Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Guarantee women’s property and inheritance rights
85
Joint titling
Land titling is often suggested as a solution to gender disparities in land rights. 9
While titling and formal registration are not the only way to provide women
with access to land, where it exists, men and women should both be able to
acquire title, individually or jointly. 10
Joint titling helps to guard against capricious actions by one spouse; protects
against the dispossession of women through abandonment, separation,
or divorce; and increases women’s bargaining power in household and farm
decisionmaking. Joint titling can be mandatory or voluntary for legally married
couples. Mandatory joint titling provides the most secure land rights for
women. Rights are established in civil law, through co-ownership rules. In
practice, proof of marriage and sometimes proof of commingling of household
resources may be required. 11 Voluntary joint titling is less secure and requires
significant education of women, registration personnel, legal services, and
other actions.
In Latin American and the Caribbean a major advance has been joint adjudication
and titling of land to couples (Deere and Leon 2003). During 1988–
95 five countries (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua)
passed agrarian legislation for joint adjudication or titling of land to couples. In
countries where mechanisms of inclusion have been adopted and implemented,
women have benefited to a greater extent than they have from previous agrarian
reforms (Deere and Leon 2003). This was also the case in Viet Nam, which
revised its marriage and family law in 2001 to require joint titling for land and
other family assets (box 6.3).
Box 6.3
Joint titling
improves women’s
access to land
in Viet Nam
Source: Prosterman and
Hanstad 2003; Ravallion
and van de Walle 2004;
World Bank 2002d.
As part of the transition to a market-oriented economy, Viet Nam has instituted a series of
land reforms. Although the government remains the sole owner of land, under a 1993 law
granting use rights for up to 20 years individuals can transfer, exchange, mortgage, and
bequest their use rights. Initially, the land tenure certificates issued to households had
space for only one signature. As a result, the certificates typically bore the signature of the
male head of the household. Women could claim their rights only in the presence of their
husbands or male relatives and could lose their rights in case of divorce or death.
In 2001 the marriage and family law was revised so that both spouses’ signatures are
required on any documents registering family assets and land use rights. The government
aims to achieve universal joint titling by 2005.
In cooperation with the World Bank the Vietnamese government selected two communes
for a pilot project to reissue land title certificates with joint signatures. The project
organized village meetings and distributed leaflets about the new law. As a result of the
pilot, some 2,600 households now have joint titles. A 2002 evaluation by the World Bank
concluded that the project also:
• Enabled the establishment of a gender-responsive land administration system.
• Improved the ability of local governments to implement land reform.
• Enabled local practices to comply with national law.
• Disseminated knowledge on national law in remote communities.