Resource information
Across the world, low rates of land ownership remain as one of the most persistent signs of gender inequity. While many developing countries have adopted legislation to reinforce gender equality in property ownership, the actual de facto state of women’s right to land often remains unchanged. Even when countries adopt joint-titling policies intended to shift household bargaining power in favour of women, actual rates of joint ownership are often lower than expected. However, there are some examples at the national, state, city and project level where progress has been made towards getting women’s right to land formalised, either as single or joint-holders of a land title.To better understand how this progress can be achieved, this report documents several cases from around the developing world, and offers lessons drawn from the study:
legislation which is “gender neutral” is often not enough, as neither title-granting institutions nor households will be concerned with joint-titling if it is not the default position for married couples
NGO/CSO involvement seems to be an important driver of both legal and political reform. However, the examples where NGO/CSO involvement waned after large political or institutional successes resulted in poorer joint-titling outcomes than those where involvement included low-level interventions, such as education and programmes to get past last mile problems
institutional learning is an important factor, as land authorities and governments do learn from their mistakes. However, because land titling schemes are costly and imply large `sunk’ costs, if learning does not happen quickly enough then it may be very difficult to overturn existing inequities
having institutions in which the interests of women are well-represented can ensure that titling programmes are successfully backed
institutions tasked with implementing joint-titling policies seem to be more effective when they have incentives to do so
on-the-ground information and advocacy can help in getting past last mile problems. Similarly, incentives at the household level can be useful in enticing land owners to jointly-title
