ABSTRACT
Traditionally, land and property rights are conceptualised and measured using legal definitions. However, women are often prevented from exercising their legal rights, meaning that legal definitions can obscure women’s actual experiences. This leads to lower tenure security, which refers to the certainty that a person’s rights to land or property will be recognised and protected by others. Tenure security is considered a cornerstone of economic development, meaning that gender disparities can act as a significant barrier to women’s economic empowerment. In this chapter, we explore how subjective data on women’s perceptions can help provide more accurate way of analysing the security of women’s land and property rights. Analysis shows that although such data can be more meaningful in representing women’s experiences of tenure security, they are also more complex. It needs to be collected at the individual-level using a set of clear, consistent and precise survey instruments. These need to capture women’s future interests in land and the substantial threats they face from other members of the family or community, especially in events of spousal death and divorce. These lessons can help identify populations that are being denied land and property rights, and design appropriate policy interventions to secure women’s economic empowerment.
