Explaining the Gender Gap: Women and Land Titling in Kenya

• In Event: Land and Politics in Africa

Abstract

Development scholars and practitioners acknowledge the transformative potential in formalizing the land rights of women as a means of political and economic empowerment. Yet across much of the Global South, women’s land rights are significantly weaker than their male counterparts. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), women constitute only 18 percent of all agricultural landowners. Explanations for this gender gap focus on the role of discriminatory gender rules and norms, particularly around inheritance and marital rules, as well as disparities in education and literacy. Indeed, national laws and practices may help explain why women in some countries have stronger rights than women in others. We know far less, however, about why women’s tenure security might vary sub-nationally.

We examine this question drawing on data from Kenya’s recent land titling program. Between 2013-2017, the Kenyan government issued 3.2 million title deeds to individual households. Yet despite constitutional provisions guaranteeing women the right to own property, only 10 percent of these title deeds were issued to women. There is, however, striking sub-national variation. While in some counties, women represented over 50% of title deed recipients, they constituted less than 3 percent of recipients in others. As a way of explaining this variation, we combine data on the individual recipients of title deeds along with a number of local-level variables that might help account for the differences in titling we observe. Preliminary analysis suggests that conventional explanations, such as an area’s urbanization, primary religion, level of education, ethnic composition, poverty, and primary agricultural commodity do not account for much of the observable variation. Instead, we hypothesize that women are more likely to acquire land rights in spaces where there is greater female political representation, and where there is longer history of women’s organizing and participation in local politics, which we measure by the number of and membership in women’s self-help groups and the number of local elected seats held by women. This paper aims to contribute to theories of property rights, economic development, and gender politics, highlighting the local institutional factors that enable or restrain the economic and political rights of women.

Authors

• Mai Omer Hassan, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Kathleen Klaus, Uppsala University