Property Rights Abuses: A case of Kenyan Women

Today we celebrate The Human Rights Day, and whether we agree or not, women are the most vulnerable when it comes to violation regardless of their race or religion.

Many Kenyan women are unaware that they have legal property rights or have no idea how to enforce them. The time and expense of pursuing property claims can be insurmountable. Women also face violence and social stigma if they attempt to claim property. Moreover, nongovernmental organizations that work on women’s property rights are harassed for doing their work.

Women’s Property Rights Violated

• Exclusion from Husbands’ Inheritance: In some cultures, when men die, widows’ in-laws often evict them from their lands and homes and take other property, such as livestock and household good, excluding them from inheriting from their husbands.
• Barbaric Customary Practices. Some cultures force widows to engage in risky traditional practices involving unprotected sex in order to keep their property. It involves the widow being “inherited” as a wife by a male relative of her deceased husband, and ritual “cleansing,” which involves sex with a social outcast, usually without a condom.
• Unequal Inheritance from Parents. Women seldom inherit from their parents on an equal basis with their brothers since women are expected to marry and be “absorbed” by their husbands’ families.
• Lack of Control over Property. Married women can seldom stop their husbands from selling valuable family property. Men are typically the registered landowners holding title deeds, and there is no legal bar against selling family land without their wives’ consent.

Here is a real scenario of how Kenya’s courts are biased against women, slow, corrupt, and often staffed with ill-trained or incompetent judges and magistrates.

N. Ritah, a thirty-four-year-old woman, was separated from her husband on and off for several years. During one period of separation, she borrowed money, purchased land, and constructed a house, all in her name alone. When she reconciled with her husband in 2001, they moved into the house together. He became violent again, and accused her of sleeping with everyone who helped her construct the house. He threatened to kill her, slashed her face with a knife, and beat her so severely she could not get out of bed for three days. Ritah fled to her mother’s house. She obtained legal services from a women’s organization and filed for legal separation. Ritah’s lawyer sent her husband a letter demanding that he move out of the house, which he ignored. At a preliminary hearing, a judge refused to order Ritah’s husband to vacate the house even though the judge knew that Ritah paid for it herself and had title to the house. Ritah still pays the mortgage while she stays with friends and family, and her husband pays nothing. The experience of losing her home has been demoralizing. “Sometimes I cry until there are no more tears to cry,” she said.

That is just one scenario among the many other unreported. You should note that this is just the tip of the iceberg as some cases are more horrible than the above mentioned. Most often, women find themselves on the receiving end especially when it comes to the ownership of land. Naturally, a father divides land amongst his sons because the assumption is that the daughter/s will get married. But then where they get married, they still can’t own the land as it’s owned by the husband. So, the only way women can own land is by working hard to purchase or lease it on their own.

I hope such medieval acts will change very soon, and I am looking forward to a time when women will own what they are rightfully entitled to and that fathers will also include their daughters in family land ownership.

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