Africa: Women still back of the queue on land access

The yams in the family plot were ripe when Elizabeth Igwenagu's husband died. But at the end of the one-week-long burial rite, his family harvested the entire crop of the thick, potato-like tubers, a staple starch in southern Nigeria. In many African societies, women's rights to land and property are tenuous and dependent on males. Although legislation may guarantee equality among men and women, family matters are often managed under customary law, which evolved to retain property within the family and under male control.