UN Women working to promote women’s property rights
Date:
Equal property rights and the principle of gender equality are each protected by law in Georgia. Nevertheless, people are often guided by a harmful tradition in which the owners of real estate may only be male. This problem is further aggravated because women’s level of awareness about property rights, especially in rural areas, remains very low.
UN Women has begun to take effective steps to put into practice the principle of women’s empowerment, equal property rights and gender equality. A Memorandum of Understanding with the National Agency of Public Registry of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia was signed by the Chairman of the Agency, Oleg (Bacho) Tortladze, and the UN Women Country Representative in Georgia, Kaori Ishikawa, on 15 March to serves this very purpose.
Under the memorandum, UN Women will help the Agency make its services (including the land registration services provided by the reform) equally accessible to women and men alike, while also promoting Agency policies and procedures, including gender equality, especially in the ownership and management of real estate. Significantly, with the help of its community mobilization initiative, UN Women will encourage the increased awareness of rural women about the systemic registration of land and their participation in this process.
Currently, inequality in property ownership restricts women from receiving funding and starting or running a business with such loans, thereby restricting their development. This also causes property disputes during divorce proceedings, thus often posing an additional obstacle that must be overcome by women who have experienced domestic violence.
“It is very important for women and men to be able to register as co-owners of real estate, to know the relevant procedures,” remarked Ms. Ishikawa. “One of the important focuses of this cooperation will be raising awareness and promoting women’s property rights.”
In addition, UN Women will provide technical support to the National Agency of Public Registry in implementing important initiatives, such as conducting participatory gender audits, developing relevant recommendations, implementing sexual harassment prevention and response mechanisms in the workplace, generating gender-disaggregated data and so on.
“The memorandum will allow us to plan and implement the process of integrating the principles of gender equality more effectively,” Mr. Tortladze noted.
Cooperation between the National Agency of Public Registry and UN Women is one aspect of the UN Women “Good Governance for Gender Equality in Georgia” project, and a part of the Women’s Economic Empowerment initiative, supported by the Government of Norway.