Conditioned gains for women, rising insecurity for men

Some progress in strengthening women’s land rights but women’s access to land remains dependent on family relationships in key areas. Men’s tenure insecurity rises sharply in high-income countries.

New Prindex data from 108 countries shows the global gender gap in tenure insecurity is moving in two directions at once — with women's rights still conditional on preserving family relationships in many parts of the world, and men's insecurity rising in others.

The Prindex Gender Report 2024 provides the most detailed global picture to date of how women and men experience land and housing insecurity. Drawing on more than 107,000 individual interviews across 108 countries, it finds that 21.7% of men and 20.8% of women feel insecure about their main property. The near-equal global average masks underlying differences in regional patterns and drivers of tenure insecurity.

Prindex data shows that women's tenure insecurity remains markedly higher than men's in countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe. In these settings, women are less likely to be owners, more likely to use family-owned property, and far more likely to fear losing their rights at moments of family change. The gap is most acute in Yemen, where more than half of married women say they would worry about losing their property rights if divorced.

Yet there are also signs of progress. Several countries — including Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, India, and Nepal — have seen significant improvements in women's tenure security, often alongside reforms to inheritance law, family law, or land registration systems. In Benin, women's insecurity fell by more than 18 percentage points over four years, alongside a national land registration programme that issued ten times more titles than had previously existed.

At the same time, in 11 countries, men now report significantly higher insecurity than women — a shift driven largely by financial pressure including rising rents, mortgage stress, and concern about government action. The change is most visible in high-income countries. In Greece, the gender gap in tenure insecurity shifted by nearly 19 percentage points between 2020 and 2024, with men's insecurity rising against the backdrop of mortgage foreclosure pressures and a long-term decline in real wages.

Different drivers of insecurity for women and men

Women more frequently report sources of insecurity internal to the household — disagreements with relatives, the death of a family member — most prominently in the Middle East and North Africa region. The pattern reflects how women's rights to land and housing often remain conditional on relationships with others.

Men more frequently cite external sources of insecurity: lack of money to cover rent or mortgage payments, and concerns about government seizure of property. Both have grown since 2020. The report links rising male tenure insecurity in some contexts to social norms that tie men's standing, provider role, and household legitimacy to their ability to secure land or housing — making them particularly exposed when financial conditions deteriorate.

Persistent gaps in ownership and documentation

Globally, men are 8.3 percentage points more likely than women to report ownership of their main property — the most secure form of tenure — and 11.1 percentage points more likely to have their name on documents confirming property rights. Women remain over-represented among users of family-owned property, a less secure tenure form that does not place rights in the user's own name.

In countries with policies that encourage women to register immovable property, including through joint titling, the gender gap in ownership is smaller and rates of formal documentation are higher for both women and men. Where customary, religious, or traditional norms create different rights for women and men, the gender gap in ownership is markedly wider.

Worry at moments of changes in family relationships

Globally, 33.4% of married women say they would worry about losing their property rights in the event of divorce, compared with 30.2% of men. For spousal death, the figures are 35% and 30%. In countries where inheritance law does not grant women equal rights, the spousal-death gap widens significantly. The pattern is most pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why this matters

Equal rights to land and property are central to Sustainable Development Goal 1.4, which commits states to ensuring equal rights to ownership and control over land by 2030. The Prindex Gender Report 2024 shows that progress towards this commitment is uneven, with backsliding in some regions and positive advances in others.

The report makes a broader argument: tenure security cannot be addressed solely within the land sector. Family and inheritance law, governance and trust in institutions, and fiscal and monetary policy all shape whether women and men feel secure in their homes and on their land. Responding to rising insecurity will require land actors to engage well beyond their traditional remit.

Policy implications

The report identifies five priorities for policy and practice:

Expanding equal access to ownership, including by enabling women to register property in their own names and improving access to formal documentation

Removing statutory discrimination from inheritance and family laws, and aligning practice and social norms with gender-equal legal frameworks

Strengthening legal empowerment so that women and men know their rights and how to enforce them

Establishing safety-net policies for rent and mortgage payments to protect households facing economic shocks

Improving access to capital and strengthening renters' rights in contexts where men are disproportionately reliant on rental tenure

The report also points to a research agenda that extends beyond traditional gender and land scholarship. This includes a dedicated focus on men's tenure insecurity, its relationship to specific forms of tenure, and its links to gender norms, including norms of traditional or restrictive masculinity. It also points to the need for land professionals to engage beyond their immediate field of expertise to connect the land agenda to broader fiscal and monetary policy issues.