Land Registration and Gender Equality in Ethiopia: How State–Society Relations Influence the Enforcement of Institutional Change

Abstract

In recent years, the Ethiopian government has introduced reforms to promote gender equality in land rights, including legislative changes and a land registration programme that requires the names of both husbands and wives on certificates. This paper examines implementation of these reforms through a case-based approach that links national policy processes to analysis of two village-level case studies, based on fieldwork conducted in 2009-10. In both cases, government initiatives do appear to have enhanced women's land rights to a certain degree. However, the causal process involved is considerably more complex than the direct link between titling and women's land rights that is assumed in much of the existing literature. The cases suggest that government initiatives are contingent upon state-society relations, and that change to informal institutions and power relations within society can constitute an important complement to land registration.

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

“…Previous research finds that the majority (53%) of rural household heads in the four study regions expect that, upon death, their spouses will receive all the household holdings (Fafchamps & Quisumbing, 2002). Previous research also finds that in some communities where it is customary for a widow to be inherited by her deceased husband’s relative, customary law provides the right for her to withdraw her consent (Lavers, 2017). However, this consent is sometimes contested by the husband’s family and Lavers (2017) documents a case where a widow’s withdraw of consent was only accepted after she won her case at a woreda court.…”

“…Previous research also finds that in some communities where it is customary for a widow to be inherited by her deceased husband’s relative, customary law provides the right for her to withdraw her consent (Lavers, 2017). However, this consent is sometimes contested by the husband’s family and Lavers (2017) documents a case where a widow’s withdraw of consent was only accepted after she won her case at a woreda court.…”

“…I however highlight some facets of the land tenure in order to situate the country’s land certification program. During Ethiopia’s imperial period (pre-1974) one tenure system found in northern Ethiopia was chiguraf-sehabo (see Lavers (2017) for a review of this system). Under chiguraf-sehabo , each household head was allocated a landholding by the community (acting through a committee of elders).…”

“…Consequently, women obtained their user rights to land through their relations with men, i.e., their fathers or husbands. Under a different more prevalent tenure system known as risti (see Lavers (2017) for a review), women (and men) had individual rights to land. Here too however, men and women did not enjoy equal land rights since sons were often given preference over daughters in bequests and women faced difficulties reclaiming their land after divorce.…”

“…Four practices converge to place divorced and widowed women in Tigray at a disadvantage: landholdings are more likely to be passed on to sons than daughters upon death and thus unmarried women are less likely to hold inherited land than unmarried men; in cases where an unmarried woman does receive land, either through inheritance or allocation by the community, the custom of patrilocal residence often involves the woman leaving behind her land upon marriage as well as her natal family who might have championed her land rights; men waiting until they are allocated land by the community before entering into marriage such that men have a higher likelihood of bringing landholdings into a marriage than women; and the custom that land brought into a marriage reverts to its original owner (more likely the husband) upon divorce (Fafchamps & Quisumbing, 2002; Lavers, 2017). Without her name on the land certificate, a divorced or widowed woman may have low standing in the courts, which have been accused of being partial to men (Rahmato, 2010).…”