Abstract
This chapter deals with a right that, in spite of being considered fundamental and of being guaranteed in all legal systems, is enjoyed by a very small number of women in the world. The cases analyzed in the book cover three thematic axes: the consequences of linking the female identity to maternity and access to property; the configuration of privileged access to property; and the tensions among marginalized groups. The Chapter analyzes how most legal systems in the region have repealed legal provisions that banned women from administering and owning property or businesses. It presents the case of special treatment for reasons of population displacement derived from the Colombian armed conflict. It discusses, from the perspective of access to property and allocation of housing and points out the difficulties faced by case law in establishing hierarchies among disadvantaged groups in matters such as the agrarian reform.
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Notes
- 1.
See Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Carol H. Potson, ed., W.W. Norton, New York, 1975; Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1980; Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Rowman & Alanheld, Totowa, 1983; Frances E. Olsen, “The family and the Market: A study of ideology and Legal Reform”, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 96, No. 7, 1983, pp. 160–78; Joanne Conaghan, “The invisibility of women in labour law: gender neutrality in Model- building”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 14, No. ¾, 1986, pp. 377–92; Mary Joe Frug, Women and the Law, The Foundation Press, New York, 1992.
- 2.
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- 3.
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- 4.
See Nancy Holmstrom, “A marxist theory of women’s nature”, Ethics, Vol. 94, No. 1, April 1984, pp. 456–73; Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Towards a Unitary Theory, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1983; Annette Kuhn, Ann Marie Wolpe, eds., Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston, 1978; Ann Foreman, Femininity as Alienation: Women and the Family in Marxism and Psychoanalysis, Pluto Press, London, 1977.
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See Heidi Tinsman, op.cit.
- 7.
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This is the perspective held by Jeremy Bentham: “A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.” Jeremy Bentham, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation” in Peter Gay, ed., The Enlightment: A Comprehensive Anthology, Touchstone Press, New York, 1973, p. 664.
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See M. León, E. Rodríguez ed. op.cit.; Carmen Diana Deere y Magdalena León, Género, Propiedad y Empoderamiento: Tierra, Estado y Mercado en América Latina, Tercer Mundo Editores, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, 2000; Silvia M. Arrom, “Cambios en la condición jurídica de la mujer mejicana en el s. XIX”, in Jose Luis Soberanes Fernández comp., Memoria del II Congreso de Historia del Derecho Mexicano, UNAM, México D.F., 1981.
- 10.
C. Deere and M. León, op.cit., p. 2.
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Leslie Kurshan, Rethinking Property Rights as Human Rights: Acquiring Equal Property Rights for Women Using International Human Rights Treaties, 8 am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol’y L. 353 (2000).
- 12.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, University of California Press, 1978.
- 13.
Roger Chartier, El mundo como representación: estudios sobre historia cultural, Gedisa, Barcelona, 1995, p. 56.
- 14.
Judith Butler uses this concept in 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1990. She might have borrowed it from Sandra Harding, “The instability of the analytical categories of feminist theory”, Signs, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1986, pp. 645–64.
- 15.
Michel Foucault, La verdad y las formas jurídicas, Gedisa, Barcelona, 2003.
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See Louise A. Tilly, Joan W. Scott, Women, Work and Family, Routledge, London, 1989; Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850, Cass, London, 1969; Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, Vintage Books, 1962; Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures. Second Edition, Routledge, 1994; David Landes, The Industrial Revolution in Britain, New York University Press, New York, 1969; Arnold Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, The Beacon Press, Boston, 1961.
- 17.
See Louise A. Tilly y Joan W. Scott, Women, Work and Family, Routledge, London, 1989; Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850, Cass, London, 1969; Eric Hobsbawm, op.cit; Maxine Berg, op.cit; David Landes, The Industrial Revolution in Britain, New York University Press, New York, 1969; Max Pietsch, Arnold Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, The Beacon Press, Boston, 1961.
- 18.
Friedrich Engels, “Working Class in Manchester”, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, Norton, New York, 1978, p. 583. “Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping-room all in one. In such a whole, scarcely 5 ft long by six broad, I found two beds-and such bedsteads and beds!-which with staircase and chimney place, exactly filled the room.”
- 19.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1978.
- 20.
Id. pp. 56–78.
- 21.
Gosta Esping-Anderson, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990, p. 21.
- 22.
Id. p. 19.
- 23.
León Duguit, Las transformaciones del derecho público y privado, Editorial Heliasta, Buenos Aires, 1975.
- 24.
See Kurshan, supra note 12, at 357–58.
- 25.
See Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995; Marianne H. Marchand y Jane L. Parpart eds., Feminism, Postmodernism and Development, Routledge, Nueva York, 1995; Karen Engle, Female Subjects of Public International Law: Human Rights and the Exotic Other Female, 26 New Eng. L. Rev. 1509 (1992).
- 26.
Art. 75, para. 22, Constitucion Nacional (Argentina) (establishing the constitutional hierarchy of international treaties and pacts, and expressly of the provisions of the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (IPESCR)).
- 27.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, London, 1974, p. 148
- 28.
Organization of American States, Official documents emanating from the especial meeting of the Inter-American Economic and Social Counsel at the Ministerial Level held in Punta del Este. Uruguay 5–17, 1961, Washington, DC. General Secretariat of the OAS, 1961.
- 29.
See Richard L. Harris, “Marxism and the agrarian question in Latin America”, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1978, pp. 2–26.
- 30.
See Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, Double Day, New York, 1970.
- 31.
C. D. Deere and M. León, op.cit., p. 429.
- 32.
Arturo Warman, La reforma agraria mexicana: una visión de largo plazo. http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/j0415t/j0415t09.htm
- 33.
Joan W. Scout, “Deconstructing Equality Versus Difference: Or the Uses of Postestructuralist Theory of Feminism”, en Frances Olsen, ed., Feminist Legal Theory I: Foundations and Outlooks, New York University Press, Nueva York, 1995, pp. 261–278.
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Alviar, H. (2013). Property. In: Motta, C., Saez, M. (eds) Gender and Sexuality in Latin America - Cases and Decisions. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6199-5_5
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