Carmen Diana Deere Gender and Assets Workshop, World Bank

1. Land ownership and farm management in Ecuador: Egalitarian family farming systems and gendered constraints Carmen Diana Deere Gender and Assets Workshop, World Bank Jennifer Twyman June 14, 2012

2. Objective • Determine if female landowners are also the farm managers. • Not typically addressed, but… • Assumed that owners and managers are the same. • Research Questions: • Is the form of land ownership (individual vs. joint) related to whether women participate in decision-making? • What other factors are associated with women landowners’ participation in decisions regarding their own plots?

3. Land Ownership & Farm Management: Honduras & Nicaragua Percent of Households reporting… • Issues • Definitions • Principal decision-maker • Land rights • Unit of analysis • Household, farm, parcel Source: Deere, Alvarado & Twyman 2012

4. Data: 2010 Ecuador Household Asset Survey (n=2,892) Household Questionnaire Individual Questionnaire • Interviewed husband & wife together when possible • Household member registry • Assets inventory • Household level characteristics and experiences • Interviewed husband and wife separately • Participation in decisions • Financial assets • Marital & inheritance regimes—legal knowledge

5. Data: Form of Ownership • 12.4% of households reported owning land • 513 parcels

6. Data: Agricultural Decision Questions • Who in the household made the decision on what to plant? • Who made the decision on what inputs to use? • If some of the harvest was sold, who made the decision on how much to sell? • Who decided how to spend the money generated from the sale?

7. Data: Sample Size & Cultivation Decision Women’s Responses Woman’s Participation in the Cultivation Decision • Partnered women • 228 parcels • Owned by women and • A household member works land

8. Models • Modeled each decision separately • Binary dependent variable logistic regression models • Wife participates= 1 • Otherwise = 0 • Key Variables of interest: • Form of Land Ownership (individual v. joint) • Wife’s share of couple’s wealth • Off-farm employment • Fieldwork

9. Results—Form of Land Ownership • Women who are joint owners are more likely than individual owners to participate in the decision about what to plant. (Odds ratio: 3.85)

10. Results—Wife’s share of couple’s wealth

11. How wife’s share and odds of wife participating in input use decision Min Odds (0.51), wife’s share = 0.51

12. How wife’s share and odds of wife participating in input use decision Min Odds (0.51), wife’s share = 0.51

13. Results—Off-farm Employment • Off-farm employment is not statistically significant; it is not related to wife’s participation in agricultural decision-making.

14. Results—Fieldwork • Wives who participate in fieldwork on the parcel are more likely to participate in the decision-making than wives who do not do fieldwork. • If the husband participates in fieldwork, women are less likely to participate in the decision-making than when the husband does not do fieldwork.

15. Results—Other Variables

16. Results—Model Statistics

17. Conclusions • Majority of women landowners in Ecuador participate in the agricultural decisions • Participation in fieldwork is highly correlated with women’s participation in decision-making • Positively related to women’s participation in fieldwork • Negatively related to men’s participation in fieldwork • No correlation between off-farm work and women’s participation in agricultural decision-making

18. Conclusions • Joint land owners more likely than individual owners to participate in cultivation decision. • Important to exert her land rights if less secure than individual ownership? • Wife’s share of couple’s wealth was negatively related to her participation in input decision • Is she choosing in which decisions to participate? Does not choose agriculture. • Future work • Do same analysis with men’s responses—can examine women who own jointly in comparison to wives who do not own land • Explore the relationship between wife’s share of wealth and agricultural decision-making

19. Thank You!

20. Who are the farmers? • Household head • What about women within dual/male-headed households? • Landholder • Makes most decisions • Best informed • Keeps revenue from crops • Various people within the household?

21. Gender Analyses • Productivity (and/or efficiency) • Typically by plot • Sometimes by head of household • Does type of decision matter? • Gender roles & responsibilities • Size of landholdings? • Women participate more on small farms? • Important to ask about specific decisions, o.w. typically response is male household head. • Regional differences in women’s participation

22. Data: Input Use Decision Women’s Participation in Input Use Decision n = 164

23. Data: Selling & Spending Decisions Women’s Participation in Selling Decision Woman’s Participation in Spending Decision n = 115

24. Descriptive Stats—Continuous Variables Explanatory Variables

25. Explanatory Variables Descriptive Stats—Categorical Variables

26. How wife’s share and odds of wife participating in cultivation decision Min Odds (12.5), wife’s share = 0.59

27. Results—Age

28. Results—Education

29. Results—Type of Relationship

30. Results—Children Under 6 in Household

31. Results—Location

32. Results—Ethnicity

33. Results—Model Statistics