Gender and tenure security in Gusii, Kenya: Improving household welfare through land rights
Dolphine Kwamboka Isinta, Michael Flitner
This paper discusses the role of securing women’s land rights in improving household welfare in Gusii (Kenya). Land in Gusii is a social asset acquired through patrilineal descent, and it is a primary source of income for majority of the population. Although the 2010 constitution accords women full land ownership rights, a complex set of customary laws typically restricts them to usufruct land rights. Using a Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) framework, this paper argues that for Gusii, the realization of key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular gender equality (5), poverty and hunger reduction (1 and 2) and peace and justice (SDG 16) depends on securing land rights which is crucial for supporting women’s key role in household subsistence. To this end, structural discrimination of women has to be fought in the areas of education and improved land governance, with a focus on implementing existing rights through improved insitutional mechanisms.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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