She was the main contributor to building the family home. So why doesn’t she own it?

For 17 years, Selma Kujta¹ poured her earnings into building a family home. She worked as a cleaner in hotels and at the local thermal baths, taking whatever work she could find, and invested every penny she earned in building and maintaining the family home. Her husband, she says, contributed little, if anything. She handed over her wages in full every month, trusting that the home she was helping build would be hers too.

“I always believed that I was investing in a family home I would enjoy living in for the rest of my life,” Selma Kujta says. “I never thought that I would have to leave the house and end up with nothing after all those years.”

When Selma, a survivor of domestic violence, finally left one night together with her children, stepping out into the street at 10 p.m. with nowhere to go, the home she had spent years helping to build, remained behind. So did her rights to it. Her name was never included the property title.

Her story is not an exception in rural Albania. Rather, it is the rule. Across the Dibra region, women who have spent years contributing financially with their work to family property find themselves without any formal claim to those assets - a gap that becomes devastating when marriages end.

The Albanian legislation has evolved significantly over the past decade, including as regards providing for women’s legal right to (co-)register property in their own names. Yet knowing that a right exists and being able to exercise it are two entirely different things. Many rural women remain unaware of these rights or lack the support needed to exercise them. Others, like Selma Kujta, learned about them only after it was too late to act. “I didn’t know anything,” Selma says. “I just worked in that house for seventeen years.”

Aurela Anastasi, a lawyer who specializes in women’s rights and one of the legal experts behind a monitoring report on rural women’s access to property in Albania produced by the Center for Civic Legal Initiatives, describes the structural dimension of this gap.

“The current legislation offers an opportunity for women to exercise their rights,” she explains. “But legislative improvements alone are not enough. What is needed is support, not just information, not just raising awareness, but actually sitting down with women and helping them fill in every document, step by step.”

From law to reality

Sidorela Horeshka is the Executive Director of AGRITA Vizion, a civil society organization with 25 years’ experience in working with women in Dibra, and one of UN Women’s local partners in implementing the “Empowering Women for Rural Development in Northern Albania” project. She has witnessed how generations of women have internalized the idea that property simply belongs to the men in their lives. “This community has functioned primarily on the basis of an entrenched patriarchal mentality rather than the law,” Sidorela Horeshka says.

“Women themselves believed that the property belonged to their father, brother, or husband. Now women have more information, and they have started to change.”

These barriers are not confined to the family environment. When women go to public offices to apply for services or benefits, they are still asked, “Where is your husband?” Sidorela Horeshka says this question reflects the assumption that formal matters are the domain of men. Such assumptions still persist within administrative structures and point to a broader need for training public officials whose duty it is to inform women of their rights the moment they seek assistance.

Legal experts working on this issue have documented cases in which women seeking to register their share of a jointly-owned property were turned away and told to take the matter to court instead. “Such responses reflect a serious lack of awareness and training within the very offices that are meant to serve them,” says Aurela Anastasi.

Free legal aid as a lifeline

UN Women has been working in northern Albania, in collaboration with local institutions and civil society organizations, including Different and Equal and AGRITA Vizion, to support to women survivors of violence and their children. The initiative provides legal, psychosocial and economic support as part of the “Empowering Women for Rural Development in Northern Albania” project, funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS).

Selma Kujta received emergency rental assistance, support with food costs and access to legal aid. She now works as a barmaid and spends half of her income on the rent for a one-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen and bathroom. Her monthly income runs out by the third week of the month.

Through her lawyer she learned that the house was registered solely in her ex-husband’s name and she has no receipts to prove her financial contributions. That is why she is now relying on the free primary legal aid provided by CLCI and AGRITA Vizion.

“This community has never had free legal aid dedicated to property issues before,” says Sidorela Horeshka. Over the past several months, the team at the Center for Civic Legal Initiatives has supported 27 women and girls across the municipalities of Peshkopia and Bulqiza as they navigate complex issues such as property ownership, inheritance, domestic violence, and access to legal institutions, by providing both legal advice and practical guidance toward claiming and protecting their rights.

Property rights belong to the whole family

One of the most persistent misconceptions surrounding women’s property rights in Albania, Aurela Anastasi argues, is that the issue concerns only divorced women. It does not.

“This is not a matter of protecting the rights of divorced women,” she insists. “This is about a just society, a family that is empowered and enjoys a high quality of life. The law should serve the family at all times, not only in times of crisis.”

When a woman’s name does not appear on a property title, the consequences extend far beyond the household. Without legal recognition as a property owner, she cannot apply for agricultural subsidies, use the property as collateral for a loan, or qualify for the social insurance and pension contributions linked to being a member of a farming household. “There is an direct connection between not having a title of ownership in your name and being unable to access financing, credit or various funds. You simply cannot get them,” explains Aurela Anastasi.

Today, Selma hopes other women will learn the lesson from her experience. She urges them to keep records of their contributions. “Think more about yourselves. Keep some money aside. Keep your receipts. Keep documents that show you have contributed,” she notes.

¹ The name used in this story is a pseudonym to protect the survivor's identity and ensure her privacy and safety.