A Posh Life:: Antiquated

Have you watched this?

or this?

and found yourself completely frustrated with the complete disempowerment of women when it comes to their inheritance and property rights? I mean how completely crappy, unfair, and backwards is it that if a man does not have a son then all his wealth and property can and will be turned over to some distant perhaps completely unknown relative while his daughters may very well be left destitute.

In Downton Abbey, it was both frustrating and sad for the family that the eldest daughter Mary was unable to inherit the property of her father the earl simply because she was a woman. I am sure I was not the only only who was surprised that this was still going on in England in 1912 (that is only 100 years ago). We had electricity and telephones before women were allowed to vote in the United States or inherit the title/property of their father in England.

It was bad enough that is was going on in the late 1700s when Jane Austen wrote about the Dashwoods whose greedy and selfish half brother and sister-in-law left them with practically nothing of their fathers rather abundant wealth.

Or when Mrs. Bennett worries to herself (and anyone who will listen) about whether her daughters will find suitable husbands. While this seems both silly and trivial to us today, because of the laws of the land she was genuinely worried about her daughters welfare. She did not want to marry her daughters off to get them out of the house or because she was grandbaby hungry. She knew all too well that upon the death of her husband, her entire family would be turned out of their house and the bulk of their fortune passed on to their cousin Mr. Collins.

It was a harsh reality that even in the most developed of civilizations women simply were not equal to men in a myriad of ways in the not so distant past.

But did you know that while this seems ancient history to us today, it is still the reality of many women around the world?

(for good information all in one place about this issue go here)

The following quotes are taken from "Women's Rights to Land and Property" by Marjoelin Benschop.

While lack of security of tenure affects millions of people across the world, women face added risks and deprivations: in Africa and South-Asia especially, women are systematically denied their human rights to access, own, control or inherit land and property. The vast majority of women cannot afford to buy land, and usually can only access land and housing through male relatives, which makes their security of tenure dependent on good marital and family relations. At the same time, millions of women in Asia, Africa and Latin America depend critically on land for a livelihood.

Globally, an estimated 41% of women headed households live below the locally defined poverty line and close to one third of the world’s women is homeless or lives in inadequate housing. Exclusion of women from access to land pushes them towards the cities, where they often join the ranks of the increasing number of women headed households in slum areas. In Kenya, for example, where women head 70% of all squatter households, over 25% of women slum dwellers migrated from their rural homes because
of land dispossession.

Alarming numbers of cases are reported of in-laws having evicted widows upon the death of their husband. A widow is not considered to be part of the clan and is expected to return to her parents and/or fend for herself.

There still are countries, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and Kenya, where discrimination in customary and personal law matters (such as inheritance) is still permitted in their current Constitution.

This article was written in 2004 so some of the information may be a little outdated, but this is still going on. As a woman today I know I am empowered. I can work where I want, chose where to live, own land in my own name, and know that if anything happens to my husband I will not be left with nothing. It is easy for me, in my small corner of the world, to feel as if gender inequality is a thing of the past.

However, it certainly is not.

Where women are denied access to their land, the family is disadvantaged in many ways. Studies have show that when women in developing countries have secure rights to their land: