these case studies, women were more likely to own a house than to own land. This survey suggests the importance of inquiring separately into the ownership of the home and the plot of land upon which it sits, in addition to agricultural land.

_Land Ownership._ Most data on asset distribution by sex in developing countries refers mainly to land, which is not surprising since in developing countries land is the most important component of wealth, especially in rural areas. Generally, women are less likely to own land than men and women’s plots are likely to be smaller and of poorer quality than men’s.<sup>5</sup> Research in Latin America shows that the gender asset gap in land is substantial. In the various national rural household surveys undertaken in the early 2000s, the share of landowners who are female ranged from only 11 percent (Brazil) to a high of 27 percent (Paraguay) (Deere and León 2003).<sup>6</sup> Women are not only less likely to own land than men, but female landowners tend to own less land than men.

The data on land ownership in Africa is more difficult to interpret, since much land in Africa is held collectively and/or is untitled.<sup>7</sup> In Southern and Eastern Africa, for example, the amount of rural land that is privately owned ranges from five percent in Lesotho to 67.5 percent in South Africa (Walker 2003). The categories of private, communal, and state-owned land include a range of overlapping rights to land that adds layers of complexity to any analysis of land “ownership.”<sup>8</sup> Nonetheless, the data suggest a sizeable gender gap in land ownership in Africa. In Uganda only seven percent of women own land themselves (Rugadya et al. 2005). In Cameroon, where women do more than 75 percent of the agricultural work, it is estimated that women hold fewer than 10 percent of land certificates (Mason and Carlsson 2004). Doss (2006b) found that women owned land in only 10 percent of Ghanaian households while men owned land in 16-23 percent, depending on the year of the survey. A UNICEF/IFPRI/UDS (2001) survey of households in Savelugu and Nanton Districts in Ghana found that among households with farms, men’s land ownership was far greater than women’s: in 72.3 percent of households, men individually owned a farm while women only individually owned a farm in 47.7 percent of households. An FAO study (1997) found that for a number of countries, women were less likely to have any landholdings and when they did have land, the mean value of men’s holdings was almost three times the mean value of women’s holdings.

Far less data exist on the gender asset gap in land in Asia. A 2001 household survey in Pakistan found that women owned less than 3 percent of the plots, even though 67 percent of the sampled villages reported that women had a right to inherit land (Mason and Carlsson 2004).<sup>9</sup> According to the 2001 Population Census in Nepal, only about 11 percent of women own land and among those, around 90 percent own less than one acre (Malla 2000).

_Livestock._ Livestock everywhere are an important source of income and means of wealth accumulation. A general pattern is for men to own large livestock and particularly, work animals, while women own smaller livestock and yard animals. In Nicaragua, for instance, in 73 percent of the households the cattle was owned by men, in 13.5 percent by women, and in only 13.7 percent were they jointly owned. Men were even more likely to own the household’s other work animals, such as horses, donkeys and mules. In most households women owned the pigs 7