Women and Housing Rights Scroll down to download Fact Sheets on women and housing rights
Grassroots Women Empowerment Centre, Manila	Women in Zambia
Housing and land are key issues for women. The recent growth in numbers of female poor has been directly linked to women’s absence of economic opportunities and autonomy, due to a lack of access to economic resources and failure to respect of women’s rights, including to land and housing. As a result, millions of women have been relegated to slums, squatter settlements, shantytowns, transit centres, refugee camps or the streets, often for no other reason than the circumstance of their gender and the discrimination which this social status entails. One crucial way to combat women’s poverty and economic marginalization is to make sure that all women realize their human right to adequate housing, without discrimination, and without exception. COHRE's Women's Housing Rights Programme (WHRP) undertakes a wide-range of activities to further develop and understand housing and land rights from women's perspectives and experiences. The WHRP has undertaken a variety of activities since its inception in 1998, including advocacy at the United Nations for new legal standards pertaining to women's housing rights, research and publications on housing rights issues as they affect women, including inheritance, and community based trainings and other awareness raising activities, to highlight the importance of housing, land and related rights for women. COHRE’s WHRP has been working in all regions of the world, more recently focusing on Africa.

Fact Sheets on Women's Housing Rights Fact Sheet One is about women's housing rights generally.  download word [en]   Fact Sheet Two is about women and inheritance rights.  download word [en]   COHRE Statement on International Women's Day 2006 On International Women’s Day, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions called on governments to take active steps to protect the rights of women to housing and land.  download word [en]