Inherited by Males: Egyptian Women Denied Ownership of Agricultural Land

By Duaa Imam

At 60 years old, Olfat Jabr still works the fields every day. She spends her mornings alongside hired laborers who are paid by the day. By two in the afternoon, their work is finished, and she returns home to the food and shelter provided by her brother.

“Can you believe I own two acres of land, and this is my situation?” she says.

Olfat lives in Al-Barraniyya village, in the Ashmoun district of Menoufia Governorate (Egyptian Delta). She tells Sharika Wa Laken how she was forced to give up her life in exchange for land she does not truly control.

When her father died, he left more than ten acres. Her share, two acres, was registered in her name, since she had worked as a farmer from the age of five while her brothers pursued their studies.

“I was denied an education, while my brothers completed their schooling and obtained degrees,” she recalls. “After my father’s death, they refused to let me marry. My brother even beat me when I said I wanted a family, claiming men were only after my inheritance. Years passed, and I never married. Later, one brother asked me to sign over my land so he could apply for a job that required proof of agricultural ownership. I agreed on the condition that he would return it once he was appointed.”

But that promise was broken. “He told me the land would return to us after my death anyway, since I was unmarried and living in his house. Villagers, and even his wife, treat me as a burden, someone living off him, while I work in my own land for scraps. They won’t let me marry, and they won’t give me back my land.”

Double deprivation

Ownership of agricultural land in Egypt is governed by a web of laws, customs, and traditions that often exploit women’s labor while denying them inheritance or ownership rights, perpetuating discrimination.

Sayyida Metwally, 38, from Kowm Al-Ashraf in Sharqiya Governorate, learned of her father’s plan to distribute his estate before his death. When the children gathered, the son received the family home outright.

“We were five girls and one boy,” she says. “We were surprised my father gave the house to him. We accepted it, but I was also excluded from the land for some strange reason, because I am childless.”

Sayyida had worked daily on the family farm since childhood, later marrying but never having children. “My father saw no reason to give me land like my siblings,” she explains. “He feared my husband would take it while I was alive, or inherit it after I died.”

“I was deprived of both motherhood and land,” she says quietly. “I thought of selling my share to my brother to pay for medical treatment that might help me conceive, but I knew what my father’s answer would be: ‘Let your husband spend on you.’ So I stayed silent.”

The fate of Afaf Moussa, from Al-Hawarta in Minya Governorate (Upper Egypt), is no different, though the reasons vary. Her father died when she was in her first year, leaving her mother to raise the family.

Afaf recalls her first steps into “the land”: “My three sisters, my older brother, my younger brother, and I were all children. None of us were married when my father died.”

Tears fill her eyes as she recounts how her mother favored her sons. “She told us daughters that we would be denied our inheritance of two acres and two houses because we had already been married off at the cost of our shares. My brothers married at double the cost, yet each received a house and an acre of land.”

Her mother even relinquished her own share to the men. When the daughters protested, the reply was: “If you take your inheritance, you’ll lose your brothers. And if you face problems in your marriages, you’ll have no one to support you, no home to return to.”

“So we surrendered,” Afaf says. “And none of us has dared claim our rights since.”

Conditional Inheritance

Women are routinely denied their right to own and manage property, an exclusion that leaves lasting scars on their economic security. Access to land, water, and other natural resources is restricted by discriminatory guardianship laws and entrenched practices that compel women to register property under the name of a male relative, whether father, brother, husband, or even son. In cases of separation or divorce, men often retain control of property, while women may find themselves homeless or forced to share ownership with in-laws without gaining any real authority or rights, according to the New Woman Foundation.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that men are twice as likely as women to hold secure ownership or tenure rights to agricultural land in more than 40% of the countries that provided data on women’s land ownership. In 40 out of 46 reporting countries, men hold stronger rights than women. Across most Arab countries, less than 10% of women own land.

Cultural, religious, and customary practices reinforce these disparities. Male relatives typically control family resources and income, leaving women structurally dependent on men for survival, a dependency that frequently exposes them to insecurity and violence.

May Saleh, director of the Women and Work Program at the New Woman Foundation, explains that women are often pressured to relinquish their title deeds, or to grant power of attorney to a husband, son, or brother to manage their land. “Patriarchal authority,” she says, “heavily influences the exclusion of women from agricultural holdings, since women ownership is still considered a disgrace.”

She tells Sharika Wa Laken that a large proportion of women are seasonal or migrant workers, hired on a daily basis for low wages. With such meager earnings, they cannot afford to purchase land. Meanwhile, women who work without pay on family farms are often denied inheritance under prevailing social norms, or are allowed to inherit only on the condition that they do not sell to outsiders, but exclusively to their male siblings. “And it is the brothers who set the price, of course, which means women lose either way, their ownership is suspended, and their rights are stripped,” Saleh adds.

She continues: “Agricultural property is central to women’s economic empowerment. Without it, women are deprived of access to loans that require ownership as collateral, leasing opportunities that could provide steady income, and countless other avenues closed off by their deliberate exclusion.”

For Saleh, addressing the problem requires both cultural and legal reform. “We need social change, but it will not happen overnight. There must be a clear legal mechanism for transferring land to women, especially in cases of inheritance. That mechanism must incorporate a gender perspective and ensure women’s representation in decision-making bodies, so that they can help resolve the crises they themselves endure.”

She urges officials to coordinate with banks and registries to treat women as independent individuals capable of claiming their rights directly, rather than channeling access exclusively through sons, brothers, or husbands by virtue of kinship.

Fear of Women

In her analysis, Lamia Lotfi, human rights activist and co-founder of the Rural Women initiative, explains that women are denied ownership of agricultural land, or property more broadly, because they are perceived as dependents, the “weaker” element of society. She stresses that this is not accidental, but a form of deliberate impoverishment and marginalization designed to keep women financially and socially controlled.

She tells Sharika Wa Laken: “Rural women work, whether paid or unpaid, on family farms, contribute to household expenses, and sometimes even carry the family entirely on their shoulders. Yet they remain subjugated within the nuclear or extended family.”

Lotfi continues: “Women are denied ownership because of the fear that financial independence will allow them to challenge patriarchal authority or choose separation. Men’s control over women’s financial resources is a key tool for controlling them as people.”

She adds that multiple factors have systematically reduced women’s chances of owning agricultural land: strict social control over women’s movements and interactions, the creation of constant fear around leaving the home, and the idea that the household is the only safe place for them. Added to this are subtle social tactics, such as exaggerating the complexity of land ownership, claiming women are incapable of handling official documents or government agencies, and insisting that only men can complete these tasks. All of this, she says, reinforces a broader climate that obstructs women’s pursuit of financial independence.

Lotfi also highlights the structural barriers: inadequate transportation networks in villages leave men free to rely on motorcycles for easy mobility, but this option is taboo for women in rural areas. Thus, when women demand to register land in their own names, they are often blackmailed with the “difficulty” of reaching agricultural associations, land registries, or banks. “Some women,” she explains, “end up believing that their brother or husband, who has in fact stolen their rights, is doing them a favor by taking on the burden of leaving the house and dealing with officials.”

The feminization of poverty

Neamat Mohammad El-Sayyed Mostafa, professor of sociology at the Faculty of Education, Alexandria University, examined the consequences of denying women land ownership and its direct impact on their declining standard of living. In her study, “The Relationship between Women’s Ownership of Agricultural Land and the Feminization of Poverty in Rural Areas,” she argues that the economic empowerment of rural women is essential to eradicating poverty among women and achieving genuine, sustainable human development.

She emphasizes that women—both Christian and Muslim—in rural Egypt continue to be marginalized and denied their rightful inheritance, whether monetary or in-kind, for a variety of reasons. This persists despite the fact that divine religions, international conventions, and national laws all affirm women’s financial independence and their right to inherit.

According to the study, discrimination against women’s rights to property and ownership remains the prevailing norm in rural Egypt. The findings recommend prioritizing the economic advancement of rural women by tackling the widespread poverty that afflicts large groups of them. This goal, the study stresses, can only be achieved by ensuring women’s access to their legal inheritance of money and agricultural land, as well as to the full range of resources and services available in society.

The study concludes that the Egyptian state must confront both the structural and legal discrimination faced by rural women, adopting strategies developed by sociologists and economists to strengthen women’s empowerment across all sectors.

By: Duaa Imam