metadata: authors: 0: author: Hallward-Driemeier,Mary C.
1: author: Hasan,Tazeen
2: author: Rusu,Anca Bogdana
count: World
docna: 0: docna: Women's legal rights over 50 years :
            what is the impact of reform ?
docty: Policy Research Working Paper
theme: Other Private Sector Development,Analysis of economic growth,Personal and property rights,Regulation and competition policy,Gender
majtheme: Economic management,Rule of law,Financial and private sector development,Social dev/gender/inclusion
subtopic: Social Policy,Human Rights,Legal Products,Judicial System Reform,Common Property Resource Development,Educational Sciences,Gender and Development,Legal Reform,Legislation,Regulatory Regimes
teratopic: Law and Development,Social Protections and Labor,Health, Nutrition and Population,Gender,Finance and Financial Sector Development
abstracts: cdata!: This study uses a newly compiled
            database of women's property rights and legal capacity
            covering 100 countries over 50 years to test for the impact
            of legal reforms on employment, health, and education
            outcomes for women and girls.  The database demonstrates
            gender gaps in the ability to access and own property, sign
            legal documents in one's own name, and have equality or
            non-discrimination as a guiding principle of the
            country's constitution. In the initial period, 75
            countries had gender gaps in at least one of these areas and
            often multiple ones.  By 2010, 57 countries had made reforms
            that strengthened women's economic rights, including 28
            countries that had eliminated all of the constraints
            monitored here. In the cross-section and within countries
            over time, the removal of gender gaps in rights is
            associated with greater participation of women in the labor
            force, greater movement out of agricultural employment,
            higher rates of women in wage employment, lower adolescent
            fertility, lower maternal and infant mortality, and higher
            female educational enrollment.  This paper provides evidence
            on how the strengthening of women's legal rights is
            associated with important development outcomes.
repnme: repnme: Women's legal rights over 50 years :
            what is the impact of reform ?
display_title: Women's legal rights over 50
            years : what is the impact of reform
listing_relative_url: /research/2013/09/18287783/womens-legal-rights-over-50-years-impact-reform
topicv3: Justice m1326106 840,Personal Property Rights m1326571 1907,Education m1327048 470,Gender m1327621 615,Discrimination m1505707 3379
publishtoextweb_dt: 2013-09-01T00:00:00Z
historic_topic: Law and Development,Social Protections and Labor,Health, Nutrition and Population,Gender,Finance and Financial Sector Development
no_of_pages: 46
author_keys: 0: author_key: 142140
1: author_key: 1059962
2: author_key: 1106080
model_extractions: WPS6617 Policy Research Working Paper 6617 Women’s Legal Rights over 50 Years What Is the Impact of Reform?

_Mary Hallward-Driemeier Tazeen Hasan Anca Bogdana Rusu_ The World Bank Development Research Group Finance and Private Sector Development Team September 2013
Policy Research Working Paper 6617

# **Abstract**

This study uses a newly compiled database of women’s property rights and legal capacity covering 100 countries over 50 years to test for the impact of legal reforms on employment, health, and education outcomes for women and girls. The database demonstrates gender gaps in the ability to access and own property, sign legal documents in one’s own name, and have equality or non-discrimination as a guiding principle of the country’s constitution. In the initial period, 75 countries had gender gaps in at least one of these areas and often multiple ones. By 2010, 57 countries had made reforms that strengthened women’s economic rights, including 28 countries that had eliminated all of the constraints monitored here. In the cross-section and within countries over time, the removal of gender gaps in rights is associated with greater participation of women in the labor force, greater movement out of agricultural employment, higher rates of women in wage employment, lower adolescent fertility, lower maternal and infant mortality, and higher female educational enrollment. This paper provides evidence on how the strengthening of women’s legal rights is associated with important development outcomes.

This paper is a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Team, Development Research Group. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at mhallward@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
ae ) Years of Expanding Women’s Legal Rights <!-- Start of picture text --> 6;<br><!-- End of picture text -->
# **Introduction**

Rights matter. They matter in themselves. The question here is what is the evidence that they matter for other outcomes of interest – namely the ability to pursue economic opportunities, and health and education outcomes? Existing research shows that strengthening women’s economic and legal rights has a real and positive impact on women’s labor force participation, investment and agricultural productivity. However, most of the literature focuses on a particular country, examining differences in property rights across groups of individuals or looking at a particular reform episode. The “50 Years of Women’s Legal Rights Database” offers an opportunity to expand the analysis – with comparable indicators across 100 countries and covering 50 years.

The legal rights focused on here can be grouped into three broad categories. The first regards the ability to access and own property. This can mean land, but it also means other types of assets more generally. The second is legal capacity, whether women have the same ability as men to enter into legal agreements in their own name. The last is the approach to principles of equality and non-discrimination within the constitution. Such principles can be recognized in general, or with enumerated groups (e.g. non-discrimination based on gender or sex). But in some countries laws governing property, marriage and inheritance can be explicitly exempt from these principles in the constitution.

The database highlights the extent to which gender gaps in these three areas have been widespread, recognized in all regions and across all income groups. But the time dimension also shows that there has been change. Not only countries, but entire regions have eliminated the constraints examined here. Today’s rich countries of the OECD had their share of gender gaps in the 1960s and 1970s. However, today, they have removed all of the ones covered in this 2
study. In the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, only Turkey had some gender gaps in these laws; it no longer does. In Latin America, there are now only two exceptions to the laws on legal capacity and property rights. And Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest rates of gender gaps in the initial period, has removed more than half of them by 2010. Progress towards women’s equal rights is possible (see companion paper for a more detailed discussion of legal reforms and the factors that help trigger reforms).

At the same time, there are still countries with gender gaps in these rights. And some countries have increased the number of constraints since the 1960s. On net, both in South Asia and the Middle East & North Africa, the net number of constraints has remained fairly stable, with both some reforms and some new constraints being introduced.

Given the variation in the legal rights both across countries and over time, how are they correlated with outcomes? We focus on employment, health and education as these are traditionally areas where women and girls have not enjoyed the same benefits and access as men and boys. They are also key indicators of well-being.

The paper begins by looking at comparisons across countries. This has the advantage of allowing a wider range of outcome variables to be examined. Unfortunately, gender disaggregated data are not available for many of the indicators except in recent years. However, there are indicators for employment that go back 30 years, and there are some health and education indicators that cover the entire 50 years.

For those indicators for which we have sufficient time variation that straddle reform episodes, we look at the impacts of the law within countries over time. Finally, we examine whether the effects of legal reforms vary either by level of development or by the strength of the rule of law. Is it that having formal recognition of rights is only important once countries reach a 3
certain level of development, or do de jure rights have little benefit in a society that does not uphold the law? This is important in understanding where reforms are likely to have the greatest impact and where the lack of reform can be the most costly.

The following section reviews the literature on rights and women’s empowerment outcomes. The next section describes the data in more detail. The methodology is explained and then the results are discussed. The final section concludes.

# **Review of the Literature**

Interest in the importance of property rights stretches back centuries. Adam Smith was one of the first to argue forcefully about the economic benefits that come from securing people’s incentive to invest and exert effort. The extent to which it is formal rights that matter, however, is still a matter of debate, particularly in countries with larger rural populations, lower levels of education and pluralist systems for resolving disputes. However, what laws are on the books does determine the rules and whose interests will be protected. They send important signals as to what is acceptable or not, even if parties never make it to a court. And as arms-length transactions become more common, the formal legal system plays a larger role.

Many cross-country studies aimed at analyzing how laws and regulations affect employment, including entrepreneurship, look at business regulations. Botero et al. 2004, Klapper et al. 2006 and Djankov et al. 2003 point to the importance of these regulations in explaining cross-country patterns of employment, firm start-ups and use of courts. But they do not look at gender disaggregated results.

Indeed, legislation to register property, enforce contracts or access credit is largely gender neutral. However, these laws presuppose one can own property or enter contracts in the first 4
place. The law that determines who has control over assets and thus affects the types of economic opportunities that are available is family law. Family law covers issues of marriage, but also of marital property and who can control it – within the marriage and at its end, whether through divorce or inheritance. And it is here that gender gaps can be—and still too often are— explicit.

There are also several country specific studies that find significant impacts of the reforms to family law. In studies that analyze the impact of the Hindu Succession Act Amendment of 2005, equal inheritance rights for girls and women are shown to be correlated with increased educational attainment, higher household investment in girls as well as higher age at marriage (Deininger, Goyal, and Nagarajan, 2010). Equal inheritance rights for women are also associated with higher women’s autonomy (Roy 2008).

Assessments of changes in divorce laws in the Unites States show that women were more likely to initiate a divorce in states where women’s position was strengthened. Also the changes in divorce laws were correlated with a fall in domestic violence in these states. As illustrated by Gray (1998) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2006), part of the effect may come from shifts in intrahousehold bargaining power.

Similarly, changes in the family law in Ethiopia were associated with a substantial shift in women’s economic activities (Hallward-Driemeier and Gajigo, 2013). As of 2000, Ethiopia requires both spouses’ consent in managing marital property, enabled women to work outside the home without needing permission from their spouse and raised the minimum marriage age for women. The reform, which is now applicable across the country, was initially rolled out in select regions and cities. Using two nationally representative household surveys, one in 2000 just before the reform and one five years later, Hallward-Driemeier and Gajigo (2013) find that 5
women’s participation in occupations which require work outside the home, full-time hours, and higher skills rose more where the reform had been enacted (controlling for time and location effects).

Property rights can be set out in family law as well as in land law. Here too the literature has found significant gender impacts from differences in the strength of rights to land. Secure property rights to land are fundamental to agriculture and rural economic activity. Without secure rights, the incentive to invest is diminished, as it is not clear the rewards of the investment can be enjoyed. In addition, the lack of such rights undermines the land owner’s ability to use it as collateral, leading to credit constraints. Besley (1995) demonstrates that individuals in Ghana vary their investment across plots depending on the security of their rights. Goldstein and Udry (2008) show that in a society where land rights are not secure, it is those at the top of the local hierarchy—those with the more tenured rights—that benefit the most.

A number of other empirical studies point to increased agricultural productivity as a result of women controlling larger shares of resources (Saito, Mekonnen, and Spurling 1994; Udry and others 1995; Quisumbing 1996; Besley and Ghatak 2009). More resources in women’s hands is also associated with a decline in poverty (World Bank 2001). And the benefits can transfer across generations. Duflo’s work in South Africa showed that when women received additional resources, the spending on education and food, particularly for girls, went up (Duflo 2003). Indeed, many of the conditional cash transfer programs, inspired by the results of Progresa in Mexico, now specifically target women as recipients (Skoufias and McClafferty 2001).

Beyond general principles that give everyone equal access to own property, how property rights are implemented can be important. Even when a household has secure property rights, 6
titling has too often been under a single name, that of the male head of household. As a consequence, many women have been excluded from ownership. Some countries, such as Ethiopia, have tried to address this unbalance by mandating joint titling of land, thus increasing women’s control over land. (Deininger et al. 2008). The benefit of such policies is apparent from Field’s (2007) study of a titling program in the slums of Peru, where she finds a strong impact on labor supply, especially for women. Without the need to physically protect plots and dwellings, women have more time to work away from their home.

Thus the literature shows that economic rights can affect women’s employment, health and education outcomes in particular countries and for particular reforms. This paper contributes to the literature by expanding both the country coverage and time dimension of legal indicators available for analysis. It also broadens the set of outcome variables analyzed. It provides further evidence of the scope for legal reforms to expand women’s wellbeing and empowerment. But it also shows that benefits are not automatic. This is true both as rising country incomes is not necessarily associated with closing gender gaps in these economic rights, and because the impact of giving women and girls equal rights is shown to vary by level of development and rule of law. Ensuring women and girls obtain and benefit from stronger protections of the property rights and legal capacity is an active agenda.

# **Data and Methodology**

The paper uses the newly compiled “50 Years of Women’s Legal Rights” database. The methodology is explained in more detail in the appendix. It draws on the constitutions as well as family, succession and land laws to look at three sets of legal rights for women. The indicators are based on an assessment of de jure rights based on the reading of the constitutions and 7
statutes. There may well be a gap between what is on the books and what happens in practice, but this database focuses on the former as the measures are objective and provide an easy way to benchmark countries across issues, countries and time. The indicators are generally 0-1 measures of whether women and men have the same right. They do not attempt the measure the degree of the inequality, nor are the indicators weighted or aggregated into an index.

Access to and control of assets is examined between unmarried men and women and between married men and women. In addition, indicators include whether sons and daughters are treated equally in inheritance, and another whether wives and husbands are treated the same in determining their inheritance shares when the other spouse dies.<sup>2</sup> A second set of indicators concerns legal capacity. These largely stem around ‘head of household’ statutes, both in terms of recognizing a head and who the head can be, and the rights the head can exercise. Gender gaps include the inability of women to be recognized as the head of household. And statutes can give the husband, as head of household, the right to deny permission to his wife to work or pursue a trade or profession. His signature may be required for her to open a bank account, to sign a contract or to initiate legal proceedings.

A third set looks at the approach to equality before the law. By 2010 all the countries with a constitution have this principle enshrined in it. Many further have a non-discrimination clause that explicitly enumerates discrimination based on gender or sex as something that is protected against.<sup>3</sup> However, the principle is not universally applied across all areas of the law in some countries. The two most common exceptions come from the formal recognition of

> 2 Additional measures of the default marital property regime and whether joint titling is allowed are included in the database.  As these indicators remain almost unchanged for countries, they are not included in the time series analysis.

> 3 It should be noted that it is not necessary to enumerate gender or sex if the constitution already has an equality provision.  In fact, its presence can sometimes be an indicator of perceived weakness of women’s rights that such a clause was deemed necessary.

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religious and customary law as prevailing in matters of marriage, property, inheritance – and explicitly exempting religious or customary law from the non-discrimination requirement in the constitution.

One lesson that comes out clearly is that ‘women’ are not a homogenous group. In particular, marital status matters. Many of the gender constraints come upon marriage, with the head of household rules the most common example. The formal status of the marriage matters too (e.g. whether it is registered with the state or is a customary marriage) in determining whether statutes, customary or religious law applies to any dispute within that marriage. Another lesson is that there are strong patterns by legal tradition. Those with civil law traditions are more likely to have the head of household rules codified on their books. While those with common law traditions tend not to have those rules, but rather are more likely to recognize customary law and exempt it from constitutional principles of non-discrimination. There can also be differences by religious affiliation, particularly with regard to the formal recognition of religious law, with implications for property statutes too.

Figure 1 shows each of the indicators and how it has evolved over time. The indicators are grouped by theme. The height of the line indicates the share of countries that do not have a gender gap on this dimension; the higher the line the more countries treat men and women equally.

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<!-- Start of picture text --> Property rights and access to assets<br>n “-——<br>zo ene<br>3S on<br>68 |. foeeet TEa _ —<br>Lo ~or*<br>oO . on mee aoe a<br>ae ee<br><<br>1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010<br>year<br>——— Unmarried women's rights to immoveable property<br>=-=—=- Married women's rights to immoveable property<br>— — — - Equal inheritance of daughters and sons<br>——— [qual inheritance of wives and husbands<br>cooenon JOint title is default<br><!-- End of picture text -->
<!-- Start of picture text --> Legal capacity<br>2°20 seectcene anette eestOG=<br>= cau ZA eee<br>5 |. — _””<br>8 Sn om 7 oe<br>ON 7"<br>oO a ae amt<br>Hole<br>be<br>1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010<br>year<br>——— Women can be head of household<br>=== No permission to work<br>— —-— - No permission for bank account<br>— No permission for contracts<br>vows NO permission for legal proceedings<br><!-- End of picture text -->

<!-- Start of picture text --> Constitutional principles<br>n<br>+<br>3© pane<br>: a<br>° ?<br>owt /<br>£ ”<br>Oo Pl<br>N ~/<br>Latahalloo_”<br>fo)<br>1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010<br>year<br>——— Equality principle in the constitution<br>===== Non-discrimination based on gender as constitutional principle<br><!-- End of picture text -->
The constitutional principle of equality is now recognized everywhere, except for the countries in our sample that do not have a constitution (e.g. UK and Jamaica). The principle of non-discrimination has climbed to over 60% (figure 1C). The interpretation of this latter variable, however, is not always straightforward. Some legal scholars argue it is not necessary if a constitution already has an equality clause; many high-income countries do not have a nondiscrimination clause. Indeed, the need to enumerate gender could even be interpreted as a sign of weakness; that doubts about the strength of the equality provisions in safeguarding women’s rights are what led to its inclusion. On the other hand, having this principle included provides additional legal tools to argue against statutes seen as potentially discriminatory.

The last figure (figure 1D) depicts countries’ approaches to legal pluralism. Recognition of customary law has been growing since 1960 and to a lesser extent so has recognition of religious law. Some of this reflects the inclusion of new countries post-1960 that included such a provision in their constitution at the time of independence. However, the emphasis here is whether customary and/or religious law – recognized as prevailing over issues of property, marriage and inheritance – is exempt from non-discrimination protections.

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<!-- Start of picture text --> Constitutional approach to legal pluralism<br>Ww<br>N<br>n<br>5%<br>=<br>a]<br>fo}<br>ow<br>co. _ an an ore<br>a 67 MN \--<br>sh a<br>1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010<br>year<br>—— Recognize and limit customary law<br>—---—- Recognize without limit customary law<br>— —-—-- Recognize and limit religious law<br>vovenees Recognize without limit religious law<br><!-- End of picture text -->
the state of rights in those countries. Of the 100 countries that are included, there are some gaps in early years or pre-independence. However, by 2010, only Niger’s laws regarding property rights to unmarried men and women could not be located.

**Table 1 : Regional and Income Representation of Countries (1960)**

||**Number of**||**Quartiles of Initial**|**Income Levels**||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Region**|**Countries**|**Lowest**|**Lower Middle**|**Upper Middle**|**Upper**|
|**EAP**|12|5|3|3|1|
|**ECA**|10|0|4|6|0|
|**LAC**|15|0|1|11|3|
|**MENA**|8|0|5|3|0|
|**OECD**|17|0|0|2|15|
|**SAR**|5|5|0|0|0|
|**SSA**|33|16|14|2|1|
|**Total**|**100**|**26**|**27**|**27**|**20**|

# **Approach**

The legal indicators cover the period 1960-2010. The aim is to look at how changes in these indicators affect outcomes in women’s and girls’ economic opportunities, education, health, and empowerment. However, before analyzing the time dimension, we first start with the cross-country relationships between a large set of outcomes and each of the legal indicators. Table 2 presents the cross-country variation in the legal indicators and their association with outcomes. In each regression, each country appears once, generally in the year of its most recent household survey. Each of the legal indicators is entered in a separate regression, so each cell in Table 2 represents the results of different estimations.

A number of country characteristics are controlled for, including GDP per capita and the sectoral composition of the economy. The size of the agricultural, industry or service sectors can 14
have an independent impact on the prevalence of employment categories (e.g. wage employment tends to rise as the service sector expands; natural resource sectors often do not employ as many workers), and may also indicate the range of opportunities that are available in an economy.<sup>4</sup> Another control used is whether a country was in a recent conflict and the intensity of the conflict. Conflicts disrupt economic, health and education outcomes, particularly if they are on a large scale. However, the post-conflict era could mark an opportunity for reforms if there is a new constitution or as statutes are reformed. Whether this opportunity is taken by reformers to address gender gaps is an empirical question. The measures of conflict also have the benefit of covering the entire sample period. The rule of law is another control used, but not in all specifications as it is only available since 1985.<sup>5</sup> It is recognized that the probability of reform itself is not necessarily exogenous from all the outcomes of interest. Greater participation of women in paid employment may contribute to political pressures to reform laws, which then may further enable more women to pursue employment opportunities. More women in parliament may be associated with reforming statutes that give women greater property rights and legal capacity. The specification thus lags country characteristics; they are thus predetermined.

We examined different lag structures of one, five and ten years. The five-year lag is our preferred specification; all the legal indicators and country characteristics in the regression tables are lagged by five years. Some reforms are unlikely to lead to immediate large-scale responses. In many cases it may take a few years – for the information to become widely known and for

> 4 These measures of sectoral composition are available for all countries but Switzerland and Niger since 1994. In the 1960s coverage is not complete as some of the countries had not yet gained independence.  By 1970, almost 85% of the countries have the data available.

> 5 There are two sources for ‘rule of law’ indicators.  The one from ICRG goes back to 1985, but only covers up to 84 of the countries in our sample.  There is another source, the Global Governance Indicators, that covers all the countries, but only back until 1996.  In the cross-section results, we use the GGI version to maximize coverage, but with the longer time series we use both to test for the importance of either greater time or country coverage.

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people to then change their behavior. At the same time, too long a lag is likely to dilute the findings, particularly if other changes are also happening. Given many gender disaggregated outcome variables are only available in the 1990s and onwards, such a long lag structure would also restrict the ability to construct a meaningful panel for the analysis.

We then turn to the impact of changes in the legal indicators over time. Our preferred specification is a panel regression with country fixed effects that looks at how reforms within a country are associated with changes in the various outcomes. This approach holds all timeinvarying characteristics constant, decreasing the concern about omitted variable bias. We also include additional controls for country characteristics that do change over time, such as GDP per capita and whether the country is in a conflict, and we include a trend variable. Each of the legal indicators are then entered one at a time to test for the significance of strengthening women’s legal rights in that area on each of the outcomes. With the country fixed effect, the coefficient on the legal indicator is identified by changes in its value, i.e. by reforms, rather than by differences across countries. This provides the strongest test of the importance of these legal rights.

Yit = α + β1 Legal_indicatori,t-5 + β2 GDPper_capitai,t-5 + β3 agri_GDPi,t-5 + β4 services_GDPi,t-5 + β5 conflicti,t-5 + β6 conflict_intensityi,t-5 + β7 trend + β8 Country_dummies + vi,t-5 (1) This approach is taken for at least one key variable in each of the outcome categories. For economic opportunities, we look at women’s labor force participation. For education, we look at the ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education. For health, we look at infant mortality and women’s life expectancy. And for empowerment, we look at the age of first marriage and adolescent fertility.

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There are other outcome measures that can also be examined over time. However, the time-series coverage of these variables is not as extensive. Data may only be available for the last 20 years rather than closer to 50 years. This restricts the ability to identify some of the reforms, particularly with country fixed effects, as there are simply fewer reform episodes covered in 20 years versus 50 years. So, for the wider set of outcome variables we look at shorter panels using random effects. We also aggregate the legal indicators. We combine the individual legal indicators according to their group, resulting in three measures: property rights, legal capacity and constitutional rights. These measures capture more reform episodes, making it easier to identify impacts – although the results cannot tell which sub-component is driving the results.

It is also possible that the effectiveness of legal reforms varies across countries. It may be that the benefit of having equal property rights or legal capacity is only realized if a country is already reasonably developed, or where the rule of law is sufficiently established. Alternatively, it may be that having some rights formally recognized is particularly important when the rule of law is otherwise weak. We explore if the impact of legal reforms is non-linear, whether the strength of the rule of law or a country’s level of development affects how the legal rights translate into outcomes.

# **Results**

_Cross-country analysis_ Table 2 provides the basic cross-country results for each of the legal variables separately, for each of 25 outcome variables. The outcome variables are grouped by theme, with the definitions and sources used listed in the appendix. Looking at the first category, ‘employment’ it 17
is striking the association between equal property rights, particularly with regard to inheritance and joint titling, with increased labor force participation, greater employment outside of agriculture and into wage work. Particularly in low-income countries, women are disproportionately underrepresented in wage employment, a gap that tends to close with income. Stronger property rights appear to reinforce this transition into wage employment. Measures of greater legal capacity are also associated with improved employment outcomes, both for labor force participation more generally and for wage work more specifically. The correlations for the self-employed are generally the same but of the opposite sign than for wage employment. As these are two largest categories of the employed, it is natural that there is some substitution between the two types of work.

On the other hand, somewhat surprisingly, unmarried and married property rights are negatively associated with women being employers. However, with a small number of countries in the cross-section that do not recognize equal rights to immovable property for unmarried men and women, the result is not necessarily generalizable to historical relationships.

Regarding constitutional principles, non-discrimination (as a clause in the constitution, and for limiting religious law) is associated with higher labor force participation, nonagricultural employment and being an employer.

The second category includes the education outcomes. There are fewer significant associations here; not needing permission to work is positively associated with three of the four outcomes and property rights with two. Limiting religious law to conform to non-discrimination principles is associated with higher primary school enrollment, but lower tertiary enrollment. This is due in part from the contribution of countries in the Middle East and North Africa that 18
have very high rates of women in tertiary education and are more likely to recognize religious law without restricting it.

There are many beneficial health outcomes that are significantly associated with smaller gaps in gender rights. Measures of women’s life expectancy – as a level and relative to men – are significantly related to all three categories of rights. The negative associations are where either customary or religious law is formally recognized. Another outcome strongly associated with women’s legal rights is access to contraceptives. As much as any particular reform may contribute, this is likely reflects a more open view of women’s roles in society.

Among the outcomes where lower values indicate better outcomes (i.e. the shaded columns), both maternal and infant mortality fall with better property rights and greater legal capacity. Recognition of customary law, however, has a positive sign, indicating that mortality rates are higher where customary law prevails. Recall, the results cannot be interpreted as causal; they are associations in the data, controlling for a number of other explanatory variables.

The fourth set of outcomes provides additional measures of women’s empowerment. Indicators from all three sets of legal rights are significantly associated with higher rates of women in parliament. Similar patterns hold for the share women among senior officials and managers, although there are some negative associations with some of the legal capacity indicators, driven again by the smaller number of countries with this outcome variable that also have these constraints on the books. Again, the variables that come in strongly negative are ones represented in the cross section by very few countries. In terms of women’s access to finance, whether simply to a bank account or to a loan, legal capacity matters, as do measures of property rights.

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The final column is shaded, to indicate that for this outcome, lower values reflect better outcomes. Thus negative signs should be interpreted as reforms helping improve the outcome. The indicator is drawn from DHS surveys regarding domestic violence and the share of women who could face a beating for arguing, refusing sex or burning the food. The country coverage is low, but both equal inheritance and non-exemption of customary law are associated with lower rates of women fearing being beaten.

# _Time series analysis_

For the series with the longest time series dimension, Table 3 looks at the effect of reforms of each legal indicator.<sup>6</sup> The same set of controls is again included. We also allowed for non-linear effects by income. It should be noted that some of the coefficients are quite large, with offsetting interaction effects. This reflects that there is a sizeable variation in the outcome variables across countries – including those with and without reforms. The claim is not that strengthening women’s rights on its own will automatically lead to large improvements in outcomes; but there are significant differences on average between countries with and without gender gaps in rights, controlling for a number of time-varying and non-varying country characteristics.

In terms of women’s labor force participation, there are differential effects by level of income; the effect of the reforms in raising labor force participation is almost always stronger in middle- and upper-level-income countries. The inflection point comes in close to the median of the sample; so the beneficial impacts are relevant for a large number of countries. At the median

> 6 There is no time series dimension available on the variables measuring women’s access to bank accounts or loans; the coverage of the share of women as senior officials and managers is likewise thin and there is no repeating information on the measure of domestic violence.  The coverage of female infant mortality is less extensive than of infant mortality overall, so we look at the latter measure in the panel analysis. The same is true of ‘the age of first marriage’ compared to ‘the share of 18 year olds who are married.’

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income, an increase of income of one standard deviation would raise women’s labor force participation 2.1% percentage points higher for countries with equal inheritance for wives and husbands than countries where wives do not have the same inheritance rights. Or, for countries at the 75% percentile of income, those that do not require permission for wives to open bank accounts on average have women’s labor force participation that is 2.62% higher. For employment in the non-agricultural sector, the more limited time dimension means that only the regressions on inheritance spanned a sufficient number of reforms. For both indicators, the impact of closing the gender gap in inheritance is associated with an increase in the share of women working outside of agriculture. The effect is positive, with only a very small interaction term that would reduce the effect only at the very upper end of the income distribution.

For education, the effects are strongest for primary enrollment, particularly regarding property and inheritance rights. The effects of reform are generally positive, with a negative interaction term indicating the effect is lower as incomes rise. Expanding women’s legal capacity and protecting non-discrimination principles are also generally associated with higher ratios of girls enrolled; again with the effect the strongest in lower-income countries. For example, at the 25<sup>th</sup> percentile of income, countries that give sons and daughters equal inheritance rights on average have a 6.4 percentage point higher ratio of girls to boys in primary enrollment. The pattern for secondary enrollment is similar, although not always statistically significant. However, for tertiary education the interaction terms with income often flip signs. Whereas legal reforms tend to have the most impact in raising primary education in lowerincome countries, they tend to contribute to higher rates of women in tertiary education in higher-income countries. For the age of first marriage, the effect of legal reforms in raising the age of marriage is greater in higher-income countries. This is true for property rights and legal 21
capacity, as well as safeguards that invalidate customary and/or religious law that discriminate based on gender. For health, we look at infant mortality (overall, not gender disaggregated). The impacts of reforms helping lower infant mortality are most significant with indicators of property rights and inheritance. And the effects of closing the legal gender gaps are more beneficial at lower levels of income. At the 25<sup>th</sup> percentile of income, recognizing women as the head of household is associated on average with a decline in infant mortality of 9.3 deaths per 1000 live births; at the 10<sup>th</sup> percentile the decline is 12.3.

Table 4 then looks at whether there are also differential impacts of reforms by the strength of the rule of law. As this measure is only available for 83 of the 100 countries, it reduces the sample and thus the potential number of reforms spanned by the data. As a result, the list of outcomes is shorter, as is the number of legal indicators with sufficient changes in the time period covered. For women’s labor force participation, the variables that have non-linear impacts by rule of law are unmarried women and men’s property rights, and the recognition and limitations on customary and religious law. In all three cases, the greater equality of rights appears to have a stronger association with women’s labor force participation where the rule of law is otherwise weak. For education, the non-linear effects are most apparent in secondary school. Property rights measures are associated with higher girls’ enrolment where the rule of law is stronger; but the effect is the opposite for inheritance rights where the effect of reforms seems stronger where the rule of law is stronger. The signs are often the same for primary and tertiary education, but the coefficients are not significant. For infant mortality, the effects are also most beneficial where the rule of law is stronger. The same pattern also holds for life expectancy (note: the signs are actually opposite as improvements in infant mortality imply 22
declining rates, while improvements in life expectancy imply rising rates), although often not at statistically significant levels.

Table 5 then looks at additional outcome variables that have a sufficient time dimension to span legal reform periods. One of the challenges here is that the data on the outcomes of interest are not always available going back more than 10-20 years, depending on the series, and some, e.g. infant mortality, are not gender disaggregated until relatively recently. For those series with a relatively short time span, they often span an insufficient number of reforms to be able to identify an effect. As a solution, we group the legal indicators into the three categories of property rights, legal capacity and constitutional principles of non-discrimination. Each outcome is again run separately on each of the three sets of legal rights. The same controls (lagged 5 years) are included, GDP per capita, the sectoral composition of the economy, whether it had been in a conflict and the conflict’s intensity, and a year dummy as the same indicator is not necessarily available for all countries in the same year. As the lengths of the panels vary by outcome variable, the regressions will cover differ numbers of reforms, so the comparisons across outcomes should take into account the length of reform periods being examined.

For employment, equal property rights are associated with more women working outside of agriculture. However, it is the measure of stronger legal capacity that is most associated with a higher share of women in wage work, and lower shares of women in vulnerable and selfemployment. As one of the sub-indicators within legal capacity is whether a husband can deny his wife permission to work, this correlation makes sense. However, the results on nondiscrimination are more surprising, being associated with lower wage work and more vulnerable employment and self-employment.

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For health outcomes, female wasting is lower where property rights are stronger. There are also some non-linear effects at work; both stronger property rights and legal capacity have a stronger association with lower female wasting in lower-income countries. The same is true for maternal mortality, with rates falling the most in lower-income countries with stronger rights for women across all three categories. For access to contraceptives, stronger property rights and legal capacity are associated with greater access, particularly in lower-income countries. However, for non-discrimination, the effect is greater in higher-income countries.

All three sets of legal rights are highly significantly associated with the share of women in parliament. Greater legal rights can help empower women to run for office and to have more of the population recognize women as leaders. It is also true that the share of women in parliament is also associated with more reforms to close gender gaps. The relationship thus appears to run both ways, and there are no apparent non-linear effects by income.

# **Conclusion**

Over the past 50 years, there has been tremendous progress made in closing many of the gender gaps in formal property rights and legal capacity. Change is possible. But it is not complete. And progress has been uneven – across countries and across types of legal constraints to give women equal legal capacity and property rights as men.

Enshrining equal rights for women in the law is heralded as having intrinsic value. But there is also a case to be made that there is instrumental value too, that removing gender gaps in these rights will enable women to pursue greater opportunities thereby raising incomes and productivity. The paper examines the evidence on the strengthening of women’s economic legal rights on girls’ education, health outcomes, women’s employment (particularly in wage 24
employment and as employers), and women’s participation in elected office. While the effects cannot be interpreted as causal, the correlations are often strong – both across countries and within countries over time. The benefits of the reforms show signs of having differential effects by income and rule of law across different types of legal indicators. For raising girls’ primary and secondary education, and for lowering infant mortality, the benefits of reforms appear strongest for lower-income countries with relatively weaker rule of law. For employment outcomes, reforms are associated with greater women’s labor force participation and employment outside of agriculture in higher-income countries.

More work needs to be done to provide women with equal legal protections in more countries; this paper provides evidence that the benefits can be realized not just by individuals, but in contributions to broader development outcomes too.

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