Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
IN HUMAN SETTLEMENTS IN DEVELOPING CITIES
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
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| WORKSHOP: HOME PAGE - INDEX of WORKSHOP PAPERS |
Ann Varley
This paper asks how women and men how women and men in self-help settlements construe their relationship to property and how this affects the outcome of land tenure regularisation programmes. In particular, our concern is for women's ability to defend their claim to a roof over their heads: tenure rights were recognised as a strategic gender interest for women over a decade ago. In Mexico, married women enjoy the same legal rights to property as their husbands, yet many see their title to the home as secondary to that of their husband. Men's relationship to property is more direct: ownership is part of the package of rights and responsibilities that go with being a husband and father. The husband's name is therefore likely to be the one registered on land titles, leaving women vulnerable to efforts to cheat them of their property. Threats to women's security of tenure may come either from husbands or from other relatives such as adult sons or daughters. It is therefore very important to ensure that both spouses' names are entered on property titles. This seemingly modest policy recommendation is not, however, well received in many quarters. Those creating new regularisation programmes may be content to regard legal declarations of equality between spouses as 'covering the gender angle'. International experts promoting the 'traditional' approach to regularisation regard what happens within the family as beyond the remit of public programmes. Non-government organisations may regard dual-name titling as a threat to housing programmes requiring the provision of credit to intended beneficiaries. There is, in short, a disjunction between the lipservice paid to promoting women's rights by most international agencies and the practice of tenure regularisation on the ground.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net