# **1. Introduction**

In most countries around the world, 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 developing countries and the primary means to store wealth in rural communities.

Does it matter if land and housing property and, by extension, overall wealth are disproportionately concentrated in the hands of men? The answer is unambiguously affirmative – from a gender equality perspective women’s ownership, use and control over resources matter for their well-being and agency (Grown et al 2005). In addition, a more equitable distribution of property and wealth may advance economic prosperity and promote human development of future generations. This is because gender differences in the ownership of land and other productive assets can induce allocative inefficiencies and foregone economic output (O’Sullivan 2017); and because gender differences in the use of productive resources, and the income derived from them, can affect development outcomes among children (World Bank 2011).

Yet, we do not have an extensive understanding of the extent of gender differences in property ownership or the factors driving these gaps. Household surveys, the primary data source for information on the possession and use of assets, traditionally collect these data for the household as a single unit, thereby obscuring gender differences. Recent efforts, mainly through specialized surveys on individual-level asset data, have started addressing this issue (see Doss et al 2020 for a review). This literature documents sizable gender gaps in asset ownership in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (e.g. ADB 2017; Deere et al 2013; Jacobs et al 2011; Kes et al 2011; Kilic and Moylan 2016). However, differences in methodology across studies impede broader comparative analysis and limit the conclusions that can be drawn for developing countries at large.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on gender gaps in property ownership using nationally representative data collected by the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) program. Recent rounds of the DHS project (starting in 2010) collect data on ownership of land and housing from adult men and women. The DHS is particularly suited for gender analysis of property ownership as eligible respondents are personally asked about their ownership of land and housing property, instead of relying on proxy information given by other household members. Doss et al (2015) use the DHS data to provide estimates of land ownership by women and men for eight countries in Africa. Gaddis et al (2018) expand this analysis to cover 28 African countries.

This research, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to take a global perspective on gender gaps in the ownership of property. Its main contribution is twofold. First, using data from 41 countries across the world, we document the extent of gender gaps in property ownership worldwide and explore descriptive patterns within and across countries. Second, we use multivariate analysis to assess in greater detail what factors are correlated with the gender gap in property ownership, with a particular focus on the role of legal systems. We find that there is substantial variation in gender gaps across countries, but in almost all countries men are more likely to own property than women. Within countries, gender gaps in property ownership are larger for the more disadvantaged population groups – that is, they are larger in rural than in urban areas, and larger for the poorest than for the richest wealth quintiles. But what drives these gender gaps? While the analysis in this paper cannot establish causality, the multivariate analysis shows that women’s disadvantage in property ownership is associated with discriminatory norms and laws 2