Joint Land Certification and Intra-

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Joint Land Certification and Intra- household Decision-making:

Towards Empowerment of Wives?

Stein T. Holden and Sosina Bezu Centre for Land Tenure Studies / School of Economics and Business NMBU, Ås, Norway

www.steinholden.com

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Joint Land Certification and Intra- household Decision-making:

Towards Empowerment of Wives?

• Study in Ethiopia

• Funding by

– Research Council of Norway

– GLTN, UN-Habitat (2007 survey)

• Data: Panel household survey

–Data from 2007 and 2012 (~620 households) from 20 communities in 5 districts in Oromia and SNNP

regions

–Social experiments 2012

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Joint land certification of husbands and wives in Southern Ethiopia: Example certificate:

Women – from being the

“property” of men to becoming equal co-owner of

land?

How

has this

reform influenced

women’s position

in the household?

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Women have a particularly weak position in relation to land in Southern Ethiopia

• Holden and Tefera (2008). From Being Property of Men to Becoming Equal Owners? UN-Habitat report.

– Evidence of weak position of women related to land:

• Patri-lineal system, women move to husband’s village/home upon marriage

• Arranged marriages where girls/brides had little influcence on marriage decisions, with bride prizes

• Widows are required to marry the brother (or other relative) of the late husband or they have to leave the land

• Kidnapping marriages quite common in the past

Joint Land Certification and Intra-household Decision-making: Towards Empowerment of Wives?

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Polygamy is common in Southern Ethiopia,

here a man with his three wives

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Correspondence of stated marriage type by spouses

Marriage type: females’ responses

Marriage type:

males’ responses Parental arrange ment

Parental and bride agree- ment

Love marri- age

Wife ex-

change

Kidnap- ping marri- age

Total

Parental arrangement

60 7 11 1 4 83

Parental and bride

agreement 14 81 7 1 3 106

Love marriage 11 12 132 0 11 166

Wife exchange 0 1 2 5 0 8

Kidnapping marriage 1 1 2 0 18 22

Total 86 102 154 7 36 385

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Oromia and SNNP Regions:

Impacts of Joint Land Certification

• Indicator of women’s empowerment:

–Extent of participation in a set of land- related decisions, including crop choice and land renting decisions, and whether wives’ participation in such decisions has led to a change in the decisions

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Effects of land certification on household decision-making

Husbands’

responses

Wives’

responses

Responses in 2012 Numb

er

% Numb er

%

More discussion on land renting decision 115 21.6 103 20.5 More discussion on crop choice 212 39.8 236 47.0 More discussion on work division on each

plot

52 9.8 50 10.0

More discussion on investment decisions such as tree planting

69 12.9 51 10.2

More discussion on construction of houses on the land

55 10.3 49 9.8 More discussion on giving land to children 20 3.8 13 2.6

Total 533 100 502 100

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Wives’ stated preferences for

strengthened women’s land rights:

Wives’ Attitude Index

• Generated from the response to three questions:

–Wife can deny husband to rent out land = 1, = 0 otherwise;

–Wife expects joint land certificate = 1, = 0 otherwise;

–Wife expects equal sharing of land upon divorce = 1, = 0 otherwise;

• Aggregate index of wives' attitude is the sum of the above three variables

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Husbands' preference for

traditional position of women:

Husband s’ Attitude Index

• Widow should not be allowed to marry outside the family of the late husband = 1, = 0 otherwise;

• Widow should marry brother of late husband =1, = 0 otherwise

• Husband decides if disagreement between husband and wife =1, = 0 otherwise

The index was created by summing the responses to these three questions

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“Wives’ land rights attitudes”- index distribution by year

Index score ^Stats 2007 2012 Total

0 ^Freq. 38 24 62

Percent 11.3 7.5 9.4

1 ^Freq. 43 7 50

Percent 12.8 2.2 7.6

2 ^Freq. 117 58 175

Percent 34.7 18.1 26.6

3 ^Freq. 139 232 371

Percent 41.3 72.3 56.4

Total ^Freq. 337 321 658

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“Husbands’ preference for traditional position of women- index in 2012

Index score Freq. Percent Cum.

0 115 35.8 35.8

1 ₁₂₂ _38.0 _73.8

2 ₇₀ _21.8 _95.6

3 14 4.4 100

Total ₃₂₁ ₁₀₀

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Parsimonious models

Wives' land rights attitude

index

Husbands' preference for traditional position

of women index

Wives’ land- related empowerment

index

Attended land reform meeting 0.206*** -0.178* 0.135

Land certificate, dummy -0.088 0.051

Year dummy, =1 for 2012 0.723****

Wives' land rights attitude index 0.284****

Husbands' attitude index -0.108*

Community FE Yes Yes Yes

cut1 -1.037** -0.081 -0.838*

cut2 -0.606* 0.934 0.522

cut3 0.337* 2.043 1.444

Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000 0.000

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Factors affecting wives’ involvement in land-related decisons

Results from ordered probit models OP1 OP2 OP3

Wives' land rights attitude index 0.292 0.333 0.332

Husbands' land rights attitude index -0.231* -0.235* -0.234***

Age of household head -0.001 -0.001 -0.001

Household size 0.015 0.031 0.028

Average education level in hh. 0.006 0.024 0.034

Male work force 0.054 0.039 0.034

Female work force -0.082 -0.090 -0.085

Farm size, ha -0.203 -0.243 -0.261

Tropical livestock units 0.054* 0.049* 0.052*

Wife's name on certificate, dummy 0.205 0.282 0.253 Religion dummies, baseline= Muslim

Protestant -0.673**

Orthodox -0.695**

District fixed effects Yes

Village fixed effects No Yes Yes

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Social experiments

• Used to tease out the relationship between husbands and wives

–Dictator games:

• Intra-household generosity –Hawk-Dove games:

• Intra-household coordination, cooperation and competition

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Husband and wife waiting for the outcome

of the coin toss: Dictator games

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How generous are spouses towards each other?

Husbands and wives are about equally generous

More than 60% share equally with their spouse

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Dictator game outcomes for husbands and wives

0 20 40 60

0 10 20 30 40 0 10 20 30 40

Husbands Wives

P e rce n t

How much money allocated, EB Graphs by Gender of player

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“ Hawk and dove” games: Who is the boss in the household?

Wives are more hawkish than their husbands, while the men are kinder than their reputation, but…

Large differences in “cooperative climate” across

households

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Relation between experiments and land certificate?

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Joint land certification has resulted in more involvement

More and better cooperation (in HD games) between spouses

that have received joint land certificates

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Hawk-Dove game outcomes for husbands and wives

.2 .3 .4 .5

P ro b a b ility o f p layi n g Ha wk

1 2 3 4 5 6

Game number

95% CI Wives' average prob(Hawk)

95% CI Husbands' average prob(Hawk)

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Factors associated with hawkishness in Hawk-Dove experiments

Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Tittel på presentasjon 22

Models without separate asset variables

Models with separate asset variables

Husbands Wives Husbands Wives

Average education of hh members -0.137 0.076 -0.167 0.055

Age of male head 0.002 0.024** -0.016 0.025

Education of male head 0.071* -0.002 0.096** -0.007

Number of children not attending school 0.125 0.519 0.179 0.523

Has land certificate -0.938 -1.898** -1.065* -2.033****

Number of Hawk by wife -0.326 -0.258

Number of Hawk by husband -0.474 -0.381

Marriage type dummies: Baseline: Arranged marriage

Arranged marriage with bride agreement 0.077 0.157 0.139 0.020

Love marriage 0.320 0.270 0.417 0.245

Exchange marriage -0.517 0.599 -0.547 0.446

Kidnapping marriage 1.181 1.326 1.187* 1.589*

Land brought to marriage by husband -0.039 0.010

Land brought to marriage by wife -0.390** 0.133

Husband's assets brought to marriage,

1000EB -0.039*** -0.048

Wife's assets brought to marriage, 1000EB 0.295**** -0.046

Tropical livestock units 0.082 0.094

Wife's share of livestock -0.993 -7.092**

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Overall conclusion I

• We have found strong evidence that the Joint land certification has:

–Strenthened land rights and awareness of wives in male-headed households

–Resulted in stronger involvement in land- related decisions

• We found evidence of mutual generosity between spouses in dictator games

–Many supportive men!

• Hawk-Dove games indicated that many wives

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Conclusions II

• We found substantial variation across communities in the wives’ land rights attitude index pointing in

direction of substantial local variation in the social processes that are likely to influence women’s

positions on these issues

• This may imply that provision of women’s name on the certificates needs to be accompanied with further awareness raising about their right according to the law in areas where women and men still have weak awareness of the law

• This may be an area where donor support also could reduce the budgetary constraint that is faced

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Thank you for your attention!

• Comments are welcome!

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