Gender, Land rights and Inheritance. Securing Women’s Land Rights: approaches prospects and challenges

This paper discusses the issues involved in women’s land interests and inheritiance, with reference to recent land tenure reforms in Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda and reviews debate among gender justice activists about how related issues should be addressed, in particular the problems of customary law and land titling and registration and statutory law. Recent land and tenure reforms in Africa seek to improve women’s representation in land administration bodies: while this is not in contention, current policies also seek to build on customary systems instead of breaking with them. Tsikata finds that unless the [unwritten] rules of customary law can effectively be rewritten, requiring a strengthening of women’s voice at every level, the new generations of tenure reforms will be subject to the same pitfalls as the old.