Abstract:
Ethiopia, Amhara Region in particular, has introduced recently rural land registration and
certification with the goal of being able to recognize land rights and provide security of tenure to its
citizens in an innovative way. The major objective of doing so was to establish systems of land
administration that can provide tenure security to land holders. Systematic assessment of the
performance of such systems with respect to gender would be of great importance to inform the
policy debate. As a result, a study was conducted in three districts of Amhara Region, Ethiopia, to
identify the role of land certification on women empowerment. The data was collected through
interview schedule, focus group discussion and key informant interview. The findings of the study
revealed that land right registration in the names of both husband and wife had enabled married
women ownership right to access their land resource. However, none married women had partially
benefited from their land resources. It was hardly given to women to have control over what crop to
grow, what and how much inputs to use, frequency and time of management practices, etc. It is the
sharecropper who can take the leading role in the decision land management. Recommendations
include economic empowerment of women through access to credit, extension services, use of
labour saving technologies, and effect legal registration of land transactions, including share
cropping
