# **1. Introduction**

Across Africa<sup>1</sup> there are profound differences between men and women in ownership, use and control over assets and wealth. Gender gaps emerge prominently in ownership of land and housing property, which are important assets for the poor in Africa and the primary means to store wealth in rural communities. Estimates in this paper – based on data representing more than three-quarters of Africa’s population – suggest that just under 13 percent of African women (aged 20-49 years) claim sole ownership of land, compared with 36 percent of African men. The gender gap is smaller if one considers joint ownership, but even then, it remains significant: 38 percent of African women report owning any land (alone or jointly), compared with 51 percent of African men. A similar picture emerges for housing ownership.

Why is it important that in most African countries land and housing property and, by extension, overall wealth are disproportionately concentrated in the hands of men? First, women’s ownership, use and control over resources matter for their well-being and agency (Grown et al 2005). Married women’s rights to marital property and other assets can be linked to their bargaining position within the family. Many models of household behavior, such as cooperative bargaining models proposed by Manser and Brown (1980) and McElroy and Horney (1981), predict that bargaining power within marriage depends on the husband’s and wife’s ‘outside options’, e.g. their expected utility if the union were to end. These outside options depend, among other factors, on who in the family owns the household’s property, and the rules and norms that shape the division of assets and other family resources upon divorce (Lundberg and Pollak 1996; Lundberg et al 1997; Fafchamps and Quisumbing 2005).<sup>2</sup> Empirical studies from Africa show that a more egalitarian distribution of assets between husband and wife correlates with the wife’s participation in decision making (e.g. Oduro et al 2012 for Ghana), which is an indicator of agency (Kabeer 1999). Similar evidence is available from Asia: Beegle et al (2001) find that asset ownership among Indonesian women is associated with an elevated probability of women seeking pre-natal care or giving birth in a hospital or clinic. Studies from India show that legislative changes under the Hindu Succession Act, which strengthened women’s inheritance rights, positively impacted measures of female empowerment (i.e. education and health outcomes). These effects were even larger for the ‘second generation’, i.e. daughters born to women themselves affected by the reforms (Deininger et al 2013, 2014).

Women’s ownership, use and control over assets are of particular importance in the case of marriage dissolution through widowhood or divorce. In many parts of Africa widows and their orphaned children are at risk of being dispossessed from their property by the relatives of the deceased husband (Peterman 2012; Deere and Doss 2006; Lambert and Rossi 2016). A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW 2017) documents several cases of Zimbabwean widows being evicted from their marital home after the death of their husbands and left with no assets and income sources to support themselves and their children (see also Economist 2017) and similar case studies exist for other parts of Africa (e.g. Ntozi 1997; Okuro 2008). Dillon and Voena (2017) show that, in communities with weak inheritance rights for widows, concerns over eviction deter land investments even among currently married women.

A second argument concerns gender differences in the use of productive resources and the income derived from them, which may affect development outcomes among children. As discussed in World Bank

> 1 Throughout this paper, Africa refers to Sub-Saharan Africa.

> 2 Cooperative bargaining models assume that household behavior is Pareto efficient, i.e. whatever decision the household takes, no alternative decision would have been preferred by all its members (Chiappori 1988, 1992). Non-cooperative models relax the assumption of Pareto-efficiency (Lundberg and Pollak 1994, 1996).

2