Land Tenure Housing Rights And Gender In Colombia

Key messages Collective land tenure in Colombia covers almost 38 million hectares, including land recognized both as indigenous resguardos and as collective lands of Afro-descendant communities. Yet, land titling has stagnated since t

Key messages The consolidation of the current legal regime for the protection of collective land tenure in Colombia is the result of a series of processes —social, political, economic, cultural, and legal— that have shaped and restruc

The expansion of married women's property rights was a main achievement of the first wave of feminism in Latin America. As Carmen Diana Deeere and Magdalena Leon reveal, however, the disjuncture between rights and actual ownership remains vast. This is particularly true in rural areas, where the distribution of land between men and women is highly unequal. In their pioneering, twelve-country comparative study, the authors argue that property ownership is directly related to womenÆs bargaining power within the household and community, point out changes resulting from recent gender-progressive legislation, and identify additional areas for future reform, including inheritance rights of wives.