Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Executive summary
9
Ensuring female
property and
inheritance
rights would
help empower
women both
economically
and socially
and rectify a
fundamental
injustice
the upfront costs of these fuel sources (such as the cost of an LPG stove or
cylinder) will also reduce costs.
Increasing women’s participation in the design and implementation of
infrastructure projects can help to overcome obstacles to access and affordability.
This is best illustrated in the sanitation and water sector, where women
play key roles as users and managers. As primary collectors of water, women
have key information about such issues as seasonal availability from various
sources, water quality, and individual and communal rights to those sources.
If incorporated in project design, this information could also improve project
outcomes. There is strong evidence from community water and sanitation
projects that projects designed and run with the full participation of women
are more sustainable and effective than those that ignore women.
Adapting modern science and technology to meet the infrastructure needs
of poor people in a way that builds on the knowledge and experience of women
and is accessible and affordable to all is therefore a development priority.
Strategic priority 4: guarantee women’s and girls’ property and
inheritance rights
Ownership and control over assets such as land and housing provide economic
security, incentives for taking economic risks that lead to growth, and
important economic returns, including income. Yet, women in many countries
around the globe are far less likely than men to own or control these important
assets. Ensuring female property and inheritance rights would help empower
women both economically and socially and rectify a fundamental injustice.
Rectifying this injustice will also have other positive outcomes because women’s
lack of property has been increasingly linked to development-related problems,
including poverty, HIV/AIDS, and violence.
Secure tenure to land and home improves women’s welfare. Land and
home ownership confer such direct benefits as use of crops and rights to the
proceeds thereof and having a secure place to live. Indirect advantages include
the ability to use land or houses as collateral for credit or as mortgageable assets
during a crisis.
Beyond the direct economic impact, assets in the hands of women have
other welfare impacts. Land ownership can act as a protective factor for women
against domestic violence. Research in Kerala, India, found that 49 percent of
women with no property reported physical violence, whereas only 7 percent of
women with property reported physical violence, controlling for a wide range
of factors. Some studies found that in societies where husbands control most
household resources, as in Bangladesh, expenditures on children’s clothing and
education were higher and the rate of illness among girls was lower in households
where women owned assets than in households where women did not.
In addition to welfare gains, gender-equal land rights can enhance productive
efficiency. Land title can serve as collateral, improving women’s access to