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Ghana - Women Hope to Get Fair Treatment Under New Land Policy

Public Agenda (Accra)
9 July 2007

By Isabella Gyau Orhin
Accra

Women's rights activists are pushing for Ghana women's access and control of land to be incorporated into the new studies that would form part of the new Land Administration Policy.

The Land Administration Project (LAP) seeks to make the process of acquisition and registration of land open and less stressful for investors and citizenry to acquire. It also seeks to reduce the various chieftaincy disputes.

According to Dr. W Odame Larbi Project Director of LAP, the new study will provide the structures and linkages that would fill up the proposals in the new Bill.

During the consultation period for the proposed LAP in 2005, the Deputy Minister for Lands, Forestry and Mines Theresa Tagoe appealed to traditional authorities to lead in the review of customary laws governing inheritance patterns in the various communities.

This she said hinders the acquisition of property by women upon the death of their spouses or at divorce.

"Equal rights to land for women and men are an essential and inherent component of progress on overall human rights and democratic development," she said.

According to the Ghana poverty Reduction Strategy, regions experiencing increases in poverty levels tend to have a higher female population in the range of 50 to 52 percent.

An essential feature of Ghana's rural setting is the emergence of female headed households which constitutes 35 percent of all household heads. Fifty- three percent of such female households falls in the poorest 20 percent and depend on the land for their sustenance.

"It is therefore important that a frame work that ensures women's equal access to land is improved upon to reduce poverty," says Tagoe.

Tagoe also said that Queen Mothers across the country have not been making inputs into the on-going Land Administration Project (LAP).

She said although the Queen mothers attended the meetings in their numbers and look splendid in their traditional attire, they keep silent until the meetings are over.

"Queen Mothers attend these meetings but they never open their mouths. Only the chiefs' talk," she said.

According to her, it was only at Juaso, in the Ashanti Region where one Queen mother got up and expressed her self but she could not finish sharing her ideas when one of the chiefs asked her to shut up.

Tagoe was speaking at a round table conference on Women's Economic rights in the areas of inheritance and property with reference to land. It was organized by the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).

She was of the opinion that women's interest in the process will not be taken care of when only men do the talking, "Women will not achieve much if they do not assert themselves in the process," she said.

She therefore charged Women's rights activists to sensitise women especially queen mothers to assert themselves and make an input into the Land Administration process.

. "Tell the Queen mothers that, nobody will punish or destool them when they express themselves on land issues," she said.

Tagoe further explained that although the Interstate succession Law PNDC L111 has very good provisions, its implementation is fraught with a lot of difficulties mostly to the detriment of women.

While some civil society groups have asked government to ensure that the project does not favour foreign investors alone to the detriment of Ghanaians, the beef of the Women's rights activist is different.

"We want to ensure that the project does not favour men as against women," said Jane Quaye, a Women's right activist in 2005.

Land is local and the actual struggle for access to land takes place at the local level, it is therefore important to educate women at the local level on their rights to land at divorce and upon the death of their spouses," says Jane Quaye who is also the Executive Director for FIDA.

She said the names of women are often left out when their spouses register lands they have acquired together. "They often prefer the land to be registered in the name of the man," she said. She attributed this to internalised discriminatory views of these women.

She said in spite of the fact that Ghana has enshrined the principle of equality and non- discrimination in the basic laws of the land and has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All form so f Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) most of our customary laws and practices are discriminatory against women.

Article 22(a) of the 1992 Constitution states "Spouses shall have equal access to property jointly acquired during marriage," while Article 22(b) says, "assets which are jointly acquired during marriage, shall be redistributed equitably between spouses upon dissolution of the marriage."

The Constitution further recognises the current power imbalance between the sexes and explicitly calls for the state to "take all necessary steps so as to ensure the full integration of women into the mainstream of economic development of Ghana."

FIDA notes that 65 percent of Women depend upon land for their livelihood. "When women have access to land, it will empower them economically," said Jane Quaye.

Quaye also said although statutory laws do not discriminate against women in terms of obtaining land rights, in practice, women do not have land rights because of socio-economic obstacles such as lack of education and lack of resources to buy or lease land.

She said women play a crucial role in agriculture providing about 70 percent of food and as such discrimination related to land ownership must be addressed since it has great bearing on food security.

Legal experts say women are often not regarded as essential contributors to the family's economic unit through their unpaid labour and are not given equal share of marital property upon divorce.

They also contend that the Constitution addresses the problem of culture and the role it plays in shaping people's consciousness with regards to rights of both men and women in marriage.

Consequently, the Constitution prohibits all injurious customary practices thereby banning all practices, which discriminate against newly divorced women by unequally distributing marital property.

For the rights activists, the problem of inequitable distribution of property is from two sources. These include the traditional subordinate role Ghanaian wives have played to their husbands and the judiciary's failure to consistently recognise wives property rights to the marital property.

"While wives work both in the public and private sectors, few control the income benefits accrued from such labour," said, Fitnat Adjetey a legal expert at a meeting on marital property at divorce sometime back.

She said generally Ghanaian wives support and assist their husbands in marriage through child-care, homemaking and labour on the family farm or business, all without remuneration.

States in the US according to Adjetey were traditionally either Common Law or Community Property States when applying their family law.

In the Common Law states of the US, the courts did not have the authority to distribute properties that were held under the title of only one spouse. This approach became inequitable, giving way to a situation where the woman is viewed as family partner.

Also under the Community Property System, each spouse has a one and half interest in all community property that is acquired during the marriage. Separate property is regarded as separate and is never divided.

In England, however, statutory laws regulate property allocation upon divorce. Family assets have been defined broadly by Common Law and may include real personal property, properties such as home, furniture investments etc. acquired before and during marriage are all distributed equitable between spouses upon dissolution of a marriage.

Another legal expert Sheila Minka-Premo, also proposes that upon divorce the law should explicitly guarantee a wife's receipt of independent ownership of at least one-half of the marital property in order to ensure accurate distribution of a wife's property interest

"Separate property should be distributed equitably but after five years of marriage legislation should ensure that a wife receives no less than one-third of her husband's property."

Again she said a court in its ruling on a divorce case should take into account contributions each party has made to the welfare of the family, including any unremunerated contribution of house work, childcare, and work on the family land and in the family business in apportioning property.

Minka-Premo also noted that in the case where either spouse does not own the property of a marriage but is rather leased to him, a wife's right to use a minimum percentage of the property should be guaranteed.

"This guarantee should run for the lifetime of the lease or the lifetime of the wife ending either at the time of the lease or the life of the wife," Minka-Premo.





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