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Women’s land ownership and participation in decision-making about reproductive health in Malawi

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Abstract

Given the centrality of land to rural livelihoods and the high rates of fertility in Africa, there is a need for more research that explores the intersection between gendered patterns of land ownership and reproductive health outcomes. Drawing on a household bargaining framework, I hypothesize that women’s land ownership should be associated with increases in women’s decision-making in multiple domains in the household including financial decision-making (the focus of bargaining literature), but also decision-making about reproductive health. Using the 2010 Malawi Demographic Health Survey (DHS), I find women’s ownership of land (sole or joint) is associated with increases in women’s participation in financial decision-making in the household and women’s sole ownership of land is associated with increases in women’s participation in reproductive health decision-making. However, women’s joint ownership of land with spouses is negatively associated with participation in reproductive health decision-making, perhaps because of backlash or intra-household conflict.

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Notes

  1. Landowners can sell produce generated on land, enter into contract farmer arrangements with larger producers, rent land to tenants for profit, use land as collateral, or even sell land in times of financial hardship, although there is always uncertainty in agricultural production in drought-prone Malawi.

  2. These are slightly different figures than in Doss et al. (2015) due to the different analytical samples.

  3. I include indicators for all ethnic groups that comprise at least 10% of the population; all other ethnic groups are coded as other.

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Acknowledgements

The paper uses publically available de-identified data collected by ICF international, which received all appropriate ethical approvals. I am grateful to Jere Behrman for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Doctoral student, Department of Sociology, New York University, 295 Lafayette Ave, 4th floor, New York, NY, 10012, USA

    Julia Andrea Behrman

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  1. Julia Andrea Behrman
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Correspondence to Julia Andrea Behrman.

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Behrman, J.A. Women’s land ownership and participation in decision-making about reproductive health in Malawi. Popul Environ 38, 327–344 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-017-0272-4

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