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How perceived tenure security differs between men and women in the Arab region: evidence from a global survey
Abstract
Executive summary Historically, women in the Middle East and North Africa have been disadvantaged in access and controlling land. In 1999, it was estimated that women's ownership rates in the MENA region were among the lowest in the world at just 5 percent (FAO, 1999). Gender-unequal asset distribution, especially of land and housing, is increasingly recognized as an important impediment to both individual and human development outcomes. Tackling it is therefore a key component of promoting gender equality under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the evidence based regarding women's tenure security in the region is relatively thin (see e.g. Doss et al., 2015). SDGs 1.4.2 and 5.a.1, which explicitly refer to women's tenure security, specify the need to track women's legal rights to land and property as well as their perception of those rights 1. Data that captures perceptions of tenure security is increasingly being acknowledged as an envelope for both the actual experience, as well as the legal status, of tenure (see Arnot et al., 2011). It can therefore help reveal where women feel insecure about their tenure, even where they possess the legal right to tenure. This is considered especially important in the MENA region due to the widespread adoption of gender-unequal inheritance law and practices, such as social pressure on daughters and sisters to voluntarily renounce rights to land and property (Ababsa, 2017; Najjar et al., 2020). This paper analyses nationally-representative subjective data from 6,312 women and 7,254 men in 13 countries located in the Middle East and North Africa, and collected as part of the global Property Rights Index (Prindex) Initiative. The findings provide a first insight into the factors that influence the tenure security of women in the region by operationalizing a conceptual framework developed by Doss and Meinzen-Dick (2020). They demonstrate the importance of contextual factors, such as tenure type, age and a low socioeconomic background. The results also confirm that in many parts of the Arab world, women's tenure security is shaped by "internal" threats from actors within the household, the family or the community. The paper concludes by presenting three ways that can help guide further efforts to tackle issues surrounding women's tenure security in the region: (i) gaining a greater understanding of the gender dynamics affecting the high share of renters in the region; (ii) taking into consideration the interplay between demographic and socioeconomic factors and women's tenure security, especially in the Mashreq, and; (iii) paying special attention to internal sources of insecurity from within the family and the community over a longer time horizon. First, without distinguishing the different dynamics underpinning the tenure security of renters and owners (including family-owners), one could underestimate the importance of 1 They include: (i) 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure; (ii) 5.a.1: (a) Proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex; and (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure, and; (iii) 5.a.2: Proportion of countries where the legal framework (including customary law) guarantees women's equal rights to land ownership and/or control. issues affecting women's tenure security in the region. Gender gaps appear insignificant overall, with a two percentage point gap between men's (22%) and women's (24%) rates of perceived insecurity. However, these gaps are considerably wider, and up to 8 percentage points for the sample of owners and family-owners in the Maghreb 2 and Mashreq 3 countries. Separating the analysis of tenure security among renters is needed because of the fundamentally different set of dynamics at play, especially gendered patterns of voluntary and involuntary migrations and their causes. These may be political, ethnic, cultural or economic in nature and require further analysis as they lie beyond the scope of the dataset used in this paper. One interesting avenue to explore in the context of women's tenure security is the ability of rental markets as a way of liberating women from the constraints of social and religious norms surrounding the ownership of fixed assets such as land and property. There has, to date, been more of a focus on individual ownership and control of land and property in the region. The results of the analysis confirm that women's rates of individual or joint ownership are as low as 8 percent (22% overall), but provided that rapidly increasing rental markets are affordable, they can offer opportunities to acquire more liquid assets that women may prefer (see Najjar et al., 2020). However, at present tenure security among renters in the region are among the lowest in the world, and should therefore be considered a key priority area for national governments and international development partners. The second important consideration to make when analysing women's tenure security is that context matters. Young women are particularly vulnerable, especially in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq, which contribute to low levels of tenure security for women in the Mashreq region. Low income, unemployment and part-time employment are also important, socioeconomic factors to consider when analysing the tenure security of women in the Mashreq and Maghreb regions. For men, it shows singledom to be associated with low levels of insecurity in many countries. The analysis found that biophysical characteristics, such as urbanicity or the possession of formal documentation, to be less relevant for understanding issues surrounding women's tenure security. Nonetheless, the analysis did not consider institutional context, such as national legal frameworks or informal institutions. Nor did it include community relationships, which may shape the interplay between individual-level characteristics such as age and marital status, and tenure security. These two groups of contextual factors-highlighted in Doss and Meinzen-Dick (2020)-will need to be operationalized using complementary data, including qualitative data at national or subnational level. Third, these contextual factors will need to be linked to the threats and opportunities identified for women's tenure security in the region. As in other parts of the world, women are more likely to cite internal sources of insecurity from within the household or the community than men are, especially in the Mashreq and Maghreb regions. This is linked to 2 Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. 3 Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Algeria the extremely wide disparities between men and women's feelings of tenure security in the event of divorce or spousal death. In Egypt, over 40 percent of married women felt insecure about their land or property in the event of a divorce, compared to just 4 percent of men. Overall, roughly one in three married women felt insecure in such scenarios compared to one in ten men. This points towards the need for policy interventions aimed at improving women's rights to inherit and thereby redistribute land and housing to women (see e.g. Deininger et al., 2010). The impact of unequal inheritance law and practices on women's tenure security also needs to be explored for women who are not married. For instance, it might explain why single women feel insecure in many countries, either because they face having to leave family homes upon marriage, or because they do not have the opportunity to acquire land or property except through marriage. There is also a need to understand other sources of insecurity cited by women, especially financial sources in the GCC countries. To achieve this, the dynamic causal relationships between contextual factors (such as age and income), the action arena (particularly male household heads and community leaders) and the threats identified in this paper (laws and social norms regarding land) will need to be explored at country-level to provide detailed policy proposals. One consideration to draw from our findings is that in some countries, women feel comparatively secure about their tenure in a spousal death scenario. Despite the presence of gender-unequal inheritance law (Women, Business and the Law, 2020), women in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria or Tunisia experience relatively low levels of insecurity. This may be related to differences in social attitudes, types of marriages or the possession of non-fixed assets, and may yield some important lessons for strengthening the tenure security of women in similar scenarios in other countries.
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Secure tenure over women’s land and property rights is increasingly considered an important means to promote economic, social and even environmental outcomes. Where gender-unequal tenure security exists, promoting women’s land and property rights is therefore a key component of SDGs 1.4.2 and 5.a.1, which call for gender-equal access and security of resources, including housing and land. Both development goals acknowledge that measuring men and women’s self-perceived tenure security is an important way of monitoring progress, but until recently there has been a lack of consistent and comparative global data on this front. In this paper, we analyse the perception data of 28,132 women and 25,048 men in 33 countries to assess potential gender imbalances. We find that overall, men and women’s perceived tenure security does not differ significantly. However, significant in-country differences exist that can in part be explained by gender-differentiated sources of insecurity. Women are more likely to feel threatened by internal sources of insecurity from within the family or the community, particularly when faced with scenarios of divorce or spousal death over the long-term expected duration of their tenure. Men, in turn, are significantly more likely to cite external sources of insecurity such as government expropriation or private investment in the near- or middle-term. Furthermore, the results of our models suggest that the possession of (named) formal property rights documentation may be effective in protecting both men and women from external threats, but not internal ones. Formalisation of property rights therefore needs to be complemented with measures that tackle the day-to-day denial of women’s rights within families, communities and societies.
While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it. To be able to compare women’s tenure security in different places, we need information on the context, the threats and opportunities facing tenure security, and the action arena that includes both the people who play a role in promoting or limiting women’s tenure security and the resources used in doing so.
The Middle East and North Africa region has the lowest level of women’s land ownership in the world, yet little research has explored the barriers and opportunities women face in land ownership in the region. This paper identifies patterns, opportunities, and constraints of ownership of land and other assets (houses, livestock, poultry, and gold) by women and men in the Old and New Lands of Egypt. Based on a survey complemented with qualitative interviews, the study finds that both women and men viewed land and houses as the most economically and socially important assets, but they differed in what assets they considered to be valuable for women. The findings highlight the importance of implementing policies that optimize women’s property ownership, even if they own non-land assets. The study concludes that while legal and economic interventions aid in accomplishing gender-equity goals, consciousness-raising initiatives are as crucial as pro-women policy reforms.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Women are disadvantaged in land ownership in the New and Old Lands in Egypt, though not to the extent the literature has assumed for the MENA region.
• Patterns of asset ownership and control are similar to other regions: men own and control more land and housing; women own and sometimes control (liquefiable) livestock and gold
• Men underestimate women’s preferences for owning immovable property (land and housing) even in the New Lands, where 20 percent of land titles are distributed to women.
• Women who acquire land remained hesitant or unwilling to enable their daughters to inherit land at par with their sons.
• While pro-women policy reforms should be implemented, consciousness-raising initiatives are equally crucial.
This paper reviews the literature on women’s land rights (WLR) and poverty reduction. It uses the Gender, Agriculture and Assets Project (GAAP) conceptual framework to identify pathways by which WLR could reduce poverty and increase wellbeing of women and their households in rural areas. It uses a systematic review search methodology to identify papers for inclusion, but adopts a more synthetic approach to assess the level of agreement and the amount of evidence within this literature. The paper examines the evidence from qualitative as well as quantitative studies on each of these pathways. Owing to the scarcity of experimental studies, the review of empirical work is based mostly on observational studies. We find some evidence on these relationships, but many of the key pathways have not been empirically analyzed. The evidence is strong for relationships between WLR and bargaining power and decision-making on consumption, human capital investment, and intergenerational transfers. There is a high level of agreement, but weaker evidence on the relationship between WLR and natural resource management, government services and institutions, empowerment and domestic violence, resilience and HIV risk, and consumption and food security. There is less agreement and insufficient evidence on the associations between WLR and other livelihoods, and a higher level of agreement, but still limited evidence on associations between WLR and credit, technology adoption, and agricultural productivity. Notably, we find no papers that directly investigate the link between WLR and poverty. Many gaps in the evidence arise from a failure to account for the complexity of land rights regimes, the measurement of land rights at the household level, the lack of attention paid to gender roles, and the lack of studies from countries outside Africa. Many studies are limited by small sample sizes, the lack of credible counterfactuals, lack of attention to endogeneity and selection bias, and possible response bias on questions of domestic violence and empowerment. There are very few rigorous evaluations of reforms that strengthened WLR. The paper concludes that gaps in the evidence should not deter the careful design and implementation of programs and policies to strengthen WLR, given the ongoing land tenure reforms in many countries. Different modalities and mechanisms for strengthening WLR could be tested, with appropriate counterfactuals. Program designers and evaluators can strategically identify pathways and outcomes where evidence gaps exist, and deliberately design studies to close those gaps.
This article analyses a women’s movement that emerged in the context of increased land commodification in Morocco. It focuses on the dynamics that characterised the making of this coalition of actors across the social divide. It mainly analyses the division of tasks among the different partners, highlighting the role played by intermediate organisations and actors in connecting and merging together local, national and international norms, practices and actors. The empowerment of this intermediate layer of leaders indicates a gradual inversion of the power hierarchy and illustrates the fluidity of domination relationships within social movements.
We conducted a systematic review on the effects of land tenure recognition interventions on agricultural productivity, income, investment and other relevant outcomes. We synthesise findings from 20 quantitative studies and nine qualitative studies that passed a methodological screening. The results indicate substantial productivity and income gains from land tenure recognition, although gains differ markedly by region. We find that these effects may operate through gains in perceived tenure security and investment; we find no evidence for a credit mechanism. The qualitative synthesis highlights potential adverse effects. A conclusion emphasises the need for further research on inter-regional differences and on the role of customary tenure arrangements.
Decentralization of land governance is expected to significantly improve land tenure security of small-scale farmers in Africa, through ensuring better protection of their assets and reducing land-related conflicts. This paper, however, cautions not to have too high expectations of transferring responsibilities for land administration and dispute resolution to local government bodies. Field research in Mbarara District in south-western Uganda brings out how decentralization has limited impacts in terms of localizing land services provision. Nonetheless, local land governance has transformed in important ways, as decentralization adds to institutional multiplicity, and fuels competition among state and non-state authorities, and about the rules they apply. Rather than strengthening local mechanisms for securing tenure, the reforms introduce new forms of tenure insecurity, fail to transform local conventions of dealing with land disputes and delegitimize local mechanisms for securing tenure. In practice, decentralization has had limited effects in securing tenure for the rural poor, yet reinforces the presence of the state at the local level in diverse ways.
Lack of clarity behind measurement and interpretation of statistics on gender and land leads to an inability to clearly articulate a policy response to the potential inequalities faced by women and men. This article sets out to explore, conceptually and empirically, the levels and relative inequalities in land rights between women and men in African countries. The first section of the article engages in a conceptual discussion of how to measure gendered-land outcomes, what ownership and control mean in different contexts, and why attention to these factors is important for the development of gender and land statistics. The second section of the article systematically reviews existing evidence from microlevel large sample studies to summarize recent trends in land access, ownership, and control by sex. The third section presents new statistics from a variety of nationally representative and large-scale unpublished data on gender and land in Africa. Results provide not only a nuanced understanding of the importance of measuring land indicators for gendered development in Africa and globally but also new statistics on a variety of land outcomes to aid stakeholders in the discussion of gender-land inequalities.
Tenure security is widely believed to contribute to low-income settlement development by encouraging investment in housing improvement. However, in spite of consensus about its importance it is still unclear what it exactly entails and few studies have examined how it exactly relates to housing improvement. Using survey data from six informal neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we empirically test a model that specifies how the different types of tenure security that feature in academic and policy debates relate to each other and the extent to which each predicts investment in housing improvement. We find that legal tenure security and de facto security of tenure influence investment in part through increases in perceptions of tenure security. We conclude that the hypothesized model accurately predicts investment in housing improvement and discuss how these findings inform current debates on tenure security and informality.
In this paper, the relationship between perceived tenure security and housing improvement in informal neighbourhoods is examined drawing from a case in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A perspective based on recent insights from social psychological research on judgment and decision making under uncertainty is introduced to operationalize the concept of perceived tenure security and to establish the nature and strength of its frequently assumed relationship with investment behaviour. Following these insights, perceived tenure security is shown to be composed of both the perceived probability of eviction (a thinking state) and the fear of eviction (a feeling state), which are related but separate variables. The results show that perceived tenure security is an important individual variable influencing housing improvement, with fear of eviction being a more important determinant than perceived probability of eviction. These results have important consequences for the future study of tenure security and can also have policy implications.
We have offered an exegetical inquiry into the exact meaning of individual, specific, and secure rights in land. We have argued that a coherent view of security sees it as the perception of how rights may be altered or violated. Specificity of rights concerns the precision of the boundaries by which rights are divided, and the level of fragmentation of the categories into which rights are divided. The assertion that land rights tend to become more secure and more specific as the value of land increases is consistent with these definitions. If, however, individual rights are required to avoid the problems of open access, the comparison of different rights structures in terms of individuality has no meaning. Land rights structures differ primarily in the boundaries whereby individual rights are separated. The discussion here has revolved around 'private' rights structures, where individual rights are partitioned according to location, and different 'communal' structures, where individual rights are withheld or partitioned in terms of shares or resource categories.
Although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. The case of Rwanda's nation-wide and relatively low-cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest. This paper evaluates the short-term impact (some 2.5 years after completion) of the pilots undertaken to fine-tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects. Three key findings emerge from the analysis. First, the program improved land access for legally married women (about 76 percent of married couples) and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias. Second, the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures. This effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households, suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity, which the program managed to reduce. Third, land market activity declined, allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people. Implications for program design and policy are discussed.
Securing property rights in both rural landholdings and urban housing is a much-debated feature of current development policy. Providing title for the household does not guarantee security for women, and legal equality may fail to prevent gender differences in property ownership. A pro-active approach to women’s property rights is needed. Disenchantment with state programs delivering individual titles has led to calls for alternative strategies emphasizing local or customary authorities and procedures. This paper questions the ability of either approach to address gender inequalities effectively without affirmative action but suggests that informal responses within state institutions can help.
In areas of Africa hard hit by HIV/AIDS, there are growing concerns that many women lose access to land after the death of their husbands. However, there remains a dearth of quantitative evidence on the proportion of widows who lose access to their deceased husband's land, whether they lose all or part of that land, and whether there are factors specific to the widow, her family, or the broader community that influence her ability to maintain rights to land. This study examines these issues using average treatment effects models with propensity score matching applied to a nationally representative panel data of 5,342 rural households surveyed in 2001 and 2004. Results are highly variable, with roughly a third of households incurring the death of a male household head controlling less than 50% of the land they had prior to their husband's death, while over a quarter actually controlled as much or even more land than while their husbands were alive. Widows who were in relatively wealthy households prior to their husband's death lose proportionately more land than widows in households that were relatively poor. Older widows and widows related to the local headman enjoy greater land security. Women in matrilineal inheritance areas were no less likely to lose land than women in patrilineal areas.
This paper examines whether and to what extent amendments in inheritance legislation impact women's physical and human capital investments, using disaggregated household level data from India. The authors use inheritance patterns over three generations of individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth rights in joint family property that were denied to daughters in the past. The causal effect is isolated by exploiting the variation in the timing of father's death to compare within household bequests of land given to sons and daughters in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The analysis shows that the amendment significantly increased daughters'likelihood to inherit land, but that even after the amendment substantial bias persists. The results also indicate a robust increase in educational attainment of daughters, suggesting an alternative channel of wealth transfer.
The debate over land law reform in Africa has been framed as a referendum on the market – that is, as a debate pitting advocates
of the growth-promoting individualization of property rights against those who call for protecting the livelihoods and subsistence
rights of small farmers. This article argues that the prospect of land law reform also raises a complex bundle of constitutional
issues. In many African countries, debates over land law reform are turning into referenda on the nature of citizenship, political
authority, and the future of the liberal nation state itself. The article describes alternative land reform scenarios that
are currently under debate, and identifies the constitutional implications of each. The practical salience of the issues is
illustrated through reference to land reform politics in Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania.
Although the global literature suggests stronger forest tenure is associated with better forest condition, several recent meta-analyses of this relationship have found inconclusive results. There are numerous factors influencing these mixed econometric results, including selection biases and inconsistent definitions or methods, and the global literature is limited to selected geographies. This paper seeks to address these gaps by analyzing an original data set collected as part of a prospective impact evaluation of a reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) program in eastern Zambia funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Drawing on survey data from 2822 households and supplemented with contextual and spatially-derived statistics, we seek to answer two questions: (i) what household and village characteristics explain variation in perceived forest tenure security, which we define to mean relatively unchallenged access to forest resources? and (ii) is more secure forest tenure, as perceived by forest users, associated with better reported forest condition? We aim to contribute more reliable evidence to the global literature linking community-level land tenure and forest condition by using improved proxies for (de facto) local forest tenure and land governance and filling a gap in the geographic coverage. Overall, we find that more secure de facto forest tenure is associated with localized (village level) customary governance. We also find that more secure de facto forest tenure is associated with better reported forest condition. Our results highlight the need to understand local accountability in existing customary governance structures in the context of designing and enforcing REDD+ agreements. We expect our more nuanced assessment of de facto forest tenure security to inform policies to promote sustainable forest management, including through REDD+ and community-based forest management, particularly in forest contexts where customary rights remain relevant.
Only one fourth of Jordanian women entitled to property inheritance receive it fully. The main reason is that land and property are not formally registered. But this is also due to several strategies to exclude women from inheritance. Social pressure is translated into the "exclusion" (takhāruj) of inheritance rights. This is linked to social norms in favour of male property.
Tenure security is believed to be critical in spurring agricultural investment and productivity. Yet what improves or impedes tenure security is still poorly understood. Using household- and plot-level data from Ghana, this study analyses the main factors associated with farmers’ perceived tenure security. Individually, farmers perceive greater tenure security on plots acquired via inheritance than on land allocated by traditional authorities. Collectively, however, perceived tenure security lessens in communities with more active land markets and economic vibrancy. Plots held by migrant households and women in polygamous households are perceived as less tenure secure, while farmers with political connections are more confident about their tenure security.
Using nationally representative data
from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam,
this paper investigates which individual and
household characteristics influence men’s and
women’s landownership across and within households.
Often neglected in household-level statistics,
married women in all countries are landowners.
Across different household structures, women own
less land than men, and less land relative to the
household average as household landholdings increase.
Increasing gender inequality with household
wealth cannot be consistently explained by an increasing
share of household land devoted to crops.
Findings support the need to strengthen women’s land
rights within marriage and to protect them should the
marriage dissolve
A broad consensus has emerged among both policymakers and researchers that strengthening women’s
property rights plays an important role in reducing poverty and achieving equitable growth. Despite the
important role of land in rural livelihoods and as a form of wealth in many Asian cultures, surprisingly
few nationally representative data exist on women’s land rights in Asia. This paucity hinders the
formulation and implementation of appropriate policies to reduce gender gaps in land rights. This paper
reviews the available data on men’s and women’s land rights, identifies what can and cannot be measured
by these data, and uses these measures to assess the gaps in the land rights of women and men. Building
on the conceptual framework developed in 2014 by Doss et al., we utilize nationally representative
individual- and plot-level data from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Vietnam, and Timor-Leste to calculate five
indicators: incidence of ownership by sex; distribution of ownership by sex; and distribution of plots,
mean plot size, and distribution of land area, all by sex of owner. The results show large gender gaps in
landownership across countries. However, critical data gaps cloud our understanding of land rights and
why women fare better or worse in certain countries. In particular, the limited information on joint and
individual ownership indicates that this is an important area for future data collection and analysis.
Widows in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) are perceived to face discrimination in asset inheritance, leading to poverty for themselves and their children. However, large‐sample empirical research supporting this claim is scarce. This article explores asset inheritance among widows using two data sources: (i) nationally representative demographic and health survey (DHS) data from 15 SSA countries, and (ii) a 13‐year longitudinal panel from the Kagera region in north‐west Tanzania. Results indicate that, across the 15 DHS countries, less than half of widows report inheriting any assets; the proportion reporting inheriting the majority of assets is lower. Findings from Kagera indicate that the value of inheritance is significant in determining changes in long‐term household welfare.
This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub–Saharan Africa and their implications for women's interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so–called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. This consensus, which has arisen out of critiques of past attempts at land titling and registration, particularly in Kenya, is rooted in modernizing discourses and/or evolutionary theories of land tenure and embraces particular and contested understandings of customary law and legal pluralism. It has also fed into a wide–ranging critique of the failures of the post–colonial state in Africa, which has been important in the current retreat of the state under structural adjustment programmes. African women lawyers, a minority dissenting voice, are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring instead to look to the State for laws to protect women's interests. We agree that there are considerable problems with so–called customary systems of land tenure and administration for achieving gender justice with respect to women's land claims. Insufficient attention is being paid to power relations in the countryside and their implications for social groups, such as women, who are not well positioned and represented in local level power structures. But considerable changes to political and legal practices and cultures will be needed before African states can begin to deliver gender justice with respect to land.
Security of property rights, or tenure, is central to the economics of development and is recognized as important for the adoption and implementation of sustainable forest management. Despite the potential importance of tenure security, this paper shows that there is a great deal of variation in how security is defined and measured, which may be responsible for difficulties that empirical studies have had in linking tenure security with economic behavior. The objective of this paper is to clarify concepts of tenure security that will hopefully allow for improvements in empirical studies.
While a large literature discusses the impact of titles on tenure security in Africa, little attention has been devoted to land conflicts. We use Ugandan data to explore the incidence of land conflicts, the impact of legal changes on their frequency, and their impact on productivity. Results indicate that female-headed households and widows are particularly affected that passage of the 1998 Land Act has failed to reduce their number, and that they have a significant and large productivity-reducing impact. In Africa, attention to land-related conflicts including ways to prevent and resolve them constitutes an important area for policy and research.
This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literature on the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. It addresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between property rights and economic activity. (i) What are the mechanisms through which property rights affect economic activity? (ii) What are the determinants of property rights? In answering these, it surveys some of the main empirical and theoretical ideas from the extensive literature on the topic.
This paper examines rights to property accorded to women in Islam under direct injunctions and compares it with the state of these rights in present Muslim societies. It argues that the correct application of law will not only materially improve the status of women in Muslim societies and guarantee them economic security, it will also bring economic prosperity to such societies directly. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) Institute of Economic Affairs 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
This paper examines the link between property rights and investment incentives. The author develops three theoretical arguments based on security of tenure, using land as collateral and obtaining gains from trade. The paper then presents empirical evidence from two regions in Ghana. The author investigates the possibility that rights are endogenous, with farmers making improvements to enhance their land rights. Finally, he suggests tests for which of the theories might explain the results. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.
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