Women's Legal Rights to Property in Ethiopia, South Africa, Bangladesh and Guatemala

This study was commissioned by IFPRI's Gender and Intrahousehold Aspects of Food Policy research team with a view to strengthening the knowledge base with regard to extra environmental parameters. The study focuses on women's rights to property in the four high concentration countries, South Africa, Guatemala, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, in which the IFPRI team is undertaking primary data collection efforts.

For all four countries the study will examine women's property rights as defined by both formal legislation -- constitution, civil code, inheritance laws, and marital property legislation -- and customary law -- religious and ethnic laws. The Ethiopian and South African case studies will include fieldwork in recognition of the enormous changes that have occurred in both countries in the relatively recent past. This fieldwork will be structured to determine the actual practice of property rights as opposed to the legal, both formal and customary, property rights and identify inconsistencies across the differing property right regimes. The studies in Bangladesh and Guatemala will be desk-based studies but will attempt to identify discrepancies between legal property rights and the actual practice of property rights.

All studies will address the broad base of property rights for women, including marital and divorce legislation. Additionally there will be an emphasis in Ethiopia and Bangladesh on property rights appropriate to rural women, issues of ownership and access to natural resources, such as land. The studies in Guatemala and South Africa will have a more urban focus including attention to labor legislation as it affects women.