Strengthening the incentives and abilities to pursue opportunities expands women’s economic empowerment, and property rights are central in this process because they ensure that people can reap the benefits of their efforts. Yet despite the importance of property rights, this World Bank publication is the first study to look systematically across Sub-Saharan Africa to examine the impacts on women’s economic empowerment.
The book examines family, inheritance, and land laws. It surveys constitutions and statutes in all 47 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to document where gender gaps in these laws impinge on women’s legal capacity, property rights, or both. The book also looks at some labour law issues, such as restrictions on the types of industries or hours of work in which women may engage and provisions for equal pay for work of equal value.
A new database, the Women’s Legal and Economic Empowerment Database for Africa (Women–LEED–Africa), was created for this study. It documents which countries legally allow differential treatment between women and men and along which dimensions. It provides detailed indicators and links to statutes, constitutions, and international conventions on issues of legal capacity, marital property, land ownership and labour law. The study’s key findings indicate that:
- Areas of the law other than business regulations play a determining role in framing women’s economic rights. Laws governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, land rights, and labour markets, rather than business regulations, determine whether women and men are equally able to make economic decisions in their own name or whether their ability to enter into contracts or own, administer, transfer, or inherit assets and property is restricted. It is in these areas that gender differences, including outright discrimination, are most apparent.
- Every country in Sub-Saharan Africa recognises non-discrimination as a constitutional guiding principle, but numerous exceptions are formally allowed. Gender gaps in legal rights do not necessarily close when the rule of law is stronger. However, gaps in legal capacity are more common and protection of labour rights weaker in countries in which the rule of law is weak. The exemption of customary law from non-discrimination provisions is often more common where the enforcement of the rule of law is strong.
- Legal pluralism brings additional challenges to ensuring equal rights for women and reinforces the need for certain principles in the constitution, such as non-discrimination, to prevail and guide all sources of law. De jure legal economic rights are not static and legal decisions are also instrumental in defining legal economic rights.
- One way of establishing a framework of accountability is to empower women to assert their claims in both formal and customary legal frameworks. Building awareness of their rights is essential, as is promoting informal and formal networks, such as women’s cooperatives and professional associations. Improved access to justice for women rarely happens without networks, resources, and coordinated advocacy.
The following recommendations emerge from the study:
- The principle of non-discrimination based on gender should be included in every country’s constitution and applied to all women, regardless of marital, ethnic, or religious status. The principle should also apply to areas of the law that define property rights and legal capacity. The best way to reduce uncertainty in economic rights is to pass clear legislation and effectively enforce the law.
- Short-term wins likely to improve the enforcement and accessibility of legal systems include registration of marriages, joint titling of property, exemption from court fees for poor women, and sensitivity training for legal professionals.
- Medium- to long-term institutional development and governance improvement measures are needed to strengthen law and justice institutions in the formal, customary, and religious systems. Successful reforms indicate that reformers need to understand the constraints in society before embarking on reform initiatives, and to engage with the actors who can potentially ease or obstruct the reform process.
- Reform should be seen as a long-term goal that provides staggered benefits. Changing laws is a necessary part of this process, but education and acceptance are also needed. Experience in sub-Saharan countries and elsewhere reveals that changing social norms take time, but without targeted reform, it may take even longer.
