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In Malawi, traditional/customary land rights are engendered where the patrilineal or matrilineal land holding regimes are upheld. In this paper, we investigate the interplay between engendered land rights regimes and intrahousehold bargaining power in dictating the direction of agricultural commercialization, and food security in Malawi. We, firstly, examine the effect of engendered land rights regimes and spouse bargaining power on commercialization of smallholder farming and then, analyze the effect of commercialization on food security factoring in land rights regimes and intrahousehold power. Using round 5 of the Malawi integrated household surveys (IHS), and various econometric models, we find that households under a matrilineal land holding regime are less likely to commercialize, and that an increase in spouse bargaining power increases the likelihood of commercialization. We also find spouse bargaining power to be instrumental in improving food security, especially for households under a matrilineal land holding regime. Interestingly, we find that an increase in commercialization is likely to improve food security for households under matrilineal land holding regime if there is more spouse bargaining power. The outcomes indicate that collaborative decision-making between the household head and spouse holds significant importance in ensuring that resources aimed at enhancing household well-being are directed towards the land assets controlled by women.
