©UN-HABITAT Women are disproportionately affected by forced evictions

A widow who has lost her husband should not have the added pain of being forced out of her home and stripped of her land and inheritance, yet this is still happening to many women.

Many States have constitutional guarantees and specific laws and policies aimed at promoting and safeguarding women’s equal rights to land, property and housing.

In practice, however, these are often undermined by cultural and social norms, and practices that are discriminatory against women.

Property grabbing from widows is particularly a problem in Southern Africa, where widows of HIV/AIDS-affected husbands are especially vulnerable. This is just one example of how gender, land and housing issues intersect.

Divorcees, women fleeing domestic violence, and female-headed households are also among the most disadvantaged in terms of accessing housing or keeping it. Moreover, women are disproportionately affected by forcible evictions.

Change comes with effective campaigning, political will, improved policies and practical tools to improve security of tenure for both men and women equally.

UN-HABITAT’s global campaigns for secure tenure and urban governance have made gender rights a priority, placing women’s security of tenure at the centre of policy debate and advocacy. The new Global Campaign for Sustainable Urbanisation will continue to build on these efforts.

The Global Land Tool Network

UN-HABITAT is also the Secretariat for the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN), an international network of partners working to develop pro-poor land tools, which are measures for land reform, improved land management or improved security of tenure.

GLTN’s innovative work is raising awareness of policy issues and practises that need to be addressed, so that poor men—and women—have more secure rights to stay on the land and in the homes they know, free from harassment and intimidation.

GLTN promotes realistic and practical approaches— particularly by promoting a continuum of land rights, instead of individual land titling as the only option for greater tenure security.

For example, women in particular may benefit from joint-titling. Even if a husband or male relative passes away, a woman may still be able to keep her home if she has a joint-title.

GLTN has produced a range of publications and tools that promote gender equality and pro-poor land policies together.

These include the following:

• Policy Makers Guide to Women’s Land, Housing and Property Rights Across the World;
• Gender reviews of law, land and housing, for Latin America and Southern Africa;
• Land Registration in Ethiopia: Early Impacts on Women;
• Gender Evaluation Criteria for Large-Scale Land Tools – an evaluation framework to assess how sufficiently a land tool addresses the needs of both men and women
• Secure Land Rights for All
• Rights and Reality

Click here for GLTN’s brochure on gender and land tool development

The United Nations Housing Rights Programme

The United Nations Housing Rights Programme (UNHRP) is a joint initiative by UN-HABITAT and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It focuses on the gender dimensions in all its activities. Through this Programme, UN-HABITAT supports the work of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, including on gender aspects of housing rights.

Read more about UNHCR
The Special Rapporteur’s reports on women and adequate housing