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Date Added to
Site: 31st August 2005 |
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Short Summary
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| Title |
Are Wealth Transfers Biased Against Girls? Gender
Differences in Land Inheritance and Schooling Investment in Ghana's
Western Region |
| Author |
Quisumbing, A.R., Payongayong, E.M., and Otsuka,
K. |
| Publication
Date |
August 2004 |
| Publisher |
Food Consumption and Nutrition Division (FCND) |
| Volume |
Discussion Paper |
| Series |
186 |
| Donor |
International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI) |
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Short Summary |
This study attempts to analyse changing patterns
of land transfer and ownership, as well as school investments by gender
over three generations in customary land areas of Ghana's Western
Region. Traditional inheritance rules deny land ownership rights to
women. Yet the increase in the demand for women's labour due to the
expansion of labour intensive cocoa cultivation has created incentives
for husbands to give their wives and children land. Through this and
other gift mechanisms, women have increasingly acquired land, thereby
reducing the gender gap in land ownership. The gender gap in schooling
has also declined significantly, though it persists. Findings suggest
that changes to the increase in women's bargaining power are due to
the introduction of the agricultural technology for cocoa farming,
which has increased the demand for women's labour. This increasing
demand for female labour as land use intensifies has, in turn, increased
the transfer of land to wives and daughters. Such long-term changes
have been supported by the absence of strong parental discrimination
against daughters. Gender differences in schooling have been also
declining in Ghana's Western Region, primarily because of declining
social discrimination. Although the social and economic forces underlying
such changes were not analysed as part of the study, a possible explanation
is that building schools in remote villages and increasing non-farm
employment opportunities for women have increased parental investments
in daughters' schooling. |
| Summary Source |
adapted from abstract and paper |
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