national income), the authors found that financial account penetration was at 57% among women in countries that allow for joint control, and only at 18% among women in countries where husbands administer marital property (World Bank and IFC 2015).

Other statutory restrictions further impede financial inclusion. In Niger, banks are required to inform male spouses when a married female tries to open a bank account with funds received from her husband (World Bank and IFC 2013). In five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Mali, Niger, and Togo), a married woman is legally obliged to obtain her husband’s consent to set up a bank account or withdraw funds obtained via her husband (HallwardDriemeier and Hasan 2012). Hallward-Driemeier and Hasan (2012) also note that, in many other countries where this not officially stipulated as law, banks are allowed to require a husband’s signature for a wife’s transactions.

Head of household provisions, meanwhile, also restrict women’s ownership and control over property. Men are automatically designated as the head of household in nearly half of the low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hallward-Driemeier and Hasan 2012). These requirements, typically included in family codes or other statutes of civil law countries, can restrict women’s access to government services – particularly for land titling and land redistribution programs.

In addition, formal inheritance laws in several African countries leave women, including widows and daughters, with unequal inheritance rights. Default marital regimes typically grant widows less than half of the estate, including land (with a usual range of 0 to 30 percent) – and these restrictions are even tighter under customary law (World Bank 2011).<sup>24</sup> In Ghana and Zambia, for example, the laws guiding intestate transfers to women (for those lacking in will documentation) do not include family or lineage property, thereby limiting widows’ access to land (Hallward-Driemeier and Hasan 2012).

The complexity of legal frameworks may also limit women’s property rights. Changes to a legal framework do not necessarily translate into changes in women’s property rights unless they can appropriately address the challenges of legal pluralism – in which statutory law operates and overlaps with customary and religious legal systems (Lastarria-Cornhiel et al. 2014). The ambiguity of legal pluralism, which allows for the co-existence of statutory and customary land tenure regimes, also provides scope for forum-shopping in ways that could further constrain women’s use and control of land. For example, there are five distinct – yet overlapping – legal regimes for marriage in Kenya (civil, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and customary), with differing and sometimes conflicting rules over the merging and disposition of marital assets (Deere and Doss 2006). Such arrangements can further contribute to uncertainty around women’s rights to property.

# - **_Customary norms and laws_**

Customary laws over property tend to prevail over formal laws in practice in Sub-Saharan Africa – particularly in rural areas (Pande and Udry 2006). Property rights over land and other assets typically consist of a complex set of overlapping claims held by multiple members of the household and community. Access and use rights over land, for example, are embedded within social relations, and these rights are conferred through one’s position and membership in social groups or via exchange (Berry 1989). Men in rural areas, who are viewed as autonomous members of the

> 24 Widows may be particularly vulnerable to unequal statutory protections on inheritance. Nine countries (Burundi, Guinea, Kenya, Mauritania, Senegal, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Uganda) across Sub-Saharan Africa fail to provide equal inheritance rights to widows (World Bank and IFC 2015). Peterman (2012) analyzed Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and found that, among widows, only 47% report having inherited any assets from their deceased spouse.

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