Does Women’s Land Ownership Promote Their Empowerment? Empirical Evidence from Nepal

Women’s Land Tenure Security and Household Human Capital: Evidence from Ethiopia’s Land Certification

“…A growing literature has examined the relationship between women’s land tenure security and allocation of family resources and finds that in families where women own land, compared to families where women do not own land, women are more likely to be involved in family decisions in India (Garikipati, 2009) and Peru (Wiig, 2013), and more likely to have final say over family decisions in Nepal (Allendorf, 2007; Mishra & Sam, 2016; Pandey, 2010). Also in Nepal, children of mothers who own land are less likely be underweight compared to children of mothers who do not own land (Allendorf, 2007).…”

Women�s Land Title Ownership and Empowerment

“…Roy (2008) also found similar evidence in India with respect to increases in women's autonomy within their marital families based on the 2005 2006 National Family and Health Survey dataset that covers 28,000 ever-married women. From other contexts, Mishra and Sam (2016) provided evidence that Nepalese women's participation in decisions about their own health care, major household purchases, and visits to family or relatives increases based exclusively on whether or not they have land ownership. Wiig (2013) estimated the impacts of men's and women's inheritance on women's participation in household decision-making in rural Peru and found a significantly positive impact on female empowerment, but only from the perspective of joint land titling.…”

“…The classification in this study avoids that bias by distinguishing the schema based on who owns the land title through the separate identification of men's land title, women's land title, and individuals with no titles. Furthermore, they only investigated women's participation in few household decisions including their own health care, major household purchases, visits to family or relatives (Mishra and Sam 2016), purchase of agricultural assets, use of agricultural land, sales of crop produce (Santos et al 2014), and autonomy within marital families (Roy 2008). Therefore, we identify land title ownership by men and women and estimate the associations between women's participation in several family decisions and their land title ownership.…”

“…Moreover, the absence of land ownership by women affects their social status, imposing the patriarchal views stringently and women's status is low within the social strata and within their family (Roy 2008). Thus, land rights equity is widely advocated as a women empowerment tool to spur development outcomes (Mishra and Sam 2016;Montenegro, Mohapatra, and Swallow 2016;Wiig 2013). Land is the key asset in rural areas, and the main pathway of land accession is through inheritance.…”

Microplots and food security: encouraging replication studies of policy relevant research

“…In that sense, Santos et al contribute to the literature on securing land rights and agriculture investment (Deininger 2006;Goldstein and Udry 2008;Besley 1995) and homestead agriculture for improving nutrition (Talukder et al 2010). The paper specifically contributes to the literature on the effects of land rights/ownership and women's bargaining power over consumption and investment decisions (Brule 2010;Wiig 2013;Mishra and Sam 2016) and the effect of women empowerment through land security on children's health or education outcomes (Menon, Rodgers and Nguyen 2014;Ghebru and Holden 2013;Allendorf 2007).…”