Conceptualizing and measuring dimensions of tenure security: Gendered analysis from Malawi, Bangladesh, and Nepal

Women’s property rights and tenure security are recognized as critical for development policy and practice. Yet there is no consensus on how to conceptualize or measure these concepts. In this paper, we explore the relationships between perceived tenure security, as reported by survey respondents, with documentation and the bundle of rights that are often used to define property ownership. We use data from the pilot of the Women’s Empowerment Metrics for National Statistics (WEMNS) in Malawi, Nepal, and Bangladesh on both agricultural land and housing. The land rights module was designed to match indicators being collected to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Similar questions were asked regarding the dwelling. Regression results find few associations between perceived tenure security and property rights (holding individual or sole land rights, having your name on a document, and holding rights to sell and bequeath). We thus use Sankey diagrams to visualize these relationships. In Malawi, two-thirds of those without documents, both men and women, are tenure secure. In Bangladesh, over half of the respondents are landless and thus do not have tenure security. Two-thirds of Bangladeshi women respondents in landed households report that they are tenure secure, in spite of not having their own names on the documents. In Nepal, we find a high level of both property ownership (90 percent) and tenure security (80 percent). The patterns differ across contexts and between land and housing. The results confirm that the documentation of rights and having sole or joint rights are important but should not be conflated with tenure security.