Do chiefs foster gender inequality? Traditional political institutions and women’s empowerment in Africa

with Katharina Holzinger

Across Africa, many women live under traditional governance systems. Yet, there is limited systematic comparative evidence on how traditional political institutions impact gender equality and women’s empowerment. Existing qualitative case studies indicate that customary governance often marginalizes women, excluding them from decision-making processes and restricting their access to land. This study systematically tests how various traditional political arrangements affect gender inequalities across Africa. Using novel georeferenced data on traditional political institutions alongside individual-level information from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we concentrate on three key measures of women’s empowerment: household decision-making power, women’s literacy, and child marriage. Our findings indicate that women are less empowered in communities governed by strong traditional authorities, and in which customary rules play a central role in communities’ daily life. However, we also show  that the type of traditional arrangements matter. Specifically, in communities where customary authorities are held accountable to their ethnic group through mechanisms like councils or assemblies, women experience greater bargaining power within households, improved educational outcomes, and reduced risk of child marriage. These results highlight the need for a more nuanced view of the role of customary institutions in either promoting or preventing gender equality across African states. Based on our findings, we propose some policy recommendations on how to potentially increase the accountability and inclusiveness of traditional governance systems.  

Taming Opportunism? Droughts, Traditional Political Institutions, and Communal Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

with Valentin Geier

Studies suggest that the increasing occurrence of anomalous climate events, such as severe droughts, may exacerbate communal violence across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in pastoralist regions. At the same time, there is ample evidence that traditional institutions play a pivotal role in managing disputes and preventing conflict in many African societies. So far, their role has however received insufficient attention in research linking climate anomalies and communal violence. To address this gap, this paper investigates how the political centralization of traditional institutions moderates the impact of climate shocks on pastoralist violence—a prevalent and fatal form of communal violence. We argue that a low political centralization of customary institutions in drought-affected communities increases the likelihood of opportunistic attacks against neighboring communities. Concretely, droughts and their impacts on local economies may provide community members with a motive for the violent appropriation of resources, for instance, through cattle raiding, which decentralized traditional institutions may be less able to contain than more centralized ones. Political centralization is understood as (1) the concentration of authority over dispute resolution, security, and land management in traditional leaders; (2) the legitimacy of these leaders as conflict mediators within their communities; and (3) the recognition of authorities and customary rules by the state. Our analysis combines spatio-temporally disaggregated data on the territories of ethnic communities with new data on the political centralization of their traditional institutions as well as information on drought occurrence and pastoralist violence. Our quantitative analysis employs two-way fixed effects regression models.  

Women’s empowerment and climate adaptation: Do joint land titles promote food security of households facing extreme weather events in Tanzania?

with Niklas Hänze and Roos Haer

Promoting gender equality, climate change adaptation and food security are major challenges of present times. This study underlines the tight interlinkages of these issues by arguing that women’s empowerment may contribute to securing access to a nutritious diet in a scenario of increasing climate vulnerability. Furthering women’s land rights through joint land certification promotes women’s intra-household bargaining power. We argue that this, in turn, increases the likelihood of credit allocation, improves households’ spending and saving behavior, and, most importantly, encourages the adoption of climate-sensitive practices. We thus expect joint land titling (i.e., issuing land certificates in wife’s and husband’s names) to foster the food and nutritional security of households facing extreme weather events. To test our hypothesis, we combine temperature and rain data with information on land titling, farming practices, and food consumption provided by the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) for more than 25,000 households in Tanzania. Employing a combination of coarsened exact matching, propensity score matching, and a differences-in-differences approach, we show that joint land certification drives access to food in regions affected by weather extremes.

Responsibility to Deflect? How Adherence to a Sustainability Reporting Initiative Affects Mining Companies’ Investments  

with Mario Krauser

Multinational mining companies are under increasing pressure to improve the sustainability of their extractive activities. Joining voluntary sustainability standards may be a tool to signal commitment. Yet, the role of initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is disputed since they make weakly worded demands and rely on self-reporting. Whether such initiatives can indeed induce a change in companies’ behavior has been questioned. Critical voices argue that mining firms cloud their intentions to externalize costs and expand their activities in poorly governed countries by using self-disclosure sustainability reporting as a form of whitewashing. Mining companies, in contrast, blame the local political context for the so-called resource curse, arguing that mineral revenues are not adequately invested to promote the well-being of host societies. Relying on a novel operationalization strategy, this paper is among the first to assess the extent to which extractive industries deliberately use voluntary sustainability standards to expand their operations in countries characterized by poor institutional quality. We test the effect of UNGC adherence on companies’ investment location choice using two-way fixed effects models on a sample of 124 mining firms from 2010-2019. Our results reveal that adopting this voluntary reporting standard drives firms to increasingly invest in countries with lower institutional quality. We provide descriptive evidence on the strategic behavior of two multinational mining firms that corroborates our quantitative findings.