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ecognized and common in Laos, and any property acquired within marriage throughout the country islegally considered as the joint property of both husband and wife (FAO 2012a; Mann & Luangkhot2008, pp.81-82). On the other hand, women’s inheritance is often transferred as “brideprice” and isthus dependent on marriage – “women are consistently disadvantaged with respect to land andproperty rights on divorce, widowhood, and remaining unmarried” – and in ethnic groups wherepatrilineal land tenure is practiced and women do not inherit the situation is worse (Mann &Luangkhot 2008, pp.24, 49). Management of village and communal land in Laos is also maledominated,through (usually male) village elders and also because of socio-cultural connectionsbetween customary tenure and spiritual practices in relation to this type of land (Ibid, pp.25-26).As joint ownership of property is recognized within marriage in Laos, in urban areas where systematicland titling has taken place, the names of both husband and wife have usually been recorded ondocuments. However the situation in rural areas is very different, as elaborated by one informant fromthe national government:A wife always refuses to have her name on the title due to traditional practices and thebelief that the husband will take care of her and the family. This is the majority ofcases, especially for ethnic minorities. Women never think about what would happen inthe case of divorce. More time and efforts are needed to raise women’s awareness…Inthe case of the parents’ death, the daughter sometimes does not accept her share of theproperty because of the traditional belief that a man will take care of her as a wife andof the family…Among the Hmong and hills ethnicities [Lao Soung and Lao Theung],most of the land and property will be given to sons only. Girls do not really dare to askfor it, even though they are supposed to have their share by law…Once I tried to speakto a young Hmong [Lao Soung] woman about this [putting her name on a landdocument], but she said ‘no I could not do so and our village leader would not agreewith that. This is our tradition.’On the other hand, these attitudes around gender and land are subject to change, as shown in onevillage studied by researchers investigating women’s property rights in Laos:While pointing out that men are the household heads, Hmong [Lao Soung] men andwomen stressed that the household head will be the person who is better at planningand managing household land and property. The team spoke to women who areacknowledged as cleverer than their husbands and whose names are the ones found onland and property documents (Mann & Luangkhot 2008, p.45).There is an active but largely informal urban land market in Laos and there are also land markets inrural areas – albeit more limited due to shortages of agricultural land (pushing up prices) and thepossibility of independently clearing forest land and/or seeking land allocations and concessions fromthe government instead of purchasing land (Wehrmann et al 2006; 2007, pp.12, 14-16; c.f. Mann &Luangkhot 2008, pp.43-44). In rural areas there is no Land Title and the best equivalent is a LandSurvey Certificate (LSC). However, most rural people who have formal documents have onlyregistered for a Temporary Land Use Certificate (TLUC) at the district level. A TLUC is legally validfor only three years and obliges holders to pay taxes, but it does not include the rights to sell,mortgage or claim compensation on expropriation. Other documents used to prove private landownership in rural areas of Laos include Land Tax Declarations (LTDs) – the most common landdocument in rural areas overall, with a high degree of tenure security and recognised as a base forcompensation – Land Tax Receipts, and Village Heads Certificates on Land Ownership. All three ofthese latter documents are often used to support claims to full disposal rights and compensation onexpropriation even though they all have limited legal validity beyond use rights (Schoenweger &Üllenberg 2009, pp10-11; Wehrmann et al. 2007, pp.5, 9-10, 25). However, as several informantsemphasized, the majority of rural people in Laos do not have formal documents for all or any of theirland, in order to avoid paying the taxes that registering their land would incur.16