How COVID-19 Puts Women's Housing, Land, and Property Rights at Risk

May 4, 2020 | Victoria Stanley and Paul Prettitore
View Original

Around the world, land serves as a foundation for security, shelter, income and livelihoods. But rights to land are not equitably distributed to all. This is especially true for women. In fact, women still encounter persistent barriers to their land rights – including legal barriers – in nearly 40 percent of countries. This is a problem the World Bank and partners have sought to address through the Stand for Her Land campaign in which we’re working to bring down these barriers.  But urgent action is needed during COVID-19 so that women do not fall further behind.

Previous epidemics, and post-conflict or post-disaster situations, have shown that women are likely to be further disenfranchised of their rights to HLP if their rights are not protected.  During the AIDS epidemic, widows and orphans often lost property to other family members and were left homeless, even as they dealt with their own health emergencies.  And while there is some anecdotal evidence that during the Ebola crisis women’s customary rights were protected if they were widowed, generally during crises, widows face a higher risk of disinheritance.