Half the world's population now lives in cities. Governments andagencies have made housing the poor a priority, but few studies orinitiatives focus on women's needs.

Based on research conducted in Ahmedabad in collaboration with theSelf-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), this book maps theconstraints and opportunities that low-income women throughout theGlobal South face in securing property, which remainsoverwhelmingly in male hands. Their vulnerabilities open a window toassess not only land tenure and property laws but also theoreticalapproaches to gender and development. Although the developmentcommunity holds out microcredit financing as one potential solution,these women's stories reveal its glaring limitations.

By highlighting the importance of property as a material andsymbolic asset in women's empowerment, this book carves out newintellectual space in the study of gender and development.