Women’s right to land and housing

Dr Vibhuti Patel, Professor and Head, Post Graduate Department of Economics SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai presented the following paper at The Western Regional Consultation on Women’s Right to Land and Housing organised by Indo Global Social Service Society, Pune and ActionAid India on April 9, 2008 in Pune, Maharashtra). Women’s right to land and housing has been major concern of the women’s movement in India for over two decades. Globally, women’s land rights are becoming an area of increasing urgency. In most societies, women have historically managed the unpaid care economy and fulfilled the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, family care, collection of fuel, fodder, water, kitchen gardening, poultry and animal husbandry and provided food and nutritional security. As women’s contribution to the economy and society at large remains unrecognised, largely underpaid and mostly unpaid, the need for women to be able to secure land and property has become even more critical. Similar to the cross-cutting nature of women’s human rights issues, women’s land and housing rights intersect with other problems such as discriminatory inheritance patterns, disinheritance through wills, agriculture and development issues, use of forest-based resources, gender-based violence, the appropriation and privatisation of communal and indigenous lands, as well as gendered control over economic resources and the right to work. The interdependence of women’s human rights highlights the importance of women being able to claim their rights to adequate housing and land, in order to lessen the threat of discrimination, different forms of violence, denial of political participation, and other violations of their economic rights. International human rights laws While there is a need to strengthen the recognition of women’s right to land and housing, this human right is related to the right to an adequate standard of living and freedom from forced eviction. These rights are recognised by several international documents such as: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (Articles 17 and 25); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 (Article 17); International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 (Article 11); and UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979 (CEDAW Articles 13-16). While housing and property rights are guaranteed to women through international documents as well as through constitutions and laws in many states, often the implementation of these rights is overshadowed by existing patriarchal practices and discriminatory patterns. Religion based family laws and customary laws play important roles in determining women’s rights to land and housing are different for different communities and religious groups. Constitutional provisions in India Constitution of India has guaranteed “equality before the law” and “equal protection of laws within the territory of India” to citizens irrespective of class, caste, race, religion and sex as per Article 14. Also Article 15 (1), 15 (2) and 15 (3) not only prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, but also provide possibility to apply affirmative action policies for women and children. Women’s Policy adopted by Maharashtra, 2001 support land rights for women and in 2003 the state government issued a Government Resolution (GR) to that effect. Andhra Pradesh state government was the first among all states of India, to declare land and property rights for women during mid-nineties. It was followed by amendments in the Hindu Code Bill after the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed demanding coparsonary rights for Hindu daughters in the ancestral property. Women’s movement for land rights During 1980s, rural women of Bodh Gaya waged a heroic battle under guidance of Chatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini against Mahant of Shankar Math who had usurped 12,000 acres of land. Monks of the math used to behave like feudal lords and many lecherous monks also used to sexually exploit poor women agricultural workers. They raised slogans such as “One who cultivates land is the owner of the land” and “One who ploughs, sows and harvests is the owner of the land”. Along with mass mobilisation, they also filed a PIL and after a long drawn struggle, in 1989, the Supreme Court of India gave a historic judgment and decreed that the land under control of math should be distributed among the agricultural labourers. The state and district administration consulted only men. Only in Katora and Kusha-Beeja villages some women managed to get land in their names after consistent mass mobilisation. Land-ownership to women resulted in reduction of wife-beating, alcoholism and mortgage and sale of land. While, in Kusha, the land was given to daughters, in Mastipur, the daughters-in-law inherited land. PILs by Bhuribai and Dhagibai, tribal agricultural women workers in Dhule district of Maharashtra and by Laro Janco in Singbhoom in 1985 backed by strong ground level land-struggles and movements of women invited attention of policy makers to the burning issue of land rights. But, without gender aware administration dealing with land allocation, inheritance and dispute settlement, prejudice against women persists among officers who don’t allow women to benefit from land and housing rights. Both, NGOs and GOs, when it comes to women’s development, focus on employment generation rather than ownership and control over land, shop or house. During 1980s, as feminist activists when we joined National Campaign for Housing Rights, an umbrella organisation fighting for ‘housing for all’, we were acceptable as mobilisers, translators and foot soldiers but as soon as we demanded land and housing rights for women, we were shunned. For the campaigners only category that was meaningful was ‘poor’ not ‘women’. Since 1990, Shetkari Sangathana has persuaded hundreds of families in their areas of influence in rural Maharashtra to implement joint registration of land and housing in the name of husband and wife. In 2006, MASUM, NGO in Pune, launched a campaign for joint registration of property as per GR passed in November 2003. Within a year, MASUM managed to achieve joint property registration for 95% of households in 80 villages of Purandhar Taluka. In 2002 Janu, a tribal woman leader of Vaynad district of Kerala has exposed patriarchal biases in the land reforms implemented in Kerala. In Gujarat, women’s organisations have formed a coalition to pressurise the state to ensure land right for women. As land struggles accentuate, increasing number of incidents have been reported in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkahnd of witch-hunting of female headed households managed by widows, single, divorced and deserted women by the vested interests driven by their greed to grab their land. Please click on the attached file to read the full article.

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