Examining gender inequalities in land rights indicators in Asia

Abstract

A broad consensus has emerged that strengthening women's property rights is crucial for reducing poverty and achieving equitable growth. Despite its importance, few nationally representative data exist on women's property rights in Asia, hindering formulation of appropriate policies to reduce gender gaps in land rights. This paper reviews existing micro-level, large sample data on men's and women's control of land, using this information to assess gaps in land rights. Utilizing nationally representative individual-and plot-level data from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Vietnam, and TimorLeste, we calculate five indicators: incidence of landownership and distribution of landownership by sex, and distribution of plots owned, mean plot size, and distribution of land area, all by sex of owner. The results reveal large gender gaps in landownership across countries. However, the limited information on joint and individual ownership are among the most critical data gaps and are an important area for future data collection and analysis.

Do shocks affect men's and women's assets differently? Evidence from Bangladesh and Uganda

“…First, husband's, wife's or jointly owned assets may not be equally important to household livelihoods, and it is more likely that the household (acting collectively) would decide to preserve that asset that is most important to generating the household's incomes. In some societies, this might be a large asset such as land, which tends to be owned by men, given documented gender inequalities in landownership (Doss, Kovarik, Peterman, Quisumbing, & van den Bold, ; Kieran, Sproule, Doss, Quisumbing, & Kim, ). Second, even for the same type of asset, differences in bargaining power within the household may imply that the person with less bargaining power has a higher probability of losing that asset.…”

Women’s empowerment in Indian agriculture: does market orientation of farming systems matter?

“…Kieran et al (2015) reported that in India almost 90% of agricultural landholders are men. According to Harper et al (2014), one way of enabling women to make decisions related to land use is to focus on ensuring women's ability to own (and inherit) land and other assets.…”

“…This suggests that the design of such reforms needs to be more water tight in order to ensure that the target beneficiaries (women, in this case) are able to benefit as expected. While land ownership is an important step by itself, Kieran et al (2015) make the point that, in addition to designing policies to ensure that more women own land, focus also needs to be on allowing women to manage and make decisions regarding those lands.…”

Review on Gender and Poverty, Gender Inequality in Land Tenure, Violence Against Woman and Women Empowerment Analysis: Evidence in Benin with Survey Data

“…The rigidity of the statutes and gender roles on farm families is explained by the problem of women's unequal access to agricultural property rights and agricultural education and to the persistent weakness of institutional support to increase Participation and power of women in agricultural households (Istenic, 2015). Kieran, Sproule, Doss, Quisumbing and Kim (2015) report that policy-makers and researchers have largely come to the conclusion that strengthening women's property rights is crucial to poverty reduction and achieving equitable growth. In Ethiopia, according to the 2009 socio-demographic survey data, a female head of household handles an average of 4.39 people and has an average property right of 1.73 hectares against a male head of household who has property rights in Average over 2.20 hectares (Krumar and Quisumbing, 2015).…”