Annotation Summary for ‘Land Rights and Women’s Economic Empowerment ’ Folder
The articles are basically discussing the historical background of the landholding/ownership system in Ethiopia, the status of women, the current reform, and how gender is integrated into all the processes. Eight of the literature have a common argument that in Ethiopia, land right is explicitly gender biased whereby male got priority over women in access and control over the land. The historical land rights system is discussed in detail in all of the literature, accordingly, during the Feudal period, the dominant land tenure system is private property and Church land ownership in the South, and the Gult, racist, and Chiguraf Goses systems in the north of the country. In 1974, the Derg regime come to power and radical reforms with regard to land tenure. Nationalisation of land is declared and individuals are endowed with use right only. After the overthrow of the military government in 1991, various reforms were, and among this Land registration and certification were commonly discussed in the literature.
Ethiopia’s land certification has been lauded for its speed and cost-efficiency (Deininger et al., 2008). The program was decentralized and operated at the village level, which allowed rapid progress with the majority of rural households covered within 2–3 years of the start of the implementation.
The authors argue that female landlords had lower land productivity than male landlords before the land certification and, therefore, had larger gains in productivity and income with land certification because certification helped less productive landlords increase their land productivity and incomes by renting out to more productive tenants.
The legislation that provided for land certification endowed households with the legal right to use for an unlimited period, lease, and bequeath land to family members. Land certification thereby increased legal land tenure security of households