Protecting women's rights to land.

This article examines the efficacy of the 1998 Land Act in protecting women's right to land in Uganda. The Land Act introduced individual ownership to encourage a more productive use of land, based on the principles of economic liberalization. It converted customary ownership through the creation of written deeds. Traditionally, women's land use was protected under customary law, in which elders assumed the role of protectors, however, the passage of the Land Act changed this. It did not recognize the role of elders as protectors. To this effect, men automatically assumed that role because of the presumption that women did not own the land making them individual owners of the land. Therefore, because of the law's limitations, women have lost ownership, and are more disadvantaged by the higher incidences of divorce and the fact that wives rarely inherit. It is for this reason that the Oxfam worked with the Uganda Land Alliance to lobby the government to ensure that the Act protected women's right as much as possible.