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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Arts and Humanities

Santa Clara University

Series

Burkina Faso

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray Jan 1999

A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Gendered social norms and institutions are important determinants of agricultural activities in southwestern Burkina Faso. This paper argues that gendered land tenure, in particular, has effects on equity and efficiency. The usual view of women as holders of secondary, or indirect, rights to land must be supplemented by a more nuanced understanding of tenure. Women's rights are in fact considerably more complex than the simple right to fields from their husbands. First, women's rights to property obtained from men may be coupled with other rights and obligations. In many ethnic groups, women have share rights to the harvest of their …


Extra-Household Norms And Intra-Household Bargaining: Gender In Sudan And Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane Apr 1998

Extra-Household Norms And Intra-Household Bargaining: Gender In Sudan And Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane

Economics

This paper argues that future empirical strategies for approaching the problem of deepening relative poverty for women in sub-Saharan Africa might focus on distinguishing and weighing two complementary determinants of the process. One determinant is the changing distribution of intra-household bargaining power. The other determinant is the changing constellation of social norms that constrain and regulate the economic activities of women. The paper shows how fruitful this dichotomization may be in the context of an analysis of women's economic activities in western Sudan and south-western Burkina Faso. In western Sudan the military regime deliberately brought about changes, at the very …