Publication: Top Policy Lessons in Women's Property Rights
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2020-03
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2020-03-30
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This policy brief summarizes top policy lessons from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab's work in securing property rights for women.
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“World Bank. 2020. Top Policy Lessons in Women's Property Rights. Gender Innovation Lab;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33492 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Top Policy Lessons in Women’s Property Rights(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-17)Land is the major source of income for most African households, particularly those engaged in agriculture. In the region, property rights over land are largely governed by informal customary systems. These systems, while deeply rooted in tradition, may not always provide sufficient security of tenure and are often influenced by patriarchal norms that disadvantage women. This brief synthesizes evidence from impact evaluations conducted by the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda. It offers insights on: (i) strategies to enhance women’s property rights over land, and (ii) the effects of these strengthened rights.Publication Securing Property Rights for Women and Men in Rural Benin(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are less likely than men to own land. They also use less land and have lower tenure security over the land that they use. This gap is costly in terms of lost productive output. The early results showed that improved tenure security through land demarcation increased long-term investments in cash crops and trees and erased the gender gap in land fallowing - a key soil fertility investment. It is important that interventions cover as much of a household’s landholdings as possible: the authors found that some women shifted their agricultural production to plots of land that did not benefit from demarcation so that they can guard these less secure and less productive plots. The rural land use plans (plans fonciers ruraux (PFR)) in Benin represent a more decentralized, low-cost approach to land rights formalization. The PFR program is innovative in its focus on the formalization of existing customary rights of individual landholders. The objectives of the program are to improve tenure security and stimulate agricultural investment in rural areas. The World Bank’s Africa gender innovation lab, in collaboration with researchers from the development research group and the Paris school of economics, set out to evaluate the PFR program’s impact through a randomized controlled trial. 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The study examines the links between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with the model, improved tenure security under demarcation induces a shift toward long-term investment on treated parcels. This investment does not yet coincide with gains in agricultural productivity. The analysis also identifies significant gender-specific effects. Female-managed landholdings in treated villages are more likely to be left fallow—an important soil fertility investment. Women further respond to an exogenous tenure security change by moving production away from relatively secure, demarcated land and toward less secure land outside the village to guard those parcels.Publication Who Survives? 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