This presentation will discuss improving women’s rights and access to property is a central objective of policies aimed at promoting gender equality in Africa. A recent experiment in Uganda made strides toward this goal by offering subsidized formal land titles to households and encouraging men to include their wives on the titles. In this qualitative study, embedded within the survey data as part of the experiment, we investigate two key aspects of the initiative: firstly, the meaning and significance of newly-acquired titles for recipients and, secondly, the implications of these titles for marriage dynamics and women’s status. Whereas household bargaining models predict that joint titling increases a woman’s decision-making power by increasing her control over household resources, our findings reveal that couples with joint titles did not commonly perceive these titles as conferring new rights or control to women within the marriage. Even before obtaining titles, women held a good deal of influence in the management of marital property. Joint titles do exert an influence on household dynamics, however, by symbolizing a husband's commitment to the conjugal unit. Women’s sense of land tenure security is enhanced mainly through an improvement in their sense of marital security. As symbols of commitment, joint titles possess the potential to foster spousal cooperation and elevate the quality of marital relationships. 

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