In all parts of the world, it is invariably women who represent the poorest of the housing poor, and who find themselves confronted by the most desperate situations of housing insecurity. While lack of access to stable and secure housing adversely affects all, women bear the brunt of this universal housing crisis. Often overburdened with treble shifts of caring for children, managing households and generating income, women rely heavily on proper and secure housing for their economic and personal wellbeing. Lack of security in the area of housing deprives women of economic autonomy, physical safety and personal dignity, and serves to further marginalise women by contributing to their poverty and continued social subjugation. Without adequate housing, women cannot enjoy other fundamental rights, including their right to equality.

In fact, securing women’s rights to housing and land is fundamental to improving women’s status, and their lives. Without independent rights to adequate housing and land, women remain precariously dependent on males and susceptible to lives of insecurity, abuse and exploitation. The result of this situation equals a precarious state of limbo for millions of individual women. On the one hand, a woman can easily be forcibly evicted from her home or land at any time, often without any recourse whatsoever. On the other, she can become easily trapped in situations of violence and abuse because she simply has no where else to go.

Throughout the world today, women’s housing poverty and insecurity take many forms. From the woman who has no other housing option than to stay in a situation of domestic violence in order to keep from becoming homeless, to the young mother struggling in the slums without basic tenure security for herself and her family, to the girl orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and prohibited from inheriting housing and land on an equal basis with her bothers, women’s housing rights are not peripheral issues – they are central to improving the lives of women and girls throughout the world. For women in particular, housing rights are intimately connected to their security, health, and wellbeing. If they are unable to fully enjoy their housing rights, women cannot be the architects of their own destiny, they cannot exercise true independence, and they become vulnerable to a myriad other human rights violations.

Indeed, in many parts of the developing world, a woman’s housing security is inextricably linked with her land and food security. Statistics from UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and others illustrate that women in many regions of the world produce up to 80% of all food, yet globally own one percent of all land. This profound imbalance is both reflective of, and responsible for, the overall inequality and discrimination women face in their daily lives. Women traditionally carry the multiple burdens of being care givers, house keepers and income generators. Yet, women are rarely given title to the housing they live in or the land they farm, as it is often accessed either formally or informally through their relationship with a male.

Ensuring that women and girls throughout the world are able to enjoy their housing and land rights is the fundamental work of the COHRE Women and Housing Rights Programme. In order to secure women’s housing and land rights, it is critical to employ a methodology and an approach which recognises that gender neutral forms of advocacy are simply not enough to make a real change in the lives of women. Indeed, in order to address the housing rights violations which women and girls experience, it must also be understood that those violations are not only rooted in unjust systems of poverty and social neglect, they are also deeply rooted in systems of gender-based oppression which must themselves be challenged and put right.

To ensure that housing rights benefit women and advance the goal of gender equality, COHRE’s Women and Housing Rights Programme works to:

• Enforce and strengthen the international human rights framework so that women are able to fully enjoy their housing and land rights in practice.
   
• Defend and advocate on behalf of women’s housing and land rights at all levels and fight against the denial of these rights in all forms.
   
• Empower and support women and their advocates to effectively claim women’s housing and land rights and to combat gender-based discrimination.