Muchomba, F.M. (2017) ‘Women’s Land Tenure Security and Household Human Capital: Evidence from Ethiopia’s Land Certification’, World Development, 98, pp. 310–324.
The author commenced by explaining how land determines the economic and social status of agrarian societies. Women’s access to the land is directly linked to productivity, economic welfare, social status, and decision-making roles. The historical tenure system that discriminates women against landholding is widely discussed in this study. Accordingly, during the Imperial period, there was a system called Chiguraf-Sehabo, in which landholding rights is allocated to household heads through the community. As most of the household heads are male, and only sons can inherit the land from their family, women are excluded from the direct landholding and rather benefit from it through their relations with men as daughters or wives. The Rist system was also most prevalent during this time in which women and men had individual right over the land. However, this system is also discriminatory by its very nature whereby males are given preference over females during bequests. During divorce also women are not entitled to land division. Moreover, due to the customary practice that women shall not plow, female-headed households receive smaller land sizes when compared with male-headed households. In 1975, the Derg Regime come to power and declared land nationalisation whereby exclusive ownership rights is bestowed to the government. During this time also women are disproportionately affected by tenure insecurity. After the coming to power of the FDRE government, land policies were reformed. Among these reforms, land registration and Certification which was implemented in Tigray Region, Amhara Region, Oromia Region, and SNNPR. However, land registration and certification didn’t bring the expected result of gender equality. Customary practices that discriminate against women continued to be practiced. For example, divorced women are still in difficulty getting land division during divorce, the land continued to pass to sons during inheritance and women are generally denied equal entitlement to the land.
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With the aim of assessing the effect of women’s formal land tenure security on household capital allocation for human capital, the author used data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS), a longitudinal survey of 1477 households from the four major regions in Ethiopia; Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPRs.
According to the finding, land certification contributed to women’s productivity and income. Before certification, female landowners had lower productivity than male landowners. Following certification, women land owners are found to have higher productivity and income as it provides different opportunities to rent out the land and use the income to invest in farming inputs. Moreover, the certification increased land tenure security and reduced conflicts during the transfer of the land to their children and division among the spouses during divorce
Regarding the impact of certification on household capital investment, the study found that male-headed households exposed to joint land certificate programs increased the share of household resources spent on healthcare, decreased the share spent on clothing and there is evidence that they increased the share of consumption allocated to homegrown food. This shows that increased women’s bargaining power that extends to decisions concerning household production. Generally, its indicated that extending land tenure security to women improved women’s bargaining power within households and consumption of healthcare and food. Improving women’s land tenure security has the potential to transform intrahousehold dynamics and may influence the realisation of health and development policy objectives.