This global survey examines the impact of current trends and policies on the overall social and economic situation of women. It starts by describing the main economic trends produced by globalisation: trade liberalisation; increased globalised production due to direct investment of multinational corporations; and financial liberalisation. The gender impact of those trends are then analysed in detail beginning with employment and displacement effects, including their influence on women's position within the household and the labour markets around the world.

The Women Advancement Trust (WAT) in Tanzania carries out various initiatives related to land rights, affordable housing, and inheritance rights. This report presents lessons learned from a housing and shelter development initiative. The goals of the initiative were to empower low-income communities, particularly women, to participate fully and actively in all aspects of human settlements development, including the improvement of their living and housing conditions.

Across Africa, land is integral to identity and existence. Access to, and ownership of land for women is often problematic – particularly when laws and culture collide. Land issues, including family property matters, are often determined within entrenched cultural norms, resulting in the application of a hybrid legal interpretation of both customary and national law that leaves many women at a disadvantage. Under the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015, the Commonwealth Secretariat has spearheaded efforts to secure women’s rights to land in Africa.

While the majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly Eastern Africa provide a living for their families on land, they largely do not own it. This comprises one part of a study on women and land in five countries in Eastern Africa - and was commissioned by the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).

In a globalising world where the role of the local, the national and the global is shifting, the meanings of citizenship are also changing. This article presents some new theoretical discussions on gender and citizenship. It argues that, rather than something which sees everyone as "the same", citizenship should be understood as multi-tiered and formed through many different positions according to gender, ethnicity and urban/rural location.

How have Egyptian feminists promoted women's rights? This paper looks at the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) in the fight for women's right to vote in Egypt in the early twentieth century. The EFU had much in common with the international women's movement then mobilising around women's right to vote. The IWSA represented the basis for an 'international sisterhood', where the EFU's goals were in line with other feminist organisations that came together under the IWSA.

Because of their lower social and economic status, as well as physiological needs, women are often more vulnerable to nutritional problems. When it comes to sharing food resources in the home, women and girls can lose out. Indeed, the full realisation of the right to food for women depends on parallel achievements in the right to health, education, access to information and access to resources such as land.

Do women have effective land rights in practice? Research and policy have only recently begun to engage with the need for women to have independent rights to fields of their own. What needs to be done? Four areas for action are identified with associated strategies: improve women's claims on private land (e. g. through gender equal inheritance laws); improve women's access to public land (e.g. through land reform schemes); improve women's access to land via the market (e.g. through subsidised credit); and improve the viability of women's farming efforts (e.g.

What are the links between HIV/AIDS and women's property rights in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)? This paper asks if women's lack of rights increases household poverty and their own vulnerability to infection, and if securing these rights can reduce the impacts of the epidemic on poverty. The paper notes that gender inequality in land ownership is common in SSA, due to male preference in inheritance, male bias in state programmes of land distribution, and gender inequality in the land market.

Women's access to land is a fundamental factor in food security. Yet women all over the world suffer under discriminatory property and inheritance laws and customary practices which restrict their rights over the land on which they live and work. Articles 15 and 16 of CEDAW state the rights of women to property and inheritance. This report is a tool to help non-governmental organisations and multilateral agencies in advocacy and policy dialogue using CEDAW and the Optional Protocol (which allows individuals and groups to make complaints directly to the CEDAW committee).

Are women's equal rights to land, housing and property implemented in East Africa? How are land rights translated into national legislation in the Region? This books explores land, housing and property rights in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, and looks at how relevant international treaties are transformed into national legislation and policies in these three countries. A detailed analysis of constitutions and laws on land, housing, inheritance, marriage and divorce laws is also offered.

The Integrated Drylands Development Programme (IDDP) is a global UNDP initiative to promote sustainable development in the drylands, and advance the implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. This topic brief highlights the important role that gender plays in this context of sustainable development, in particular the role of women in the Arab States and Africa. In these regions, inequality and stereotypical gender norms often prevent women from contributing to the sustainable development of drylands, despite possessing a wealth of traditional knowledge and skills.