Empowering Women

The expansion of married womenrs"s property rights was a main achievement of the first wave of feminism in Latin America. As Carmen Diana Deeere and Magdalena Leon reveal, however, the disjuncture between rights and actual ownership remains vast. This is particularly true in rural areas, where the distribution of land between men and women is highly unequal. In their pioneering, twelve-country comparative study, the authors argue that property ownership is directly related to womenrs"s bargaining power within the household and community, point out changes resulting from recent gender-progressive legislation, and identify additional areas for future reform, including inheritance rights of wives.

Carmen Diana Deere, past president of the Latin American Studies Association, is professor of economics and director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Magdalena Leon is a professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National University of Colombia