ABSTRACT
Without meaningful land rights, women lack access to the most important source of wealth and livelihood, thus risking poverty and legal disempowerment. In many sub-Saharan African countries, neither statutory nor customary law affords women secure or robust land rights, and women must rely on the strength of kin and social networks to maintain access. Accordingly, women have an extraordinarily strong incentive to avoid unsettling those networks. Faced with the constant possibility of losing both social capital and land rights, women struggle to access courts, to benefit from favorable legal judgments, and to exercise other kinds of rights. This chapter examines the problems faced by women due to their lack of access to land rights and how issues of both statutory and customary law must be addressed in order to facilitate meaningful access to justice.
