Women’s access to inheritance property rights for their economic empowerment in Albania

Abstract

This work focuses on a much-neglected issue: the links between inheritance property rights, economic empowerment and domestic violence in Albania. It outlines why in Albania, where, despite of having a progressive gender neutral legislation with regard to inheritance property rights and despite that inheritance is considered as the main way for women to access property rights, few women own land either as wives or as daughters. A complex range of factors, legal, social, institutional, and ideological - are found to underlie the persistent gap between women’s rights to inherit property. This work furthermore, tries to explain that it is precisely due to barriers to ownership, highlighting the importance of access to property rights for women’s economic empowerment, that women in Albania are living in very difficult economic conditions, consequently very often they found their selves as being victims of domestic violence as a result of economic dependency. Hence, this thesis suggests that women’s access to inheritance property rights in Albania is of a great importance as a tool for their economic empowerment, and for an end to domestic violence.