Sudan, for example, men are twice as likely as women to have an account, while in other countries (e.g. South Africa and Ghana) gender gaps are not significant (Demirguc-Kunt et al 2015; World Bank 2017). Even though gender gaps in economic opportunities probably only play a limited role for male and female property ownership today – given the predominance of life events – they may assume greater importance in the future as property markets become more efficient through better secured property rights.

# **2.2 Empirical evidence on gender gaps in property ownership in Africa**

An emerging empirical literature documents gender gaps in asset ownership in Africa, including two recent overview articles: Doss et al (2015) present a comprehensive review of the literature on gender gaps in land ownership in Africa, while Doss et al (2017) survey recent data collection initiatives gathering data on assets at the individual level and describe the methodological issues that arise and best-practice standards (see also Doss et al 2008, 2013).

A sub-strand of this broader literature are studies that explore explicitly intra-household differences in asset ownership, use and control to estimate, among other things, prevalence rates for women and men (e.g. Jacobs et al 2011; Kes et al 2011; Deere et al 2013; Kilic and Moylan 2016). These studies have several common elements. First, they extend beyond land to include housing, consumer durables, livestock and other types of assets. Second, the studies measure and triangulate different types of ownership and use rights – such as reported ownership, documented ownership, economic ownership and rights to bequeath, sell, rent out, use as collateral and invest in the asset (Kilic and Moylan 2016; Doss et al 2017). Third, the underlying data are collected by interviewing multiple respondents per household (typically one adult male and one adult female). As we will discuss further in the next section, this approach of soliciting data on asset ownership, while operationally demanding, avoids potential biases from the use of proxy respondents (Doss et al 2008, 2017; Kilic and Moylan 2016).

The Gender Land and Asset Survey (Jacobs et al 2011; Kes et al 2011) was conducted in three locations in South Africa and Uganda in 2009. Across all three sites, women are found to be less likely to claim ownership of land and housing than men. Joint ownership of immovable assets (land, housing) is prevalent in all study locations, particularly for women, but does not always carry significant advantages (compared with non-ownership) in terms of decision-making (Jacobs and Kes 2015). The study further documents that reported ownership (based on an individual’s perception) often does not go in hand with formal documentation. It should be noted though that due to the limited geographic coverage of the data, the estimates are not nationally representative.

The Gender Asset Gap Project collected nationally (or, in one case, state-level) representative data on a broad range of assets in Ghana, Ecuador and Karnataka, India, in 2010. As shown in Deere et al (2013), married women hold 19 percent of couple wealth in Ghana, which is less than in Ecuador but more than in Karnataka, India. These gender wealth gaps are largely driven by immovable assets – agricultural land, the principal residence and other real estate, which in Ghana are often owned individually by men. This reinforces the notion that land and housing property are an important driver of the overall distribution of wealth in developing countries. The study also suggets that inheritance norms explain much of the gender gap in asset ownership – as 45 percent of survey respondents in Ghana reported that inheritance practices favored men (see also Oduro et al 2010).

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