Gatekeeping Women’s Property Rights: Evidence from a Land Titling Program in Urban Mozambique

While governments and development agencies have prioritised formalising property rights over the past few decades, evidence on the gendered impacts of these efforts – particularly in urban and peri-urban settings – remains limited. This article builds on a large-scale land formalisation intervention in Mozambique to examine how documentation is associated with individual-level outcomes for women and men. Drawing on cross-sectional endline survey data from 850 matched husband-wife pairs as part of a broader impact evaluation, and complemented by focus group discussions, we examine associations between women’s inclusion on formal land documents and reported decision-making power and land rights. Because intrahousehold dynamics were not measured at baseline, we do not make causal claims. However, we show women were rarely listed on household documents during program implementation and, while women explicitly named on documents report greater decision-making power and stronger perceived rights over household land, the most vulnerable women were least likely to be listed. We argue that household-level gatekeeping and prevailing gender norms shaped both who was documented and how documentation relates to intrahousehold outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of implementation design for gender-equitable land reform and caution that omitting women’s names when formalising land rights may reinforce existing inequalities.