Rules of legal institutions aim to protect the citizen against discretionary and arbitrary power, ensure equality with others and guarantee procedural fairness.
Land tenure is often the basis of commercial activity.
Ownership of land provides collateral, and collateral translates into access to credit for further commercial activity. Inheritance is a means of wealth acquisition and the basis of generating further wealth. If women are constrained under customary law in their inheritance rights and in the ownership of land, they are likely to be marginalized from the process of directly generating and directly benefiting from further wealth. Unless these dynamics are fully appreciated and the interrelations between rights under statutory and customary law, and their instrumentality in consolidating social, political and economic status are recognized, little advance can be made in promoting the economic advancement of women and in promoting them as and economic force. In 1994, an Operation Evaluation Department study traced how the concept of women in development , and later the broader concept of gender , had yet to be reflected in Bank policies and lending.