Women are responsible for 80% of the food production and 70% of agricultural work in Kenya. However, they rarely own their own land and never participate in decision-making. Faced with this injustice, the struggles of gender equality and land access have been taken up by organizations like Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) and FIDA-Kenya, both of which give voice to several hundred organizations and individuals. For Kenyan women, the World Social Forum, which took place in Nairobi, in their country, was an incredible opportunity to pose questions surrounding these issues to Kenyan authorities.
In law, as well as in practice, the right of Kenyan women to own property is not as well-entrenched as the right of men to do so. Only 1% of Kenyan women have a property deed, and 5 to 6% own property jointly with their husbands. For KLA and FIDA, this situation is unacceptable. 

When women promote… 

While all eyes were turned to Nairobi, KLA and FIDA took advantage of the opportunity of this international conference to publicize and spread awareness of the policy brief that they have created. Advocating for the struggle against discrimination of women, these organizations speak out against exclusion and propose new policies. The objective is clear: push authorities to enact specific reforms on women’s rights (to own, inherit, and manage land) by writing them into the new constitution. 

	© KLA / KLA and FIDA take advantage of the World Social Forum in Nairobi to question authorities on the issue of land access for Kenyan women.

Much progress has been made because the struggle is led by several Kenyan organizations that have worked on the problem for many years. Since being founded in 1999, KLA has been engaged in many political and legislative debates relating to land access. When FIDA, and its network of 360 member organizations that fight against discrimination against women, joined KLA, they gave the movement more force and strengthened its assertions. It was a truly effective collaboration for bringing women the right to a small piece of land. 

Giving land to more women 

Along with these strong actions, KLA took advantage of the World Social Forum to distribute a booklet [1] on the new constitutional processes of land ownership, which was an effective way of letting the government realize that the situation has gone on long enough. The publication was alarming, concluding that Kenyan women practically have no rights at all. Married women cede all control of their income to their husbands.  For divorced women, their income remains in their husbands’ names, and for widows, their situation is even more uncertain.

For KLA and FIDA, inclusion in the constitution of their proposed reforms would allow women to be less dependent on men and to take charge of their own future. The rejection of the constitution in a 2005 referendum, which proposed including more rights for women, did not discourage them at all. Today, they hope that regardless of whether or not women’s property rights are established on paper, Kenyan women will be able to start exercising these rights in practice.

Notes :

[1]  A Case for Women’s Land Rights in the New Constitution