This policy note summarizes research examining the medium-term impact of land registration in Ethiopia on household investment behavior, specifically in terms of the adoption of soil conservation techniques and tree planting. The research investigated whether men’s and women’s knowledge of their land rights—defined as tenure security, land transfer rights, and rights related to gender equity and inheritance—had an impact on their investment behavior.

In this paper, the relationship of women’s individual and joint property ownership and the level of women’s input into household decisionmaking is explored with data from India, Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania. In the three African countries, women with individual landownership have greater input into household decisionmaking than women whose landownership is joint; both have more input than women who are not landowners.

Although there is ample evidence of differences in how and where men and women acquire information, most research on learning and household decisionmaking only considers access to information for a single, typically male, household head. This assumption may be problematic in developing-country agriculture, where women play a fundamental role in farming. Using gender-disaggregated social network data from Uttar Pradesh, India, we analyze agricultural information networks among men and women.

Book chapter

An increasing body of research is focusing on the question of how poor agricultural households will both perceive and be affected by climate change. In view of its predicted effects, the need to identify effective adaptation strategies is urgent.

Progressive legislative actions in Uganda and Tanzania have improved women’s legal rights to land, however significant gender disparities persist in access, control, inheritance, and ownership of land at the grassroots level.

Project Note

This paper uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze the impact of Helen Keller International’s Enhanced-Homestead Food Production pilot program in Burkina Faso on women’s and men’s assets and on norms regarding ownership, use, and control of those assets. Even though men continue to own and control most land and specific assets in the study area, women’s control over and ownership of assets has started to change, both in terms of quantifiable changes as well as changes in people’s perceptions and opinions about who can own and control certain assets.

Gender equality is one of the ten core principles of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. This guide aims to assist in its implementation through the achievement of responsible gender-equitable governance of land tenure. The guide focuses on equity and on how land tenure can be governed in ways that address the different needs and priorities of women and men.

The effect of HIV/AIDS on Africa and the issues it creates for women in African societies, especially unmarried women, is a difficult one that will not soon go away. These two volumes [ The Land and Property Rights of Women and Orphans in the Context of HIV and AIDS : Case Studies from Zimbabwe, and Reclaiming Our Lives: HIV and AIDS, Women’s Land and Property Rights and Livelihoods in Southern and East Africa: Narratives and Responses] are important and useful additions to the literature of the problem and should be found in academic and research collections dealing with the topic

The report summarises the papers, presentations and discussions of a workshop on failures and achievements at securing women’s land rights. In particular, it addresses the following issues: Land rights and legal reforms,legal aid and land administration practice, women's land rights in an HIV/AIDS context,women's land rights from a food security and livelihoods context. Organised by the FAO and Oxfam, the workshop seeks to establish global and multi-sectoral alliances and multiple strategies as a means of breaking out of the present impasse in this matter.

This case study has been produced in response to a request made to the Evidence on Demand Helpdesk. The objective of the request was to provide a detailed case study on the evolution of land policy in Mozambique and provide the reader with insights into what is viewed as one of Africa’s most progressive land laws, recognising multiple forms of tenure.