Only 2 Percent of Women In Kenya Own Land

The latest National Lands Commission report shows that only 2 percent of women in Kenya own land while 5 percent jointly own property with men.

Global campaign research dubbed ‘Stand for her Land’ carried out by the World Bank in 2019 revealed that Women in half of the countries in the world are unable to assert equal land and property rights despite legal protections.

The Kenyan Constitution states that men and women are equal under the law. Passed in 2013, the Matrimonial Property Act states that marriage between a man and a woman rests on a foundation of equality. It recognizes spouses as equal property owners and protects women’s rights to land ownership during marriage, divorce, and separation.

The Marriage Act calls for registering all marriages–effectively granting women a legal basis for land ownership claims. The Land Act provides spouses some protection from having their home or land leased or sold without their knowledge. The Law of Succession Act, on the other hand, gives both male and female children the same inheritance rights.

Despite the several protection Acts, women in Kenya are still discriminated against for exercising their right to own land with their name on it rather than their husbands’ name.

In many parts of the country, full participation in society, including the ability to earn an income is still dependent on owning land. Yet in many of these places, discrimination against women’s rights to property and tenure remains the norm – and the existing policies and legal frameworks in these regions often provide little recourse for women to realize these rights.

According to one research project by KLA in 2020, only 10.3% of Kenyan women own land title deeds. Even with the implementation of this new law, varied customs and traditions that bar women from land ownership exist throughout Kenya’s 47 counties.

In rural areas where people have limited access to justice, discriminatory traditional practices operate by default. Widows still get disinherited, including being evicted from family homes and land. This is commonly done to those women who do not have children.

Even though the succession law is very clear that evicting a widow from her matrimonial home is illegal the same laws aren’t always enforced and justice is hard to come by. The laws have serious gaps that are continuously assumed.

The Marriage Act, for instance, locks out couples who are not officially married. The Matrimonial Property Act’s ambiguity around the evidence of contribution made by each spouse to property acquired during the marriage and calculating distribution discourages women from claiming their property or results in discriminatory outcomes.

This is especially because Kenyan women largely contribute in non-monetary terms, which is hard to quantify.

Widows in rural areas whose livelihood is closely tied to pastoral and agricultural communities which rest the absolute power and rights to use, own, manage, and dispose of land and property in the hands of men face social and cultural problems trying to enforce their rights.

Rather than turning to the justice system, married couples in rural areas undergoing divorce will instead meet with community elders and chiefs for an efficient and affordable alternative.  Customary laws that insist matrimonial property is not entitled to women prevail, potentially leaving women with only their personal belongings and no roof over their head.

Breaking down poverty by gender, Kenyan women are more likely to fall into poverty than men. For single, divorced, and widowed women, this is especially true. Nearly 31% of divorced women fall into poverty, while 38% of widowers fall into poverty, according to the World Bank.

For decades now, several organizations have consistently fought for women’s rights to own land and property giving it the recognition and realization that securing women’s land rights does more than just make them prosperous.

Women tend to invest more of their earnings than men in their family’s well-being. Investing in women’s equal access to land and assets, then, is a direct investment in the future – as well as a crucial step towards both achieving gender equality (SDG 5) and ending hunger (SDG 2).

Even though women have made strides toward equality in Kenya, we still have a long way to go to make the right to land and property a reality for all women.

Further reforms should be placed in the work to help address some of these issues. Any revision of the law should align with the Matrimonial Property Act and ensure equality between women and men in how an estate is managed.

The Kenyan Government should foster the implementation of the Matrimonial Property Act and other women’s land rights laws that are still slow, especially in rural parts of the country, where patriarchal traditions and community justice systems often override national legislation.

Since most of the victims reign in the rural areas and might not be aware of the existing protection rights, there should be more awareness creation through local radio stations or even social platforms for those who can reach and use them.