July 2024 TOP POLICY LESSONS IN WOMEN’S PROPERTY RIGHTS GENDER INNOVATION LAB The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations Land is the major source of income for most African households, particularly of development interventions in those engaged in agriculture. In the region, property rights over land are Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to largely governed by informal customary systems. These systems, while generate evidence on how to close gender gaps in earnings, deeply rooted in tradition, may not always provide sufficient security of tenure productivity, assets, and agency. and are often influenced by patriarchal norms that disadvantage women. The GIL team is currently working on over 80 impact evaluations in The benefits of strengthening land rights in terms of empowerment and more than 30 countries with the aim of building an evidence base investment can be particularly high for women. Throughout rural sub- with lessons for the region. Saharan Africa, land is commonly transmitted through male lineage, with The impact objective of GIL is women accessing land through their husbands. Women’s land rights thus increasing take-up of effective often depend on their marital status, weakening their decision-making power policies by governments, within the household. With lower tenure security, women may have less development organizations, and the private sector to address incentive to invest in their land and its productivity. They may need to allocate the underlying causes of gender time and other limited resources to protect their claims and may face steeper inequality in Africa, particularly in terms of women’s economic and barriers to accessing credit because they are less able to use their land as social empowerment. The Lab collateral. aims to do this by producing and delivering a new body of evidence This brief synthesizes evidence from impact evaluations conducted by and developing a compelling narrative, geared towards the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, policymakers, on what works and Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda. It offers insights on: (i) strategies to what does not work in promoting enhance women’s property rights over land, and (ii) the effects of these gender equality. strengthened rights. http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab 1. HOW TO STRENGTHEN WOMEN’S during the interaction between households and land LAND RIGHTS operators. These combined actions increased the Many African governments invest in large-scale inclusion of wives’ names on freehold land titles from land formalization programs to clarify and formalize 66% to 91%. Notably, offering the titles conditional land rights. These programs typically engage local on the wife’s inclusion did not diminish the overall communities in the demarcation, adjudication, demand for titling.1 These findings are consistent and registration of their land rights. Important with evidence from Côte d’Ivoire, which also shows economic goals of these programs include creating that simple informational and economic incentives incentives among households for productive land successfully encourage men to register some of use, encouraging long-term investments, increasing their land in their wives’ names.2 their ability to use land as credit collateral, and Changing perceived social norms also plays a making land markets more efficient. To promote crucial role in promoting women’s land rights. In gender equity, these programs often include targets Mozambique, a survey with rural households found requiring a minimum percentage of land titles to be that actual public support for women’s land rights was registered in women’s names, either alone or jointly high—80% among men and 84% among women. with their spouses. However, respondents significantly underestimated Effective measures to promote women’s land rights this support, believing that only 47% of men and often involve simple, low-cost adjustments to the 68% of women in their communities supported implementation of land formalization programs. In these rights. Correcting this misperception through Uganda, one successful approach involved both a simple information campaign nearly doubled the (i) providing persuasive information to husbands number of married couples opting to split land about the benefits of adding their wives’ names to ownership between spouses in the context of a land titles, and (ii) requiring the presence of wives systematic rural land registration project. 1 Cherchi, L., Goldstein, M., Habyarimana, J., Montalvao, J., O’Sullivan, M., & Chris Udry. (2022). A Seat at The Table: The Role of Information, Conditions, And Voice in Redistributing Intra-Household Property Rights. Economic Development & Institutions. 2 Donald, A., Goldstein, M., Hartman, A., La Ferrara, E., O’Sullivan, M., Stickler, M., World Bank, & Innovations for Poverty Action Peace and Recovery Program. (2020). What’s Mine Is Yours: Pilot Evidence from A Randomized Impact Evaluation on Property Rights and Women’s Empowerment in Côte D’Ivoire. 2. WHAT ARE THE IMPACTS OF substitutes rather than complements in generating STRENGTHENING WOMEN’S LAND these impacts. RIGHTS? Diversification: Investment: Another study tested a pilot land titling intervention A pilot land formalization program in Rwanda that took place in an urbanizing area located in the doubled rural households’ investment and Central Region of Ghana. The analysis found that maintenance of soil conservation measures such as land registration led to a decrease in the amount bunds, terraces, and check dams. This effect was of agricultural labor, accompanied by only a small particularly pronounced among women who had reduction of agricultural production and no changes previously experienced higher tenure insecurity.3 in productivity. Instead, there was a general shift to nonfarm economic activities, and women’s business A large-scale land formalization program in Benin profits increased considerably.5 A similar pattern resulted in a 23-43% increase in the probability that was eventually detected in Rwanda when we tested households would grow perennial cash crops and the national scale up of the pilot land formalization invest in trees on their parcels. The study also found program discussed above. There we also found a that because of the program, female-managed reduction in farm labor, without reducing agricultural landholdings in treated villages were more likely to yields; and an increase in off-farm employment, be left fallow—an important soil fertility investment. wage income, and household food security. Consistent with the notion that women may allocate limited resources to protect their claim over their Women’s Empowerment: land, we found that women responded by shifting The study in Uganda also found that registering investment away from relatively secure, demarcated land in women’s names significantly increased land and toward less secure land outside the village their decision-making power within the household, to guard those parcels.4 particularly regarding income allocation. These improvements were evident five years after the In Uganda, encouraging households to register intervention, highlighting the long-term benefits of a parcel of land in women’s names significantly secure land tenure. increased the likelihood that households used the parcel to produce coffee, the main cash crop in the In Benin, the large-scale land formalization program study area. This effect translated into a substantial discussed above bolstered widows’ rights to remain increase in household income from crop sales. The in their communities, especially those without male impact of this intervention was comparable to that heirs. This stability was linked to strengthened of a large cash grant directly targeted to women and perceptions of women’s land rights within the labeled for productive investment. Interestingly, the community and increased intra-household decision- study found that these two interventions acted as making power over land resources. 3 Ali, Daniel Ayalew; Deininger, Klaus; Goldstein, Markus. 2011. Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa : Pilot Evidence from Rwanda. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5765. 4 Goldstein, M., Houngbedji, K., Kondylis, F., O’Sullivan, M., Selod, H., Africa Region, & Development Research Group. (2015). Formalizing Rural Land Rights in West Africa: Early Evidence from a Randomized Impact Evaluation in Benin. In Policy Research Working Paper (No. 7435). 5 Agyei-Holmes, Andrew; Buehren, Niklas; Goldstein, Markus P.; Osei, Robert Darko; Osei-Akoto, Isaac; Udry, Christopher Robert. And the pilot land registration intervention in Rwanda significantly reduced inheritance-related uncertainty. Children were particularly affected, with the intervention increasing by 13 percentage points the likelihood that they will inherit land. The gender bias in inheritance intentions was virtually eliminated, with girls’ planned level of land inheritance almost identical to that of boys. Exploring Alternative Approaches: Beyond land registration, alternative methods like formalizing marriages are being tested to enhance women’s property rights over land. For instance, in our Côte d’Ivoire study, the impact of formalizing marriages is being compared to registering land plots in women’s names to identify the most effective strategies for securing women’s rights. CONCLUSION Strengthening women’s land rights through targeted, practical interventions can yield significant economic and empowerment benefits. Encouraging active female participation in land formalization programs, correcting misperceptions about community support, educating men through persuasive information, and providing economic incentives are all effective steps towards achieving gender equality in property rights over land. The evidence shows that strengthening women’s land rights can foster greater investment in land, promote economic diversification into off-farm income-generating activities, and enhance women’s empowerment. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Joao Montalvao jmontalvao@worldbank.org Nelsy Affoum naffoum@worldbank.org Photo credit: A’Melody Lee/World Bank, National Fund for Sustainable Development (FNDS), World Bank Sustainable Land Management Program, Stephan Gladieu/World Bank, 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund www.worldbank.org/africa/gil administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.