Norwegian University of Life Sciences 1

Joint Land Certification and Intra-

household Decision-making:

Towards Empowerment of Wives? Stein T. Holden and Sosina Bezu

Centre for Land Tenure Studies /

School of Economics and Business

NMBU, Ås, Norway

www.steinholden.com

http://www.steinholden.com/

Joint Land Certification and Intra-

household Decision-making:

Towards Empowerment of Wives?

• Study in Ethiopia

• Funding by

–Research Council of Norway

–GLTN, UN-Habitat (2007 survey)

• Data: Panel household survey

–Data from 2007 and 2012 (~620 households) from 20

communities in 5 districts in Oromia and SNNP

regions

–Social experiments 2012

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Joint land certification of husbands and wives

in Southern Ethiopia: Example certificate:

3

Women – from being the

“property” of men

to becoming equal

co-owner of

land?

How

has this

reform influenced

women’s position

in the household?

Women have a particularly weak position

in relation to land in Southern Ethiopia

• Holden and Tefera (2008). From Being Property of Men to

Becoming Equal Owners? UN-Habitat report.

– Evidence of weak position of women related to land:

• Patri-lineal system, women move to husband’s

village/home upon marriage

• Arranged marriages where girls/brides had little

influcence on marriage decisions, with bride prizes

• Widows are required to marry the brother (or other

relative) of the late husband or they have to leave

the land

• Kidnapping marriages quite common in the past

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Polygamy is common in Southern Ethiopia,

here a man with his three wives

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Correspondence of stated

marriage type by spouses

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Marriage type: females’ responses

Marriage type:

males’ responses Parental

arrange

ment

Parental

and bride

agree-

ment

Love

marri-

age

Wife

ex-

change

Kidnap-

ping

marri-

age

Total

Parental arrangement

60 7 11 1 4 83

Parental and bride

agreement 14 81 7 1 3 106

Love marriage 11 12 132 0 11 166

Wife exchange 0 1 2 5 0 8

Kidnapping marriage 1 1 2 0 18 22

Total 86 102 154 7 36 385

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Oromia and SNNP Regions:

Impacts of Joint Land Certification

• Indicator of women’s empowerment:

–Extent of participation in a set of land-

related decisions, including crop choice

and land renting decisions, and whether

wives’ participation in such decisions has

led to a change in the decisions

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Effects of land certification on

household decision-making

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Husbands’

responses

Wives’

responses

Responses in 2012 Numb

er

% Numb

er

%

More discussion on land renting decision 115 21.6 103 20.5

More discussion on crop choice 212 39.8 236 47.0

More discussion on work division on each

plot

52 9.8 50 10.0

More discussion on investment decisions such

as tree planting

69 12.9 51 10.2

More discussion on construction of houses on

the land

55 10.3 49 9.8

More discussion on giving land to children 20 3.8 13 2.6

Total 533 100 502 100

Wives’ stated preferences for

strengthened women’s land rights:

Wives’ Attitude Index

• Generated from the response to three questions:

–Wife can deny husband to rent out land = 1, = 0

otherwise;

–Wife expects joint land certificate = 1, = 0

otherwise;

–Wife expects equal sharing of land upon divorce =

1, = 0 otherwise;

• Aggregate index of wives' attitude is the sum of the

above three variables

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Husbands' preference for

traditional position of women:

Husband s’ Attitude Index

• Widow should not be allowed to marry outside the

family of the late husband = 1, = 0 otherwise;

• Widow should marry brother of late husband =1, = 0

otherwise

• Husband decides if disagreement between husband

and wife =1, = 0 otherwise

The index was created by summing the responses

to these three questions

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“Wives’ land rights attitudes”-

index distribution by year

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Note: Pearson chi2(3) = 141.3, Pr = 0.000 for difference

in distribution from 2007 to 2012.

Index score Stats 2007 2012 Total

0 Freq. 38 24 62 Percent 11.3 7.5 9.4

1 Freq. 43 7 50 Percent 12.8 2.2 7.6

2 Freq. 117 58 175 Percent 34.7 18.1 26.6

3 Freq. 139 232 371 Percent 41.3 72.3 56.4

Total Freq. 337 321 658

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“Husbands’ preference for traditional

position of women- index in 2012

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Index score Freq. Percent Cum.

0 115 35.8 35.8

1 122 38.0 73.8

2 70 21.8 95.6

3 14 4.4 100

Total 321 100

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Parsimonious models

Norwegian University of Life Sciences 13

Wives' land

rights

attitude

index

Husbands'

preference for

traditional position

of women index

Wives’ land-

related

empowerment

index

Attended land reform meeting 0.206*** -0.178* 0.135

Land certificate, dummy -0.088 0.051

Year dummy, =1 for 2012 0.723****

Wives' land rights attitude index 0.284****

Husbands' attitude index -0.108*

Community FE Yes Yes Yes

cut1 -1.037**** -0.081 -0.838***

cut2 -0.606*** 0.934**** 0.522**

cut3 0.337* 2.043**** 1.444****

Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000 0.000

Number of observations 1166 617 501

Factors affecting wives’ involvement in

land-related decisons

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Results from ordered probit models OP1 OP2 OP3

Wives' land rights attitude index 0.292**** 0.333**** 0.332****

Husbands' land rights attitude index -0.231*** -0.235*** -0.234***

Age of household head -0.001 -0.001 -0.001

Household size 0.015 0.031 0.028

Average education level in hh. 0.006 0.024 0.034

Male work force 0.054 0.039 0.034

Female work force -0.082 -0.090 -0.085

Farm size, ha -0.203 -0.243** -0.261**

Tropical livestock units 0.054* 0.049* 0.052*

Wife's name on certificate, dummy 0.205 0.282 0.253

Religion dummies, baseline= Muslim

Protestant -0.673**

Orthodox -0.695**

District fixed effects Yes

Village fixed effects No Yes Yes

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Social experiments

• Used to tease out the relationship

between husbands and wives

–Dictator games:

• Intra-household generosity

–Hawk-Dove games:

• Intra-household coordination,

cooperation and competition

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Husband and wife waiting for the outcome

of the coin toss: Dictator games

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How generous are spouses towards each other?

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Husbands and wives are about equally generous

More than 60% share equally with their spouse

Dictator game outcomes for

husbands and wives

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020

40

60

0 10 20 30 40 0 10 20 30 40

Husbands Wives

Pe

rce

nt

How much money allocated, EB

Graphs by Gender of player

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“Hawk and dove” games: Who is the boss in the household?

Wives are more hawkish than their husbands, while the

men are kinder than their reputation, but…

Large differences in “cooperative climate” across

households

Relation between experiments and land certificate?

20 Joint land certification has resulted in more involvement

of wives in land-related decisions

More and better cooperation (in HD games) between spouses

that have received joint land certificates

Hawk-Dove game outcomes for

husbands and wives

21

.2.3

.4.5

Pro

ba

bili

ty o

f p

layi

ng

Ha

wk

1 2 3 4 5 6Game number

95% CI Wives' average prob(Hawk)

95% CI Husbands' average prob(Hawk)

Stata command: qfitci

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Factors associated with hawkishness in

Hawk-Dove experiments

Norwegian University of Life Sciences Tittel på presentasjon 22

Models without separate asset

variables

Models with separate asset

variables

Husbands Wives Husbands Wives

Average education of hh members -0.137** 0.076 -0.167** 0.055

Age of male head 0.002 0.024** -0.016 0.025

Education of male head 0.071* -0.002 0.096** -0.007

Number of children not attending school 0.125 0.519** 0.179 0.523**

Has land certificate -0.938** -1.898**** -1.065* -2.033****

Number of Hawk by wife -0.326**** -0.258****

Number of Hawk by husband -0.474**** -0.381****

Marriage type dummies: Baseline: Arranged marriage

Arranged marriage with bride agreement 0.077 0.157 0.139 0.020

Love marriage 0.320 0.270 0.417 0.245

Exchange marriage -0.517 0.599 -0.547 0.446

Kidnapping marriage 1.181**** 1.326** 1.187*** 1.589*

Land brought to marriage by husband -0.039 0.010

Land brought to marriage by wife -0.390** 0.133

Husband's assets brought to marriage,

1000EB -0.039*** -0.048

Wife's assets brought to marriage, 1000EB 0.295**** -0.046

Tropical livestock units 0.082 0.094

Wife's share of livestock -0.993 -7.092**

Age difference husband-wife 0.034*** 0.000

Overall conclusion I

• We have found strong evidence that the Joint

land certification has:

–Strenthened land rights and awareness of

wives in male-headed households

–Resulted in stronger involvement in land-

related decisions

• We found evidence of mutual generosity

between spouses in dictator games

–Many supportive men!

• Hawk-Dove games indicated that many wives

dare to stand up and demand their rights 23

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Conclusions II

• We found substantial variation across communities in

the wives’ land rights attitude index pointing in

direction of substantial local variation in the social

processes that are likely to influence women’s

positions on these issues

• This may imply that provision of women’s name on

the certificates needs to be accompanied with further

awareness raising about their right according to the

law in areas where women and men still have weak

awareness of the law

• This may be an area where donor support also could

reduce the budgetary constraint that is faced

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Thank you for your attention!

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•Comments are welcome!

•Those of you interested in more details

can find relevant papers in the following

web sites:

•www.steinholden.com

•www.nmbu.no/clts

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http://www.steinholden.com/http://www.umb.no/clts

Generosity and social distance in

dictator game 26

The Ethiopian land reform has been successful in

Strengthening women’s land rights and position

within the household