What's in a name? Property titling and women's empowerment in Benin

Abstract

Women’s empowerment is not just an end in itself, but also yields important development outcomes. For example, children of empowered women are healthier and enjoy greater nutrition. However, the factors influencing women’s empowerment in Benin are not well explored. To our knowledge this study is the first to investigate the determinants of women’s empowerment in Benin, with a focus on property titling. Including women’s names on titles is an important step towards gender equality and should be considered given Benin’s recent titling efforts. Land reform that lacks gender inclusivity may disempower women. Using probit, partial proportional odds models, and extended probit models which allow for endogenous treatment effects, our results show that women that possess a property title with their name on it are more empowered. For example, women with property titles that include their names are 44 % more likely to be involved in decisions on large household purchases than women that have a title without their name or no title at all. Our results also indicate that older, wealthier, and employed women are more empowered, while women in polygamous unions are disempowered.