Women and Land in Africa: Case Study of Senegal

This study analyses the important role played by women in the Senegalese economy through their contribution in agriculture, which remains the key activity and the target of development policy. Such analysis shows that although their contribution is extremely important, it is invisible and not taken into account. Although they toil in the land, women have no right to own it. Land is the property of men. Even when most of the rural men immigrate to developed countries and stay there for many years, they still control the land cultivated by women who are in charge of the families welfare. In order to study why women cannot own land in Senegal, how the three institutions -tradition, religion and the law- rule the land together to the detriment of women must be studied.