What gender inequalities are resulting from prime-age adult death in countries affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa? This paper, from an international colloquium, argues that women’s access to land is becoming increasingly tenuous as traditional rules and institutions break down in the face of the epidemic. This in turn heightens the risk of women contracting HIV/AIDS and perpetuating the disease. Although evidence on the conjunction of HIV/AIDS, gender and ‘property grabbing’ is relatively scarce, the continued viability of some societies may be at stake.
In many African societies, women have traditionally achieved access to land and other productive resources through marriage. Women’s rights are already eroding under the impact of land privatisation, land scarcity, democracy and now the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS. In an example from Zimbabwe, that country’s Supreme Court found a woman ineligible to inherit her father’s property. The alleged basis lay in women’s status as perpetual minors under customary law, and the patrilineal and patrilocal nature of Zimbabwean society. According to patrilocal custom, a married couple lives with or near the husband’s parents.
The exploration of gender discrimination over land access in the wake of HIV/AIDS reveals trends such as the following:
- Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa have created laws and agreed to international conventions pledging non-discrimination on gender issues. The problem is enforcement, as gender-sensitive objectives and relevant institutional mechanisms are not adopted.
- Numerous studies have demonstrated the wide ranging negative impacts of HIV/AIDS on land issues. Examples include loss of inheritance rights, changes in use and tenure, distress sales and shifts in ownership. The amount of land under cultivation may be decreasing and less labour-intensive crops are often being chosen.
- Certain social institutions, such as levirate and wife inheritance, are under stress from HIV/AIDS. For instance, awareness of the epidemic among the Luo of Kenya has made it more difficult for many widows to re-marry and inherit property.
- Rural African women without property and means of subsistence often feel impelled to engage in transactional sex to support themselves and their children. These women are putting themselves at much higher risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.
- Major international instruments surrounding the HIV/AIDS crisis tend to use medical language, without mentioning gender and land rights issues.
To promote property and land inheritance rights for women, thus strengthening societies more generally, some policy recommendations are to:
- Encourage the development of statutes that guarantee women access, ownership and inheritance rights over land and other productive resources.
- Stipulate that these rights remain the same regardless of the type of marriage.
- Bring about the ratification, adoption and enforcement of the Optional Protocol on Women to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and similar international instruments.
- Refine current policies with a stronger focus on the most marginal and vulnerable citizens.
- Empower rural women and orphans through action at the community level.
- Design and implement programmes for communities that build or reinforce self-esteem, along with other life skills.
