled to acquire title deeds that they can then use to guarantee loans and thus gain access to greater economic opportunity; and that even if they have no such plans, their ownership rights are sacred and are protected in our laws.

The writer, a sub-editor at the Star, writes on gender issues.