Assignment on women and criminal laws

Table of case
Content
 Introduction
Women's property rights are property and inheritance rights enjoyed by women as a
category within society at any point in time. The patterns and rights of property ownership
vary between societies and are influenced by cultural, racial, political, and legal factors.[1][2]
[3]
 The lack of control over both productive and non-productive resources that is apparent in
both rural and urban settings places women at a reduced level of advantage in areas of
security of home, maintaining a basis for survival, and accessing economic opportunities.[4]
[5]
 Development-related problems faced across the globe have been increasingly linked to
women's lack of property and inheritance rights, especially in regard to land and property
ownership, encompassing areas such as low levels of education, hunger, and poor health.
[6]
 Thus land property rights, through their impact on patterns of production, distribution of
wealth, as well as market development, has evolved as one of the prerequisites of economic
growth and poverty reduction.[7]

Defining land rights

Property rights are claims to property that are legally and socially recognized and enforceable
by external legitimized authority.[8] Broadly defined, land rights can be understood as a
variety of legitimate claims to land and the benefits and products produced on that land.
[9]
 Inheritance, transfers from the State, tenancy arrangements, and land purchase are all
constructs of land rights.[10] These rights can be in the form of actual ownership or usufruct,
the rights of use.
 Global overview
Women play an integral part in the production of food and goods, from work in fields,
factories, and home-based business across the globe.[11] There is a critical relationship in the
role that women play and the sustenance provided for families, communities, and nations.
[11]
 Globally, an estimated 41% of women headed households live below the locally defined
poverty line, with one-third of the world's women either homeless or living in inadequate
housing facilities.[12] The additional exclusion of women from access to land pushes them
towards cities, where they often join the ranks of increasing number of women-headed
households in slum areas.[12] However, through the processes
of globalization and industrialization, there has been a noted increase in the numbers of
women entering in the waged labor sectors.[13] Rural women are solely responsible for half of
the world's food production, and in developing countries, as much as 80% of food crops.
[14]
 More recent estimates claim that half of the world's food and in developing countries,
between 60-80% of food crops are the results of growth from seeds that have been planted by
a woman's hand.[15] This persistence of traditional divisions of labor, in which women hold
primary responsibility for producing food, as well as other labor-intensive tasks such as
gather water and fuel, contributes to the large percentage of women informally working in
rural areas.[16] The roles that women play differ significantly by region, with an average of
43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, ranging from 20% in
Latin America to 50% in Eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.[16] Thus, in addition to
increasing vulnerability and reducing status, exclusion of women from the decision making
process and the control and transfer of land has also led to a decrease in food
security and sustainable development.[

Shifting systems[edit]
Though women's lack of formal control over land and resources has long persisting historical
roots, economies and societies undergoing extensive change have created deep implications for
ownership rights.[17] In subsistence production systems, access to land was determined by status
within the family rather than actual ownership rights; resulting in both men and women having
“user rights” to produce food for their families. The combined processes of industrialization and
globalization have disrupted longstanding livelihoods and systems of production, forcing many
families to focus more on income-generating activities than on subsistence practices. [6] However,
increasing women's access to property rights has numerous significant economic benefits for the
overall community as well as psychological and social benefits for the lives of women,
themselves, especially in agricultural societies. Economically, when women have greater access
to land-ownership in rural areas, which started being implemented by the government following
the 20th century mandates on property laws in order to ultimately promote greater gender
equality, women begin to independently cultivate their own land (given to them either by the state
itself, allocated otherwise through the private market, or passed on by a male relative), form
women collectives to learn more about agricultural practices as well as profit-generating skills
and ultimately, have yielded more output from that given land than the previous owners.
[18]
 Further, the psychological benefits from increasing women's access to property rights is that
this leads to a significant decrease in instances of marital domestic violence. [19] All of these
factors would contribute positively to the economic growth of that given community in the long-
term by experiencing greater overall labor force participation rates, increased income generation
and greater investment in child healthcare and education, also thereby combating malnutrition
and breaking out of the poverty cycle.[20]

Impact of gender bias[edit]

The typical process of agrarian transformation under which labor shifts from agriculture to
nonagricultural has occurred slowly and with heavy gender-bias. [8] Because women's property
rights are often assumed through the security of the oftentimes, male, household head, some
inheritance laws allocate less property to female heirs than male heirs.[21] Ongoing adherence to
male-dominated traditions of property ownership has generally meant that women cannot take
advantage of the wide range of benefits associated with ownership and control of property.
[5]
 According to the Land Tenure Service at FAO, poverty is inversely correlated with household
land ownership and direct access to land minimizes women's risk of impoverishment and
improvements the physical well-being and prospects for children. [22]
Land titles[edit]
The process of titling has been administered with strong gender bias, with women usually denied
equal ownership rights.[6] Furthermore, property and inheritance claims are generally processed
through loosely organized administrative bodies consisting of local leaders and clerks with limited
legal training. Closer inspection of the decision makers, notes a body of mostly males. [6]
Patriarchal property rights[edit]
Women who are potentially able to meet their subsistence needs on their own may threaten to
leave the household if they are not given a large share of the surplus. [23] However, due to
patriarchal property rights, husbands control over the allocation of wives’ labor time, husbands
can make decisions that reduce the value of their wives’ alternatives to marriage. [23] Both the right
to manage land and control the income from production, encompassing secure rights to land
access, have much deeper implications than mere access. For many women, access to land and
property are essential to the production of food as well as sustainable livelihoods, but are
dependent on natal and marital affiliations. In many countries, women can lose rights to land
when there is a change in marital status, including marriage, divorce, or even death of a spouse.
[24]

Male dominance[edit]
Because of the worldwide prevalence of patrilineal inheritance customs, both productive
resources and property such as household goods have ended up in the hands of men and not
women. When only men have rights of inheritance or family succession, women have little
opportunity to improve their status or living conditions within the family and community.
Consequently, they are rendered dependent on male relatives for survival and have little say
over how property is used to generate income or to support families. Additionally, within
patrilineal communities, there is a strong resistance by men towards endowing women,
especially daughters, with rights to land access. [2]

Barriers to change status[edit]

Inadequate laws and systems of enforcement[edit]
While there are a growing number of contemporary laws, as framed by the modern State, which
give inheritance rights to daughters when they are recognized as individuals among the
communities, the process of marriage and the traditionally patrilineal customs have remained
largely unchanged.[2] Thus, there remains a mismatch between marriage practices and
inheritance laws, with the strength and biases of the marriage practice often overriding
inheritance laws. This is also evidenced in the process of dowry practices. In many cultures, a
daughter's dowry is viewed by her family as her direct portion of her inheritance, even though it
may be typically absorbed by the new husband and his family. Thus, while in some communities
women do have the formal rights to inherit lands, the social representation of inheritance in the
form of dowries and the strength of the practice of marriage trump given laws. [24]
Lack of awareness existing laws and insufficient understanding of
legal redress options[edit]
Levels of education, oftentimes products of restrictions on women's interaction with institutions
which are primarily composed of men, create a mystique and illusion about legal actions.
[25]
 Additionally, ideologies about the conduct that a woman displays, normally taking the form of
docility, can bring shame to the idea of challenging persisting gender inequalities in law, policy
and land rights.[26]
Prevalence of traditional attitudes and practices[edit]
Gender ideologies, or beliefs and stereotypes of the expected characteristics of a particular
gender, provide a barrier for women to gain property rights and enhance status. [2] These
ideologies may take the form of assumptions of the role that a woman plays in society, her needs
or capabilities, which thus affect the way that an issue is framed and implemented.