ESR Review: Economic and Social Rights in South Africa recently published an article on Gender dimensions of the right to adequate housing from an international perspective by Mayra Gomez and Bret Thiele, Co-Executive Directors of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 

The article examines how women's housing and land rights are crucial for the advancement of women's economic and social status, and how international human rights law and mechanisms can be used for the eradication of gender-based discrimination and the substantive human rights to adequate housing and access to, control over and use of land and other productive resources. According to the article:

Throughout the world, women face entrenched barriers to the full enjoyment of their housing and land rights.  These barriers are often rooted in systems of gender-based discrimination and prejudice, which undermine women’s basic autonomy and impact negatively on their ability to realise the full range of their human rights on an equal basis with men.  In much of the world, it is women’s rights to housing and land that continue to be systematically denied.  As such, gender is an essential lens through which the advancement of  housing rights must be seen.

Gender dimensions of the right to adequate housing from an international perspective and several other interesting and useful articles dealing with economic, social and cultural rights can be found in the latest edition of ESR Review: Economic and Social Rights in South Africa.