This presentation was given by Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing, Cheryl Doss and Sophie Theis (IFPRI) on 7 September 2018, as part of the webinar 'Women’s land: Beyond “access” to rights'. The webinar was co-organized by the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Read more about this webinar at: http://gender.cgiar.org/webinar-womens-land-access-rights/ Related papers: - Open access paper, in Agricultural Systems: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X1730505X - IFPRI Discussion Paper – includes table summarizing each study reviewed: http://www.ifpri.org/publication/womens-land-rights-pathway-poverty-reduction-framework-and-review-available-evidence Find out about other webinars hosted by the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research: http://gender.cgiar.org/gender_events/webinars/

1. Women’s Land Rights as a
Pathway to Poverty
Reduction:
A framework and review
of available evidence
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing,
Cheryl Doss, Sophie Theis

2. Overview
• What Do We Mean by Women’s Land
Rights?
• Conceptual Framework
• Evidence on the Contributions of Women’s
Land Rights to Poverty Reduction
• Evidence Gaps—What Don’t We Know?
• Conclusions/Implications

3. What Do We Mean by Women’s
Land Rights?
• Beyond “access”—Rights held by women, not access via men
• Individual level—not just FHH
• Tenure security:
– Robustness/resilience (can withstand challenges, e.g. land grabs)
– Duration (long horizon, not changed by change in marital status)
– Assurance/enforceability (can present claim, be heard)
– Cultural and legal legitimacy (recognized by law, custom, community,
family)
– Exercisability (informed of rights, understand meaning and how to
document)
• Beyond “ownership”—Bundles of rights (use, fructus, control)
• Often depends on how acquired, social categories of land
• Degree of individual vs joint rights
However, this data is rarely available in the literature

4. What Do “they” Mean by Women’s
Land Rights?
Proxies used:
• FHH/MHH
• Access to land (land manager)
• Self-reported ownership
• Land registration
• Knowledge of land law/land rights

5. Links from Women’s Land Rights to Poverty
Reduction

6. Links from Women’s Land Rights to Poverty
Reduction
?
See Doss, C. and R. Meinzen-Dick. 2018. Women’s land tenure security: A conceptual
framework. Background paper. Research Consortium.
https://consortium.resourceequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CF-FINAL-2018.pdf

7. Search process: an overview
• Focus: studies that documented impacts/associations
between WLR and outcomes, NOT the effect of
interventions on WLR
• Systematic review search protocol
• Peer-reviewed publications and working papers, in English,
published January 1, 2000 - April 10, 2017
• Online search screening against eligibility criteria.
• Additional titles added via “snowballing” sources, reviewing
websites of leading land tenure institutions
• Included World Bank 2017 Land and Poverty Conference in
the pipeline but not yet published in peer-reviewed
journals.
• 52 studies met the inclusion criteria for the review

8. Country coverage of studies reviewed

9. Distribution of studies reviewed by topic
Note: some papers examined multiple outcomes
2%
26%
3%
10%
5%
7%
12%
3%
15%
10%
7%
Resilience Natural resource management Credit
Ag productivity Govt services Livelihoods
Empowerment and IPV Full income (food security) Decisionmaking
Human capital investment Inheritance and transfers

10. Distribution of studies reviewed by method
52%
31%
13%
4%
Quant/Obs Quant/IE Mixed/Obs Mixed/IE

11. Agricultural Technology Adoption
• West Bengal (Santos et al. 2013): including women’s
names on land titles associated with use of improved
agricultural inputs
• Rwanda land registration didn’t increase use of
improved seed (Ali, Deininger, and Goldstein 2014)
• Little theoretical reason that land rights affect short-
term technology adoption

12. Natural resource management--1
• 15 studies of long-term investment
– 5 impact assessments using some type of formalization
as indicator of tenure security, primarily comparing male
and female headed households;
– 10 observational studies using some form of self-
reported tenure security.
– All from 7 countries in Africa
• Overall evidence: tenure security associated with
investment in land, but “tenure security” is complex
– Both women’s and men’s tenure security matters

13. Natural resource management--2
• Land registration programs (Rwanda, Benin, 1st stage
Ethiopia) increased adoption of soil conservation;
– 2nd stage Ethiopia certification didn’t increase
conservation, but also didn’t increase tenure security
• Women’s knowledge of legal rights increases
investment in soil conservation, trees (Uganda,
Ethiopia)
• Need to look at local definitions of tenure security
– “people invest not only in trees but also in social
relationships” (Quisumbing et al. 2004)

14. Credit
• Despite claims that secure land rights improve access
to credit, very little evidence (only 2 studies)
– Ethiopia (Persha): 2nd tier land registration increased access
to credit for both MHH and FHH, larger effect for MHH
– West Bengal (Santos et al.): beneficiary hholds in land
allocation and registration program more likely than
nonbeneficiary hholds to have take bank loan and use
credit for agriculture
• For WLR to affect credit requires well-functioning
credit markets, banking systems that accept land as
collateral, and legal systems that adjudicate cases
where land is used as collateral.

15. Agricultural productivity--1
• Many recent studies on men and women
farmers (plot managers, etc.) and agricultural
productivity, but don’t identify owner of the
land
• 6 studies directly examine link between WLR
and agricultural productivity

16. Agricultural productivity--2
• 3 quasi-experimental studies; results differ
across countries and programs
– Ethiopia (Bezabih et al. 2016): value of agricultural output
higher in the households with certificates, impact is
greater for FHH
– Malawi (Mendola and Simtowe 2015): agricultural
productivity and income higher for land reform
beneficiary households headed by men
– Vietnam (Newman et al. 2015): plots with land use
certificates have higher productivity; productivity
not lower on jointly titled plots.

17. Agricultural productivity--3
• Observational studies:
– Ghana (Goldstein and Udry 2008): women’s lower
productivity related to their lower tenure security
and lack of fallowing
– Malawi (Bhaumik et al. 2016): even if WLR are
stronger in matrilineal areas, women may not
have access to markets and complementary
resources such as capital and hired labor.
• Takeaway: tenure security matters, but so
does access to markets and complementary
resources

18. Government services
Government services usually provided to land
owners, but most studies based in urban areas.
Studies from rural Tanzania show:
– Land ownership is positively correlated with
participation in community meetings and
household decisionmaking (Grabe 2015);
– NGO work to educate women about their land
rights strengthened women’s social relations,
expanding access to customary authorities, and
increasing knowledge of political processes
(Goldman et al. 2016)

19. Livelihoods
• Tanzania (Peterman 2011): women’s property and inheritance
rights associated with increases in women’s employment
outside the home, self employment and earnings.
• Studies on women’s ability to rent out land (Ethiopia) (Holden,
Akpalu et al.):
– Women more likely to rent out land if they have a certificate, if risk of
losing land is low, marginal cost of litigation is low
• Takeaway: WLR positively associated with
livelihood diversification

20. Resilience
• One observational study using panel data in Malawi
(Asfaw and Maggio 2017)
– High temperature shocks during agricultural season disrupt
households’ consumption more when plots solely managed
by women
– Effects less severe for FHH in matrilineal districts,
suggesting that tenure security is also important

21. Empowerment and domestic violence
• Land ownership can decrease HIV risk by reducing
women’s need for survival sex (Machomba et al.)
• Land and property ownership associated with reduced
domestic violence in very different contexts
– Kerala, India (Panda and Agarwal): women’s property ownership
negatively associated with both long-term and current
physical and psychological violence.
– Nicaragua and Tanzania (Grabe, Grabe et al.): significant links
between land ownership, relationship power, and reduced
domestic violence.

22. Full income
• No papers looking at full income per se, but two
papers on food security
– Ethiopia (Ghebru and Holden 2013): significant positive
effects of holding a land certificate on food availability
and BMI of children in Ethiopia; effects on calorie
availability higher for female-headed households.
– West Bengal (Santos et al. 2013): greater women’s
decision-making over household food and agriculture
among beneficiary households of a land allocation
program, but no evidence of significant short-term
improvements in food security ( over 2 years)

23. Bargaining power and decisionmaking
over consumption
• 3 quasi-experimental studies (India, Peru, Nepal)
found positive effects of WLR on women’s
decisionmaking outcomes
• 6 observational studies (Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia,
Sumatra (Indonesia), South Africa, Ghana, India, Malawi, Mali,
Tanzania, Karnataka (India): WLR have positive
associations with women’s decisionmaking
ability and empowerment, but associations
are not consistently significant across
outcomes and countries, owing to the context
specificity of gender norms.

24. Human capital investment and
inheritance
• WLR has positive associations with education,
nutrition, health of children (Nepal, Vietnam,
Ethiopia)
• WLR may affect transfers to next generation
by increasing the stock of resources to be
transferred, or by affecting women’s
bargaining power, which would affect the
allocation of transfers among sons and
daughters. Results vary across contexts.

25. Summary of Findings
Amount of evidence
Limited Medium High
Levelofagreement
Low Suggested but unproven
 Other livelihoods
Speculative Alternate explanations
Medium Tentatively agreed by
most but unproven
 Credit
 Technology adoption
 Agricultural
productivity
Provisionally agreed by most Generally accepted
High Agreed but unproven
 Poverty reduction
Agreed but incompletely
documented
 Natural resource
management
 Government services and
institutions
 Empowerment and
domestic violence
 Resilience and HIV risk
 Consumption and food
security
Well established
 Bargaining power and
decision making over
consumption
 Bargaining power and
decision making on
human capital
investment and
intergenerational
transfers

26. Evidence Gaps
• Most studies only compare MHH/FHH
– Confounds household structure with gender; ignores
women in dual adult HHs
• Studies concentrated in few countries, mostly Africa
• Short-term impacts of reforms, not long-term
• Dynamic effects, e.g. with rapid male outmigration
• Women’s tenure security in collective tenure; empowerment
effects of land rights at community and higher levels
• Quality of land
• Life cycle effects: land rights for youth and old age security
 Nuance needed to understand women’s land rights, if
interventions are to be effective in strengthening them

27. Evidence Gaps
• What works to strengthen women’s land rights?
– Gender-sensitive registration programs may strengthen
WLR, but:
• Little quantitative data on effects of gender-blind programs.
• Qualitative studies suggest negative effects of poorly designed
formalization
• Trade-offs between high speed/low cost vs inclusive processes
• If technology-driven formalization, how do women participate?
– How do women “actualize” their rights (in the face of social
pressures, etc.)
– Knowledge of land laws is important: by women, men, and
land administrators
– How to strengthen women’s tenure in collective tenure
systems? Internal governance, not just external boundaries

28. Implications
• Women’s land rights are important for empowerment and
investment, but they are not a panacea
• Framework helps think through downstream impacts (on women,
households, communities)
– Guidance for program design (e.g. what rights to be strengthened,
need for complementary programs, etc.)
• Formalization of tenure programs offer serious risks as well as
opportunities
– Urgent need to address women’s land rights in their design,
implementation, and accompanying legal literacy campaigns
• Land rights derive from more than state law—embedded in social
relations
– Strengthening women’s land rights is a process of long-term social
change.

29. Women’s Land Rights as a
Pathway to Poverty
Reduction:
A framework and review
of available evidence
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing,
Cheryl Doss, Sophie Theis

30. Links
• Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing, A.R., Doss, C., Theis, S. 2017. Women’s land rights
as a pathway to poverty reduction: A framework and review of available evidence.
Agricultural Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2017.10.009
– Open access
• Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing, A.R., Doss, C., Theis, S. 2017. Women’s land rights
as a pathway to poverty reduction: A framework and review of available evidence.
IFPRI Discussion Paper. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research
Institute. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/womens-land-rights-pathway-poverty-
reduction-framework-and-review-available-evidence
– Includes table summarizing each study reviewed
• Doss, C. and R. Meinzen-Dick. 2018. Women’s land tenure security: A conceptual
framework. Background paper. Research Consortium.
https://consortium.resourceequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CF-FINAL-
2018.pdf