Aimee Farnsworth and Dr. Valerie Hudson, Political Science
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The main goal of this research was to complete a cross-national survey of women’s property rights in law and in practice. Surprisingly, such a global survey has never before been undertaken. This is a large gap in the existing knowledge base. My goal in this research was to be able to point out similarities, differences and anomalies throughout diverse regions and identify areas for future reform. Specifically, I wished to address the range of legal systems and cultural practices regarding women and property throughout the international system. Are there regional variations? What anomalies are present in the data? In which areas do we find the most discrepancy between law and practice, and why?
After performing an extensive literature review, I was able to more fully understand how women and societies are impacted by gendered access to property, providing me with a framework for my report. This information was eventually confirmed by my own research. I found that, although women’s property and inheritance rights are recognized in international law, women in many countries still lack the ability to own or inherit property, either by law or by the trumping of law in practice. The increasing number of women as heads of household who are in critical need of land and property for economic security is a particular concern in the developing world and a major factor for the progress of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Among other things, property plays a central role concerning women’s vulnerability to HIV and AIDS as well as domestic violence. Even where laws are present, the disjuncture between property rights and actual ownership is immense. Because property ownership is directly related to women’s bargaining power within the household and community, the need to explore gendered access to property within cultural and social systems is imperative.
Authorized by the UN and with data collected on 174 countries for over 300 variables, the WomanStats Project Database is “the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world”1. However, it was lacking much information concerning women’s property rights. For my project, I collected country-specific facts on laws and practices regarding women’s property rights and uploaded the information into the WomanStats Project Database, filling in many holes in the data.
I sought information dealing with various aspects of women’s rights to moveable and immoveable property, including inheritance, division of assets upon divorce, law versus practice, and government and civil society initiatives to aid women’s ownership of property. I obtained information from a variety of sources, including data from the 2010 Gender and Land Rights Database published by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. The information, mostly qualitative, is now freely available online at www.womanstats.org.
I then created a five-point scale (with 0 representing countries where women’s property rights are the most secure, and 4 representing countries where women’s property rights are the least secure) with which I could assess the gathered qualitative data and rate each country accordingly. In essence, I derived quantitative data from the qualitative data I had collected. I rated each country for which sufficient information had been gathered, and plan on continuing my data collection in order to enhance and perfect the scale. With over 160 countries currently rated, I will eventually be able to scale the rest of the countries where gaps in the data still exist.
In order to ensure that my preliminary scaling work is sound, another coder working on the WomanStats Project Database will need to replicate my work using the same scale, and discrepancies in our scaling work must be reconciled. Once the final scaling and reconciliation are completed and the new scale is approved, it will be uploaded to the Database and freely accessible online to scholars, policymakers, and advocates for use in future research. I can then use the scale to run a multitude of statistical tests in order to further assess trends, anomalies, and regional variations. For example, it can be used on regression analysis to tease out relations between property rights and levels of domestic violence. Additionally, I will use the final scale to create a color-coded map to illustrate the security of women’s property rights, adding to the WomanStats Project’s current collection of world maps that represent the various aspects of the situation of women worldwide. This unique scale thus represents an important contribution to the fields of gender studies and international development. I intend to continue my own research in this area, reporting my findings in a publishable article next year, and will most likely center my doctoral dissertation around this research a few years down the road.
References
- WomanStats Database. 2010. WomanStats Project. At <http://www.WomanStats.org>. 10 October 2010.
- Gender and Land Rights Database. 2010. Full Country Report. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. At <http://www.fao.org/gender/landrights>. 10 October 2010.
- A very special thank you to Arielle Badger, Andrea Kelly, Vanessa Nielson, Lauren Woodmansee and Kelsey Sanabria for their efforts in translating documents, and to the many coders on the WomanStats team who helped to collect and code information for this project.