Informal Spouses and Other “Invisible" Women: The Dark Underbelly of Land Rights Formalization

Mar 23, 2022 | Dr. Anne Hennings
View Original

As every year, the month of March has been packed with content and events around the globe related to women's land rights. The Land Portal Foundation, which has been working on the land and gender nexus for many years, took this opportunity to relaunch its thematic Land and Gender portfolio and hold a webinar on the risks to informal spouses from land tenure formalization and titling campaigns. Both inspired this digest, and I decided to investigate the issue of intersectional vulnerabilities for women, who are often overlooked in formalization campaigns, a little more deeply.

While land rights formalization and (joint) titling campaigns have significantly contributed to increasing tenure security in many parts of the world, some vulnerable groups have been left out systematically. This includes women in informal de-facto marriages or subsequent women in polygamous settings, for example. The Global Land Alliance study Invisible And Excluded: Risks To Informal Wives And Partners From Land Tenure Formalization And Titling Campaigns In Latin America raises this under-explored, important issue and provides a great starting point.

In this digest, I cast my net a bit wider and look into case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa, notably Ethiopia and Rwanda. The digest closes with a thorough comparative study that offers a differentiated take on rural women and female access to land in Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. It’s a selection particularly helpful to those working on and researching women’s land rights and land titling projects.