Land Rights and Women
Several scholars argue that women’s lack of sufficient land rights negatively affects their immediate families and the larger community, as well. With land ownership, women can develop an income and allocate this income more fairly within the household. Tim Hanstad claims that providing sufficient land rights for women is beneficial because:
- Women are less likely to contract and spread HIV/AIDS as they do not have to resort to prostitution
- Women are less likely to be victims of Domestic violence
- Children are more likely to get an education and stay in school longer
- Women may have better access to Microcredit
In many parts of the world, women have access to land in order to farm and cultivate the land; however, there are traditions and cultural norms which bar women from inheriting or purchasing land. This puts women in a place of dependence on their husbands, brothers, or fathers for their livelihood and shelter. Should there be an illness, domestic violence, or death in the family, women would be left landless and unable to either grow crops for food, or rent land for profit. Land ownership for women is a crucial form of security and income, increasing Empowerment and decreasing Poverty.
Read more about this topic: Land Law
Famous quotes containing the words land, rights and/or women:
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Love your enemies. I saw this admonition now as simple, sensible advice. I knew I could face an angry, murderous mob without even the beginning of fear if I could love them. Like a flame, love consumes fear, and thus make true defeat impossible.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)