Antigone IsufiPristinaBIRNMarch 9, 202317:39Too few women in Kosovo own any property, mainly due to a patriarchal culture, which prevents women from becoming financially independent and establishing their own businesses.
BIRN’s Kallxo Pernime show on Wednesday, March 8, 2022. Photo: BIRN
Women in Kosovo continue to struggle winning property rights due to not being included in inheritance and even giving up property rights due to old patriarchal customs, which leave women financially dependent on the men of the families and create obstacles for women entrepreneurs.
Kosovo’s legal framework gives equal property rights to men and women, but only 19 per cent of properties are owned by women, according to the Chief Executive of the Agency for Gender Equality, Edi Gusia.
Gusia told BIRN’s show Kallxo Pernime on Wednesday that one of the factors hindering registration is the inadequate issue of death certificates of parents, where sometimes only male children are included in the certificate.
“Sometimes it happens intentionally, where the family secretly remove [female heirs] from the inheritance, but sometimes the girls themselves give up their inheritance,” said Gusia, explaining that issuing the correct death certificate would facilitate tracing the entire family line of succession.
Besides being deleted from inheritance after their parents’ deaths, many women are not included in the registration of joint property with their spouses.
“In 2016, we had only 105 couples who registered joint property in the whole of Kosovo, and in 2022 there were 4,375 couples who have done so,” Gusia told BIRN.
Property rights ease women’s financial problems and allow them to become entrepreneurs by establishing or expanding their businesses by using the property to get a mortgage.
Entrepreneur Behije Berisha, who worked for 24 years as a seamstress, has managed to strengthen her tailoring business by taking loans because she owns a flat in Peja/Pec, placing the apartment on a mortgage at a commercial bank.
Berisha told BIRN that due to owning her property she managed to strengthen the business that “helped me to live and educate my children. I started with a simple tailoring machine at home and now I work in my company together with my daughter. Together we plan to do our business online as well”.
The Director of Agriculture in the Municipality of Pristina, Plator Gerdovci, told BIRN the low number of women with property under their names comes from a patriarchal mindset which considers that only men can be heirs and property owners.
“This small number of women who have property in their name also causes other problems, such as grants in agriculture,” Gerdovci told BIRN.
Selvije Gashi-Bucaj, a mother of five, is another Kosovo woman who has managed to become a successful entrepreneur due to owning a two-hectare property near Lipjan/Lipljan. She has developed a flower business.
“I had the opportunity to use part of the property for a mortgage or loan, to expand the business,” Gashi-Bucaj, who has 28 employees, told BIRN.
Suzana Gashi, from the Ombudsperson’s Office, told BIRN that current regulation, such as an administrative instruction for the registration of joint property, is encouraging, but not enough.
“We have an inherited system that discriminates. Regardless of whether the property was acquired during the period when she was married, or whether or not she is registered, she is the owner of half of the property, and this should not even be discussed. The legal framework is generally good, but now the problem is the implementation in practice,” Gashi explained.
According to her, it is discouraging that the Ombudsperson’s Office receives very few complaints regarding property issues.
According to Gerdovci, many women in Kosovo also do not have information on public grants and face administrative restrictions when applying for them, due to lack of education or proof of property ownership.
Luljeta Demolli, executive director of the Kosovar Gender Studies Centre, KGSC, previously told BIRN that, “for Kosovar parents, girls belong to their husbands and they don’t give them the property. For the in-laws, the women are not their blood and they are upset if she has part of their property or land after she and her son get divorced.”
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