Ensuring Women’s Access to Assets

1. Ensuring Women’s Access to Assets Cheryl Doss Yale University

2. Importance of Assets • Productive assets allow escape from poverty • Assets reduce vulnerability to economic shocks • Asset ownership can be empowering

3. Women need access to assets • Women are overrepresented among the poor and vulnerable • Women use assets differently from men • Women may not have access to assets owned by men, even men in their households

4. How do women acquire assets? • Marriage • Inheritance • Gifts and transfers • Market purchases • State or community distribution

5. Marital Regimes • Separation of property – assets are individually owned • Full community property – all assets are pooled, if marriage dissolves, assets split • Partial community property – assets acquired before marriage remain individually owned, assets acquired during marriage are pooled

6. Advantages of different Regimes • Community property regimes recognize women’s contributions to the household; women own half of the marital property, even if they did not purchase it themselves • Separation of property rights regimes protect wives’ individual property

7. Inheritance Regimes • Partible vs. impartible inheritance • Degree of testamentary freedom • Rules for intestate inheritance • Inheritance rights of spouses • Inheritance regimes especially important under separation of property regimes

8. Implications • Need to be aware of the multiple ways that projects may impact women’s access to assets • To understand this, need to consider the intersection of marital and inheritance regimes, social norms and market forces.