From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

2 POWER AND POLITICS I OWN, THEREFORE I AMadvancing funds to small farmers to buy the land. The alternatives,either compulsory purchase or seizing land without compensation,arouse ferocious opposition from landowners and their allies, and cangreatly increase opposition to reform.Market-led approaches have been widely criticised for ignoringissues of social justice: the beneficiaries are often not ‘the poorest ofthe poor’, they enter their new lands saddled with debt, and theapproach often recognises only individual titles, ignoring other, oftenmore widespread, customary land tenure systems. In practice, governmentsoften square the circle by handing out publicly owned land atlow or no cost.WOMEN’S PROPERTY RIGHTSIn wealthy countries, property rights were one of the first goals foughtfor by first-wave feminists in the nineteenth century, and today theyremain central to many organisations of poor women across theworld. 95 In many countries, a combination of attitudes and beliefs andlegal discrimination in both ‘modern’ and ‘customary’ law excludeswomen from owning land. Women rarely possess full rights over land,instead being forced to negotiate as secondary claimants through malerelatives – fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons.Women usually cannotinherit the matrimonial home on the death of their husband.Formalisation of customary law often means that a piece of land withmultiple users becomes the property of a single owner, usually male.For example, the Kenyan Court of Appeal ruled in 1988 that a wife’sinterests under customary law cease to exist once her husbandbecomes the formally registered owner. 96 The unpalatable option formany women is often between being a second-class citizen undercustomary law or being completely invisible under formal systems.The impact of the denial of property rights affects all women.Making a living depends on having a place to live, and – depending onwhat you do to survive – on having some land to farm, a room to runa business from, money to pay for materials and equipment, andsomeone to look after the children. Yet without legal rights to ownproperty, regardless of marital status, most women living in poverty indeveloping countries depend on their relationships with men to deliver77